Transportation Law Commons^™

New York City Misses The Exit To Traffic Safety, Joseph Caffrey

Capstones

New York City Misses the Exit to Traffic Safety investigates New York City’s mounting traffic violence crisis through the lens of a devastating crash that killed a Brooklyn mother and her two daughters. It examines the city’s inconsistent enforcement of reckless driving and the failure of the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program (DVAP), which aimed to reform recidivist speeders. The piece investigates the imperfections of Vision Zero, public backlash to automated enforcement, and the broader failure to prevent recidivist speeding. It also explores policy alternatives like Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), highlighting legislative efforts to revive accountability and save lives, while advocating …

Green Amendments Land Use And Transportation: What Could Go Wrong?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Numerous states have amended their constitutions to include a green amendment (that is, an amendment providing that the state's citizens have a right to a healthy environment). Unfortunately, the vagueness of these amendments leaves an enormous amount of interpretative power to courts. This article examines how some courts have interpreted green amendments and how these interpretations risk the misuse of green amendments. Additionally, this article examines how such misuse may be avoided.

Surprises In The Skies: Resolving The Circuit Split On How Courts Should Determine Whether An "Accident" Is "Unexpected Or Unusual" Under The Montreal Convention, Ashley Tang

Washington Law Review

Article 17 of both the Montreal Convention and its predecessor, the Warsaw Convention, imposes liability onto air carriers for certain injuries and damages from “accidents” incurred by passengers during international air carriage. However, neither Convention defines the term “accident.” While the United States Supreme Court opined that, for the purposes of Article 17, an air carrier’s liability “arises only if a passenger’s injury is caused by an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger,” it did not explain what standards lower courts should employ to discern whether an event is “unexpected or unusual.” In 2004, …

Law School News: Rewards Of The Road Less Traveled 10-13-2022, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

How To Pay Off Hard Work, Juliette Hernandez

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Motor Carrier Excuse, David M. Cole

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Which Transportation Technologies Do We Want?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

A review of Todd Litman's book, New Mobilities- Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies

Hb 1009: Remote Operation Of Personal Delivery Devices, Laura Bloodworth, Julia Webb

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act provides for the remote operation of personal delivery devices on Georgia’s highways, streets, bike paths, and sidewalks. It provides the required parameters for operation including parking, time frames, speed limits, safety parameters, weight limits, insurance, and local enforcement through civil citations.

Rewriting Our Nation's Deadly Traffic Manual, Sara C. Bronin, Gregory H. Shill

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Every day, Americans entrust their lives to a road system that is governed by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (the Manual). On its face, this Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) publication is a straightforward technical document. It contains over eight hundred pages of engineering guidance on everything from traffic-light placement to the font of highway signs. It also establishes acceptable methods for officials to modify speed limits.

While such provisions may sound inconsequential, some of the Manual’s provisions have far-reaching, even deadly, consequences. They prioritize vehicular speed over public safety, mobility over other uses of …

Bursting The Auto Loan Bubble In The Wake Of Covid-19, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, auto loans outstanding in the United States had soared to record highs. The boom in lending spanned new and used cars and traditional and subprime loans. With loan delinquencies also hitting new highs almost every quarter, predictions that the auto lending market could burst soon abounded. When the economy came to a grinding halt and unemployment skyrocketed in the wake of the pandemic, auto lenders knew they were facing a crisis. Throughout 2020, auto lenders granted more payment forbearances to consumers, while slashing interest rates on new loans. Auto manufacturers similarly made promises to buyers, such …

Transportation In A Changing Climate: Innovating To Create Resilient, Low-Carbon Systems, Vicki Arroyo, Annie Bennett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The climate is changing rapidly, bringing new temperature highs and weather extremes and affecting every individual, community, and sector of society—including transportation. Although, at times, climate change may feel like an insurmountable challenge, humanity is resilient and innovative. Transportation ultimately is about people: connecting people to places, to goods and services, and to each other. Because of its central role in the functioning of society, the transportation system—including its infrastructure, networks, and workforce—is an essential part of addressing and responding to climate change.

This article discusses challenges and opportunities for building resilient and low-carbon transportation solutions in the United States.

Who’S Afraid Of Uber?, Jeremy Kidd

Articles

Ride-sharing has disrupted the transportation-for-hire industry, breaking down barriers to entry that have protected entrenched incumbents for decades. The disruption has led to calls for increased regulation, along with criticisms about the effect of innovation on consumer safety, market stability, rule of law, and other areas. That disruption, however, has also led to tremendous benefits to consumers as they are freed from a regulatory regime that limited their transportation choices and forced them to pay higher prices for lower quality service. The same type of disruptive innovation is upon us in almost every area of our economy. How we deal …

Accelerating Deep Decarbonization In The U.S. Transportation Sector, Daniel Sperling, Lewis Fulton, Vicki Arroyo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The transportation sector includes light-duty vehicles, heavy-duty vehicles (trucks), off-road vehicles, buses, rail, shipping, and aviation. Reducing emissions in this sector is critical in order to achieve the pathways to zero carbon. Transportation emissions accounted for 37 percent of total CO₂ emissions from energy and industry in 2019. The principal strategy for decarbonizing transportation is electrification (including battery, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen fuel cells) of all light-duty vehicles, urban-based trucks and buses, rail, much of long-haul trucking, and some short-haul shipping and aviation. For long-haul aviation and long-haul ocean shipping, advanced low-carbon biofuels and synthetic liquids or gases produced with …

China’S Regulatory Approach To The Sharing Economy: A Perspective On Ride-Hailing, Huiqin Jiang, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

While the sharing economy brings significant social benefits in China, it comes with regulatory challenges that are novel and unpredictable. How should regulators handle these challenges? This paper offers fresh insights into the regulatory approach to the ride-hailing industry, the most comprehensively regulated sharing industry in China. A historical review identifies three regulatory approaches deployed to date: self-regulation, market-based regulation and government regulation. Self-regulation relies on the platforms with incentive to provide better service for greater profit, and to deal with sharing-specific challenges. Market-based regulation invites rivals to keep a watchful eye on other players, in order to enhance their …

Critical Issues In Transportation 2019: Climate Change Resilience, Vicki Arroyo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The climate is rapidly changing, bringing more frequent and extreme floods, droughts, and heatwaves, along with stronger hurricanes and more intense wildfires. Each year brings new record-breaking weather extremes; in the first six months of 2019, for example, a record number of U.S. counties flooded. July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded for the world as a whole (1). Climate change is also melting glaciers, reducing the amount of sea ice, and raising sea levels, bringing devastation to coastal areas. From Louisiana to Alaska, many coastal communities are forced to make difficult decisions about whether to relocate …

Mitigating Climate Change Through Transportation And Land Use Policy, Alejandro E. Camacho, Melissa L. Kelly, Nicholas J. Marantz, Gabriel Weil

Scholarly Works

A number of U.S. state and local governments have adopted strategies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation and land development. Although some have made significant progress in reducing GHG emissions from the power sector, transportation emissions in most states continue to rise. This Article details the range of existing and proposed state interventions to reduce transportation sector GHG emissions, analyzes the trade offs of these strategies, and offers recommendations to improve and supplement such initiatives, including strategic use of planning mandates and funding and technical assistance. Additionally, regulating land use, shifting transportation spending, removing barriers to implementing road …

Anti-Competition Regulation, Anne Fleming

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Looking across the long twentieth century, this article tracks the rise and fall of one form of anti-competition regulation: the certificate of public convenience. Designed to curb “destructive competition” in certain industries, such as transportation and banking, certificate laws prevented firms from entering those industries unless they could convince regulators that they would satisfy an unmet public demand for goods or services. This history highlights how lawmakers used similar techniques in governing infrastructure and finance—two fields that are not often studied together. It also shows that state regulation both prefigured legal change at the federal level and then lagged behind …

The Future Of Law And Mobility, Daniel A. Crane

Journal of Law and Mobility

With the launch of the new Journal of Law and Mobility, the University of Michigan is recognizing the transformative impact of new transportation and mobility technologies, from cars, to trucks, to pedestrians, to drones. The coming transition towards intelligent, automated, and connected mobility systems will transform not only the way people and goods move about, but also the way human safety, privacy, and security are protected, cities are organized, machines and people are connected, and the public and private spheres are defined.

Law will be at the center of these transformations, as it always is. There has already been …

Roll On, Cyclist: The Idaho Rule, Traffic Law, And The Quest To Incentivize Urban Cycling, Asmara M. Tekle

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Missouri Student Transfer Program, Howard E. Fields Iii

Dissertations

In 1993, the state of Missouri passed the Outstanding Schools Act. This law was created as a means to ensure that “all children will have quality educational opportunities, regardless of where in Missouri they live.” Section 167.131 of this law states that an unaccredited district must pay the tuition and transportation cost for students who attend an accredited school in the same or adjoining district. This portion of the law became known as the Student Transfer Program.

The Riverview Gardens School District (RGSD) was one of three unaccredited school districts in the state of Missouri in 2013. With close to …

Square Pegs Do Not Fit In Roun Holes: The Case For A Third Worker Classification For The Sharing Economy And Transportation Network Company Drivers, Carl Shaffer

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Need A Ride? Uber: The Trendy Choice That Could Turn Threatening, Emily L. Dyer

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of The Sharing Economy: Uber And Beyond, Jack M. Beermann

Shorter Faculty Works

On January 8, 2016, the Section held a program entitled “Regulation of the Sharing Economy: Uber and Beyond.” I served as moderator of the program, which included four excellent speakers, Nicole Benincasa, Attorney for Uber Technologies, Inc., Bernard N. Block, Managing Principal, Alvin W. Block & Associates, Chicago, Illinois, Randy May, Founder and President, Free State Foundation (and long-time active member of the Section) and Peter Mazer, General Counsel to the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade and former General Counsel to the New York City Taxicab Licensing Commission.

The program began by asking general questions about regulatory issues concerning the …

Legal Beagle's Blog Archive For December 2015, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Modern Transportation Needs And The Prohibitions Of Article X, Section 10 Of The Virginia Constitution, Hon. Stephen R. Mccullough

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Suburbia Happened In Toronto, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

To Boldly Go Where Only A Select Few Have Gone Before: Exploring The Commercial Space Launch Act And The Legal Risks Associated With Reaching For The Stars, Brent M. Timberlake

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Proliferation And Expansion Of America's Airports At The Expense Of Its Treasured Parks And Preserves: Judicial Perversion Of The Term "Use" In Section 4(F) Of The Department Of Transportation Act, Matthew J. Christian

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Meshing Of New York City's Transportation Plans And Clean Air Act Requirements Following September 11, 2001, Karen L. Alfieri, Christina Breslin

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Smart Growth And Sustainable Transportation: Can We Get There From Here?, Oliver A. Pollard, Iii

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article focuses on the development of smart growth, which includes sustainable transportation policies and more efficient uses of land. Smart growth was developed to combat some of the negative consequences of transportation and land use laws developed in the past fifty years which created dependence on motor vehicles. The article examines these policies and their inconsistency with smart growth, considers steps to be taken toward a more efficient transportation system and the difficulties in invoking these changes, and uses Atlanta as a case study in the opportunities and challenges for smart growth and sustainable transportation policies.