Komanoff: Optimizing NYC transportation

The man behind the math

Elizabeth Campbell, May 27, 10.

Charles Komanoff is a traffic expert who, according to Wired, “has taken up the Borgesian task of re-creating, in precise detail, the economic and environmental impact of every single car, bus, truck, taxi, train, subway, bicycle, and pedestrian moving around New York City.” He has developed an enormous Excel spreadsheet, the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, which breaks down every aspect of New York City transportation to determine which mix of tolls and surcharges would create the greatest benefit for the largest number of people.

A former antiwar activist and later, energy analyst, Komanoff’s involvement with transportation issues began in 1986, when he resuscitated Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group lobbying for policies in favor of alternative transportation modes, which is now a large force in New York City politics. Later, in 1996, Komanoff co-founded a pedestrian rights organization, Right of Way. Just over two years after that, he produced a “detailed statistical analysis of pedestrian and cyclist deaths—it showed that casualties are not random, unpredictable accidents but the foreseeable results of given traffic conditions.”

Indeed, urban planners know all too well that traffic is filled with negative externalities, which are the costs that accrue when the self-interested actions of one person leave bystanders worse off.

The article notes, “A small action by one driver—a mere tap on the brakes—can have ripple effects that impact thousands of other motorists.”

But such externalities are hard to calculate and the costs are not paid out of any central budget. Transportation planners continue to struggle with incorporating them into their analysis—which typically means that such costs are under-counted, if counted at all.

Wired reports:

Komanoff’s masterpiece has impressed municipal traffic planners from New York to Paris to Guangzhou, China. “Charlie has created the first believable model of the impact of pricing on transportation choices,” says Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner who actually coined the word gridlock.

It’s also the most ambitious effort yet to impose mathematical rigor and predictability on an inherently chaotic phenomenon. Despite decades of attempts to curb delays—adding lanes to highways, synchronizing traffic lights—planners haven’t had much success at unsnarling gridlock. A study by the Texas Transportation Institute found that in 2007, metropolitan-area drivers in the US spent an average of 36 hours stuck in traffic—up from 14 hours in 1982.

Tom Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) said, “The work Komanoff is doing will be essential. He’s showing the impact of traffic in easy-to-understand language, considering all transport options, and getting away from the idea that transportation happens in a vacuum.” Once we have the ability to measure the problem, we can start reducing the amount of time and money lost in traffic and Komanoff’s work is helping to realize this goal.

(Photo Credit: Gotham City Lost And Found)