Continuing traffic growth on roadways in the Grand Canyon National Park is a significant problem, detracting from the park as a natural, scenic environment and generating unacceptable levels of noise, air pollution, and congestion. A 1995 General Management Plan for the park identified transportation as the most significant issue affecting preservation of the park’s unique natural resources. In FY 1999, the U.S. Congress directed FTA and FHWA to undertake a review of the transportation alternatives considered by the National Park Service for the Grand Canyon. These alternatives included light rail, standard bus, articulated bus, and articulated bus on busway. The review concluded that transit is an appropriate solution to the transportation problems in the popular South Rim area of the Grand Canyon because of the concentration of visitors at a small number of destinations requiring motor-vehicle access and the viability of walking and bicycling as modes of transportation within the park that can complement transit service. Light-rail service, which is the preferred alternative identified by the National Park Service, has the advantage compared with bus service that it can accommodate high levels of peak-hour, peak-season demand. Although the lowest-cost alternative considered is articulated bus operated on a busway, the costs of several light-rail and bus alternatives are not substantially higher. The use of transit services by park visitors will result in substantial environmental benefits, reducing vehicular emissions and noise dramatically through a major reduction in the use of private vehicles.

A study team headed by the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center analyzed the feasibility of developing a water transportation system to serve the national parks of New York Harbor. This assessment was designed to address two principal objectives: ( a) determine the viability of water transportation as an access mode serving the parks and ( b) develop a preliminary ferry service concept plan. An analysis of market (demand) and site (supply) factors was critical to the assessment. The standard methods of demand forecasting could not be used in the market analysis, however, because most of the necessary data were lacking. Thus, an alternative approach was developed to perform this essential part of the assessment. Necessary market thresholds were estimated by applying a cost model. These thresholds were compared with ridership scenarios that were considered to be reasonable and conservative. From this analysis, the financial viability of the proposed ferry services was determined. For the particular application, the analysis results were sufficiently persuasive to suggest that proposed services should be implemented on a trial basis. This approach recognizes the practical limitations of demand forecasting in an environment in which data characterizing existing travel behavior are deficient and proposed services may attract substantially new markets with different socioeconomic and travel behavior characteristics. Because these limitations frequently apply to the planning of ferries and land-based modes serving parks and other recreational facilities, the described approach may have widespread applications.

Years of experience have provided substantial evidence of persistent planning problems that are common to many proposals for major transit investments. These problems frequently are rooted in the system-level planning performed at the scale of the metropolitan area or region. This area is the scale at which different transportation services and modes form an interrelated system for moving people and goods between origins and destinations where the household, employment, and commerce activities occur. System planning provides the big-picture context for foundational planning elements, such as developing a coherent vision for the region's future and translating that vision into concrete goals and objectives, which provide the basis for identifying transportation needs and problems. The usage of potential new transportation infrastructure and major services should be forecasted at the regional level to capture essential travel behavior characteristics. Five system planning activities are particularly necessary to provide the necessary groundwork underpinning successful projects: regional needs identification and prioritization, land use planning coordinated at the level of the metropolitan area, technical analysis and forecasting, early consideration of environmental issues, and financial planning and fiscal constraint. The components of these activities that are most critical to developing successful large-scale transportation projects are discussed, along with associated strategies for improving the linkage between system-level planning and the development of individual projects.

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Each year more than 1000 pedestrians are injured in accidents on pedestrian crossings in Switzerland. The accidents often occur in darkness, twilight or poor visibility during rain at locations without sufficient public street lighting because vehicle drivers notice the pedestrian crossing too late or overlook it altogether. Pedestrian crossings can be made significantly easier for vehicle drivers to recognize at night and in poor visibility by means of HMB reflectors. When crossing sites are made more conspicuous with high horizontal retro-reflecting markers, the readiness to stop increases. The reflectors can thus contribute to improving road safety at pedestrian crossings. This new low-cost measure has a wide range of applications. The new reflector system is currently gaining ground in Switzerland and several other European countries.