Transportation

Lecturer James Aloisi and several students from his urban planning and policy course write for Commonwealth Beacon about their proposals for creating a better public transportation connection between Kendall Square and Logan Airport. “It should not be acceptable that, in greater Boston in the 21st Century, a traveler cannot easily and conveniently connect by transit from one of the nation’s most important innovation and academic centers to the international airport, a mere three miles away,” writes Aloisi. “We can do better, and we must do better if we want to do more than just pretend that we live in a livable, sustainable region.”

David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, speaks with Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace about how cars in the U.S. are getting heavier and larger, and the environmental and safety costs associated with larger vehicles. “For decades, people who buy enormous, very heavy cars have been creating societal costs that they aren’t paying for. That’s what’s called a market failure,” said Zipper. “So if you want the market for automobiles to succeed, we need to make sure that when people are shopping for their next car, they are considering the societal costs of their purchase.”

David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, writes for Slate about the “continually expanding size of the typical American automobile” and the deadly consequences of car bloat. “In 1977, SUVs and trucks together represented 23 percent of American new car sales; today they comprise more than 80 percent,” writes Zipper. “Meanwhile, the models themselves keep getting larger. These four-wheeled behemoths started as niche vehicles, meant to allow certain groups of people to accomplish specific tasks. Today they have become a fixture of everyday American life. They are also linked to myriad societal ills, from crash deaths to climate change to social inequality. Bigger cars make each of those problems harder to solve.”

Bloomberg reporter Magdalena del Valle spotlights Regent, an all-electric sea glider startup founded by alumni Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker. Regent is combining electric propulsion and hydrofoils to, “offer a carbon-free alternative for overwater routes such as New York to Boston, Los Angeles to San Diego, or Miami to the Bahamas,” writes del Valle.

Alexander Bratianu-Badea SM '15 co-founded De-Ice, a startup creating a new and efficient way to thaw aircrafts, reports Kate Duffy for Bloomberg. Bratianu-Badea says, “De-Ice’s strips stick onto the plane with aerospace-grade, acrylic-based adhesive backing. During regulatory tests, the system was exposed to different temperatures, humidifies and chemicals. Even UV light and submersion in a heated oil bath couldn’t damage it.”

Regent, a company co-founded by alumni Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker, has developed an all-electric sea glider, a low flying plane that operates only over water, reports Alan Ohnsman for Forbes. “We’ve seen airlines and the aviation field pick up a lot,” says Thalheimer. “We're starting to see airlines really think of themselves as transportation operators, thinking about that whole end-to-end customer journey. And seagliders can fit really nicely into that picture.”

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock about the importance of scrappage programs, especially those that incentivize electrifying the current fleet of vehicles in the United States. “At any given point in time, you care about the composition of the fleet,” says Trancik. “Funding programs that would help turn over the fleet more rapidly makes a lot of sense.”

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti explores the concept of the “15-minute city,” which is aimed at creating walkable neighborhoods. “The 15-minute city must be paired with investment in transport between neighborhoods,” writes Ratti, noting that investment is especially needed in public transportation to ensure that 15-minute cities do not contribute to greater segregation.

Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Associate Fred Salvucci BS '61 SM '62 speaks with GBH’s The Big Dig Podcast host Ian Coss about his role in Boston’s “Big Dig” project. “The idea for the Big Dig began with an unlikely friendship,” explains Coss. “During the highway debates in the early 70s, Fred Salvucci – one of the highway opponents – went to a ton of meetings. And across the table at many of those meetings was a man named Bill Reynolds; he was there to represent the road builders.”

Prof. Jinhua Zhao writes for Boston Magazine about how artificial intelligence could help improve the MBTA system. “When something significant happens on public transportation—the line is down, the road is congested, some bridge is blocked—the customer is suddenly stuck in the system and needs more help,” writes Zhao. “For when that happens, we developed a solution to send individualized guidance for a better transit option to that person, communicated by text message or an app.”

Nature reporter Andrew Robinson spotlights “Atlas of the Senseable City” a new book co-authored by Prof. Carlo Ratti. The book is a “highly illustrated collection of digital maps,” Robinson notes, adding that it “analyzes four essential urban dimensions: motion, connection, circulation and experience.”

Studies by researchers at MIT have found “that shifting to electric vehicles delivers a 30% to 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over combustion vehicles,” reports Tom Krisher for Associated Press. According to Prof. Jessika Trancik, “electric vehicles are cleaner over their lifetimes, even after taking into account the pollution caused by the mining of metals for batteries,” writes Krisher.

Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Marketplace host Meghan McCarty Carino about how AI has impacted the workplace, highlighting the wide deployment of robots in warehouses. “Instead of people running around the warehouses, the people stand and the robots run around the warehouses,” Sheffi said. “But they bring the work to the people who then put it in boxes, package them.”

Researchers from MIT have found that since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a decrease in the number of interactions between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, reports Danny Westneat for The Seattle Times. “It’s creating an urban fabric that is actually more brittle, in the sense that we are less exposed to other people,” says research scientist Esteban Moro. “We don’t get to know other people in the city … to know other people’s needs. If we don’t see them around the city, that will be impossible.”

Lecturer Jim Aloisi speaks with CNN reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn about how Taylor Swift’s sold-out Eras Tour is impacting public transportation across the United States. “What Taylor Swift is doing, and I thank her for this — although I don’t know she intended to — is proving that if you give people better, reliable transit alternatives, they’ll take it,” says Aloisi. “They would prefer to do that than be stuck in soul-crushing traffic.”