Eno Transportation Weekly

July 26, 2019 – Support for capital investments in public transit is high in the United States. Evidence for this can be found in measures for new investments that voters approve with regularity at the ballot box, the state legislatures raising their own sources for capital projects, and the widespread recognition that boosting ridership requires investment in the right priorities.

This week, Eno released an important new paper from UCLA’s Michael Manville about one of the most significant transportation ballot measures in recent years. Los Angeles County voters approved Measure M in November 2016.

I knew it would be strange to be in Russia on July 4 for the Moscow Urban Forum. Moscow is a complicated and challenging city—albeit a stunning, lively one—as it struggles with the transition from a socialist economy to a market one.

May 17, 2019 – An important part of the narrative around Washington’s $2 trillion infrastructure push focuses on maintaining and modernizing what we’ve already got. Which is why the opening session to kickoff Infrastructure Week 2019 focused on ways to enable infrastructure to serve us longer, to be more easily repaired, and adapt to new forces and trends.

March 8, 2019 – In the country’s two biggest metropolitan areas, political leaders took big steps toward full-scale congestion pricing strategies last week.

January 23, 2019 – The all-too-regular budgetary shenanigans highlight once again that the nation’s aviation system should not be subject to the whims and uncertainties of political battles. It’s time for reform.

November 2, 2018 – There are at least 291 transportation measures on the ballot this November to go along with the 196 that have already appeared before voters earlier this year. Eno is tracking these measures and has released a comprehensive listing of the 2018 transportation ballot measures.

October 3, 2018 – The FAA reauthorization directly addresses the agency’s critical role in certification in order to ensure public confidence in the safety of the system for business and leisure travel. With the industry changing rapidly as new technologies come online, the federal certification process needs to be more flexible and agile.

August 22, 2018 – The Eno Center for Transportation is saddened by the recent loss of Lou Gambaccini, the founding Chairman of New Jersey Transit and a former member of the Eno Board of Advisors.

In major metropolitan areas like New York, transportation challenges dominate headlines and for good reason. The data firm Inrix recently named New York the third worst-congested city in the world, ahead of Sao Paulo, Bangkok, and Jakarta. At the same time, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a “state of emergency” for the city’s transit system. As it was in London, now is the time for bold action.

April 13, 2018 – Hank Dittmar—a transportation pioneer well known to most of us—died on April 3, 2018 at age 62 after a long battle with cancer.

Amelia Earhart, one of the most famous Americans in transportation, once said: “The more one does….the more one is able to do.” That’s the philosophy that governed 2017 at the Eno Center for Transportation as we launched several new initiatives, doubled down on others, and sharpened our focus to maximize our impact.

In region after region, a growing chorus of leaders are calling for their city and metropolitan area to plan for a future of automated vehicles (AVs). Often these calls fall along a binary argument between what analysts call the “heaven’ and ‘hell’ scenarios (or ‘utopia’ or ‘dystopia’ visions) for AVs.

Why are many organized aviation labor unions, including the air traffic controllers, the flight attendants, and several airline pilots’ unions, supporting the corporatization of air traffic control outside the structure of the FAA?

August 9, 2017 – Local voters in voters in Michigan and Missouri went to the polls and voted down transportation-related measures.

August 9, 2017 – The Open Skies relationship between the United States and two Middle Eastern countries – Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – is particularly contentious right now. This week, we have two unique perspectives on this highly-charged debate: from Eno Board of Directors chairman Jim Burnley and from Eno Policy Analyst Rui Neiva.

June 1, 2017 – In the United States today, public transit is in crisis.

While many many are already calling the Administration’s budget proposal “dead in the water” one item should not be dismissed: spinning off the nation’s air traffic control (ATC) system to an independent, nonprofit entity. Doing so would remove roughly $11 to $12 billion per year from the federal budget, and over 35,000 federal employees could be off the federal payroll.

While the U.S. had long been considered the gold standard in aviation technology and safety, the nation has begun to lose its edge and is falling behind its peers while the rest of the world surpasses it in innovation.

Fortunately, the push for safer roads is getting stronger. Inspired by European cities, the Vision Zero movement is an all hands on deck approach to transportation safety focused on improvements to streets and sidewalks, lights and lanes, as well as education and enforcement.