Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

The "Kiddie Cab" Industry Transformation In The 21st Century, Jason Wachs

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

A new niche business has increased in the United States from a handful of private van services in 1992 to almost 250 nationwide. Referred to by many as "kiddie cabs," these private business are more than buses, iii that, they will chauffeur children to after school activities, the dentist, school, and anywhere else that children need to go.

The Kiddie Cab industry must explicitly be separated from publicly owned and operated transportation services for children such as paratransit services, shuttles for specific programs such as the YMCA, and any other transportation services for children that are currently funded and operated …

Time Point-Level Analysis Of Passenger Demand And Transit Service Reliability, Thomas J. Kimpel, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper provides a framework for analyzing transit service reliability and estimating passenger demand at the time point-level of analysis. It begins with a literature review of passenger demand modeling and transit service reliability analysis, and shows how advances in transportation technologies are producing vast amounts of data that encourage the use of new modeling techniques. Differences between route-level and time point-level demand modeling are discussed. Lastly, the results of the passenger demand and transit service reliability models estimated from Tri-Met BDS data are presented.

The Effects Of Roadway Capacity On Peak Narrowing - Evidence From 1995 Npts, Jihong Zhang, Anthony M. Rufolo, Kenneth Dueker, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Spreading of the peak is one effect of increased peak-period congestion. Due to peak spreading, the travel-time impact of congestion is mitigated for some travelers, but the inconvenience of traveling at a less-preferred time also has a cost. Alternatively, increases in capacity have their impacts on peak-period congestion mitigated by a narrowing of the peak. This reduces the travel-time savings, but it generates a benefit for those traveling closer to their preferred times. This benefit from capacity improvements has largely been ignored, and one reason is the difficulty of quantifying the effect. This paper reports on some crude attempts to …

A Clearinghouse Approach To Sharing Transportation Gis Data, Kenneth Dueker, J. Allison Butler, Paul Bender, Jihong Zhang

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Updating and maintaining Geographic Information Systems-Transportation data (GIS-T data) is proving difficult. Different database formats needed to support diverse applications leads to inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and duplication in updating. A clearinghouse approach is recommended for the collection and dissemination of new transportation features that can be segmented in different ways to meet the needs of various applications and inserted to update existing GIS-T databases. The clearinghouse approach is advantageous in that it is based on collecting data about new or changed transportation features once and uses the data many times to update existing databases.

A Framework For Gis-T Data Sharing, Kenneth Dueker, J. Allison Butler

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper develops a framework and principles for sharing of transportation data. The framework is intended to clarify roles among participants, data producers, data integrators, and data users. The principles are intended to provide guidance for the participants. Both the framework and the principles are based on an enterprise GIS-T data model that defines relations among transportation data elements. The data model guards against ambiguities and provides a basis for the development of the framework and principles for sharing of transportation data. There are two central principles. First is the uncoupling of graphics, topology, position, and characteristics. Second is the …

Sharing Transportation Gis Data, Kenneth Dueker, Paul Bender, Jihong Zhang

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Updating and maintaining Geographic Information Systems-Transportation data (GIS-T data) is proving difficult. Different database formats needed to support diverse applications leads to inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and duplication in updating. Dueker and Butler (1998) have proposed an Enterprise GIS-T data model that unbundles the various components of transportation data (network links, cartography, and attributes) to facilitate generating application-specific networks, and which eases updating and maintenance. However, developers of existing application-specific databases that employ integrated data models that bundle the network link with cartography and attributes are reluctant to step back to an intermediate form for managing their data. Consequently, attention is …

Analysis Of Induced Travel In The 1995 Npts, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas W. Sanchez, Jihong Zhang, Ann-Elizabeth Riis

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

In this paper we estimate the relationship between road capacity and vehicle miles of travel (VMT) from a sample of 12,000 respondents from 48 urban areas in the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS). Our approach seeks to account for the effects of residential location, employment location, and commute mode choice in estimating the effect of capacity on VMT. VMT is found to be directly related to road capacity, as well as indirectly related through the influence of road capacity on residential and work place densities.

Bus Transit Operations Control: Review And An Experiment Involving Tri-Met’S Automated Bus Dispatching System, James G. Strathman, Thomas J. Kimpel, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

An operations plan contains information on the provision of transit service, including intended service levels, vehicle availability, and driver schedules. Agency resources would be utilized efficiently if the operations plan could be executed without disruptions in service. When service disruptions occur, the aim of operations control is to optimize system performance given the current state of the system (Wilson et al., 1992). This typically involves actions intended to either return service to schedule or restore headways separating vehicles. Disruptions in service impose costs on transit providers in the form of reduced productivity and on passengers in the form of increased …

A Primer On Gis-T Databases, J. Allison Butler, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper describes the primary database design approaches that have been and are being used in geographic information system applications for transportation (GIS-T). While not intending to be exhaustive, the paper covers the primary approaches used in federal, state, and local transportation agencies.

Effective Transportation Demand Management: The Results Of Combining Parking Pricing, Transit Incentives, And Transportation Management In A Commercial District Of Portland, Oregon, Martha J. Bianco

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The Lloyd District is a high-density commercial and residential district located a short distance from downtown Portland, Oregon. Parking and transportation problems in the District have been a source of increasing contention for nearly a decade. As a result. in September of 1997. the City of Portland implemented a Lloyd District Partnership Plan, which consists of a number of elements aimed at curbing SOY use for the commute to and from the District. This plan included parking pricing in the form of meters, w'here on-street parking had previously been free: discounted transit passes: and other transportation demand management (TOM) strategies. …

Land Use And Growth Impacts From Highway Capacity Increases, Thomas W. Sanchez

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This analysis examined the historical relationship between land use changes and the location of capacity increasing highway projects in the State of Oregon from 1970 to 1990. Aerial photography for 18 cities was used to delineate the extent of urban development in each time period. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to assemble the data. Using this data, a logit regression model tested the significance of geographic variables such as proximity to highway projects, land use zoning classification, city size, and other spatial characteristics. The analytical methods used in this study incorporated a set of commonly used techniques to …

Effect Of Oregon's Axle-Weight-Distance Tax Incentive, Anthony M. Rufolo, Lois M. Bronfman, Eric Kuhner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Oregon s weight-mile tax was amended in 1990 to provide for a lower tax rate for trucks weighing more than 80,000 pounds if they added axles. The additional axles within a weight class reduce the amount of road damage. The tax break was largely based on equity considerations, since trucks within a weight class tend to do less road damage if they have more axles; however, the tax reductions also created an economic incentive to add axles and thus reduce road damage. This article is a report on attempts to determine if the tax break actually led to an increase …