Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled, Encouraging Walk Trips, And Facilitating Efficient Trip Chains Through Polycentric Development, Reid Ewing, Keunhyun Park, Sadegh Sabouri, Torrey Lyons, Keuntae Kim, Dong-Ah Choi, Katherine Daly, Roya Etminani Ghasrodashti

TREC Final Reports

Compact development can result in many benefits for communities and residents. Areas can connect compact developments through high-quality transportation options, creating a network of centers, or a “polycentric” region. This development pattern is very popular in Europe and is linked to significant benefits. Salt Lake County has organically developed several small centers, and with the right strategies could continue to fuel this kind of growth. The metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the region, the Wasatch Front Regional Council, has been planning for polycentric development since the Wasatch Choice for 2040 Vision was released in 2010. Our research is aimed at …

The Role Of Bus Stop Features In Facilitating Accessibility, Keith Bartholomew, Ja Young Kim, Divya Chandrasekhar, Reid Ewing, Arlie Adkins, Samuel Jensen

TREC Final Reports

Although transit decision-makers and riders generally favor improving bus stops by adding shelters, benches, and similar features, it is unclear the impact such features have on transit demand and there has been little research that measures these impacts. This study examines the link between stop improvements and changes in stop-level boardings on scheduled-service buses and in ADA paratransit demand in the Salt Lake City, UT, metropolitan area between 2014 and 2017. The study also investigates current bus stop improvement practices of leading transit agencies nationwide. The study uses a number of quantitative and qualitative techniques, including propensity score matching, propensity …

Urban Transportation System Flood Vulnerability Assessment With Special Reference To Low Income And Minority Neighborhoods, Courtney Crosson, Daoqin Tong, Yinan Zhang

TREC Final Reports

A flood vulnerability assessment of the City of Tucson, Arizona’s transportation systems was conducted with special reference to low-income and minority neighborhoods. Short-term flooding from extreme storm events pose a serious challenge to transportation system reliability and emergency response in cities across the United States. This problem, which is anticipated to grow over the next century due to climate change, is often hardest on vulnerable populations, including low-income and minority neighborhoods. Our work aimed to advance national research methods for assessing multi-modal transportation degradation due to flooding. We identified priority locations for Tucson to make transportation improvement investments for the …

What Makes Cents? How Uber Shapes Municipal On-Street Parking Revenue, Anne Brown, Benjamin Y. Clark

TREC Final Reports

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) will challenge cities in many ways that are critical to address before widescale adoption. In particular, AVs may upset municipal budgets as they upend traditional auto-related funding streams like registration fees and parking revenues. This research begins to quantify the potential financial impacts of AVs by analyzing current associations between transportation network company (TNC) trips—often viewed as a precursor of AVs—and parking revenue. This report uses TNCs as a proxy for future AV travel to examine the connections between trip-making and on-street parking occupancy and revenue. Specifically, we use Uber trip data along with built environment and …

Matching The Speed Of Technology With The Speed Of Local Government: Developing Codes And Policies Related To The Possible Impacts Of New Mobility On Cities, Marc Schlossberg, Heather Brinton

TREC Final Reports

Advances in transportation technology such as the advent of scooter and bikeshare systems (micromobility), ridehailing, and autonomous vehicles (AV’s) are beginning to have profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also on urban form and development itself. These new technologies are changing the systems of transport, the layout of cities, and the places we spend our time. In turn, these changes will likely have additional and profound effects on land use, street design, parking, housing, equity, municipal finance, and fundamental issues related to urban density, sprawl, vitality and the economic viability …

Ada Accessible Trail Improvement With Naturally Occurring, Sustainable Materials, Matthew D. Sleep, Damian K. Matzen

TREC Final Reports

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides specific guidelines and requirements that must be met in terms of accessibility. However, in the case of unpaved trails, the requirements are less defined. An ADA trail must be firm, stable and slip resistant. Some compacted aggregate material may meet this definition, but degrade over time and can no longer be ADA compliant. The benefits of using unpaved surfaces for ADA trails include fit to the natural environment, cost, sustainability and environmental benefits such as increased permeability. If an unpaved surface can be improved with the use of an additive, more could be …

Revisiting Tods: How Subsequent Development Affects The Travel Behavior Of Residents In Existing Transit-Oriented Developments, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill

TREC Final Reports

Portland State University has worked with the Portland Metro regional government periodically since 2005 to survey occupants of buildings for which developers had received funding from Metro’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Program. This research extends upon the prior TOD surveys in Portland by revisiting a set of developments with a second wave of surveys to understand how the travel behavior of TOD residents may change over time, and what factors influence change in travel patterns. The second-wave surveys, coming 8-13 years after the baseline surveys, include five TODs in the west-side Portland suburbs of Hillsboro and Beaverton, two TODs in East …

Connected Vehicle System Design For Signalized Arterials, Xianfeng Terry Yang, Mingyue Ji, Qinzheng Wang

TREC Final Reports

It can be expected that connected vehicles (CVs) systems will soon go beyond testbed and appear in real-world applications. To accommodate a large number of connected vehicles on the roads, traffic signal control systems on signalized arterials would require supports of various components such as roadside infrastructure, vehicle on-board devices, an effective communication network, and optimal control algorithms. In this project, we aim to establish a real-time and adaptive system for supporting the operations of CV-based traffic signal control functions. The proposed system will prioritize the communication needs of different types of CVs and best utilize the capacity of the …

Understanding Economic And Business Impacts Of Street Improvements For Bicycle And Mobility – A Multicity Multiapproach Exploration, Jenny H. Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Final Reports

Many cities across the country, as part of Complete Streets initiatives or to promote community livability and environmental sustainability, have engaged in street improvement or transportation infrastructure upgrade projects that increase access and mobility for pedestrians and bicyclists through a reduction of on-street parking or traffic lanes. With various transportation modes competing for scarce resources (including right-of-way and transportation funding), city planners and transportation agencies often struggle with how to justify these infrastructure investments for non-motorized modes such as bicycling and walking, particularly when driving is still the predominant mode of transportation in most cities. There is a vital need …

Visual Exploration Of Utah Trajectory Data And Their Applications In Transportation, Seth Miller, Zachary Vander Laan, Yinhu Wang, Nikola Markovic

TREC Final Reports

Transportation agencies have an opportunity to leverage massive GPS trajectory data to support their analyses and enhance their decision making. However, these data are typically purchased from vendors, which means that transportation agencies must understand their benefits before they decide to invest in data acquisition. To help transportation agencies better understand the tremendous value of trajectory data, the PI of the project acquired Utah GPS trajectory data from one of the leading GPS data providers and conducted visual analyses demonstrating applications of trajectory data in various areas of transportation. The analyses focused on (a) evaluating the data itself by exploring …

Promoting Environmental Justice Populations’ Access To Opportunities With Suburban Boomtowns: An Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Approach To Addressing Infrastructure Needs, Jandel Crutchfield, Courtney Cronley, Kate Hyun, Erin Findley, Mehrdad Arabi

TREC Final Reports

This study used a community-engaged interdisciplinary approach to assess the gaps between economic growth and transportation infrastructure development, and the impact of potential gaps on access to opportunities for environmental justice populations within North Central Texas, where population growth has increased over 100% since 2000. The interdisciplinary team, comprised of social work and civil engineering researchers, in partnership with the regional homeless coalition, measured residents’ perspectives of the economic growth in the area over the past decade, the extent to which transportation infrastructure has matched the economic growth, and the implications for access to affordable quality housing, employment, quality public …

Emerging Technologies And Cities: Assessing The Impacts Of New Mobility On Cities, Rebecca Lewis, Rebecca Steckler

TREC Final Reports

Advances in emerging technologies – such as autonomous vehicles (AVs), e-commerce, and the sharing economy – are having profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also on urban form and development itself. These new technologies are changing how people and goods move around a city and are beginning to have substantial effects on land use, street design, parking, and housing. These changes will have significant implications for city governance, revenues, and budgets.

In partnership with the cities of Gresham and Eugene (the Cities), this project assessed the challenges and opportunities presented …