Twin Cities Research Group
Brown-Bag Speaker Series for 2005

Topic for May: "Understanding large increases in commute durations"

When: Wednesday, May 11, at 12:00 Noon

Where: MN Council of Nonprofits, 2314 University Avenue, Suite 20,
Saint Paul 55114. Map to this location is at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TCRG/

Event is *free* (bring your own brown-bag lunch).

Featured speaker: Gary Barnes, Research Fellow at U of M's Humphrey
Institute, will present on commute durations, untangling the puzzle
of system capacity and travel behavior. Average commute durations
increased substantially during the 1990s in every county in
Minnesota. While increasing commute times are often blamed on
congestion and sprawl, in this case the largest increases were in non-
urban counties where neither of these factors could be having much
impact.

The research used a detailed data analysis of changes in job and
housing locations, wage and housing price differentials, and rural
and urban travel speeds, to understand exactly what changed between
1990 and 2000. It is important to know if recent increases represent
the beginning of a trend that will continue, and if so, what the
reasons are, and what implications this might have for the type of
transportation system that will be needed in the future. This could
have major implications both for future transportation system needs
and for traffic forecasting models.
_____


PS: Have something YOU want to present? If so, send short proposal
abstracts to the TCRG list moderator: tgraham@...

Speakers and topics for upcoming months will be announced at later
date.

Hope to see you all @ next 2nd Wednesday.

Cheers,
Todd Graham
TCRG list moderator
tgraham@...