Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Urbanism Next: How Technology Is Changing Our City, Nico Larco

PSU Transportation Seminars

Advances in technology such as the advent of autonomous vehicles (AV’s), the rise of E-commerce, and the proliferation of the sharing economy are having profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also increasingly on urban form and development itself. These new technologies are changing the ease of transport, the role of transit, and the places we spend our time. These changes will have profound effects on cities including large shifts in land use, changes in street design, a potential reduction on the need for parking, a shift on where we choose …

Vulnerabilities, Attacks, And Countermeasures In Balise-Based Train Control Systems, Yongdong Wu, Jian Weng, Zhe Tang, Xin Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In modern rail transport systems, balises are widely used to exchange track-train information via air-gap interface. In this paper, we first present the vulnerabilities on the standard balise air-gap interface, and then conduct vulnerability simulations using the system parameters that were specified in the European Train Control System. The simulation results show that the vulnerabilities can be exploited to launch effective and practical attacks, which could lead to catastrophic consequences, such as train derailment or collision. To mitigate the vulnerabilities and attacks, we propose to implement a challenge-response authentication process in the air-gap interface in the existing transport infrastructure.

Transportation Cost Index: A Comprehensive Performance Measure For Transportation And Land Use Systems And Its Application In Or, Fl, And Ut, Liming Wang, Jenny H. Liu

TREC Final Reports

MAP-21 and state laws are placing increasing emphasis on using comprehensive transportation performance measures that include mobility, safety, economy, livability, equity, and environmental to guide transportation decision-making. One of the toughest challenges keeping DOTs and MPOs from adopting comprehensive measures in the decision process is the lack of performance measures allowing consistent comparison of multimodal performance over time and across geographic areas. This project advances a transportation cost index (TCI) initially proposed by Oregon DOT from a proof-of-concept stage to implementation and operational use at the state, MPO, and community levels. After pilot tests and early adoption in Oregon, we …

Assessing The Efficiency Of Mass Transit Systems In The United States, Hokey Min

Mineta Transportation Institute

Frustrated with increased parking problems, unstable gasoline prices, and stifling traffic congestion, a growing number of metropolitan city dwellers consider utilizing the mass transit system. Reflecting this sentiment, a ridership of the mass transit system across the United States has been on the rise for the past several years. A growing demand for the mass transit system, however, necessitates the expansion of service offerings, the improvement of basic infrastructure/routes, and the additional employment of mass transit workers, including drivers and maintenance crews. Such a need requires the optimal allocation of financial and human resources to the mass transit system in …

A Household Daily Non-Mandatory Activity Participation And Duration Modeling Accounting For Person Level Budget Constraints, Ivana Vukovic

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A key methodological and behavioral innovative component in recent Activity-Based Models (ABMs) used for transportation planning is the household-level non-mandatory activity participation component. While traditional ABMs use a series of simple models to predict non-mandatory activity participation decisions in a sequential manner (which is often not correct), the Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value (MDCEV) model can model both individual and joint non-mandatory activity participation and time allocation decisions in different out-of-home activities of all household members simultaneously. A key advantage of the MDCEV framework is that it accounts for complex intra-household interactions among different household members by allocating the total …

Changing The Focus Of Urban Transport From Congestion To Access, Jeffrey Gutman

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

The traditional approach of urban transport planners has been to focus on the reduction of traffic congestion. More recently, with the growth of cities worldwide and the ever-present challenge of congestion, transport and urban planners have started to focus on the concept of access as the ultimate goal. How can we ensure and enhance access to jobs, education, commerce, and other services by all segments of the population? This requires a more complementary effort by transport planners and urban planners as well as finance and fiscal experts. The lecture will follow this shift in emphasis, the opportunities it poses, and …

Dynamic Assignment Models And Their Application In The Portland Metro Region, Peter G. Bosa

PSU Transportation Seminars

Metro's Research and Modeling Services Program is responsible for the development, maintenance, and application of travel demand models for application in long-range planning efforts in the Portland metropolitan region.

Representation of traffic—both vehicular and transit—plays an integral role in the travel demand modeling process. Complex software is required to assign vehicles and transit users to transportation networks to determine viable options available to travelers, costs associated with those options, and sets of routes by which travelers might navigate their trips.

Metro's current static assignment model has traditionally sufficed for use with Metro's four-step travel demand model. However, static assignments have …

Explaining Unequal Transportation Outcomes In A Gentrifying City: The Example Of Portland, Oregon, Eugenio Arriaga Cordero

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines unequal outcomes of urban transportation policies in the neoliberal era. It focuses on inequalities in the Portland, Oregon metro area between 1994 and 2011 as measured in three key areas: 1) access to public transit; 2) the journey-to-work; and 3) "household-serving" trips. Growing concern over the harmful impacts from an increasing dependence on cars has led planners in the U.S. to encourage a modal shift from private car to public transit, bicycling, and walking. The required policies to make this modal shift possible, however, might inadvertently be benefiting "choice" riders at the cost of transport disadvantaged groups. …

Land Use Mix And Pedestrian Travel Behavior: Advancements In Conceptualization And Measurement, Steven Robert Gehrke

Dissertations and Theses

Smart growth policies have often emphasized the importance of land use mix as an intervention beholding of lasting urban planning and public health benefits. Past transportation-land use research has identified potential efficiency gains achieved by mixed-use neighborhoods and the subsequent shortening of trip lengths; whereas, public health research has accredited increased land use mixing as an effective policy for facilitating greater physical activity. However, despite the celebrated transportation, land use, and health benefits of improved land use mixing and the extent of topical attention, no consensus has been reached regarding the conceptualization and measurement of this key smart growth principle …

Bridging The Lng Knowledge Gap In The Baltic Sea Region: The Go Lng Initiative And The Establishment Of A Competence Centre, Dimitrios Dalaklis, Aykut Ölcer, Josefin A. Madjidian, Fabio Ballini, Momoko Kitada

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

Metropolitan Centers Mean Smart Growth, Richard D. Margerum, Rebecca Lewis, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Project Briefs

In this study, a multidisciplinary team from the University of Oregon and the University of Utah examined regional metropolitan center programs and policies in the Salt Lake City and Denver regions. The goal of the study was to examine this topic on two levels. First, to learn how and why local governments have adopted the concepts of metropolitan centers over time and the related supporting and constraining factors. Second, to understand how demographics, land use, and transportation choices have changed over time in the designated centers.

Making Every Mode Count In Washington State, Krista Nordback

TREC Project Briefs

A NITC report by Krista Nordback of Portland State University offers a step toward establishing a performance metric by which statewide progress with respect to bicycling and walking can be evaluated. The Washington State Pedestrian and Bicycle Miles Traveled Project discusses the relative merits of three different methods which can be used to compute bicycle miles traveled (BMT) and pedestrian miles traveled (PMT).

Metropolitan Centers: Evaluating Local Implementation Of Regional Plans And Policies, Richard D. Margerum, Keith Bartholomew, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Parker, Stephen Dobrinich

TREC Final Reports

The Denver and Salt Lake City Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) have embarked upon regional visioning strategies that promote development around higher density, mixed use centers with current or future access to transit. This study examines the programs and policies in the Salt Lake City and Denver regions to examine regional vision influence on local planning and the opportunities and constraints facing centers. The research team analyzed local plans over the past several decades, interviewed planners, and examined demographic, land use and transportation characteristics in select centers across the region. We found that the regional vision had a moderate influence on …

Modeling And Analyzing The Impact Of Advanced Technologies On Livability And Multimodal Transportation Performance Measures In Arterial Corridors: Phase 2, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Chawalit Tipagornwong

TREC Final Reports

Transportation corridors are complex systems. Tradeoffs, particularly in terms of traffic mobility, transit performance, accessibility and pedestrian interactions, are not well understood.When the focus is on motorized vehicle mobility and throughput, high traffic or vehicle speeds are desirable because at high speeds more vehicles can flow per unit of time and roadway section. However, high traffic/vehicles speeds are not desirable for pedestrians who have to cross urban arterials. In particular, pedestrians can be highly vulnerable at unsignalized, marked crosswalks where pedestrians have the right of way but where drivers’ yield rates are significantly lower than at signalized intersections. Pedestrians are …

Access To Taxicabs For Unbanked Households: An Exploratory Analysis In New York City, David A. King, Juan Francisco Saldarriaga

Journal of Public Transportation

Taxicabs are critical complements to public transit systems. In New York City, ubiquitous yellow cabs are as iconic as the city’s subway system, and the city recently added green taxicabs to improve taxi service in areas outside of the Central Business Districts and airports. In this paper, we used multiple datasets to explore taxicab fare payments by neighborhood and examine how paid taxicab fares are associated with use of conventional banking services. There are clear spatial dimensions of the propensity of riders to pay cash, and we found that both immigrant status and being “unbanked” are strong predictors of cash …

Identifying Key Factors Of Rail Transit Service Quality: An Empirical Analysis For Istanbul, Erkan Isikli, Nezir Aydin, Erkan Celik, Alev Taskin Gumus

Journal of Public Transportation

Providing a high quality of service in public transportation is essential to reduce dissatisfactions stemming from traffic congestion and noise. Public transport providers need to find ways to dilute the effects of immoderate use of private cars in big cities while maintaining a sufficient level of customer satisfaction. This study aimed to identify the key service quality (SQ) factors that drive passenger satisfaction in Istanbul’s rail transit (RT) system using data obtained from an extensive survey conducted by the Istanbul Public Transportation Co. A total of 11,116 passengers who used rail transport from May 15–June 3, 2012, and June 17–July …

Measuring The Accuracy Of Bus Rapid Transit Forecasts, John Perry

Journal of Public Transportation

The research of Dr. Bent Flyvbjerg in the 1990s and early 2000s showed that urban rail projects often cost more than estimated and carried fewer riders than projected, a troubling trend suggesting that the forecasts for urban rail projects were too optimistic in terms of cost and ridership. Inspired by that research, this analysis seeks to extend that framework to analyze Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). A study of forecast vs. actual costs and ridership was conducted for 19 BRT projects in the United States. From this, it was found that the cost projections for these projects tended to be quite …

Effect Of Price Reduction And Increased Service Frequency On Public Transport Travel, Inge Brechan

Journal of Public Transportation

A random effects meta-analysis of the results from 15 projects involving price reduction and 9 projects involving increased service frequency showed that both price reduction and increased service frequency generated public transport travels. On average, the increased service frequency projects generated more travels by public transport than the price reduction projects. In the increased service frequency projects the proportion of travels generated by the increased frequency was strongly influenced by the size of the frequency increase. In the price reduction projects, we did not find a significant effect of the size of the price reduction on the proportion of travels …

The Causal Effect Of Bus Rapid Transit On Changes In Transit Ridership, Orion T. Stewart, Anne Vernez Moudon, Brian E. Saelens

Journal of Public Transportation

Numerous studies have reported ridership increases along routes when Bus rapid transit (BRT) replaces conventional bus service, but these increases could be due simply to broader temporal trends in transit ridership. To address this limitation, we compared changes in ridership among routes where BRT was implemented to routes where BRT was planned or already existed in King County, Washington. Ridership was measured at 2010, 2013, and 2014. Ridership increased by 35% along routes where BRT was implemented from 2010 to 2013 compared to routes that maintained conventional bus service. Ridership increased by 29% along routes where BRT was implemented from …

Estimating Walking And Bicycling At The State Level, Krista Nordback, Mike Sellinger, Taylor Phillips

TREC Final Reports

Estimates of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) drive policy and planning decisions for surface transportation. No similar metric is computed for cycling and walking. What approaches could be used to compute such a metric on the state level? This report discusses three such approaches, identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each, and applies them to Washington State. The first approach employs travel survey data. The second approach is sample-based using pedestrian and bicycle count data. The third approach is an aggregate demand model approach using demographic data combined with count data. Due to data limitations, none of these methods could be …

A Model For Better Crosswalk Safety, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

NITC researchers from Portland State University developed models to find what factors affected vehicles’ compliance with pedestrian safety laws.

The results suggest that treatments discouraging accelerating toward a crosswalk could help increase pedestrian safety.

Performance Measures To Assess Resiliency And Efficiency Of Transit Systems, Hani Nassif, Kaan Özbay, Devajyoti Deka, Peng Lou, Chaekuk Na, Sandeep Mudigonda, Yuan Zhu, Ender Faruk Morgul, Bekir Bartin, Ayman El-Awar

Mineta Transportation Institute

Transit agencies are interested in assessing the short-, mid-, and long-term performance of infrastructure with the objective of enhancing resiliency and efficiency. This report addresses three distinct aspects of New Jersey’s Transit System: 1) resiliency of bridge infrastructure, 2) resiliency of public transit systems, and 3) efficiency of transit systems with an emphasis on paratransit service.

This project proposed a conceptual framework to assess the performance and resiliency for bridge structures in a transit network before and after disasters utilizing structural health monitoring (SHM), finite element (FE) modeling and remote sensing using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). The public transit …

Transportation Construction Work-Zone Safety Impact On Time-Related Incentive Contracting Projects, Jae-Ho Pyeon, Do Kim

Mineta Transportation Institute

Work-zone safety on highway projects continues to be a national concern, and project safety performance is one of the indicators of project success. Many contractors and State Transportation Agencies believe that expedited construction time under incentive contracting contributes to reducing the safety risk of road users traveling through work zones. However, the truth of this belief has never been measured or supported by any statistical evidence. Therefore, this research investigates the statistical relationship between time-related incentive road construction projects and frequency of vehicle crashes in California to understand the impact of time-related incentive provisions on project safety performance. The research …

Exploring The Positive Utility Of Travel And Mode Choice, Patrick Allen Singleton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Why do people travel? We traditionally assume traveling is a means to an end, travel demand is derived (from the demand for activities), and travel time is to be minimized. Recently, scholars have questioned these axioms, noting that some people may like to travel, use travel time productively, enjoy the experience of traveling, or travel for non-utilitarian reasons. The idea that travel can provide benefits and may be motivated by factors beyond reaching activity destinations is known as “the positive utility of travel” or PUT.

This study presents a conceptual and empirical look at the positive utility of travel and …

Individual Decision Making In Online Public-Participation Transportation Planning, Martin Swobodzinski

PSU Transportation Seminars

The empirical evaluation of complex decision support systems is often limited to the self-reported satisfaction of the systems’ users.

Such an approach is problematic due to the conflation of the user's satisfaction related to the decision support system and the decision making process and its outcomes.

In addition, it bears limitations that are common among most techniques that solicit participant-stated feedback.

In this talk, based on data that was gathered by a web-based participatory system for transportation planning in the Puget Sound region, I present analytical methods for the empirical evaluation of decision support systems based on human-computer interaction. In …

Improving Trip Data For Livable Communities, Kelly Clifton

TREC Project Briefs

NITC researchers work to refine a framework for trip generation that includes people walking, biking and riding transit.

Could E-Bikes Spur A New Wave Of Biking In America?, John Macarthur

TREC Project Briefs

In this NITC study, researchers provided participants with electric bicycles to use for a ten-week trial period and surveyed them about the experience.

Collective Multiagent Sequential Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Duc Thien Nguyen, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multiagent sequential decision making has seen rapid progress with formal models such as decentralized MDPs and POMDPs. However, scalability to large multiagent systems and applicability to real world problems remain limited. To address these challenges, we study multiagent planning problems where the collective behavior of a population of agents affects the joint-reward and environment dynamics. Our work exploits recent advances in graphical models for modeling and inference with a population of individuals such as collective graphical models and the notion of finite partial exchangeability in lifted inference. We develop a collective decentralized MDP model where policies can be computed based …

Dynamic Repositioning To Reduce Lost Demand In Bike Sharing Systems, Supriyo Ghosh, Pradeep Varakantham, Yossiri Adulyasak, Patrick Jaillet

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bike Sharing Systems (BSSs) are widely adopted in major cities of the world due to concerns associated with extensive private vehicle usage, namely, increased carbon emissions, traffic congestion and usage of nonrenewable resources. In a BSS, base stations are strategically placed throughout a city and each station is stocked with a pre-determined number of bikes at the beginning of the day. Customers hire the bikes from one station and return them at another station. Due to unpredictable movements of customers hiring bikes, there is either congestion (more than required) or starvation (fewer than required) of bikes at base stations. Existing …

Evaluation Of An Electric Bike Pilot Project At Three Employment Campuses In Portland, Oregon, John Macarthur, Nicholas Kobel, Jennifer Dill, Zakari Mumuni

TREC Final Reports

Oregon, and Portland in particular, is internationally known for its love for bikes. Not only does the region have some of the highest bike ridership but the Oregon bike manufacturing industry is quickly growing. Oregon’s electric bike (e-bike) market is also growing but little data are available on the potential market and e-bike user behavior and interest. Only a limited amount of research has explored the potential new market segments for e-bikes and the economic, operational, safety, and transportation issues surrounding e-bikes in the United States. This report examines the results of an electric bike (e-bike) pilot project, which took …