Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Service Reliability Impacts Of Computer-Aided Dispatching And Automatic Vehicle Location Technology: A Tri-Met Case Study, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas J. Kimpel, Rick Gerhart, Ken Turner, Pete Turner, Steve Callas, David Griffin

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper presents findings on initial changes in service reliability following Tri-Met’s deployment of a new bus dispatching system using automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter technology. Changes in on-time performance, headway variation, run time variation, and run times were determined with respect to pre-deployment levels. Changes in headway variation and run times were also used to estimate the initial benefits of the new system with respect to operating costs, passenger waiting, and passenger travel time.

Income Distribution, City Size, And The Role Of Public Transportation, Thomas W. Sanchez

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This article presents an income inequality analysis for all 1990 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The analysis is concerned with whether public transportation has a detectable influence on levels of urban income equality. Because public transportation systems are generally designed to link residences with employment locations, higher levels of transit service provision, all other factors being equal, should be associated with higher employment rates and more uniform distributions of economic gains. The research presented here was influenced by an analysis originally performed by Haworth, Long, and Rasmussen (1978). Along with there study, few analyses have tried to evaluate policies that …

Automated Bus Dispatching, Operations Control, And Service Reliability: The Initial Tri-Met Experience, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas J. Kimpel, Rick Gerhart, Ken Turner, Pete Taylor, Steve Callas, David Griffin

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper presents findings on initial changes in service reliability following Tri-Met’s deployment of a new bus dispatching system using automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter technology. Changes in on-time performance, headway variation, run time variation, and run times were determined with respect to pre-deployment levels. Changes in headway variation and run times were also used to estimate the initial benefits of the new system with respect to operating costs, passenger waiting, and passenger travel time.

Pedestrian Infrastructure Improvements: Effects On Transit Use And Perceptions Of The Pedestrian Environment In Portland's Roseway Neighborhood, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Peter Mye, Joyce A. Felton

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Over the past two years the Pedestrian Transportation (PTP) of the City of Portland has been engaged in a project to encourage walking and transit use through targeted infrastructure improvements. These improvements are intended to enhance pedestrian access to transit service by aiding street crossing and providing more amenities at bus stops. Other improvements include landscaping, sidewalks, curb extensions and ramps, and improved street lighting. One of the basic assumptions of this project is that the pedestrian environment is related to transportation choices. This report explores that assumption.

Orbit: The Oregon Road Base Information Team Draft Summary Report Ii, Paul Bender, Mark Bosworth, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Data sharing among organizations has the potential to 1) decrease long-term costs of obtaining and maintaining data and 2) to facilitate data consistency and accuracy. Consistency includes both completeness and currency, while accuracy includes positional and relative accuracy of transportation features and their attributes, i.e. any data element related to roads or other transportation infrastructure.

ORBIT, the Oregon Road Base Information Team, is an ongoing effort to create an accessible and comprehensive GIS transportation base for use by public and private agencies with shared stewardship through stakeholder partnerships and standards. ORBIT is occurring concurrently with an effort at the national …

An Analysis Of Neighborhood Vitality: The Role Of Local Civic Organizations, Irina V. Sharkova, Thomas W. Sanchez

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper addresses the issue of neighborhood vitality from the perspective of social capital building. Numerous studies have shown that social capital - a complex of networks, norms, and social trust that promotes citizens involvement in local affairs - is crucial for the continuous well-being of communities. Among many political, economic, and cultural factors influencing social capital, the spatial dimension is most often overlooked. Yet the accessibility of places promoting social interactions and interpersonal communication between local residents should have a direct effect on the vitality of a neighborhood. Among these civic places are formal institutions - churches and locally …

Evaluation Of The Lloyd District Parking Programs, City Of Portland: The Impacts Of Parking Pricing And Transportation Management Association Programs In A High-Density, Mixed-Use District, Martha J. Bianco

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This is the final report of the Lloyd District transportation management program and the subsequent survey.

During the one year that had elapsed between the implementation of the Lloyd District transportation and management programs and the survey information collected in this study, the drive alone mode for the trip to work by employees in the Lloyd District had decreased by 7 percent. For the District as a whole, the drive alone commute share is about 56 percent. These are remarkable achievements.

Gis-T Data Sharing Issues, Kenneth Dueker, J. Allison Butler

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework and principles for sharing of transportation data. The framework is intended to clarify roles of the various participants and the principles are intended to provide guidance for the participants. Both the framework and the principles are based on a GIS-T data model that defines relations among transportation data elements. (See Dueker and Butler (1998) for a detailed description of the data model. A simplified version is provided in the next section.) The data model guards against ambiguities and provides a basis for the development of the framework and principles for …

Is There Still A Need For The Special Assessment Program Within Oregon's Current Land-Use System?, David R. Brooks

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Based on the research completed to date regarding the various components of the Oregon farmland preservation program, one question begs to be asked: "Is there still a need for the Special Assessment Program within Oregon's current land use planning system?"

This paper is an attempt to assess the role of the Special Assessment Program in the context of the overall land use planning system in Oregon. It is my contention that the Special Assessment Program no longer plays a meaningful role in the movement to preserve land in the rural areas of the state. Also, it may actually have perverse …

Light Rail Transit Impacts In Portland: The First Ten Years, Kenneth Dueker, Martha J. Bianco

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper examines how the first decade of light rail transit (LRT) in the Portland region has affected auto ownership, mode share, density, and property values. The empirical analysis provides evidence that light rail has had some positive effect of rail on single-family property values, transit use, and slower growth of two-plus car households in the outer part of the LRT corridor as compared to an outer part of a parallel bus corridor. These effects may be the result of households self-selecting to make housing location decisions where LRT is located, rather than current households changing mode.

This assessment of …

Kennedy, 60 Minutes, And Roger Rabbit: Understanding Conspiracy-Theory Explanations Of The Decline Of Urban Mass Transit, Martha J. Bianco

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper will review the history of the GM Conspiracy Myth, as well as what legal theorists refer to as "the facts in the case." The legal explanation of what really happened goes only so far, though. The whole story about the decline of mass transit in the U.S. is a story about the failure of public policy and about conflict among competing constituencies in the transportation policy process. This paper will very briefly discuss this failure and this conflict and will then conclude with a consideration of - or at least a hypothesis for - the endurance of the …

The Politics Of Implementation: Oregon's Statewide Transportation Planning Rule - What's Been Accomplished, Martha J. Bianco, Sy Adler

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper is a case study of the evolution of Oregon’s groundbreaking Transportation Planning Rule, from its adoption in 1991, up through present amendments. Our analysis is an assessment of how private- and public-sector investors grapple with the coproduction of the built environment under the constraints of a value system that emanates from the state, shepherded by litigious public interest groups. In this case, this value system is articulated in the Oregon administrative rule known as the Transportation Planning Rule. This Rule emphasizes a reduction in the reliance on automobiles and, among other things, requires a decrease in vehicle miles …

The Impact Of Congestion Pricing And Parking Taxes On Spatial Competition, Anthony M. Rufolo, Martha J. Bianco

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Policymakers seeking to reduce reliance on single-occupant automobiles are giving serious consideration to methods to price roads during periods of congest ion and to increase the cost of parking. Such policies are intended to induce increases in carpooling and in the use of mass transit; however, they may have unintended consequences that counteract these goals in the long run. In particular, actual implementation of such policies may create differential price increases that affect the spatial competition for markets between firms located in the central city and those in the suburbs. Analyzing such policies using the spatial competition models of location …

The Connection Between Public Transit And Employment, Thomas W. Sanchez

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Even with a considerable amount of attention being paid to the role of public transportation in addressing inner-city mobility problems, there is very little evidence of the degree to which one affects the other. In other words, little research has specifically focused on how labor participation is impacted by increases in public transportation availability. Research on the spatial mismatch hypothesis has dealt with the relationship between labor participation and the spatial separation of jobs and houses; however, most analyses concentrate on commuting time or distance as a function of auto accessibility. Few, if any, studies have considered the relative impacts …

Marketing Central City Residence To An Aging Baby Boom: The Transportation Angle, Daphne Spain, Thomas W. Sanchez

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper proposes that the aging baby boom will contribute significantly to transportation problems in the future because 1) current land use patterns necessitate dependence on cars; and 2) aging baby boom women will drive more than elderly women do now. Policies that promote central city residence by stressing the transportation advantages of high-density living, therefore, should have particular appeal to baby boom women seeking prolonged independence. Such policies would also serve the interests of localities by reducing traffic congestion, pollution, and further sprawl. We suggest that a combination of direct and indirect housing policies comparable to those that financed …

The Oregon Dot Slow-Speed Weigh-In--Motion (Swim) Project: Final Report, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Weigh-in-motion (WIM) systems have provided an effective means of data collection for pavement research and facility design, traffic monitoring, and weight enforcement for over 40 years. In weight enforcement, WIM systems have been increasingly used to screen potentially overweight vehicles. Vehicles that exceed weight limits as measured on a WIM scale are then weighed on a static scale, which is subject to accuracy standards specified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (1998). The use of WIM for screening purposes reduces queuing at weigh stations, resulting in considerable savings for both truckers and enforcement agencies. To date, however, WIM …

Analysis Of Assessment Uniformity In Relation To Favorable Mortgage Terms, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper examines the capitalization effect of mortgages with favorable terms on the coefficient of intra-area dispersion (COD), the statistic commonly used to measure assessment uniformity. Regression analysis using data from the 1982 Census of Governments indicates that as much as one third of the value of the 1981 state-level CODs can be attributed to the capitalization effects of financing rather than assessment performance. Post-1982 improvements in uniformity can be expected in light of the sharp decline in non-standard sources of mortgage credit.

A Gis Methodology For Assessing The Growth Impacts Of Highway Improvements, Thomas W. Sanchez, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper presents a methodology to assess the induced land use effects of state highway improvements on urban development patterns. The methodology is applied to the case study City of Hillsboro, Oregon and illustrates a framework for data management and analysis. A set of temporal land use characteristics and spatial measures are used as predictors of urban development activities resulting from highway accessibility improvements. A multiple regression analysis tests the significance of these variables in predicting rates and locations of urban development. The primary objective of this research is to identify the relationship between capacity increasing highway improvements and changes …

Household Travel/Activity Decisions: Who Wants To Travel?, Catherine T. Lawson

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Researchers are using activity-based survey data to better understand the nature of the derived demand for travel. However, a strong theoretical construct for derived demand has yet to be developed. In order to understand the ramifications of considering travel as a derived demand, it is necessary to review some of the basic tenets of economics.

Some activities require travel (i.e. shopping or picking up children from daycare), while others are conducted entirely within the confines of the home. There is a set of activities that can be conducted either in or out of the home. A need to travel arises …

Automated Bus Dispatching, Operations, Control, And Service Reliability: Baseline Analysis, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas J. Kimpel, Rick Gerhart, Ken Turner, Pete Taylor, Steve Callas, David Griffin, Janet Hopper

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The authors of this report are engaged in a long term project to assess the impacts of Tri-Met's BDS on service reliability and transit use. The framework designed for this assessment focuses on documenting service reliability and passenger activity at three major junctures:

• The pre-operational (baseline) period;

• The initial (passive) period following implementation of the new system, when both drivers and dispatchers have access to schedule adherence information in real time, but before the development and use of operations control practices that exploit the information generated by the system;

• Full implementation, when operations control practices are defined …

Effects Of Light Rail Transit In Portland: Implications For Transit-Oriented Development Design Concepts, Kenneth Dueker, Martha J. Bianco

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

In the Portland, Oregon, region many local planners have embraced the neotraditional planning concept in the form of transit-oriented development (TOD). One of the primary components of transit-oriented development, light rail transit (LRT), has been in place in Portland long enough to provide data for analysis. Because neotraditional planners often emphasize LRT as a crucial element in decreasing auto use and in encouraging high-density development, this paper examines the effects of LRT in the Portland region including mode share, density, and property values. The empirical analysis provides evidence that light rail alone has not been sufficient to have an appreciable …

Orbit: The Oregon Road Base Information Team, A Draft Summary Report, Mark Bosworth, Kenneth Dueker, Philip J. Wuest

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

It is clear that transportation organizations across the nation are integrating GIS into operations at many different levels—from day to day use for data display, to full-scale enterprise level integration for operations, inventory management, research and a variety of other purposes. The cost of building and maintaining a current and accurate GIS database can be substantial within any given organization. For some smaller level organizations—small counties, cities or special districts, the cost of gathering data, organizing it and implementing systems within expensive software on an expensive operating platform can be downright discouraging. Also, as more complex data structures are accumulated …

Transit Time Internet Access, Janet Vorvick, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Transit Time Internet Access (TTIA) is a World Wide Web (WWW) application which delivers real-time bus schedule information to users of the Internet. TTIA allows a bus rider to request and receive schedule deviation information about a specific bus at a specific timepoint. This report explains the design of TTIA, the specifics of the implementation, the issues of scope, the problems that were encountered and some conclusions.

A Proposed Method Of Transportation Feature Identification, J. Allison Butler, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Geographic information systems (GIS) are being increasingly deployed by transportation agencies to help them display, review, and utilize data. The primary items of interest are transportation facilities and services, which may take the form of highways, airports, bus routes, and seaports, among others. Using GIS software, transportation facilities are represented as geometric shapes; i.e., points, lines, and areas. However, it is increasingly apparent to GIS users in the field of transportation that a geometry-based approach is not sufficient.

The offered solution is to develop a feature-based GIS approach for transportation. The central requirement of such an approach is to have …

La Pine North: Two Futures, Deborah A. Howe, William A. Rabiega

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper provides a vision of how accommodating such high growth may affect one rural residential area of the county, La Pine North. It will first draw a profile of La Pine North as it exists currently. Then, two possible futures for that space and its residents will be depicted. These futures represent the minimal and the most radical responses to the present and intensifying problem of nitrate/nitrogen pollution of ground water in the area. The "Restricted Growth" scenario assumes that the only response to the pollution problem will be the requirement of sand filter septic systems for replacement and …

Issues In The Design Of A Stop-Level Transit Patronage Model, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Zhongren Peng

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Tri-Met, the transit agency serving the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area is implementing a new bus dispatching system (BDS) that includes automated vehicle location (AVL) technology. An important objective in the agency's decision to invest in a new dispatching system was to maintain or improve service reliability in an urban environment characterized by rapid growth and worsening traffic congestion.

Parking Strategies To Attract Auto Users To Public Transportation, Martha J. Bianco, Kenneth Dueker, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

No abstract provided.

Measuring The Impact Of Light Rail Systems On Single Family Home Values: A Hedonic Approach With Gis Application, Hong Chen, Anthony M. Rufolo, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

In theory, proximity to a light rail (LRT) may have two different effects on residential property values. On the one hand, accessibility (proximity to the LRT stations) may increase property values. On the other hand, nuisance effects (proximity to the LRT line and stations) may decrease property values. Existing empirical studies are inconclusive, and failure to separate the effects of accessibility from the nuisance effects may explain some of the ambiguity. This paper examines the impact of the light-rail system (MAX) in Portland, Oregon, on single-family home values using distance to rail stations as a proxy for accessibility and distance …

Hedonic Analysis Of Psu Faculty Salaries, Tim O'Brien, Matt Ransom, Ellery Reed, Tim Schindler, Kay Woodford, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The complex issue of faculty compensation has vital importance within the academic labor market. Salaries reflect institutional, interpersonal, organizational and labor market forces. Designing productive and equitable faculty salary structures is one of the most contentious challenges that American higher education institutions face (Bowen, 1986).

Increasingly, salary scales have been more responsive to market conditions, which has widened the salary disparities among academic disciplines within the university labor market. Upward pressure on the salary scales in some disciplines has been countered by a downward pull in others (Scott and Bereman, 1992). As a consequence, analyzing academic salary structure can generate …

Oregon Dot Slow-Speed Weigh-In-Motion (Swim) Project: Analysis Of Initial Weight Data, Tim Swope, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This report presents the results of a preliminary analysis of axle weights from the Oregon DOT Slow-Speed Weigh in Motion (SWIM) scale at the Wyeth weigh station.* This report includes an analysis of methodology and variables used in the study; estimates of accuracy and precision of the WIM readings; and a regression analysis of the WIM and static scale weighings. Axles weights were collected from the traffic stream.