Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Development Of Rdsetgo: A Rapidly Deployable Structural Evaluation Toolkit For Global Observation, Charles Riley

TREC Final Reports

The most expensive and critical links in the nation’s transportation network are its bridges. Historical and contemporary bridge failures have highlighted our reliance on these structures. While the nation’s bridge management system is robust and well administered, the tools needed to evaluate individual bridges to determine their condition, whether for asset management or in response to a significant loading event such as the imminent Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, are currently highly specialized. The goal of this study was to develop a cost-effective, accurate, and easily deployed evaluation tool using widely available mobile technology, specifically iPods, to …

A Portable Toolkit For Testing Bridge Structural Integrity, Charles Riley

TREC Project Briefs

The goal of this study was to develop a cost-effective, accurate, and easily deployed evaluation tool using widely available mobile technology (specifically iPods) to measure the dynamic structural response of a bridge subjected to harmonic forcing. Researchers leveraged principles of structural mechanics, dynamics, and vibrations, as well as a significant body of literature, to conceive a system that could complement existing visual inspection methods to support bridge condition evaluation and rating. The outcome of the project is the Rapidly Deployable Structural Evaluation Toolkit for Global Observation, or RDSETGO.

Evaluation Of The Valley Transportation Authority’S Do It! Program A “Ladders Of Opportunity Initiative” Program Funded By The Federal Transit Administration, Peter J. Haas, J. Fred Springer

Mineta Transportation Institute

The U.S. Department of Transportation has increasingly demonstrated interest in developing programs that will enhance the workforce capacity of future transportation systems. To that end, the Department sponsored the 2015 Innovative Public Transportation Workforce Development program, directed by the Federal Transit Administration. This program sought to enhance the availability of skilled workers from targeted groups, including the underserved, underemployed, and/or minority groups into possible transit-oriented career paths. One of the 19 programs selected for funding was the “DO IT!” project proposed and developed by the Valley Transit Authority (VTA). VTA proposed to create an innovative education and training program that …

Webinar: Pooled Fund Grant 2018 - Tackling Transportation Together, Eva-Maria Muecke

TREC Webinar Series

Information session on the Pooled Fund Research Grant

One champion identifies a problem that is common to other agencies, cities, or MPOs and then recruits other partners who are willing to collaborate and contribute financially to the project. At this point, NITC steps in and matches the funds that the partners pooled – making it possible to pursue a question that is greater in scope than any one agency or city could pursue on its own. Simple process, right? Maybe not! Yet, this process can be exciting, empowering and, most importantly, lead to the implementation of a project that produces …

Bicycles & Business Success - A San Francisco Examination, Joseph Poirier

PSU Transportation Seminars

This presentation will review research regarding the economic impact of bicycle infrastructure on local businesses. Three case study corridors in San Francisco, CA are examined, and a robust discussion of the shortcomings of the research will be included. A question and open discussion period will follow, with a focus on constructive criticism of past research and methods to improve future work.

Recent Advances In Activity-Based Travel Demand Models For Greater Flexibility, Kihong Kim

Dissertations and Theses

Most existing activity-based travel demand models are implemented in a tour-based microsimulation framework. Due to the significant computational and data storage benefits, the demand microsimulation allows a greater amount of flexibility in terms of demographic market segmentation, temporal scale, and spatial resolution, and thus the models can represent a wider range of travel behavior aspects associated with various policies and scenarios. This dissertation proposes three innovative methodologies, one for each of the three key dimensions, to fulfill the greater level of details toward a more mature state of activity-based travel demand models.

Road Diet V2.0 - Road Diet With Roundabouts, Michael Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

How can we go one step, or one lane, further than the standard road diet? Roundabouts allow a road diet to reduce the final number of lanes from three to two.

Questions arise when roundabouts are used with a road diet. What traffic volumes are supportable? Will the roundabouts fit within existing intersections? What does current guidance tell us about this approach?

Michael Williams will present his work on creating a sequel to FHWA’s Road Diet Informational Guide. This work is intended to provide a feasibility determination tool for the application of this approach to existing corridors. Data from Bird …

Urban Transportation Planning And Tod Research In Japan, Fumihiko Nakamura

PSU Transportation Seminars

Presentation on Urban Transportation Planning and Transit-oriented development (TOD) Research in Japan.

Evaluation Of Route Changes Utilizing High-Resolution Gps Bus Transit Data, Travis Bradley Glick

PSU Transportation Seminars

Congestion and travel delay on urban roadways can influence operating costs and service attractiveness. This research uses high resolution bus data to examine sources of delay on urban arterials. A set of tools was created to help visualize trends in bus behavior and movement; this allowed larger traffic trends to be visualized along urban corridors and urban streets. By using buses as probes and examining aggregated bus behavior, contoured speed plots can be used to understand the behavior of roadways outside the zone of influence of bus stops. Speed plots can be utilized to discover trends and travel patterns with …

Valuing Bicycle Infrastructure In Portland, Oregon, Wei Shi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Investments into active transportation infrastructure are often promoted as a strategy for sustainable transportation, better public health, environmental quality, and economic development. Although empirical evidence generally points toward positive property value impacts of off-street greenways and trails, few focus on whether households might have different willingness-to-pay for different types and levels of bicycle infrastructure. This paper aims to fill research gaps in understanding consumer preferences for different types of bicycle facilities by examining property value impacts of four bicycle facility types: on-street advanced bike facilities and bike lanes; and off-street regional multi-use paths and local multi-use paths. Using Portland, Oregon …

Hedonic Modeling Of Commercial Property Values: Distance Decay From The Links And Nodes Of Rail And Highway Infrastructure, Kihwan Seo, Deborah Salon, Michael Kuby, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study investigates the impacts of positive and negative externalities of highways and light rail on commercial property values in Phoenix, Arizona. We hypothesize that the positive externality (i.e., accessibility) of highway and light rail accrues at exits and stations, whereas nodes and links of highways and light rail emanate negative effects. Positive and negative effects decay with increasing distance and are captured by multiple distance bands. Hypotheses are tested using a spatial error regression model. Results show that commercial property values are positively and significantly associated with the accessibility benefits of transport nodes. The distance-band coefficients form a typical …

Resource-Constrained Scheduling For Maritime Traffic Management, Lucas Agussurja, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We address the problem of mitigating congestion and preventing hotspots in busy water areas such as Singapore Straits and port waters. Increasing maritime traffic coupled with narrow waterways makes vessel schedule coordination for just-in-time arrival critical for navigational safety. Our contributions are: 1) We formulate the maritime traffic management problem based on the real case study of Singapore waters; 2) We model the problem as a variant of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), and formulate mixed-integer and constraint programming (MIP/CP) formulations; 3) To improve the scalability, we develop a combinatorial Benders (CB) approach that is significantly more effective than …

Upping The Game Of Taxi Driving In The Age Of Uber, Shashi Shekhar Jha, Shih-Fen Cheng, Meghna Lowalekar, Wai Hin Wong, Rajendram Rishikeshan Rajendram, Trong Khiem Tran, Pradeep Varakantham, Nghia Truong Trong, Firmansyah Abd Rahman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In most cities, taxis play an important role in providing point-to-point transportation service. If the taxi service is reliable, responsive, and cost-effective, past studies show that taxi-like services can be a viable choice in replacing a significant amount of private cars. However, making taxi services efficient is extremely challenging, mainly due to the fact that taxi drivers are self-interested and they operate with only local information. Although past research has demonstrated how recommendation systems could potentially help taxi drivers in improving their performance, most of these efforts are not feasible in practice. This is mostly due to the lack of …

Defining Place: A Review Of How Place Type Is Measured And Constructed, Kelly Rodgers

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Researchers have been parsing which components of the built environment contribute to outcomes of interest and to what degree, particularly the effects on vehicle use and walking. Increasingly, researchers and practitioners recognize that the type of neighborhood may affect individual travel behaviors. These bundle of various land use and transportation system characteristics can be constructed as different neighborhood or place types. But not all place types are constructed with the same use, purpose, or methods. This presentation will review three classifications of place typologies to better understand their purpose and appropriate application as …

Density Differences: Exploring Built Environment Relationships With Walking Between And Within Metropolitan Areas, Jamie Orrego

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

To explore the relationships between measures of density and walking within and between urban areas, we present an analysis of the travel survey data from six different cities from the US and Santiago, Chile. The analysis of aggregate and disaggregate pedestrian trips presented here examine the potential consistency of relationships between walking and density within and across different regions, with a specific focus on population density. Our findings illustrate a relationship between population density and walk mode shares that is roughly linear and of nearly equal magnitude across US regions in densities below …

Webinar: An Accessible Approach To Shared Streets, Jim Elliott, Janet Barlow, Dan Goodman

TREC Webinar Series

In October 2017 the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) unveiled a groundbreaking new resource on planning and designing shared streets to accommodate people with vision disabilities. The first report of its kind, Accessible Shared Streets: Notable Practices and Considerations for Accommodating Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities (learn more and download the report) / (access the 508 version here) introduces accessible design principles for shared streets based on detailed research and extensive outreach, equipping communities to pursue new designs that are accessible for people with vision disabilities. Drawing from notable practices, public outreach, and field analysis from multiple US …

Exploring The Determinants Of Vulnerable Road Users’ Crash Severity In State Roads, Álvaro Caviedes

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Pedestrians and bicyclists are the most vulnerable road users and suffer the most severe consequences when crashes take place. An extensive literature is available for crash severity in terms of driver safety, but fewer studies have explored non-motorized users’ crash severity. Furthermore, most research efforts have examined pedestrian and bicyclist crash severity in urban areas. This study focuses on state roads (mostly outside major urban areas) and aims to identify contributing risk factors of fatal and severe crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists in state roads. The results seem to suggest that besides improvements …

Development Of A Multi-Modal Travel Demand Module For The Regional Strategic Planning Model, Huajie Yang

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Integrated land use and transportation models have evolved along a spectrum with simplistic sketch planning models on one end and sophisticated microsimulation models on the other. While each type of these models has its niche, they are largely unable to balance the flexibility and realism of microsimulation and the speed and interactiveness of simple models. The Regional Strategic Planning Model (RSPM) aims to fill this gap by taking a microsimulation approach but making other simplifications, to model first-order long-term outcomes of land use and transportation quickly. It takes into consideration the underlying uncertainties …

Exploring Bicycle Accessibility And Equity In Portland, Oregon, Jenny H. Liu

PSU Transportation Seminars

As urban areas across the country are investing in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to promote environmentally sustainable transportation and to develop livable communities, many have pointed to improvements in environmental quality, economic development and public health as potential positive outcomes. While these outcomes of active transportation infrastructure are relatively well documented, it is also known that both transportation and environmental amenities are typically unevenly distributed in the urban context. Studies show that those who are the most socioeconomically disadvantaged (i.e. low income, people of color, etc.) are also those who disproportionately experience transportation disadvantages.

This study contributes to the existing …

Container Shipping In The Great Lakes: Current Situation And Future Potential, John Floyd, James L. Roach, John C. Taylor

Journal of Transportation Management

Containerization has had an outsized impact on the growth of global trade over the past 60 years. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway is an important bi-national waterway. Since the advent of containerization in the 1950’s there has been much excitement about the prospects of scheduled container shipping in the Great Lakes. There is a perception that direct container service will add value to the economy of the Great Lakes- St. Lawrence Basin (GLSLB). However, due to unique shipping constraints in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway, significant container service has not materialized. This research seeks to explain the current state of …

Future Of Transportation: Hyperloop, Aayushi Gupta, Anju Babu, Catalina Reyes, Lipishree Vrushabhendra, Alex Tacco Melendez

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Transportation has evolved through time witnessing an expansion of the different modes of transport. Due to the various technological and organizational breakthroughs and with the arrival of ‘information everywhere’ in this digital age, one could imagine the future of transportation to be massively networked, user centered, integrated and dynamically priced too. As complex and challenging this could be, it is essential for new models of private and public collaboration, coupled with technological innovation. Today, Hyperloop is a result of one such innovation and is referred to as the fifth mode of transport in the near future. Different companies are integrating …

Minimizing Commute Distance For Small Groups: A Linear Programming Approach, Kevin Payne, Kritika Kumari, Levi Huddleston, Rabi Hassan

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

This paper aims to minimize total drive time between members and their respective group leader. Given a limit on group size and days available, how can a formulation of a group occur such that the sum of the total drive time is minimized. To accomplish this task a Linear Program (LP) is implemented that includes three sets of binary decisions variables summing to 4100 variables and a variety of constraints summing between 4200 and 4341 depending on the constraints enforced. For 200 members and 15 leaders the minimized average commuting time was found to be between 4.99 and 5.36 minutes …

An Investigation Of The Performance Of Urban Rail Transit Systems On The Corridor Level: A Comparative Analysis In The American West, Daniel Zimny-Schmitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, significant investments have been made in urban rail transit across the United States, particularly using light rail technology. Most of these light rail systems have been built in Sunbelt cities which no longer had legacy rail systems. As a result, they were constructed using a building blocks approach, being funded corridor by corridor. Most research, however, on urban rail performance has taken place at the system-wide level, leaving a significant gap at the level of the transit corridor. This research examined nineteen urban rail corridors in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Portland. A performance score was constructed …

How Commute Mode Choices Can Control Stress Levels, Liu-Qin Yang

TREC Project Briefs

This research integrates perspectives from transportation and psychology research by focusing on the relations between commuting stress, commuting mode choice, and consequences of such choice for commuters’ health, travel safety, and work performance. To fill the gaps in the transportation and psychology literatures, the project addresses two key research questions:

1) Under what circumstances workers experiencing commuting stress are more likely to commute via car vs. public transit vs. bicycle vs. on foot?

2) What are the different implications of choosing different commuting modes for commuters’ mental and physical health?

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #5: Transportation, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[Introductory paragraph]

This report examines regional perceptions of transportation related issues from the 2018 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2018) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region. For additional information on survey methodology, and analyses of other issues, please see the SSRC website at www.odu.edu/ssrc.

One Step At A Time: Counting Pedestrians Students Learn Pedestrian Observation And Data Collection In The Field, Jennifer Dill, Tara Beth Goddard

TREC Project Briefs

This guidebook provides a comprehensive set of class exercises suitable for students in courses related to travel behavior, traffic safety, urban planning and design, community health, or civil engineering. Exercises include activities developed through this project as well as an extensive set of educational materials drawn from online resources. The exercises developed as part of this project focus on pedestrians. They include elements of both traditional traffic counts and behavioral components, the latter of which are often lacking from current data collections efforts. By encouraging students to consider behavioral interactions of roadway users, these exercises can provide students with field …

Relationship Between Airline Category, Geographical Region, And Safety Performance, Peter Simpson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Passengers rank safety as a key factor in airline choice. Thus, safety performance impacts an airline's ability to attract customers. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship and difference between airline category low-cost carriers (LCCs) and full-service carriers (FSCs), geographical region, and safety performance measured by accident rates. The target population comprised all airlines in all countries that had an accident during the 14-year period 2004 to 2017. Data consisted of archival data of all global airline accidents and airline departure frequencies for the 14-year period. The theory of organizational accidents in complex sociotechnical systems explains …

The Future Of Transit, Dan Boyle

Journal of Public Transportation

Predicting the future is fun to do. Dreaming of possibilities while not being tethered to the chain of reality seems to be wired into our DNA. It doesn't matter that we are nearly always going to be wrong, nor that almost anything we come up with is some version of The Jetsons. The combination of human ingenuity and bold new technologies (helped along by artists' renderings) virtually promise a future of fun and ease.

Thee key word is virtually. Although, if the next major technological breakthrough were to be a time machine that could transport us back to the …

Retention Strategies For Millennial Long-Haul Truck Drivers, Debra A. Washington

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A persistent truck driver shortage and high driver turnover at common carriers limit the effectiveness of some U.S. supply chains. Most driver vacancies result from job hopping, especially among younger drivers. A multiple case study was conducted to explore strategies that some leaders of U.S. common carriers have used to retain millennial-age long-haul truck drivers. Data sources consisted of semistructured, in-person and phone/videoconference interviews; participant observations; and company documents. The sample population was 9 leaders from 6 different common carriers with operations in the southwestern region of the United States who successfully retained millennial long-haul drivers. The conceptual framework was …

Explaining Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Compares Market Urbanism to New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism