In May 2013 the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration released estimates of U.S. traffic fatalities for 2012, and the results were troubling: 34,080 people died in motor-vehicles crashes that year, an increase of 5.3% over 2011’s total and a reversal of the long-term downward trends. The meaning of the one-year shift is unclear and there is a […]

America’s ground-transportation system is the essence of complex. According to a 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), it includes approximately 4 million miles of state and local roads, 136,000 miles of federal highways, 604,000 bridges, and 141,000 miles of rail, 80% of which are for freight. In addition to the 250-million-plus private cars […]

José Gómez-Ibáñez is the Derek C. Bok Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and its Graduate School of Design. As can be judged by one of his signature courses, “Transportation Policy and Planning,” the systems that people and societies have developed to move from place to place are […]