Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Making A Case For Equity Planning In Transportation Development: Identifying Indicators And Building A Framework For Hillsborough County, Fl, Dayna J. Lazarus

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The idea that planners should work toward an equitable society has been part of the profession since the 1960s, largely based on the work of planning theorists like Paul Davidoff, Sherry Arnstein and Norman Krumholz. Transportation planning, however, has been slower than other sectors of the profession, such as housing, to embrace equity planning concepts. That has begun to change as concerns about income inequality, environmental justice and climate change have become more salient. This thesis makes the case that in order to improve social equity outcomes, transportation planners must make social equity an explicit goal and add social equity …

Statistical Anomaly Detection And Mitigation Of Cyber Attacks For Intelligent Transportation Systems, Ammar Haydari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Secure vehicular communication is a critical factor for secure traffic management. Perfect security in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) has solid and efficient intrusion detection systems (IDS). In this paper, we consider false data injection attacks and distributed denial-ofservice attacks (DDoS), especially the stealth low-rate DDoS attacks, targeting the integrity and availability, respectively, in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET). Novel statistical intrusion detection and mitigation techniques are proposed for the considered attacks. The performance of the proposed methods are evaluated using a traffic simulator and a real traffic dataset. Comparisons with the state-of-the-art solutions clearly demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed …

Steady State Hydroplaning Risk Analysis And Evaluation Of Unsteady State Effects, Menna Yassin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hydroplaning is a major concern on high speed roadways during heavy rainfall events. Hydroplaning tools are widely used by designers to reduce their roadway’s hydroplaning potential, therefore reducing the possibilities of severe crashes. This dissertation presents two methodologies for improving the prediction of hydroplaning potential.

The first phase focused on improving an existing widely used software called PAVDRN. Using multiple datasets from the Florida Department of Transportation, the author filtered the data using specific criteria to leave only truly dynamic hydroplaning crashes. The author then evaluated PAVDRN’s prediction capabilities and assessed its reliability in predicting a hydroplaning crash. Using past …

Routing And Designing Networks For Two Transportation Problems, Liu Su

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Routing and designing are essential for transportation networks. With effective routing and designing policies, transportation networks can work safely and efficiently. There are two transportation problems: hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation and warehouse logistics. This dissertation addresses the routing of networks for both problems. For hazmat transportation, the routing can be regulated via network design. Due to catastrophic consequences of potential accidents in hazmat transportation, a risk-averse approach for routing is necessary. In this dissertation, we consider spectral risk measures, for risk-averse hazmat routing. In addition, we introduce a network design problem to select a set of closed road segments for …

Statistical Analysis Of The Role Of Socio-Demographic And Health Factors In Shared Mobility Related Behaviors And Usage Likelihoods, Natalia M. Barbour

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

New transportation technologies and shared mobility systems have not only disrupted the market but also revolutionized the way mobility is perceived. With such rapidly progressing technology, it is likely that this transformation will continue to happen and the market will evolve further. Private and public sectors have been equally engaged in this process and new policies are being formed to accommodate this growth.

The objective of this dissertation study is to investigate how shared mobility is being perceived and utilized, and how socio-demographic and health factors affect users’ behaviors and usage likelihoods. Questionnaire surveys are designed and distributed to collect …

Increasing The Supply Of The Missing Middle Housing Types In Walkable Urban Core Neighborhoods: Risk, Risk Reduction And Capital, Shrimatee Ojah Maharaj

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a low supply of the missing middle housing types (MMH) in walkable urban core neighborhoods. That is, a variety of compact low- to mid-rise housing in walkable areas that are accessible to entertainment, recreational and other amenities. The largest demographic, the millennials, followed by the baby boomers, prefer the MMH types. The MMH types is a new name for a variety of compact housing types that existed in traditional neighborhoods in urban areas pre-World War II. However, due to changes in housing preferences after World War II, the requisite land use and zoning changes facilitated larger single-family homes …

A Tall Ship: The Rise Of The International Mercantile Marine, Jeffrey N. Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Between 1890 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, nations on both sides of the Atlantic attempted to gain prestige by building the world's greatest steamships for their merchant marines. In 1901, the United States entered this competition with the advent of J.P. Morgan's International Mercantile Marine, which built on the previous work of shipping magnate Clement Griscom. This project will explore why and how Morgan built his monopoly and the implications and repercussions this project had for both Atlantic shipping and U.S. foreign relations. Moving beyond Morgan the man, it also tells the story of the key …

Development Of A New Piezoelectric-Based Energy Harvesting Pavement System, Lukai Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A novel design of a piezoelectric-based energy harvesting pavement system (PZ-EHPS) is introduced in this dissertation work. The design concept of this PZ-EHPS is to transform asphalt layers into a piezoelectric energy harvester to collect dissipated vehicle kinetic energy in a large-scale system, relying on two conductive asphalt layers and one piezoelectric material layer. To verify the feasibility of the above design concept, this dissertation work practically fabricated and tested a series of PZ-EHPS specimens under the loads from a Material Testing System (MTS) in the laboratory, and theoretically analyzed one typical PZ-EHPS specimen via a three-degree-of-freedom electromechanical model and …

Factors Explaining Changes In Household Vehicle Miles Of Travel, Richard Driscoll

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vehicle miles of travel (VMT) is a key indicator of travel demand in the United States. Since 1995 total VMT and VMT per capita has fluctuated, with notable declines in the late 2000s and accelerated increases in the last 7 years. Since 1995, the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) has tracked the household share of total VMT to shed light on the demographic and behavioral data behind personal vehicle travel. The household share of VMT, while still a majority, has declined every NHTS year since at least 1995. Meanwhile, household VMT has stagnated around 2.25 trillion miles since the 2001 …

Connected Autonomous Vehicles: Capacity Analysis, Trajectory Optimization, And Speed Harmonization, Amir Ghiasi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging connected and autonomous vehicle technologies (CAV) provide an opportunity to improve highway capacity and reduce adverse impacts of stop-and-go traffic. To realize the potential benefits of CAV technologies, this study provides insightful methodological and managerial tools in microscopic and macroscopic traffic scales. In the macroscopic scale, this dissertation proposes an analytical method to formulate highway capacity for a mixed traffic environment where a portion of vehicles are CAVs and the remaining are human-driven vehicles (HVs). The proposed analytical mixed traffic highway capacity model is based on a Markov chain representation of spatial distribution of heterogeneous and stochastic headways. This …

Heavy Vehicle Classification Analysis Using Length-Based Vehicle Count And Speed Data, Eren Yuksel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing demand for application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in order to make highways safer and sustainable. Collecting and analyzing traffic stream data are the most important parameters in transportation engineering in enhancing our understanding of traffic congestion and mobility. Classification of the vehicles using traffic data is one of the most essential parameters for traffic management. Of particular interest are heavy vehicles which impact traffic mobility due to their lack of maneuverability and slower speeds. The impact of heavy vehicles on the traffic stream results in congestion and reduction of road efficiency. In this paper, length-based …

Understanding The Effects Of Demographic And Socio-Economic Factors On Public Transit Ridership Trends, Kurt Lehmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public transit, an important mobility service for many, has incurred ridership decline in the U.S. for the past three years. In 2014, U.S. transit ridership was 10.74 billion unlinked passenger trips. In 2015, total ridership was 1.0 percent fewer, and the 2016 decrease was 2.2 percent from 2015. The consistent abandonment of transit in the U.S. does not seem to be ending. In 2017, ridership predicted from year-to-date data is 2.4 percent less than 2016. Furthermore, per capita ridership has decreased 17 percent since 1980. Both the short-term ridership trend and long-term per capita ridership trend is concerning given the …

Performance Evaluation Of Choice Set Generation Algorithms For Modeling Truck Route Choice: Insights From Large Streams Of Truck-Gps Data, Divyakant Tahlyan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates truck route choice set generation algorithms and derives guidance on using the algorithms for effective generation of choice sets for modeling truck route choice. Specifically, route choice sets generated from a breadth first search link elimination (BFS-LE) algorithm are evaluated against observed truck routes derived from large streams of GPS traces of a sizeable truck fleet in the Tampa Bay region of Florida. A systematic evaluation approach is presented to arrive at an appropriate combination of spatial aggregation and minimum number of trips to be observed between each origin-destination (OD) location for evaluating algorithm-generated choice sets. The …

Understanding The Linkages Between Urban Transportation Design And Population Exposure To Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Application Of An Integrated Transportation And Air Pollution Modeling Framework To Tampa, Fl, Sashikanth Gurram

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid and unplanned urbanization has ushered in a variety of public health challenges, including exposure to traffic pollution and greater dependence on automobiles. Moreover, vulnerable population groups often bear the brunt of negative outcomes and are subject to disproportionate exposure and health effects. This makes it imperative for urban transportation engineers, land use planners, and public health professionals to work synergistically to understand both the relationship between urban design and population exposure to traffic pollution, and its social distribution. Researchers have started to pay close attention to this connection, mainly by conducting observational studies on the relationship between transportation, urban …

Improving Service Level Of Free-Floating Bike Sharing Systems, Aritra Pal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bike Sharing is a sustainable mode of urban mobility, not only for regular commuters but also for casual users and tourists. Free-floating bike sharing (FFBS) is an innovative bike sharing model, which saves on start-up cost, prevents bike theft, and offers significant opportunities for smart management by tracking bikes in real-time with built-in GPS. Efficient management of a FFBS requires: 1) analyzing its mobility patterns and spatio-temporal imbalance of supply and demand of bikes, 2) developing strategies to mitigate such imbalances, and 3) understanding the causes of a bike getting damaged and developing strategies to minimize them. All of these …

Comprehensive Exploratory Analysis Of Truck Route Choice Diversity In Florida, Trang D. Luong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a comprehensive exploratory analysis of truck route choice diversity in the state of Florida, for both long-haul and short-haul truck travel segments. We employ six metrics to measure three different dimensions of diversity in truck route choice between any given origin-destination (OD) pair. These dimensions are: (1) number of distinct routes used to travel between the OD pair, (2) the extent of overlap (or lack thereof) among the routes, and (3) the evenness (or the dominance) of the usage of different unique routes. The diversity metrics were utilized to examine truck route choice diversity from over 73,000 …

How Transportation Network Companies Could Replace Public Transportation In The United States, Matthew L. Kessler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The quantity of cell phone applications or mobile apps have seen an upsurge at an exponential rate in under a decade. Many have been created for a variety of industries, including transportation. The advent and subsequent commercialized implementation of near-instant transport by a middleman-type of app is now known as a Transportation Network Company or TNC. Examples of the more renowned TNCs are Uber, Lyft and Sidecar.

In recent years, TNCs have cultivated a tremendous following, to the degree of taxicab desertion. Moreover, the massive success of TNCs led to expansion of its capacities into public transportation.

The TNC’s expeditious …

Autonomous Vehicles: An Empirical Assessment Of Consumers’ Perceptions, Intended Adoption, And Impacts On Household Vehicle Ownership, Nikhil Menon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging automotive and transportation technologies have provided revolutionary possibilities in the way we might travel in the future. Major car manufacturers and technology giants have demonstrated significant progress in advancing and testing autonomous vehicles in real-life traffic conditions. Governmental agencies are grappling with how to plan transportation systems for a world with autonomous vehicles. Past research has shown that not all technologies are immediately welcomed by the public. Autonomous Vehicles would have to likely go through a similar phase, and would need to overcome not just technological challenges but also social barriers for successful penetration into the marketplace. Most previous …

Reappropriating Public Space In Nanchang, China: A Study Of Informal Street Vendors, Bryan C. Winter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since China's shift to market socialism, many marginalized by this process work as informal street vendors where they reappropriate public space in order to survive―a practice at odds with urban authorities' modernizing agenda. In relation to these competing logics concerning public space's use value versus its exchange value, this dissertation examines the practices, experiences, and agency of informal street vendors working in Sanjingwuwei, an ordinary, yet rapidly gentrifying, neighborhood of Nanchang, capital and largest city of southeastern China's Jiangxi Province. After describing the growth of an informal economy in modern China and providing a history of street vending, I describe …

Space-Time Transportation System Modelling: From Traveler’S Characteristics To The Network Design Problem, Mohsen Parsafard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traditional network design problems only consider the long-term stationary travel patterns (e.g., fixed OD demand) and short-term variations of human mobility are ignored. This study aims to integrate human mobility characteristics and travel patterns into network design problems using a space-time network structure. Emerging technologies such as location-based social network platforms provide a unique opportunity for understanding human mobility patterns that can lead to advanced modeling techniques. To reach our goal, at first multimodal network design problems are investigated by considering safety and flow interactions between different modes of transport. We develop a network reconstruction method to expand a single-modal …

Locally Optimized Mapping Of Slum Conditions In A Sub-Saharan Context: A Case Study Of Bamenda, Cameroon, Julius Anchang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite being an indicator of modernization and macro-economic growth, urbanization in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa is tightly interwoven with poverty and deprivation. This has manifested physically as slums, which represent the worst residential urban areas, marked by lack of access to good quality housing and basic services. To effectively combat the slum phenomenon, local slum conditions must be captured in quantitative and spatial terms. However, there are significant hurdles to this. Slum detection and mapping requires readily available and reliable data, as well as a proper conceptualization of measurement and scale. Using Bamenda, Cameroon, as a test case, this …

The Effects Of Age And Gender On Pedestrian Traffic Injuries: A Random Parameters And Latent Class Analysis, Tatok Raharjo Raharjo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pedestrians are vulnerable road users because they do not have any protection while they walk. They are unlike cyclists and motorcyclists who often have at least helmet protection and sometimes additional body protection (in the case of motorcyclists with body-armored jackets and pants). In the US, pedestrian fatalities are increasing and becoming an ever larger proportion of overall roadway fatalities (NHTSA, 2016), thus underscoring the need to study factors that influence pedestrian-injury severity and potentially develop appropriate countermeasures. One of the critical elements in the study of pedestrian-injury severities is to understand how injuries vary across age and gender ‒ …

Assessing Property Value Impacts Of Access To Bus Rapid Transit (Brt): Case Study Of The Cleveland Healthline, Victoria A. Perk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The nation’s economy depends heavily on mobility of goods and people. As communities look to improve mobility, many options can be considered, including roadway improvements, congestion-pricing options such as dynamic tolling and toll lanes, and public transit. Investment in public transit services can come in the form of increased and enhanced bus services, including bus rapid transit (BRT), as well as rail transit investments. As BRT continues to grow in popularity in the United States, a better understanding of the mode’s impacts on land uses and economic development is needed. One method of assessing the mode’s impacts is by examining …

A Theoretical And Methodological Framework To Analyze Long Distance Pleasure Travel, Vijayaraghavan Sivaraman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States (US) witnessed remarkable growth in annual long distance travel over the past few decades. Over half of the long distance travel in the US is made for pleasure, including visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and leisure activities. This trend could continue with increased use of information and communication technologies for socialization, and enhanced mobility being achieved using fuel-efficient (electric/hybrid) and technology enhanced vehicles. Despite these developments, and recent interest to implement alternate mass transit options to serve this market, not much exists on the measurement, analysis and modeling of long distance pleasure travel in the U.S.

Statewide …

Development Of Truck Route Choice Data Using Truck Gps, Mohammadreza Kamali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few decades, the value and weight of freight shipments have grown steadily in both developed and developing countries. A recent statistic in the U.S. reveals that weight of shipments increased from 18,879 to 19,662 million tons between 2007 and 2012 (1). It is also expected that this amount will increase to 28,520 million tons by 2040 (1). It is worth mentioning that 67 percent of shipments are shipped by truck mode in 2012. The monetary value of freight is expected to escalate even faster than weight. This value is estimated to rise from US$ 882 per ton …

Consumer Perception And Anticipated Adoption Of Autonomous Vehicle Technology: Results From Multi-Population Surveys, Nikhil Menon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging automotive and transportation technologies, such as autonomous vehicles (AVs) have created revolutionary possibilities in the way we might travel in the future. Major car manufacturers and technology giants have demonstrated significant progress in advancing and testing AV technologies in real-life traffic conditions.

Results from multi-population surveys indicate that despite enjoying moderate familiarity with AVs, more than 40% of the respondents were likely to use them when they become available. Simply looking at the demographic differences without paying any regard to the perceptions might suggest that the demographic differences are the primary causal factors behind the differences observed in the …

Modeling Intrastate Air Travel: A Case Study Of The State Of Florida, Kai Liao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. Its infrastructure allows for several travel modes including: rail, automobile, bus, aircraft, and ship. However, most intrastate travelers in Florida are limited to two practical choices: travel by car (ground mode) or travel by air (air primary mode). Due to the dramatic growth of Florida’s population over recent years, traffic has become a critical factor that impacts Florida’s development. This thesis focuses on intrastate air primary mode and develops decision making models that could aid government and airline companies to better understand travelers need and as such plan …

The Effect Of Urbanization On The Embodied Energy Of Drinking Water In Tampa, Florida, Mark Vincent Eli Santana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasing urbanization has serious implications for resource and energy use. One of these resources is drinking water. The increased amount of impervious surfaces associated with urban development is responsible for increased runoff during rain events, which may have a negative impact on the quality of nearby bodies of water, including drinking water sources. The growing populations associated with urbanization require a higher water demand. In addition, urban drinking water systems use energy to collect, treat, and distribute a safe reliable effluent to users. Therefore, this study focuses on the degree to which urbanization influences the embodied energy of drinking water …

Deriving Statewide Freight Truck Flows From Global Positioning System (Gps) Data, Akbar Bakhshi Zanjani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An accelerated growth in the volume of freight shipped on Florida's highways has led to a significant increase in truck traffic, influencing traffic operations, safety, and the state of repair of highway infrastructure. Traffic congestion in turn has impeded the speed and reliability of freight movement on the highway system. Appropriate planning and decision making processes are necessary to address these issues. However, a main challenge in establishing such processes is the lack of adequate data on statewide freight movements. As traditional data sources on freight movement are either inadequate or no longer available, new sources of data must be …

The Effect Of Airport Servicescape Features On Traveler Anxiety And Enjoyment, Vanja Bogicevic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The physical attributes of the service setting are critical differentiators among service providers that significantly influence customers' emotional responses. Following the changes in the airport industry and addressing the gap in the existing research, this study aims to investigate the relationship between physical servicescape elements, emotional responses of enjoyment and anxiety and word-of-mouth in the context of airport environment.

This study was conducted in three phases. The first phase incorporated an EFA conducted on a pilot study sample of 174 respondents that proposed a six-factor structure of airport service environment. In the second phase of the study, a self-administered online …