{"id":220030330,"date":"2011-12-22T15:32:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=220030330"},"modified":"2011-12-22T15:32:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:32:10","slug":"a-traffic-engineers-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=220030330","title":{"rendered":"A Traffic Engineer&#8217;s Lament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by alima<br \/>\nTraffic engineers are being marginalized and viewed as anachronisms, like Mad Men from a bygone age. As Christopher B. Leinberger, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and professor of planning at the University of Michigan, writes in a recent NY Times op-ed, \u201ctraffic engineers dismissively call [bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements]  \u2018alternative transportation.\u2019\u201d<br \/>\nIn saying so, he, and planners around the world, are being dismissive of me and my profession. We are the GEICO Neanderthals of society.<br \/>\nAnd who\u2019s to blame? Yes, we deserve a lot of it. We, as a profession, continued to build more roads, wider roads, and faster roads while knowing full well we were running out of capacity and making transport systems less efficient.<br \/>\nAn example I&#8217;ve used time and time again in New York City is that the Brooklyn Bridge, when it was largely a rail and walking bridge, handled 430,000 people daily.  In the 1940\u2019s, we \u2018modernized\u2019 it by removing the rail; its daily person carrying volume dropped to 180,000.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/enr.construction.com\/opinions\/blogs\/schwartz.asp?plckController=Blog&amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;newspaperUserId=00770f29-477f-46d4-bbc3-436b72d800d9&amp;plckPostId=Blog%3a00770f29-477f-46d4-bbc3-436b72d800d9Post%3a85b46226-3500-4e3a-9f9b-8d7638b1a37d&amp;plckScript=blogScript&amp;plckElementId=blogDest\">https:\/\/enr.construction.com\/opinions\/blogs\/schwartz.asp?plckController=Blog&amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;newspaperUserId=00770f29-477f-46d4-bbc3-436b72d800d9&amp;plckPostId=Blog%3a00770f29-477f-46d4-bbc3-436b72d800d9Post%3a85b46226-3500-4e3a-9f9b-8d7638b1a37d&amp;plckScript=blogScript&amp;plckElementId=blogDest<\/a>oldId.20111222153210981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by alima Traffic engineers are being marginalized and viewed as anachronisms, like Mad Men from a bygone age. As Christopher B. Leinberger, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and professor of planning at the University of Michigan, writes in a recent NY Times op-ed, \u201ctraffic engineers dismissively call [bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=220030330\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Traffic Engineer&#8217;s Lament&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220030330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220030330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220030330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220030330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220030330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220030330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220030330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}