Congestion is a poor measure of mobility.

Congestion management, or building us out of congestion, is a poor way of measuring mobility, which is why access issues for bicycle and pedestrian mobility get locked out of the funding and design streams. CCAG has not been able to implement many of its bicycle master plan provisions over the last two iterations since 1995, and is looking for a new plan, because congestion management has wiped out the routes and created the need for expensive replacement which lack any funding capability in TDA-3. One example is Ralston over 101 where the two right turning lanes on 101 northbound wiped out access and a replacement with the Ralton bike bridge is now more than eight years late and seriously funding challenged. Greg Marsden has proposed alternate measures.

Looking in the TEP for alternate funding is also wrong. SMCTD Transportation Expenditure Plan Program Categories Pedestrian and Bicycle 3 0% $45.0 million $25 million (page 7) to implement either Millbrae Avenue/US 101 pedestrian/bike overcrossing (Millbrae)
or US 101 near Hillsdale Boulevard pedestrian/bike overcrossing (San Mateo) are replacement funding for not providing routine accomodation. Both Pedestrian overcrossings should have been included as Routine Accomodation fundings when Caltrans and Bart completed the projects that left these projects up to the local municipalities. When all is said and done, there would be all too little money left in the pot to fund any other project that the 19 other Cities might propose.

In the Economist building out, or Braes Paradox, was recently described and the following letter received:

SIR – It may be of interest to your readers to know that it was actually economists who first figured out that an individual's selfish behaviour when selecting an optimal travel route would yield different traffic flows and times than if one were to assign flows in a centralized manner to try and minimize the cost to society ("Queuing conundrums ", September 13th). Arthur Pigou wrote "The Economics of Welfare" in 1920, by which time he was well aware of the distinction between different traffic behaviours.

Curiously, traffic and queuing problems keep on getting (re)discovered by different disciplines; now it seems to be the turn of the physicists.

Anna Nagurney
Director
Virtual Centre for Supernetworks
Isenberg School of Management
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts

Note the solution- permanent Sunday Streets!