Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Beneath I-280: Excavating A Neighborhood Lost To San José Freeways, Leila Ullmann, Gordon Douglas

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of people in San José, California were displaced from their homes as the state used eminent domain to purchase land and uproot neighborhoods for the construction of Interstate freeways. This report presents a multifaceted research and public knowledge effort that uncovers some of the communities buried beneath these freeways, in the area where I-280 and CA-87 meet today near downtown San José. The project builds primarily from previously unprocessed California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) archival documents, which this project studies for the first time. The records are rich in detail about valuation and sale …

Learning About Street Harassment On Transit: A Survey Instrument For Transit Agencies, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Jon Canapary, Carol Anne Caroll, Tam J. Guy, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This study was conducted in accordance with California Senate Bill 1161 (2022), legislation that directed the Mineta Transportation Institute to develop a reliable, easy-to-use survey instrument for collecting information from public transit passengers about the extent, location, and characteristics of any street harassment they experience. Although the legislation is focused on large California transit agencies, the study findings are equally relevant to smaller agencies and agencies outside the state. To develop the recommended questionnaire, we reviewed literature about street harassment, analyzed transit passenger surveys to explore the questions asked about safety and harassment, received feedback on iterative drafts of the …

A Bike System For All In Silicon Valley: Equity Assessment Of Bike Infrastructure In San José, Ca, Ahoura Zandiatashbar, Jochen Albrecht, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Investing in sustainable, multimodal infrastructure is of increasing importance throughout the United States and worldwide. Cities are increasingly making strategic capital investment decisions about bicycle infrastructure—decisions that need planning efforts that accurately assess the equity aspects of developments, achieve equitable distribution of infrastructures, and draw upon accurate assessment methods. Toward these efforts, this project uses a granular bike network dataset with statistical and geospatial analyses to quantify a bike infrastructure availability score (i.e., bike score) that accounts for the safety and comfort differences in bike path classes in San José, California. San José is the 10th largest U.S. city and …

Metropolitan Transportation Commission Discretionary Transit Funding Methods Evaluation, Christopher E. Ferrell, John M. Eells, David Reinke, Richard Lee

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

In 2021, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) approached the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) with a proposal to have MTI provide an evaluation of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s (MTC’s) operational discretionary funding allocation policies and methods for Bay Area transit operators. The research was done in two parts. Part 1 investigated MTC’s past and current allocation methods for discretionary operational transit funding programs; Part 2 involved the evaluation of outcomes if MTC employed alternative allocation methods. After the Part 1 review of MTC’s various transit funding programs, the federal pandemic relief funds and the Transportation Development Act/State Transit Assistance …

Defining And Measuring Equity In Public Transportation, Christopher E. Ferrell, David Reinke, John M. Eels, Matthew M. Schroeder

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Transit should serve all users, regardless of age, race, ability, or any other identity. Policies and planning must be conscious of inequities when defining and measuring equity in public transportation. This study was done to aid the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the state’s transit agencies in assessing transit service equity and assisting with evaluating past, existing, and future inequities. This report identifies and evaluates policies and practices associated with equity measurement in public transit from extant academic and professional literature sources. These include the Federal laws and regulations addressing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and …

Smart Transportation In Small- And Medium-Sized Cities In Central California, Hongwei Dong

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The research on smart transportation in the United States has centered on large metropolitan areas. The adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities outside of large metropolitan areas is less studied and understood. This study examined the adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities in Central California. The analysis was based on the online survey responses from 29 transportation officials and professionals who worked for 18 municipal government departments and six metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in Central California as well as in depth semi-structured interviews with seven of them. The study showed that smart transportation in …

A Gravity Model Integrating Land-Use And Transportation Policies For Sustainable Development: Case Study Of Fresno, California, Chih-Hao Wang, Na Chen

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The idea of urban compaction has been long proposed and promoted to address the problem of urban sprawl in many American cities. However, there are still rare successful cases of such implementation in the United States. This study uses a classic gravity model, TELEM (Transpiration, Economic, and Land-Use Model) to examine to what extent a land-use or transportation policy must be regulated to make the urban compaction occur in a typical auto-dependent city—Fresno, California. Five scenarios are considered (BL, L1, L2, T1, and T2), in which the baseline (BL) is a natural growth scenario. Without any policy interventions, the city …

Congestion Costs And Scheduling Preferences Of Car Commuters In California: Estimates Using Big Data, Jinwon Kim, Jucheol Moon

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

On average, California car commuters waste 4–5 minutes per morning commute due to congestion. Multiplied across all California car commuters, those few minutes entail a yearly total of approximately 2.3 billion hours of time wasted, costing 6 billion dollars. The objective of this study is to quantify congestion costs and determine how commuters adapt to the level of congestion they face (i.e., commuters’ scheduling utility functions). To that end, this research developed a model of trip scheduling under congestion to construct California commuters’ travel-time profiles, i.e., the menu of travel times that each individual would likely face according to alternate …

Inventorying San Francisco Bay Area Parking Spaces: Technical Report Describing Objectives, Methods, And Results, Mikhail Chester, Alysha Helmrich, Rui Li

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most progressive transportation regions in the deployment of high-capacity transit and use of policies to encourage active transportation. Yet like many other metro regions, there remains a dearth of knowledge on the abundance and location of parking infrastructure supply. Parking infrastructure remains one of the least catalogued infrastructure but is perhaps the most spatially dominating set of assets. This research estimates the extent and location of parking supply, including on-street and off-street spaces for the nine-county Bay Area. This parking space inventory is the most detailed assessment of parking infrastructure produced …

Comprehensive Performance Assessment Of Passive Crowdsourcing For Counting Pedestrians And Bikes, Wen Cheng, Yongping Zhang, Edward Clay

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Individuals who walk and cycle experience a variety of health and economic benefits while simultaneously benefiting their local environments and communities. It is essential to correctly obtain pedestrian and bicyclist counts for better design and planning of active transportation-related facilities. In recent years, crowdsourcing has seen a rise in popularity due to the multiple advantages relative to traditional methods. Nevertheless, crowdsourced data have been applied in fewer studies, and their reliability and performance relative to other conventional methods are rarely documented. To this end, this research examines the consistency between crowdsourced and traditionally collected count data. Additionally, the research aims …

Non-Linear And Weakly Monotonic Relationship Between School Quality And House Prices, Shishir Mathur

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study provides evidence for a non-linear and weakly monotonic relationship between school quality and house prices. Using Fremont, California, as the study area, the regression analysis shows that homeowners are unwilling to pay a premium for an increase in school quality from low to medium quality. However, they are willing to pay a) a large premium when all schools are top-quality schools and b) a premium for access to nationally-renowned schools, which is in addition to the premium for top-quality schools. These findings have important land use policy significance because they provide new insights into the homeowner’s residential location …

Do Multi-Use-Path Accessibility And The Clustering Effect Play A Role In Residents' Choice Of Walking And Cycling?, Chih-Hao Wang, Na Chen

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The transportation studies literature recognizes the relationship between accessibility and active travel. However, there is limited research on the specific impact of walking and cycling accessibility to multi-use paths on active travel behavior. Combined with the culture of automobile dependency in the US, this knowledge gap has been making it difficult for policy-makers to encourage walking and cycling mode choices, highlighting the need to promote a walking and cycling culture in cities. In this case, a clustering effect (“you bike, I bike”) can be used as leverage to initiate such a trend. This project contributes to the literature as one …

Addressing Barriers To The Use Of Value Capture To Fund Transit-Oriented Developments, Shishir Mathur, Aaron Gatdula

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Comparing Twitter And Lodes Data For Detecting Commuter Mobility Patterns, Jochen Albrecht, Andreas Petutschnig, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Bernd Resch, Aleisha Wright

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Local and regional planners struggle to keep up with rapid changes in mobility patterns. This exploratory research is framed with the overarching goal of asking if and how geo-social network data (GSND), in this case, Twitter data, can be used to understand and explain commuting and non-commuting travel patterns. The research project set out to determine whether GSND may be used to augment US Census LODES data beyond commuting trips and whether it may serve as a short-term substitute for commuting trips. It turns out that the reverse is true and the common practice of employing LODES data to extrapolate …

Novel Method For Probabilistic Evaluation Of The Post-Earthquake Functionality Of A Bridge, Vesna Terzic, William Pasco

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

While modern overpass bridges are safe against collapse, their functionality will likely be compromised in case of design-level or beyond design-level earthquake, which may generate excessive residual displacements of the bridge deck. Presently, there is no validated, quantitative approach for estimating the operational level of the bridge after an earthquake due to the difficulty of accurately simulating residual displacements. This research develops a novel method for probabilistic evaluation of the post-earthquake functionality state of the bridge; the approach is founded on an explicit evaluation of bridge residual displacements and associated traffic capacity by considering realistic traffic load scenarios.

This research …

Negative Consequences Of Innovation-Igniting Urban Developments: Empirical Evidence From Three Us Cities, Ahoura Zandiatashbar, Carla Maria Kayanan

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

Emergent economic development policies reflect the challenges urban growth coalitions face in attracting the footloose tech-entrepreneurs of the global economy. This convergence between the focus on place and the harnessing of global capital has led to the proliferation of innovation-igniting urban developments (IIUD)—place-based economic development strategies to boost the local knowledge economy. Economic developers are using IIUD strategies to convert areas of the city into entrepreneurial “launch pads” for innovation. However, because these developments remain young, considerations to implement IIUDs lack an evidence-base to show the potential for negative consequences on the communities where they are embedded. This research addresses …

The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy And Inequality In Diy Urbanism, Gordon Douglas

University Scholar Series

When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism, Dr. Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes, and more. He explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people’s relationships to their urban surroundings …

Harmonizing Climate Change Mitigation And Adaptation In Transportation And Land-Use Planning In California Cities, Serena E. Alexander, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Ashley M. Hooper, Michael R. Boswell

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Abstract: Recent extreme weather events in California—wildfires, drought, and flooding—make abundantly clear the need to plan effective responses to both the causes and the consequences of climate change. A central challenge for climate planning efforts has been identifying transportation and land-use (TLU) strategies that simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions (“mitigation”) and adapt communities so that they will be less affected by the adverse impacts of climate change (“adaptation”). Sets of policies that collectively address both mitigation and adaptation are known as “integrated actions.” This study explores municipal climate planning in California to determine whether cities incorporate integrated actions into their …

Memos And Mega Projects: Applying Planners’ Perceptions Of Their Software To A Framework For The Future Of Planning, Richard L. Davis

Master's Projects

Software powers the modern urban planning department. However, the majority of academic attention on software in the planning profession has focused on highly specialized land use models, ignoring the importance of common applications that most planners rely upon throughout their workdays. For example, email’s impact on planning has gone largely undiscussed in the literature despite its role as one of the most commonly used software by planners. This report has a twofold purpose: 1) create a protocol for interviewing planners about the software they use routinely; 2) synthesize needs and expectations of planners gathered during interviews with relevant literature on …

Value Capture To Fund Public Transportation: The Impact Of Warm Springs Bart Station On The Value Of Neighboring Residential Properties In Fremont, Ca, Shishir Mathur

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This study estimates households’ willingness to pay for single-family houses and condominiums/townhouses located within 2 miles of Warm Springs (WS) BART Station in Fremont, CA. The study finds that, compared to the houses sold in the referent category (2 to 5 miles away and sold during the pre-project-announcement period of 2000-2001), an average-priced single-family house within two miles of the WS BART Station was higher in price by 9% to 15%. The total property value increment for the single-family houses is large enough to fund the $802 million Warm Springs BART Extension Project cost five times over.

Housing And Mobility Toolkit For San Mateo County, Serena Alexander, Joseph Kott, Bruce Appleyard, Mark Garrett, Shannon Mcdonald, Maaza Mekuria, Udeme J. Ndon, Anurag Pande, Eric Peterson

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Since the end of the Great Recession, San Mateo County has attracted new workers at a record rate without building anywhere near enough housing. This jobs-housing imbalance drives the cost of housing up and forces many moderate and lower-income employees and their families out of the County. A lack of access to quality affordable housing in the County and the entire Bay Area along with limited transportation options means that an increased number of employees drive in and out of the County every workday. The resultant congestion, gridlock, and long commutes along with other negative environmental, social, and economic impacts …

Placemaking/Displacement: Architectures Of Exclusion In The Bay Area, Gordon Douglas

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

This working paper presents new research and argumentation regarding the way we think about the material culture of place and argues that thinking hard about place is essential for addressing social inequality in our cities. Drawing on new empirical research – ethnographic observation, photography, and interviews – it takes the varied communities and landscapes of the San Francisco Bay Area as a lens through which to interrogate the prominent trend of so-called “placemaking” in urban planning, development, and design. I argue that placemaking is intellectually incoherent and frequently elitist in practice, often ignoring existing places while portending a real possibility …

California Redevelopment 2.0: Implementation Of Community Revitalization And Investment Authorities, Christopher Hoem

Master's Projects

This research aims at revealing the challenges and opportunities in implementing Community Revitalization and Investment Authorities (CRIAs) in California.

This study will focus on the implementation of CRIAs, but it is worth examining alternative economic development tools to draw comprehensive comparisons and understand their advantages and disadvantages.

Understanding economic development tools may be valuable for the commercial and industrial growth and prosperity of cities and local governments. It may also be important to increase the number of affordable housing units in an area. Businesses and low-income families alike share the benefits of successful redevelopment. It may be possible to reveal …

The Impact Of Transit-Oriented Development On Social Capital, Robert B. Noland, Orin T. Puniello, Stephanie Dipetrillo

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This paper focuses on the ability of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) to improve social capital and interactions within a community. The expectation is that TOD has a positive impact on the lifestyle and activities of individuals who reside, work, and frequent these locations, and that this can include increases in social capital. Using data from a survey of transit station locations in New Jersey, the authors examine how proximity to the station and various built environment variables are associated with different measures of social capital, derived from responses to survey questions. These questions inquire about respondents’ perceptions of their neighborhood …

Improving Pathways To Transit For Persons With Disabilities, Stephanie Dipetrillo, Andrea Lubin, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Carla Salehian, Stephen Gibson, Kristen William, Theodore Trent Green

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Persons with disabilities can achieve a greater degree of freedom when they have full access to a variety of transit modes, but this can only be achieved when the pathways to transit – the infrastructure and conditions in the built environment – allow full access to transit stops, stations, and vehicles. Since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, many transit agencies and governmental jurisdictions have made significant progress in this area. Policy initiatives, incremental enhancements, modifications, and other measures undertaken by transit agencies and their partners have significantly improved access to transit for persons with disabilities, …

Healthy Fails To Wealthy Trails: Revitalization Opportunities For Underused Spaces Alongside Residential Areas In Arleta, California, Jorge Martinez

Master's Projects

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Study Of Urban Forest Management Programs For Three Major Cities In Santa Clara County: A Benchmarking Study, Suzanne Remien

Master's Projects

No abstract provided.

Are Bay Area Cities Inclusive? Evaluating How San Francisco Bay Area Cities Can Address Environmental Justice Challenges By Strengthening Their Engagement Practices With Low-Income And Minority Communities Through The California Environmental Quality Act Process, Kenneth Antonio Rosales

Master's Projects

No abstract provided.

Conveniently Located Disaster: Socio‐Spatial Inequality In Hurricane Sandy And Its Implications For The Urban Sociology Of Climate Change, Gordon Douglas, Liz Koslov, Eric Klinenberg

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

Hurricane Sandy was a major event with major implications for how sociologists think about the relationship between climate change and crisis in urban areas. The storm’s impact on New York provides a valuable case for considering how to study the impacts of climate change on large, densely settled cities with vulnerable hard infrastructure and highly complex social conditions that produce differentiated experiences across many different communities. This working paper considers data at several levels of analysis with the aim of assessing neighborhood inequalities in the impacts of such extreme weather. Drawn from the authors’ ongoing research project on unequal vulnerability …

Review Of Cities By Design, By Fran Tonkiss, Gordon Douglas

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

A review of Cities by Design: The Social Life of Urban Form. By Fran Tonkiss. Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2014. Pp. vi+204. $24.95.