Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

The Case Of Performance Measurement In Mobility Management Programs, Sarmistha Majumdar, Lalita Sen, Meredith Highsmith, Linda Cherrington

Sarmistha R Majumdar

The concept of mobility management has gained popularity over the last few decades. It refers to the provision of accessible, affordable, and multimodal transportation for all, including those who cannot or do not drive due to age, disability, or lower income. Mobility management programs can be found in large cities, urban areas, and rural areas. Evaluation of these programs is difficult in the absence of national guidelines. Consequently, many programs have developed their own measures, while others lag in performance measurement. This case study investigates the performance measures used to evaluate some established mobility management programs. Based on analysis of …

Investigation Of Crashes And Identifying The Best Practices For Setting Up Speed Zones In Towns Along Rural Highways In Nevada, Krishna Prasad Shrestha

Joseph Shrestha

In 2010, 51,664 crashes occurred in Nevada. Only about 9% of those crashes occurred in rural areas of the state. However, if only fatal crashes are considered, 41% of those fatal crashes occurred in rural areas. Generally, speed zones are provided in towns along rural highways to reduce speed-related crashes. However, a guideline is necessary for a consistent procedure to setup speed zones throughout the state. The main objectives of this study are to determine factors associated with crashes and to identify the best practices for setting up speed zones in towns along rural highways.

Eleven towns along rural highways …

Hub And Spoke: Core Transit Congestion And The Future Of Transit And Development In Greater Boston, Stephanie Pollack

Stephanie Pollack

No abstract provided.

Best Upgrade Plans For Large Road Networks, Yimin Lin, Kyriakos Mouratidis

Kyriakos MOURATIDIS

In this paper, we consider a new problem in the context of road network databases, named Resource Constrained Best Upgrade Plan computation (BUP, for short). Consider a transportation network (weighted graph) G where a subset of the edges are upgradable, i.e., for each such edge there is a cost, which if spent, the weight of the edge can be reduced to a specific new value. Given a source and a destination in G, and a budget (resource constraint) B, the BUP problem is to identify which upgradable edges should be upgraded so that the shortest path distance between source and …

French Automobiles And The Chinese Boycotts Of 2008: Politics Really Does Affect Commerce, James Prieger, Wei-Min Hu, Canhui Hong, Dongming Zhu

James E. Prieger

We explore the economic impact of boycotts of French automobiles in China during the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Conditions were favorable for a boycott, enabling Chinese consumers to overcome the collective action problems that can prevent boycott success and other voluntary contributions to public goods. We use brand and model level data in a difference-in-difference specification to investigate the boycotts’ effects on sales. A robust pattern of large impacts emerges: sales of French automobile brands fell 25-33% or more. Consumers substituted mostly toward Chinese and other Asian cars. The sales of the French models did not experience similar …

Global Cities Are Coastal Cities Too: Paradox In Sustainability?, Herman L. Boschken

Herman L. Boschken

Worldwide, most global cities are located in coastal zones, but a paradox of sustainability is especially striking for American global cities. This article examines such paradox drawn between globalization-induced development and coastal ecosystems. It focuses on two developmental components found principally in global cities: (1) the agglomeration of foreign waterborne commerce and global business services and (2) the accelerated activity and mobility habits of a global professional class. Despite formidable gaps in research, some anecdotal evidence suggests unique hazards exist for the coastal ecology as globalization pressures expand a global city’s urban footprint.

“Under Dangerous Conditions” – Safety Construction And Safety-Related Work Onboard Of Merchant Vessels, Gesa Praetorius, Monica Lundh

Gesa Praetorius

The following paper presents findings from a qualitative study conducted on board of two merchant vessels. Interviews and observations have been used to obtain insights in how safety is defined and promoted by the personnel working on board. The merchant vessel, the crew and the single mariner are identified to be part of a socio-technical system displaying three levels of system aggregation; person-centred, crew-centred, and vessel-centred. The common ground of a crew, an overlap of the individual mariners’ experience and knowledge, is identified as a basis for trust and predictability of action on board, which is a necessity to be …

A Mechanism For Organizing Last-Mile Service Using Non-Dedicated Fleet, Shih-Fen Cheng, Duc Thien Nguyen, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen CHENG

Unprecedented pace of urbanization and rising income levels have fueled the growth of car ownership in almost all newly formed megacities. Such growth has congested the limited road space and significantly affected the quality of life in these megacities. Convincing residents to give up their cars and use public transport is the most effective way in reducing congestion; however, even with sufficient public transport capacity, the lack of last-mile (from the transport hub to the destination) travel services is the major deterrent for the adoption of public transport. Due to the dynamic nature of such travel demands, fixed-size fleets will …

F-Trail: Finding Patterns In Taxi Trajectories, Yasuko Matsubara, Evangelos Papalexakis, Lei Li, David Lo, Yasushi Sakurai, Christos Faloutsos

David LO

Given a large number of taxi trajectories, we would like to find interesting and unexpected patterns from the data. How can we summarize the major trends, and how can we spot anomalies? The analysis of trajectories has been an issue of considerable interest with many applications such as tracking trails of migrating animals and predicting the path of hurricanes. Several recent works propose methods on clustering and indexing trajectories data. However, these approaches are not especially well suited to pattern discovery with respect to the dynamics of social and economic behavior. To further analyze a huge collection of taxi trajectories, …

The Taxonomy Of Maritime Information, Christopher Hoebeke

Christopher H Hoebeke

No abstract provided.

New Peril + Old Promises = Bad Results, Paul Eschenfelder

Paul F. Eschenfelder

No abstract provided.

Erau Spring 2013 Newsletter, Paul Eschenfelder

Paul F. Eschenfelder

No abstract provided.

Efficiency And Substitutability Of Transit Subsidies And Other Urban Transport Policies, Leonardo Basso, Hugo E. Silva

Hugo E. Silva

This paper analyzes the efficiency and the substitutability between three urban congestion management policies: transit subsidization, car congestion pricing and dedicated bus lanes. The model features user heterogeneity, cross-congestion effects between cars and transit, inter-temporal and total transport demand elasticities, and is simulated using data for London, UK and Santiago, Chile. We find that the substitutability between policies is large and, in particular, the marginal contribution of increased transit subsidies, as other policies are implemented first, diminishes rapidly. Bus lanes are an attractive way to increase frequencies and decrease fares without injecting public funds.

Funding Rail: Federal Decisions And Local Financing, Kate Lowe

Kate Lowe, PhD

No abstract provided.

Vehicle Lifetime Trends And Scrappage Behavior In The Used Car Market, Antonio Bento, Kevin Roth, Scarlett Zhou

Antonio M. Bento

No abstract provided.