VA: Narrow Focus

NARROW FOCUS

Traffic in Kansas City

DEFINE ISSUES MORE CLEARLY AND SPECIFICALLY

Kansas city is looking to build a carpool lane for their highway system that will encourage car pooling for commuters. MARC has tentatively added it to their 30 year transit plan. Over crowed highways cause longer commutes, wasted fuel, accidents, pollution, traffic, and angry drivers.

I don’t believe that a car pool lane is the best solution to this problem of over crowed highways. Car pool lanes just encourage people to try and figure out how to cheat the system. There are cases of pregnant women claiming that the baby they are carrying count as a second passenger, or funeral home workers claiming the corpse qualifies them. I think there are better more immediate solutions to the problem.

The problem is there are too many cars on the road. This causes too much traffic, which causes pollution. I think the problem beneath this problem is that people don’t realize just how many other people are headed in the same direction as they are. If people only knew or had a tool that allowed lots of people to interact with each other then it would be possible to get them together and utilize each other for car pooling.

DETERMINE AUDIENCE

I think that my audience could be Kansas Citians who commute to work. Or, if that is too big i could narrow my focus to the Kansas City Art Institute, and try encouraging car pooling on that level.

DETERMINE HOW AND WHERE TO CONTACT AUDIENCE

I could contact people in the school, by making a questionnaire for people to fill out about their feelings on car pooling and why they do or don’t do it. Also I think I could send my questionnaire to VML, and possible T2 since they are both located in the city and people commute their it might prove a valuable source for insight.

WHO DO YOU KNOW LOCALLY THAT FITS THE TARGET GROUP

People from school, VML, and T2 would all be possibilities for people to contact.

RESEARCH

-$27.5 billion are budgeted for roads and highways

-we don’t know exactly what this money will be used for

more lanes

new construction

redesigning existing structure to reduce traffic

-$8.4 billion is for public transit

-possible solution to traffic issue

congestion pricing: charge a toll in high congestion areas drawbacks of this are

people with low income can’t afford the expense

-”there is a default assumption that we are going to keep growing those [airports, roads, etc.]...into whatever kind of future we imagine. Sustainability mean coming to terms with the natural biophysical limits of our world.” –Bryan Davidson

-the last mile problem: people take the train to work, but work isn’t at the train station so they have to figure out how to make it the rest of the way.

-car pooling on average saves $3000 per year

-car pooling slashes a persons carbon foot print by 2/3

-people don’t know who’s “goin’ their way”

-86% of trips we take in the car we take alone

-these trips cost us $0.50 per mile, which averages to $8,000 per year

-”Humans are inclined to change when they see that it will improve on what they already experience. This is where the role of the designer comes into play.”