Senior Paper Outline

Part 1 Problem:

• Introduce Urban Transportation as a whole, brief history.
• Introduce the traffic congestion problem in Brookline.

1. Overpopulation: Brookline's population having be growing exponentially for the past 5 years, and it does not look like it will stop.  58,732 growing 4% rate.  Overpopulation causes the roads to get clogged up during rush hours(morning, evening).
2. Road Safety: Traffic congestion raises safety concern for pedestrians.  Over the past 6 months there have been 5 road-related death(all during rush hour morning or evening)
3. Co2 emission: United States currently rank number one in the world for Co2 emissions.  Co2 is the basic chemical that causes greenhouse effect and global warming.  Health Department of Brookline director Alan Balsam noted that there have been a significant increase in Co2 in Brookline
4. Department of Transportation Todd Kirane noted that due to the increase influx in car on Brookline road, he is unable to set a "town rule" for speed limit since cars from other towns are crossing and are not subjected to "town rules".

Part 2 Argument:

• I am using single difference becfause if I can show that the traffic situation in France is the same as the traffic situation in Brookline, except the bicycle sharing community in France, then the only solution will be creating a bicycle sharing community in Brookline.

Part 3 Propose Solution:

Building off of my argument above, I propose to implement a bicycle sharing community in Brookline. 

• there will be multiple stations (Coolidge Corner, Cleveland Circle, Brookline Village) where bikers can rent using the meter system.
•  a partnership with MBTA system

Benefits:

• Reduce Pollution, traffic congestion, safety concerns, and connect to MBTA                                      

Casual Outline

Causal Chain:

a)       Urban transportation, a past genius innovation, has now become an outdated model with necessary improvements.  What used to be a convenient and fast method of traveling has now become congested and bug-riddled movement.  As Tillo E. Kuhn of UC Berkley states in The Economics of Transportation Planning in Urban Areas,

        Peak-hour commuter service may be regarded as the great underdeveloped area of the entire transportation industry.' Clearly, something needs to be done and yet so far little systematic attention has been given to this core problem

It is clear through studies and research that the increase in labor productivity has caused an increase in traffic congestion.

b)      Increase Labor productivity results in more supply of cars

c)      More supply of cars result in lowering of price of cars

d)      Low price of cars result in more consumer of cars

e)      More buyers result in more cars on the street

f)       More cars on the street result in congested urban transportation system.  As we have seen through the causual chain, increase labor productivity leads to more cars on the road which means traffic congestion.  Tillo E. Kuhn describes it as a “almost inevitable result of growth and progress.”

Common Factor:

a)      Urban transportation, a past genius innovation, has now become an outdated model with necessary improvements.  What used to be a convenient and fast method of traveling has now become congested and bug-riddled movement.  As Tillo E. Kuhn of UC Berkley states in The Economics of Transportation Planning in Urban Areas,

        Peak-hour commuter service may be regarded as the great underdeveloped area of the entire transportation industry.' Clearly, something needs to be done and yet so far little systematic attention has been given to this core problem

It is clear through that the increase in labor productivity has caused an increase in traffic congestion.

b)      The labor productivity and traffic congestion is one of a supply and prices issue.  As supply goes up, prices go down, which means consumers own more of the product.  A historical example of supply and price is the sale of sugar.  Sugar, which once was reserved for only the high kings of queens of nations, due to its bleak supply, is now easily distributed across all homes due to increased resources.  As the supply of sugar went up, prices went down.

c)      The Supply and prices of Sugar is akin to the supply and prices of cars.  Increase labor productivity has increased the supply of both

d)      Therefore, the increase of labor productivity most likely caused the increase car congestions in the urban transportation system today. 

Senior Paper assignment 1

My book is Urban Transportation in the United States: an Historical Overview authored by Edward Weiner.  Edward Weiner is a Senior Policy Analysis in the Office of Secretary of the U.S.  He has updated his book for 5 editions.  The overall focus of the book is to illustrate the development of US urban transportation policies and events throughout history.  From the creation of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of   1934 to Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, Weiner examines in depth the major events in urban transportation policies and their evolution.  This book focuses on the crucial policy and subsequently the evolution of the Federal-Aid Highway Act.  Starting with the first Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1934, Congress had  authorized that 1½ percent of the amount apportioned to any state annually for construction could be used for surveys, plans, engineering, and economic analyses for future highway construction projects.  By the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, it became the first piece of federal legislation to authorize urban transportation planning as a condition for receiving federal funds in urbanized areas.  It integrated land development and urban transportation to provide a major stimulus to urban transportation planning.  A big part of the book was dedicated to explaining and analyzing intergovernmental coordination.  As the number of federal programs for urban development and transportation increased, there was a increase in concern over the coordination of those policies.  An interesting Act passed was the Highway and Motor Vehicle Safety Acts of 1966.  This bill established a National Traffic Safety Committee which required the establishment of minimal safety standards for motor vehicles and equipments.  These safety policies provided the basis of a practical, safe, and effective method of reducing death and injury on the thriving urban transportation.  Another interesting policy that could apply to my project is the Reserve Bus Lanes, which allows buses to have a designated lane, out of the way of cars.  A historical policy that can be of great assistance to my project is the Urban Mass Transportation Assistance Act, which provided a dramatic increase in the level of federal funds for urban mass transportation.  In 1975 the Urban Mass Transportation Assistance Committee laid on several rules for future improvements in the Urban Mass Transportation plans.  The main goal of the UMTA is to increase road efficiency by limiting vehicles use in certain congested area.  Several points include: Encouragement of Carpooling and Other Forms of Ridesharing; Diversion, Exclusion and Metering of Automobile Access to Specific Areas; Area Licenses, Parking Surcharges and Other Forms of Congestion Pricing; And Establishment of Car Free Zones and Closure of Selected Streets.  The Brookline community is faced with a dilemma.  Faced with overpopulation, Brookline had passed several policies on restrictive policies toward parking.  For example, Brookline prohibits overnight parking on all sidewalks.  This policy creates a difficult problem for Brookline resident who do not have access to a parking space.  Because the population in Brookline is growing exponentially, many Brookline residents simply do not have a parking spot assigned to them.  Therefore, many are forced to find extremely expensive overnight parking spot, or risk having a $50 dollar ticket stamped on their windshield wipers the next morning.  I would like to look into the problem and this book about urban transportation planning gave me a background on the subject.  An idea that had been hovering around is to have a bicycle sharing system in Brookline.  The person that I can talk to is Todd Kirrane, who is the Transportation Administrator for Brookline.   

Freakonomics Review

I-Search Proposal

Expert Speech

I project

My project is about flipping the classroom.  In lecture-oriented classes, communication between students and teachers are severely limited.  Therefore, my proposal is to eliminate the lack of social interactions within classroom without losing any lecture time.  Flipping the classroom means that lectures, which always happen during class time, will be switched to homework while traditional practice problems or discussion will be done during class time.  This essentially improves the social interactions between teachers and students without losing the time for information input and output.
The first teacher I discussed this proposal is Mr. Wolf, a physics teacher who employs a flipped classroom system for his AP classes.  His lectures were prerecorded on Youtube in which students can access it easily at home; and during class time, AP physics students work on multiple labs, discuss problems, and practice concepts.  Mr. Wolf claims that without the freed-up class time from the flipped classroom experience, his students would never be able to do as many labs, problems and also interact with the teacher as much.  He, however, also warns of the limits of this flipped classroom experience.  Mr. Wolf claims that this class is only for higher leveled class in which students have access to computers and are motivated to do work.  In a standard class, many students are not as motivated to do work and therefore the freedom to watch the lecture sometimes can be exploited.  He also claims that the prerecorded lectures have to be clear, concise, and thought-provoking; by taking away class time for lectures also takes away time for immediate questions for the lectures.  Therefore, if a lecture completely confuses students and they physically cannot ask questions, then the lecture at-home part would be useless.
The second staff member I discussed with was the head of the Math Department, Mr. Paris.  Mr. Paris seemed indifferent and somewhat disdainful to the idea.  He claims that there are a few teachers in the math department that are using this method and that most of them find that there are no difference between their methods and that of the traditional classroom.  Mr. Paris claimed that it has its "potential" and its "limits".  The potential being freed up class time for interaction and the ability to rewind, pause, and fast forward lectures.  The limits, according to him, were numerous such as the lack of interactive lesson learning when watching an video and lack of motivating students.  Mr. Paris did not elaborate greatly on the subject and basically answered only the bare minimum of my questions.  I strongly feel that the math curriculum in the high school especially are somewhat limited in their interactions based on my past experiences.  Every day we are put through a hellish, monotonous lecture that half the student actually listen to.