Research

More driving makes communities less prosperous. This study finds that productivity declines with increased vehicle travel and rises with multimodal transportation — regions with higher cycling and walking mode shares tend to have higher GDP. It identifies six ways automobile-oriented planning reduces productivity, from higher infrastructure costs to reduced access for non-drivers.

This study explores the concept of windshield bias, which refers to the tendency for people to view the world from the perspective of a car driver, and how it contributes to motornormativity and public health hazards.

Motonormativity is the idea that car use is the default and normal way to get around, which can lead to underinvestment in bike lanes and other active transportation infrastructure. This study explores how motonormativity contributes to public health issues and what can be done to challenge it.

Survey of 563 participants finds that cyclists wearing helmets or safety vests are perceived as less human than unequipped cyclists. Dehumanising perceptions are linked to more aggressive driver behavior, with safety gear paradoxically increasing the effect.

Tracks 11,010 miles of bike facilities across 29 U.S. cities (2010–2019) to assess equity in distribution. People of Color received the lowest rates of facility installation overall, though bike lanes were concentrated in lower-income areas. Causality between facilities and neighborhood demographic change was weak — facilities followed rising incomes more than they caused displacement.

American law indirectly subsidizes automobile use through rules embedded in every field of law — from traffic law and land use regulation to tax, tort, and environmental law — that reassign the costs of driving onto non-drivers and society at large. This paper identifies and analyzes these subsidies and argues that reforming them is essential to addressing inequality, public health, and climate change.

Surveys 278 transportation practitioners and finds that windshield bias inflates concern about distracted walking. Practitioners who primarily drive overestimate its role in pedestrian deaths and favor individual-level solutions over proven structural fixes like reducing vehicle speeds.

Despite bicycling being considered ten times more dangerous than driving, the evidence suggests that high-bicycling-mode-share cities are not only safer for bicyclists but for all road users.

25.5 million Americans have travel-limiting disabilities; 7 in 10 reduce daily travel because of them. People with disabilities make fewer trips, are less likely to drive, more likely to live in zero-vehicle households, and have significantly lower employment and income rates than people without disabilities.

Mixed-methods analysis of retail sales tax, traffic, and transit data in Denver finds that new bike facilities correlate with statistically significant positive economic impacts for local businesses, increased bicycle traffic, fewer traffic violations, and improved safety for all users. (15th Street & Larimer Street)