David Zipper

@davidzipper
6.6K Followers
100 Following
365 Posts
Senior Fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative and Contributing Writer at Vox, focused on mobility, cities & tech. Words in 
CityLab, Slate, The Atlantic etc. Tweets: @davidzipper 

#transportation #cities #innovation #technology #transit #cars #cycling #trafficsafety
Website, Newsletter, & Speakinghttps://www.davidzipper.com/
Twitterhttps://twitter.com/DavidZipper
LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/david-zipper-6833006

Me in Bloomberg:

As autonomous vehicles scale, they're likely to cause crippling congestion. Two reasons:
1) Their users will take more and longer car trips
2) They often drive around empty

Result: More vehicles on the road, more pollution, and more traffic

#autonomousvehicles #selfdriving #cities

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-18/self-driving-tech-promises-to-flood-cities-in-robotaxi-traffic?srnd=undefinedvehicles

Me, in Fast Company:

Finding parking can take a lot longer than Google Maps and Apple Maps suggest.

For instance, navigation apps ignore time drivers spend looking for a spot and then walking from it to their destination.

Result: Trips that are stressful — and travel planning that’s biased toward cars.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91509188/google-maps-apple-parking-spot-tech-travel-commute-time-mit-ucla-navigation

Americans drive a lot more than people in other rich countries.

If we didn’t drive so much, we wouldn’t die in so many crashes.

It’s a simple point, but one that NHTSA, traffic engineers, and many road safety org’s have yet to learn.

Me, in Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-10/how-deadly-are-us-roads-it-depends-on-how-you-count-traffic-fatalities

#safety #policy #crashes

How safe are autonomous vehicles, really?

In Bloomberg, I got into the weeds with David Kidd of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety.

His conclusion: “It’s still too early to say with any kind of confidence that they are safer than human drivers overall.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-23/how-a-car-insurance-expert-rates-the-safety-record-of-robotaxis

#autonomousvehicles #cars #safety #waymo

Hey guys, I’m writing a book!

THE PRICE OF TRAFFIC will tell the story of congestion pricing, one of the best – and most controversial—policy ideas of the last half century. It will be published with MIT Press in partnership with Penguin Random House.

Know a great story about congestion pricing that needs to be told? An illuminating study that deserves more attention? A person with an inside angle on what went down in Singapore, London, Milan or NYC? Message me!

#books #urban #transportation

The research is clear: Cities have many reliable ways to curtail speeding.

Lower the speed limit. Deploy traffic cameras. Insert speed humps. Install road diets.

They all work – and most residents support them.

But implementation often feels like pulling teeth. In Bloomberg, I explored why.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-10/how-cities-can-win-the-war-on-speeding-drivers

#safety #cities #transportation #speed

Robotaxi companies are scrambling to expand in cities, but they’re ignoring rural America. They shouldn’t.

AVs could do a world of good in the countryside (and unlike in dense cities, they’d fit well into existing transport networks).

My guest essay in The Driverless Digest:
https://www.thedriverlessdigest.com/p/av-companies-are-ignoring-rural-america

A strange but true finding about NYC congestion pricing:

Drivers’ time savings have overwhelmingly gone to those traveling *outside* the toll zone (i.e., driving from Brooklyn to Queens or within NJ) – not those headed into Manhattan.

Me, in Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/how-manhattan-s-congestion-toll-speeds-up-trips-in-the-suburbs

#nyc #congestion #manhattan #newjersey #transportation

A surefire way to make transportation more abundant and affordable?

Increase density.

In Bloomberg, I explained why: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/to-achieve-transportation-abundance-embrace-the-power-of-density

#transport #abundance #transit

The North American e-bike industry may be down, but it’s far from out.

Me, in Bloomberg.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-14/what-s-killing-off-all-the-e-bike-companies

#ebikes #bike #bikes