Engineering Commons^™

Characteristics Of Effective Metropolitan Areawide Public Transit: A Comparison Of European, Canadian, And Australian Case Studies, Michelle Derobertis, Christopher E. Ferrell, Richard W. Lee, John M. Eells

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This research project investigates the replicable characteristics, policies, and practices of successful metropolitan areawide public transportation networks that contribute to high usage and make transit an effective competitor to the private motor vehicle. The research method involves the qualitative and quantitative analysis of ten international (non-U.S.) case studies. The principal methods employed were web-based research and data collection, as well as telephone interviews with transit agency staff or regional planners as needed. The case studies were limited to developed western countries with similar metropolitan conditions to those in the United States.

This research focuses on key characteristics of highly effective …

Performance Testing Of Hot Mix Asphalt Containing Biochar, Shadi Saadeh, Yazan Al-Zubi, Basel Zaatarah

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

In recent years, researchers have been able to identify asphalt binder additives, such as polymers and bio-binder, that can enhance the rheological and mechanical properties of asphalt binders. Earlier studies show that utilizing bio-binder as a partial replacement for asphalt binder has shown promising results in both mechanical and sustainability aspects. Biochar additions improved binder viscosity and low-temperature characteristics. Biochar, which is a byproduct of producing bio-binder, has shown enhanced rheological and mechanical properties when used as an additive to the asphalt binder. In this study, the mechanical properties of asphalt mixtures containing Biochar were investigated. In addition, its color …

Eco-Driving Systems For Connected Automated Vehicles: Multi-Objective Trajectory Optimization, Ke Huang, Xianfeng Yang

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This study aims to leverage advances in connected automated vehicle (CAV) technology to design an eco-driving and platooning system that can improve the fuel and operational efficiency of vehicles during freeway driving. Following a two-stage control logic, the proposed algorithm optimizes CAVs’ trajectories with three objectives: travel time minimization, fuel consumption minimization, and traffic safety improvement. The first stage, designed for CAV trajectory planning, is carried out with two optimization models. The second stage, for real-time control purposes, is developed to ensure the operational safety of CAVs. Based on extensive numerical simulations, the results have confirmed the effectiveness of the …

A Multimodal Approach For Monitoring Driving Behavior And Emotions, Arash Tavakoli, Vahid Balali, Arsalan Heydarian

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Studies have indicated that emotions can significantly be influenced by environmental factors; these factors can also significantly influence drivers’ emotional state and, accordingly, their driving behavior. Furthermore, as the demand for autonomous vehicles is expected to significantly increase within the next decade, a proper understanding of drivers’/passengers’ emotions, behavior, and preferences will be needed in order to create an acceptable level of trust with humans. This paper proposes a novel semi-automated approach for understanding the effect of environmental factors on drivers’ emotions and behavioral changes through a naturalistic driving study. This setup includes a frontal road and facial camera, a …

Congestion-Clearing Payments To Passengers, Paul Minett, John S. Niles, Richard W. Lee, Brittany Bogue

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Peak period motor vehicle traffic volume congests roads all over the world. This project hypothesizes implementing congestion- clearing payments to passengers as a permanent congestion-management solution. Ongoing congestion-free travel would be achieved by removing existing congestion, and absorbing (re)generated demand, at costs that would be expected to increase as the total number of travelers increases over time. The project develops a comprehensive, step-by-step methodology to calculate the benefits and costs of paying for drivers to become passengers at a congestion-clearing level and to maintain this level over time. The method is derived from the literature, analysis by the project team, …

Effective Communication Message Strategy For Enhancing Traffic Safety In Fresno County: The Role Of Time Horizon, Regulatory Focus, And Perceived Personal Control, Samer Sarofim

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This research empirically investigated the differential effect of message framing on message recipients’ attitudes and intended behaviors related to pedestrian, cyclist, and motorist traffic safety practices. The framework empirically investigated time horizon (expansive vs. limited) and regulatory focus (prevention vs. promotion) message framing.

The time horizon in the message can make someone either think of the future (expansive) or the present (limited). For example, an expansive time horizon message communicates that life is long and directs the focus on the future. On the contrary, a limited time horizon message communicates that life is short and directs the focus on the …

A Multi-Objective Optimization Model To Minimize The Gap In Accessibility To Multi-Use Paths While Maximizing The Economic Efficiency Of Active Transportation Investments For Fresno, California, Chih-Hao Wang

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This research examines the accessibility to multi-use paths in a variety of neighborhoods in Fresno, California. This study aims to develop a multi-objective optimization modeling framework to be used by decision makers in transportation and policy to maximize the total accessibility to multi-use paths across the city while minimizing the gap between low- and high- accessibility neighborhoods by an optimal allocation of active transportation. Researchers calculate accessibility to multi-use paths by measuring the total length of multi-use paths (walkway and bikeway) a resident could reach from their own Census block group with a 30-minute cycling ride. The study employs a …

Southern California Regional Transit Training Consortium: Skills Gap & Needs Assessment, Tyler Reeb, Benjamin Olson

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The transit sector grows and evolves quickly with the needs of growing, busy cities. With this growth comes a need for more transit workers and more training to ensure workers can best serve their diverse communities. This report contains a transit training needs assessment and gap analysis to identify the most pressing challenges of the evolving transit workforce served by the Southern California Regional Transit Training Consortium (SCRTTC). Most importantly, this report documents and determines SCRTTC priorities to ensure the incumbent and future transit workforce is equipped with the professional and technological skills required to address the transformational trends affecting …

The Fresno State Transportation Challenge, Christian Wandeler, Steven Hart

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The goal of the “Fresno State Transportation Challenge” was outreach to schools and community engagement, to provide K-8 students opportunities to learn about transportation and transportation-related careers, and to practice 21st century skills by solving a transportation-related issue in their community. Through the pedagogical frameworks of action civics and eduScrum (a method to facilitate self-managed teamwork with a visual board), teachers and students worked on solving issues in their community. They learned design thinking to identify issues and develop solutions while using eduScrum to manage their work. University students from transportation engineering visited the schools regularly to support the K-8 …

Assessing Complete Street Strategies Using Microscopic Traffic Simulation Models, Bernice Liu, Alireza Shams, Jonathan Howard, Serena Alexander, Alex Hughes, Anurag Pande

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Authors of this research developed a traffic simulation model for the downtown San Jose network and evaluated five different street redesign and travel demand combinations. This model aids understanding of network-wide effects of changes in street design for local and regional agencies who are interested in implementing complete streets and/or one-way to two-way conversion. The base network may be altered to model and evaluate other complete streets (e.g., road diet) and tactical urbanism (e.g., farmer’s market on city streets on certain days of the week) scenarios. The 3-dimensional animated videos for each scenario are also created to be used for …

Evaluation Of Coordinated Ramp Metering (Crm) Implemented By Caltrans, Amir Molan, Nivedha Murugesan, Alireza Shams, Cristina Tortora, Faridur Rahman, Jacky Loh, Anurag Pande

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Coordinated ramp metering (CRM) is a critical component of smart freeway corridors that rely on real-time traffic data from ramps and freeway mainline to improve decision-making by the motorists and Traffic Management Center (TMC) personnel. CRM uses an algorithm that considers real-time traffic volumes on freeway mainline and ramps and then adjusts the metering rates on the ramps accordingly for optimal flow along the entire corridor. Improving capacity through smart corridors is less costly and easier to deploy than freeway widening due to high costs associated with right-of-way acquisition and construction. Nevertheless, conversion to smart corridors still represents a sizable …

Evaluating Crowdsourcing As A Vmt Reduction Tool To Support Smart Cities Initiatives, Shailesh Chandra, Rutviz Vyas, Ravi Mazin

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is an indicator of vehicular emissions, which impacts climate change. Various stakeholders aim at reducing VMT to cause reductions in emissions. This research explores the use of crowdsourcing in supporting the efforts of the stakeholders in reducing VMT among college students at California State University Long Beach. Crowdsourcing is emerging as a very promising tool in finding solutions to problems otherwise impossible to solve without a collective human intelligence. A smartphone application is developed to collect travel data and behavior of 55 college students as participants. The behavior is tracked after providing advance information on parking …

Securing The Emerging Technologies Of Autonomous And Connected Vehicles, Shahab Tayeb, Matin Pirouz

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) aims to establish a network of autonomous and connected vehicles that communicate with one another through facilitation led by road-side units (RSUs) and a central trust authority (TA). Messages must be efficiently and securely disseminated to conserve resources and preserve network security. Currently, research in this area lacks consensus about security schemes and methods of disseminating messages. Furthermore, a current deficiency of information regarding resource optimization prevents further efficient development of this network. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to these issues by merging both cybersecurity and data science to optimize and secure the network. …

Crime And Harassment On Public Transportation: A Survey Of Sjsu Students Set In International Context, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Cristina Tortora, Yajing Hu

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Communities around the world are gradually becoming aware that transit riders, and especially women, are often victims of a wide range of offenses of a sexual nature that happen on buses and trains, and at bus stops and train stations. Better understanding the extent and nature of sexual harassment on transit is a critical issue for transit operators and society at large. If fear of sexual crime limits if and how people ride transit, the result is reduced mobility for certain segments of the population, as well as lost ridership for transit agencies.

For this study, we surveyed 891 students …

Developing A Computer Vision-Based Decision Support System For Intersection Safety Monitoring And Assessment Of Vulnerable Road Users, Arash Jahangiri, Anagha Katthe, Aryan Sohrabi, Xiaobai Liu, Shashank Pulagam, Vahid Balali, Sahar Ghanipoor Machiani

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Vision-based trajectory analysis of road users enables identification of near-crash situations and proactive safety monitoring. The two most widely used sur-rogate safety measures (SSMs), time-to-collision (TTC) and post-encroachment time (PET)—and a recent variant form of TTC, relative time-to-collision (RTTC)—were investigated using real-world video data collected at ten signalized intersections in the city of San Diego, California. The performance of these SSMs was compared for the purpose of evaluating pedestrian and bicyclist safety. Prediction of potential trajectory intersection points was performed to calculate TTC for every interacting object, and the average of TTC for every two objects in critical situations was …

A New Materials And Design Approach For Roads, Bridges, Pavement, And Concrete, Alan Fuchs, Tathagata Acharya, Luis Cabrales, Jesse Bergkamp, Nyakundi Michieka

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Increased understanding of demand for transport energy and how to improve road pavement materials would enable decision makers to make environmental, financial, and other positive changes in future planning and design of roads, bridges, and other important transportation structures. This research comprises three studies focused on pavement materials and a fourth study that examines energy demand within the road transportation sector. These studies are as follows:

1. A techno-economic study of ground tire rubber as an asphalt modifier;

2. A computational fluid dynamics analysis comparing the urban heat island effect of two different pavement materials – asphalt and Portland Cement …

A Smart Growth & Equity Framework And Tool For Measuring, Understanding, And Realizing Transportation Land Use Coordination For Sustainability, Livability, And Equity, Bruce Appleyard, Chris Allen, Jonathan Stanton

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The coordination and integration of transportation and land use (also known as “smart growth”) has been a long-standing goal for planning and engineering professionals, but to this day remains an elusive concept to realize. As this approach is a widely recognized as key to achieving sustainable, livable, and equitable (SLE) outcomes for individuals and society, a key aim of this report is to instill the coordination of transportation and land use into practice by the collection of key actors and agents (MPOs, DOTs, and local land use authorities, etc.) through new measurement and policy guidance frameworks and tools. A fundamental …

The Potential For Autonomous Vehicle Technologies To Address Barriers To Driving For Individuals With Autism, Caroline Rodier

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Individuals with autism represent a sizeable share of the U.S. population (almost 2%), and nearly half of those with autism have average to high levels of intelligence. However, available research shows that adults with autism have a much more difficult time becoming employed and living independently compared to both typically developing adults and adults with disabilities. This study reviews the available literature on the magnitude of challenges to driving and accessing essential opportunities for adults with autism, and the potential of autonomous vehicles to address those challenges. This study is unique in that it identifies the specific driving challenges and …

Impact Of Smart Phones’ Interaction Modality On Driving Performance For Conventional And Autonomous Vehicles, Francesca M. Favarò

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Distracted driving related to cell phone usage ranks among the top three causes of fatal crashes on the road. Although forty-eight of 50 U.S. states allow the use of personal devices if operated hands-free and secured in the vehicle, scientific studies have yet to quantify the safety improvement presumed to be introduced by voice-to-text interactions. Thus, this study investigated how different modes of interaction of drivers with a smart phone (i.e., manual texting vs. vocal input) affect drivers’ distraction and performance in both conventional and semi-autonomous vehicles. The study was executed in a full-car integrated simulator and tested a population …