Transportation Commons^™

Crash Injury Severity Prediction With Artificial Neural Networks, Rima Abisaad

Dissertations

Motor vehicle crashes are one of our nation's most serious social, economic and health issues. They are the leading cause of death among children and young adults, killing approximately 1.35 million people each year. Providing a safe and efficient transportation system is the primary goal of transportation engineering and planning. To help reduce traffic fatalities and injuries on roadways, crash prediction models are used to forecast the injury severity of potential crashes and apply precautionary countermeasures accordingly. Most of these models are reactive as they use historical crash data to categorize crash-related factors. Recently, advancements have been made in developing …

Interstate 11: The Road To Prosperity In Nevada, Arthur C. Nelson

Policy Briefs and Reports

Interstate 11 (I-11) offers Nevada a unique opportunity to advance the economic development prospects of one of the state’s most economically challenged areas: Elko and eastern Nevada. Although the state used a qualitative system to choose a western route for I-11, this process may not have considered fully the costs of extending I-11 to Canada in a cost-effective manner or in a manner consistent with I-11 purposes, especially avoiding congested areas. This briefing report reviews the history and purposes of I-11; summarizes the I-11 route options; considers how I-11 might extend to Canada in a way that is consistent with …

Non-Linear And Weakly Monotonic Relationship Between School Quality And House Prices, Shishir Mathur

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study provides evidence for a non-linear and weakly monotonic relationship between school quality and house prices. Using Fremont, California, as the study area, the regression analysis shows that homeowners are unwilling to pay a premium for an increase in school quality from low to medium quality. However, they are willing to pay a) a large premium when all schools are top-quality schools and b) a premium for access to nationally-renowned schools, which is in addition to the premium for top-quality schools. These findings have important land use policy significance because they provide new insights into the homeowner’s residential location …

A New Approach To Transportation Pricing: Lessons From The Poem Project, Shoshana Cohen, Emma Sagor

PSU Transportation Seminars

In October 2021, Portland City Council accepted the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) report. This was the culmination of 18 months of work by the POEM Task Force, a group of 19 volunteer community members who explored whether pricing tools—or charges related to driving or using road space—could be used to improve mobility, reduce climate impact, and make our transportation system more equitable. More information is available at Portland.gov/POEM.

At this seminar, POEM Project Managers Shoshana Cohen and Emma Sagor from the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) will share how this project took on the topic of …

Factors Influencing The Usage Of Shared E-Scooters : A Case Study Of Chicago, Farzana Mehzabin Tuli

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid popularity growth of shared e-scooters creates the necessity of understanding the determinants of shared e-scooter usage. This thesis estimates the impacts of temporal variables (weather data, weekday/weekend, and gasoline prices) and time-invariant variables (socio-demographic, built environment, and neighborhood characteristics) on the shared e-scooter demand by using four months (June 2019- October 2019) period of data from the shared e-scooter pilot program in Chicago. The study employs a random-effects negative binomial (RENB) model that effectively models shared e-scooter trip origin and destination count data with over-dispersion while capturing serial autocorrelation in the data. Results of temporal variables indicate that …

Level Of Service For Parking Facilities Based On Search Time, Fernie Briones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Level of Service (LOS) is a term used by transportation engineers to identify the quality of service of transportation facilities to the public. The Highway Capacity Manual has yet to provide guidance on LOS analysis for parking facilities. Parking search time has been proposed by several researchers as the indicator for the LOS criteria for parking facilities. This thesis investigated the use of search time for LOS analysis for on street and off-street parking facilities. The analysis of LOS for off-street parking focused on the measurement of parking search time. Three search time measurement methods have been proposed: the license …

Determination Of Faculty And Staff Parking Permit Prices On University Campuses, Rodrigo Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

University campuses are the origins and destinations of a variety of trips generated by faculty, staff, students, and visitors. The vast number of trips that are attracted to university campuses result in parking congestion issues. In order to manage campus parking demand, universities establish Transportation and Parking Offices (TPO). This research has developed a two-stage procedure that can be used by TPOs as a tool for determining faculty and staff parking permit prices on university campuses. The first stage of the procedure is the determination of a single campus-wide base price (which may be regarded as the reference price or …

What Is An Effective Way To Measure Arterial Demand When It Exceeds Capacity?, Mecit Cetin, Hong Yang, Kun Xie, Giridhar Kattepogu, Behrouz Salahshour

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This project focused on developing and evaluating methods for estimating demand volume for oversaturated corridors. Measuring demand directly with vehicle sensors is not possible when demand is larger than capacity for an extended period, as the queue grows beyond the sensor, and the flow measurements at a given point cannot exceed the capacity of the section. The main objective of the study was to identify and develop methods that could be implemented in practice based on readily available data. To this end, two methods were proposed: an innovative method based on shockwave theory; and the volume delay function adapted from …

Identification And Evaluation Of Critical Transportation Infrastructure Resilience After Hydro-Meteorological Event, Herman Serrato

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Modern civilization is dependent on essential infrastructure assets that allow society to function in today’s standards. Critical interdependent infrastructure such as transportation, communication, security, and public health are marvels of human innovation and an important aspect of civilization's evolution. Recent world events such as climate change have underlined the necessity to develop strategic plans to enhance the resilience of infrastructure. This study aimed to identify and evaluate the flooding potential of critical transportation infrastructure that will influence traffic flow and impact the economy. The technical workflow is based on observations, predictions, experiments, testing, and analysis to derive a resilience score …

Exempting Battery Electric Vehicles From Traffic Restrictions: Impacts On Market And Environment Under Pigovian Taxation, Xu Hu, Zhaojun Yang, Jun Sun, Yali Zhang

Information Systems Faculty Publications

In busy metropolitan areas, traffic restrictions based on the last digits of license plates effectively ease traffic jams and improve air quality. Recently, policy-makers in China exempted battery electric vehicles (BEV) from traffic restrictions to promote their diffusion in place of conventional vehicles (CV). To examine the impacts of such an exemption on consumers and manufacturers as well as the environment, this study models the duopoly competition between BEV and CV manufacturers as a Cournot game. The numerical analyses compare three traffic restriction policies concerning BEV and CV, and reveal the pros and cons of each. In particular, the BEV-exempted …

Rail Fixed Guideway Systems In Western U.S. Regions, Kelly A. Beavers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research explores the policy factors influencing the intraregional development of rail transit. For the purpose of this research, policy factors include: institutional arrangements, factors associated with governance, and factors in the policymaking process. The research questions are studied in five case study MSAs within the Pacific West and Mountain West regions of the United States: Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO; Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA; and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR. The foundational problems that frame this research are the challenges of urban planning at a regional scale, specifically for transportation. The more specific challenge of transportation planning is situated within …

Improving Pedestrian Safety With The Implementation Of The Demand-Responsive Transverse Rumble Strip As A New Traffic Safety Countermeasure, Md Shakhawat Hossen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The traditional TRS has been extensively used as a traffic calming device to provide cognitive alerts in the form of sound and vibration to drivers. However, TRS always remains fixed on the road and thus exerts cognitive alerts, irrespective of any potential downstream hazards. Moreover, the continuous exposure to rumble strips has been identified as a source of discomfort and annoyance for drivers, which limits its application to potentially useful scenarios. This study explores a rumble strip design with dynamic behavior named as Demand-Responsive Transverse Rumble Strip (DRTRS) in order to address the limitations of static TRS. The study incorporates …

Achieving Excellence For California’S Freight System: Developing Competitiveness And Performance Metrics; Incorporating Sustainability, Resilience, And Workforce Development, Jian-Yu Ke, Fynnwin Prager, Jose Martinez, Chris Cagle

Mineta Transportation Institute

This study explores the question of whether California's freight system is staying competitive with other US regions. A novel analytical framework compares supply chain performance metrics across multiple US states and regions for seaports, airports, highways, freight rail service, and distribution centers by combining the Performance Evaluation Matrix (PEM), Competitive Position Matrix (CPM), and Business Process Management (BPM) approaches. Analysis of industry data and responses from structured interviews with 30 freight industry experts across 5 transportation sectors suggests that California's freight system is competitive for seaports, airports, and freight rail; however, highways and distribution centers have room for improvement with …

Context-Aware Graph Convolutional Network For Dynamic Origin-Destination Prediction, Juan Nathaniel, Baihua Zheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A robust Origin-Destination (OD) prediction is key to urban mobility. A good forecasting model can reduce operational risks and improve service availability, among many other upsides. Here, we examine the use of Graph Convolutional Net-work (GCN) and its hybrid Markov-Chain (GCN-MC) variant to perform a context-aware OD prediction based on a large-scale public transportation dataset in Singapore. Compared with the baseline Markov-Chain algorithm and GCN, the proposed hybrid GCN-MC model improves the prediction accuracy by 37% and 12% respectively. Lastly, the addition of temporal and historical contextual information further improves the performance of the proposed hybrid model by 4 –12%.

Integration Of Blockchain Technology Into Automobiles To Prevent And Study The Causes Of Accidents, John Kim

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Automobile collisions occur daily. We now live in an information-driven world, one where technology is quickly evolving. Blockchain technology can change the automotive industry, the safety of the motoring public and its surrounding environment by incorporating this vast array of information. It can place safety and efficiency at the forefront to pedestrians, public establishments, and provide public agencies with pertinent information securely and efficiently. Other industries where Blockchain technology has been effective in are as follows: supply chain management, logistics, and banking. This paper reviews some statistical information regarding automobile collisions, Blockchain technology, Smart Contracts, Smart Cities; assesses the feasibility …

Solar-Powered Automated Transportation: Feasibility And Visualization, Burford J. Furman, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Shannon Mcdonald, Ron Swenson, Jack Fogelquist, Yu Chiao, Alex Pape, Mario Cruz

Mineta Transportation Institute

A solar-powered automated transportation network (ATN) connecting the North and South campuses of San José State University with three passenger stations was designed, visualized, and analyzed in terms of its energy usage, carbon offset, and cost. The study’s methodology included the use of tools and software such as ArcGIS, SketchUp, Infraworks, Sketchup, Rhinoceros, and Autodesk 3DS Max. ATN vehicle energy usage was estimated using data from the university’s Park & Ride shuttle bus operation and by modeling with SUMOPy, the advanced simulation suite for the micro-traffic simulator SUMO. The energy study showed that an extensive solar photovoltaic (PV) canopy over …

Vehicular Design And Resource Allocation Policies For Equitable Road Safety, Alyssa Ryan

PSU Transportation Seminars

The diversity of road users is not equitably accounted for in vehicular and infrastructure design and funding allocation policies, among other areas that impact mobility. This impedes the ability for all road users to experience the same level of safety while traveling. Moving towards equitable road safety for all road users is critical to improve the quality of life and save lives of those that are most underserved in the transportation sector.

Professor Alyssa Ryan discusses two strategies to increase safety for vulnerable road users. First, a study on road injury differences between drivers of different biological sex is presented. …

Webinar: Radar Point Cloud Segmentation Using Gmm In Traffic Monitoring, Siyang Cao

TREC Webinar Series

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) change our communities by improving the safety and convenience of people’s daily mobility. The system relies on multimodal traffic monitoring, that needs to provide reliable, efficient and detailed traffic information for traffic safety and planning. How to reliably and intelligently monitor intersection traffic with multimodal information is one of the most critical topics in intelligent transportation research. In multimodal traffic monitoring, we gather traffic statistics for distinct transportation modes, such as pedestrians, cars and bicycles, in order to analyze and improve people’s daily mobility in terms of safety and convenience. In this study, we use a …

Economic Impacts Of Street Improvements: Findings From Portland Area, Jennifer Dill, Jenny H. Liu

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Active Transportation Return on Investment (ATROI) study aimed to provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the economic benefits of active transportation infrastructure in the Portland, OR region. The study was funded by Portland Metro and conducted by researchers at PSU and Metro.

This seminar will focus on one part of the study--a quantitative assessment of the economic impacts of 12 "catalyst" projects. These projects retrofitted busy commercial streets with pedestrian friendly treatments aimed at catalyzing economic development. The projects were in Beaverton, Cornelius, Forest Grove, Gresham, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Portland, and Tigard. The analysis estimated effects on employment, …

New Radar Sensor Technology For Intelligent Multimodal Traffic Monitoring At Intersections, Siyang Cao, Yao-Jan Wu, Feng Jin

TREC Project Briefs

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) need traffic data to run smoothly. At intersections, where there is the greatest potential for conflicts between road users, being able to reliably and intelligently monitor the different modes of traffic is crucial.

The Federal Highway Administration estimates that more than 50 percent of the combined total of fatal and injury crashes occur at or near intersections. For pedestrians the intersection is a particularly dangerous place: the City of Portland, OR identified that two-thirds of all crashes involving a pedestrian happen at intersections. And when darkness comes earlier in fall and winter, crashes increase dramatically. So …

New Mobility For All: Bringing Emerging Transportation Options To Underserved Communities, John Macarthur, Nathan Mcneil

TREC Project Briefs

Low-income residents, immigrants, seniors, and people with disabilities – these are people who stand to gain the most from new tools and services that reduce transportation costs and travel time. However, issues of affordability, technology adoption, banking access or other barriers can limit access to these new mobility opportunities. In the latest project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), New Mobility For All, Portland State University researchers Nathan McNeil, John MacArthur and Huijun Tan worked with the City of Portland’s Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to evaluate a local pilot program: the Transportation Wallet for Residents of …

Developing Strategies To Enhance Mobility And Accessibility For Community-Dwelling Older Adults, Kate Hyun, Kathy Lee, Caroline Krejci, Nilufer Oran Gibson, Troyee Saha

TREC Final Reports

Mobility disparities among older adults affect their ability to travel and access services. This project seeks to understand challenges, barriers, and gaps that older adults experience, and develop forms of assistance or educational strategies to fill the varying mobility gaps and meet mobility needs. This study characterizes older adults’ use of existing and potential transportation options, including conventional transit, paratransit, and ride-hailing systems, based on surveys collected from 146 low-income older adults in Dallas, TX. Using the survey data and interview data, we develop two mathematical modeling (a Latent Class Cluster Analysis and agent-based modeling (ABM)) and conduct content analysis …

Risk Management And Biases In How Drivers Respond To Nuisance Flooding, Saige Hill, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Burton St. John Iii, Pragati Rawat, Carol Considine

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Nuisance flooding, or recurrent flooding, occurs during high tide and may be exacerbated when combined with other events such as heavy precipitation, strong winds, or storm surge. Sea level rise has contributed to increased frequency and duration of nuisance flooding in low-lying coastal areas and is causing community-specific impacts such as transportation disruption, road closures, compromises to life and property, overwhelmed storm water systems, and infrastructure damage. This chapter focuses on how drivers respond during nuisance flooding events. Specifically, we discuss how drivers in the Hampton Roads region of southeastern coastal Virginia obtain information about road flooding, how they respond, …

Fleet Sizing And Allocation For On-Demand Last-Mile Transportation Systems, Karmel Shehadeh, Hai Wang, Peter Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The last-mile problem refers to the provision of travel service from the nearest public transportation node to home or other destination. Last-Mile Transportation Systems (LMTS), which have recently emerged, provide on-demand shared transportation. In this paper, we investigate the fleet sizing and allocation problem for the on-demand LMTS. Specifically, we consider the perspective of a last-mile service provider who wants to determine the number of servicing vehicles to allocate to multiple last-mile service regions in a particular city. In each service region, passengers demanding last-mile services arrive in batches, and allocated vehicles deliver passengers to their final destinations. The passenger …

Data From: “Developing Strategies To Enhance Mobility And Accessibility For Community-Dwelling Older Adults”, Kate Hyun, Kathy Lee, Caroline Krejci

TREC Datasets and Databases

This study administered a survey to 146 lower-income adults in Dallas, TX, aged 55 and older, between February and June 2020. As affordable public transportation options target senior citizens age 65 and older, this study focused on older adults as aged 65 and over. However, we also recruited adults aged 55 to 64 to distinguish how emerging seniors differently perceive or perform transportation activities compared to current older adults. In a partnership with a local organization providing resources and information for older adults and family caregivers located in Dallas, we used snowball sampling by recruiting participants from Foster Grandparent Program …

Improving Mobility And Quality Of Life For Older Adults, Kate Hyun, Caroline Krejci, Kathy Lee

TREC Project Briefs

As we get older, transportation provides a vital link between home and community. Without reliable and easy ways to get around, many older adults (especially those who live alone) have limited access to essentials like groceries and medicine, let alone social interaction. A new report from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), Developing Strategies To Enhance Mobility And Accessibility For Community-Dwelling Older Adults, looked at the mobility challenges, barriers, and gaps that older adults experience, with an eye toward developing forms of assistance or educational strategies to fill those gaps.

Development Of Intelligent Multimodal Traffic Monitoring Using Radar Sensor At Intersections, Siyang Cao, Yao-Jan Wu, Feng Jin

TREC Final Reports

Multimodal traffic monitoring is critical for improving mobility and safety at intersections with potential conflicts among various modes of transportation. Traditional traffic monitoring approaches utilizing cameras cannot work reliably during the night and under hazardous weather conditions. We propose to build a new intelligent multimodal traffic monitoring device using the low-cost mmWave radar. The proposed device can reliably distinguish different modes (such as buses, pedestrians, bicyclists, trucks, motorcycles, etc.), and determine the counts, speed, and moving directions of every single target in an urban environment under various lighting and weather conditions. In the study, a low-cost prototype system will also …

How Do California’S Local Governments Fund Surface Transportation? A Guide To Revenue Sources, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Kevin Yong Lee, Serena Alexander

Mineta Transportation Institute

California local agencies raise the revenue to support high-quality transportation services and infrastructure from a patchwork of federal, state, and local sources. To assist policymakers and transportation experts as they explore options for creating a more sustainable funding system, this report presents an overview of the taxes and fees that currently generate revenue ultimately dedicated to paying for transportation at the sub-state—or “local”—level. The discussion covers federal and state as well as local sources. The report also traces the evolving contribution from each level of government for expenditures on California’s local streets and roads and public transit, looking back two …

Analytical Models For Traffic Congestion And Accident Analysis, Hongrui Liu, Rahul Ramachandra Shetty

Mineta Transportation Institute

In the US, over 38,000 people die in road crashes each year, and 2.35 million are injured or disabled, according to the statistics report from the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT) in 2020. In addition, traffic congestion keeping Americans stuck on the road wastes millions of hours and billions of dollars each year. Using statistical techniques and machine learning algorithms, this research developed accurate predictive models for traffic congestion and road accidents to increase understanding of the complex causes of these challenging issues. The research used US Accidents data consisting of 49 variables describing 4.2 million accident records …

Promoting Interest In Transportation Careers Among Young Women, Eugene Cordero, Kiana Luong

Mineta Transportation Institute

Transportation remains the largest source of U.S.-based carbon emissions, and reducing emissions from this source continues to challenge experts. Addressing challenging problems requires diverse modes of thinking—and at present the transportation workforce is not diverse in terms of gender, with women occupying only about 14% of the transportation workforce. This research developed and tested a school-based intervention that uses pro-environmental framing and exposure to women transportation role models to help attract more women to transportation careers. To investigate the efficacy of the intervention, the research team studied control and treatment groups of university students using pre- and post-surveys to measure …