London Congestion Pricing – Implications for Other Cities

Straßenbenutzungsgebühr, Verkehrsstau, Stadtverkehrspolitik, Großbritannien, London, Road pricing, Traffic jam, Urban transport policy, United Kingdom

Congestion costing critique

The Urban Mobility Report (UMR) is a widely-cited study that quantifies and monetises (measures in monetary units) traffic congestion costs in U.S. metropolitan regions. This report critically examines the UMR’s assumptions and methods. The UMR reflects an older planning paradigm which assumes that “transportation” means automobile travel, and so evaluates transport system performance based primarily on automobile travel speeds; it ignores other modes, other planning objectives and other impacts. The UMR methodology overestimates congestion costs and roadway expansion benefits by using higher baseline speeds and travel time unit cost values than most experts recommend, by ignoring induced travel impacts, and using an inaccurate speed-emission curve. Its estimates represent upper-bound values and are two- to four times higher than result from more realistic assumptions. The UMR claims that congestion costs are “massive,” although they increase total travel time and fuel consumption by 2% at most. It exaggerates future congestion problems by ignoring evidence of peaking vehicle travel and changing travel demands. The UMR ignores basic research principles: it fails to identify best current practices, explain assumptions, document sources, incorporate peer review, or respond to criticisms

Urban sprawl costs the American economy more than $1 trillionannually: smart growth policies may be the answer.

The rapid urbanization of populations across the world has led to the growth of urban sprawl, which has in turn had many negative social and economic impacts. In new research in partnership with LSE Cities, Todd Litman, investigates the problems of urban sprawl and explores potential solutions. He finds that this sprawl costs the American economy more than $1 trillion every year, and argues that this may be reduced by encouraging market-based reforms to encourage smart growth strategies

Evaluating Transportation Land Use Impacts: Considering the Impacts, Benefits and

Abstract This paper examines ways that transportation decisions affect land use patterns and resulting economic, social and environmental impacts. These include direct impacts on land used for transportation facilities, and indirect impacts caused by changes to land use development patterns. In particular, certain transportation planning decisions tend to increase sprawl (dispersed, urban-fringe, automobile-dependent development), while others support smart growth (more compact, infill, multi-modal development). These development patterns have various economic, social and environmental impacts. This paper describes specific methods for evaluating these impacts in transport planning

Creating Full Individual-level Location Timelines from Sparse Social Media Data

In many domain applications, a continuous timeline of human locations is critical; for example for understanding possible locations where a disease may spread, or the flow of traffic. While data sources such as GPS trackers or Call Data Records are temporally-rich, they are expensive, often not publicly available or garnered only in select locations, restricting their wide use. Conversely, geo-located social media data are publicly and freely available, but present challenges especially for full timeline inference due to their sparse nature. We propose a stochastic framework, Intermediate Location Computing (ILC) which uses prior knowledge about human mobility patterns to predict every missing location from an individual's social media timeline. We compare ILC with a state-of-the-art RNN baseline as well as methods that are optimized for next-location prediction only. For three major cities, ILC predicts the top 1 location for all missing locations in a timeline, at 1 and 2-hour resolution, with up to 77.2% accuracy (up to 6% better accuracy than all compared methods). Specifically, ILC also outperforms the RNN in settings of low data; both cases of very small number of users (under 50), as well as settings with more users, but with sparser timelines. In general, the RNN model needs a higher number of users to achieve the same performance as ILC. Overall, this work illustrates the tradeoff between prior knowledge of heuristics and more data, for an important societal problem of filling in entire timelines using freely available, but sparse social media data.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Video: Board Certification: Reaching the Pinnacle of Practice

Course Outline & Timeline Registration & Continental Breakfast: 7:30 to 7:55 am Atrium & Lecture Room Welcome & Introduction: 7:55 to 8:00 am Elena Rose Minicucci, J.D., Director of Alumni Relations, NSU Shepard Broad Law Center Welcome Introduce Professor Donna Carol Litman, and attorneys Sheryl Moore, Steven Farbman, Todd Weicholz, and William Snyder, LL.M. Seminar Presentation 8:00 am to 9:15 am Professor Donna Carol Litman - Moderator Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center Fort Lauderdale, FL Florida Bar Board Certified in Tax Law Professor Litman will lead the discussion among the other Board Certified attorneys listed above. The Discussion will cover the following: Overview of Board Certification – Requirements Rules Regulating Board Certification – in general Handout: Rule 6-3.5 “Standards for Certification” (general) Handout: Rule 6-3.6 “Recertification” (general) Revocation of Certification – Once Certified, lawyer may lose Certification for certain reasons such as: if the area of practice ceases to be certified; if disciplinary action is taken against the lawyer pursuant to Rules Regulating The Florida Bar; if the lawyer commits a crime; misrepresentation by the lawyer; failure to abide by the rules and regulations governing the program; other lawyer misconduct. Handout: Rule 6-3.8 “Revocation of Certification” 6 Ethics – Rules Regulating The Florida Bar Rule 6-3.9 “Manner of Certification” attorney and law firm must comply with this rule for all advertising, website, business cards, office sign; limitation on use of terms: “Specialist” or “Board Certified” or “Expert” or “B.C.S.” Handout: Rule 6-3.9 “Manner of Certification” & 4-7.14(a)(4) “Potentially Misleading Advertisements” Practice Areas – Board Certification in Florida offers twenty-four practice areas in which to become Board Certified Handout: “Florida’s 24 Legal Specialty Areas” from The Florida Bar Five Specific Board Certification Practice areas discussed below by speakers who are Board Certified in their practice areas: Tax Law Certification: Donna Carol Litman, Esq. Requirements as set forth in Rule 6-5 “Standards for Certification of a Board Certified Tax Lawyer” Handout: Rule 6-5 (including 6-5.1 through 6-5.4) Discussion of Article: Board Certification: The View From the Bench…and Beyond” by George W. Maxwell, III, 77 APR Fla. B.J. 34 (April 2003) – how Judges view Board Certified attorneys Marital & Family Law Certification: Sheryl Moore, Esq. Requirements as set forth in Rule 6-6 “Standards for Board Certification in Marital & Family Law” Handout: Rule 6-6 (including 6-6.1 through 6-6.5) – lawyers and judicial officers included Case Law and/or Ethical Considerations – The Florida Bar v. Morse 784 So. 2d 414 (Fla. 2001) dealing with revocation of Board Certification in Marital & Family Law for failure to provide diligent and competent representation to client Civil Trial Certification: Steven S. Farbman, Esq. Requirements as set forth in Rule 6-4 “Standards for Certification of a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer” Handout: Rule 6-4 (including 6-4.1 through 6-4.4) Case Law and/or Ethical Considerations – Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, Chapter 4 – 1.5 Fees and Costs for Legal Services (including Contingency Fee Agreements) and Art. 1 Sec. 26 The Florida Constitution, “Claimant’s Right to Fair Compensation” Criminal Trial Certification: Todd Weicholz, Esq. Requirements as set forth in Rule 6-8 “Standards for Certification of a Board Certified Criminal Lawyer” Handout: Rule 6-8 (including 6-8.1 through 6-8.4) Case Law and/or Ethical Considerations – 4-7.18 “Direct Contact with Prospective Clients” especially relevant to criminal defense matters Wills, Trusts & Estates Certification: William Snyder, LL.M, Esq. Requirements as set forth in Rule 6-7 “Standards For Certification of a Board Certified Wills, Trusts, and Estates Lawyer” 7 Handout: Rule 6-7 (including 6-7.1 through 6-7.4) Case Law & Ethical Considerations - Rules Regulating the Florida Bar – Chapter 4 – 7.13 “Deceptive and Inherently Misleading Advertisements” especially regarding experience and special expertise Professor Donna Carol Litman, Esq. 9:15 to 9:30 am General Question & Answer Session with Seminar Attendees & Board Certified Speakers: Sheryl Moore, Esq., Steven S. Farbman, Esq., Todd Weicholz, Esq., and William Snyder, LL.M., Esq. Seminar ends at 9:30 a