Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Examining Causes And Outcomes Of Migration Patterns Out Of Southeast Michigan, Alex B. Hill, Rayman Mohamed, Allan Yang

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

This report describes a survey of U-Haul patrons regarding their experiences utilizing U-Haul to move out of the Southeast Michigan region.

Executive Summary

In the latest U-Haul Growth Index, the state of Michigan moved from ranking 48 out of 50 states up to 46. This represents a relatively small change that doesn’t relate to the documented population loss in the state.

The city of Detroit and Michigan are both at critical crossroads. Population declines are pushing local officials to come up with new and unique programs to attract new residents, new business investment, and new tax revenue.

The reasons that …

Beneath I-280: Excavating A Neighborhood Lost To San José Freeways, Leila Ullmann, Gordon Douglas

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of people in San José, California were displaced from their homes as the state used eminent domain to purchase land and uproot neighborhoods for the construction of Interstate freeways. This report presents a multifaceted research and public knowledge effort that uncovers some of the communities buried beneath these freeways, in the area where I-280 and CA-87 meet today near downtown San José. The project builds primarily from previously unprocessed California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) archival documents, which this project studies for the first time. The records are rich in detail about valuation and sale …

What Drives Housing Choices Of Refugees And Immigrants?, Diane Mitschke, Anne Nordberg, Stephen Mattingly, Katherine Kitchens, Yasmin Al-Zubi, Farah Naz

TREC Project Briefs

When newcomers to the US initially settle, if their chosen location does not meet their expectations or needs, that often propels them to relocate. To determine what helps drive those transition decisions, the researchers interviewed people if they fulfilled one of these requirements:

• They were members of the Dallas County community who were planning to move in the next five years.

• They had recently (within the past five years) moved from their initial residence following their arrival in Dallas County.
• They also had to be immigrants to or refugees in the US who were at least eighteen years old. Out …

Housing Choice, Transportation Equity, And Access To Opportunities In Refugee And Immigrant Communities, Diane Mitschke, Anne Nordberg, Stephen Mattingly, Katherine Kitchens

TREC Final Reports

Mobility directly impacts access to opportunities for all protected classes; however, transportation planning and public transit agencies and housing authorities rarely coordinate affordable housing and the transportation system planning decisions. This lack of coordination often leads to mismatches between access to opportunities and affordable housing. Safe access to employment, quality schools, and healthcare represent a few of the many factors that may influence housing choice. For most households with budget constraints, all of these factors may not be achievable. While existing research documents the mismatch between affordable housing and access to opportunities, the role that mobility plays in residential selection …

An Analysis Of The Public Participation Processes Employed For An Urban Greenway Project, Maeve O'Connell

Articles

The purpose of this study is to examine the public participation mechanisms employed for a proposed new infrastructure project. Public participation is a core characteristic of a contemporary democratic society as policy makers are increasingly encouraged to engage with citizens for learning and legitimacy. Participation is a loose concept with many forms and interpretations. This study explores the key characteristics of public participation formats, challenges to and the criteria for success. This analysis is then applied to the proposed local infrastructure consultation process. An additional survey is designed and its role in the public participation process is assessed. The processes …

App-Based Data Collection To Characterize Latent Transportation Demand Within Marginalized And Underserved Populations, Noelle L. Fields, Courtney Cronley, Stephen Mattingly, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, David Levine, Nithisha Gudipati, Cristine Highfill, Mary Kris Stringfelllow, Anna O'Dell, Rebecca Cole, Melody Huslage

TREC Final Reports

Our interdisciplinary team refined an app prototype, MyAmble, to gather data related to quantity of transportation disadvantage and latent demand, and to identify psycho-social-economic corollaries. MyAmble utilizes a traditional travel diary format but expands the type of trips measured to include 1) completed trips, 2) missed trips, and 3) latent travel demand. The app also measures the real-time perceived impact of transportation behaviors (realized and latent) on participants’ physical health, mental health, social engagement, and employment/academics. Finally, the app has a text-messaging feature, Travel Buddy, that is used to increase participant engagement and retention over longitudinal data collection. The project …

Learning About Street Harassment On Transit: A Survey Instrument For Transit Agencies, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Jon Canapary, Carol Anne Caroll, Tam J. Guy, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This study was conducted in accordance with California Senate Bill 1161 (2022), legislation that directed the Mineta Transportation Institute to develop a reliable, easy-to-use survey instrument for collecting information from public transit passengers about the extent, location, and characteristics of any street harassment they experience. Although the legislation is focused on large California transit agencies, the study findings are equally relevant to smaller agencies and agencies outside the state. To develop the recommended questionnaire, we reviewed literature about street harassment, analyzed transit passenger surveys to explore the questions asked about safety and harassment, received feedback on iterative drafts of the …

Scooting To A Brighter Tomorrow: Shared E-Scooters And Their Use In Lincoln, Nebraska, Tanner J. Hiemer

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

As a recent addition to our transportation systems, shared e-scooters have the potential to improve how people travel in the urban environment. While there is a lot to be hopeful about, the relative novelty of e-scooters calls for closer examination of how they interact with the built environment and other modes of transportation. Additionally, the equity of shared e-scooters must be at the forefront of discussion when considering their utility in the future. Given their flexibility in use, e-scooters could fill spatial gaps in transportation systems and provide improved mobility to those who are most transportation disadvantaged. This research aims …

A Bike System For All In Silicon Valley: Equity Assessment Of Bike Infrastructure In San José, Ca, Ahoura Zandiatashbar, Jochen Albrecht, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Investing in sustainable, multimodal infrastructure is of increasing importance throughout the United States and worldwide. Cities are increasingly making strategic capital investment decisions about bicycle infrastructure—decisions that need planning efforts that accurately assess the equity aspects of developments, achieve equitable distribution of infrastructures, and draw upon accurate assessment methods. Toward these efforts, this project uses a granular bike network dataset with statistical and geospatial analyses to quantify a bike infrastructure availability score (i.e., bike score) that accounts for the safety and comfort differences in bike path classes in San José, California. San José is the 10th largest U.S. city and …

Defining And Measuring Equity In Public Transportation, Christopher E. Ferrell, David Reinke, John M. Eels, Matthew M. Schroeder

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Transit should serve all users, regardless of age, race, ability, or any other identity. Policies and planning must be conscious of inequities when defining and measuring equity in public transportation. This study was done to aid the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the state’s transit agencies in assessing transit service equity and assisting with evaluating past, existing, and future inequities. This report identifies and evaluates policies and practices associated with equity measurement in public transit from extant academic and professional literature sources. These include the Federal laws and regulations addressing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and …

Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, And Quality Of Life In Refugee Communities In Tucson, Arizona, Orhon Myadar, Arlie Adkins, Maia Ingram, Nicole Iroz-Elardo

TREC Final Reports

In this multidisciplinary research project we aimed to study mobility challenges that refugees in Tucson, AZ, experience after their resettlement. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from interviews and survey data, we argue that mobility shapes the ways refugees foster social connections, attain employment and access educational opportunities. Accordingly, barriers to mobility negatively impact refugees’ perception of well-being in post resettlement. However, these challenges are not experienced evenly. Nor are refugees passive subjects who lack agency in overcoming various barriers they experience. The study reveals the resilience of the refugee community in navigating the intersectional challenges they confront related to …

Transportation Behavior Among Older Vietnamese Immigrants In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: Well-Being, Geospatial Mobility, And Potential Indicators For Ride Providers’ Geospatial Burden, Rebecca L. Mauldin, Stephen Mattingly, Mahshid Haque, John P. Connolly, Latisha Thomas, Zachary Tarbet, Farzana Chowdhury, Rupal Parekh

TREC Final Reports

Nearly 4.6 million immigrants aged 65 and older live in the United States. This population is expected to more than triple in size by 2050. A lack of culturally appropriate transportation solutions for older immigrants creates disparities in access to services for older immigrant populations, increasing their risk of social isolation and reduced physical and mental health. A growing number of older immigrants live in low-density urban environments, which are characterized by high automobile dependency and limited public transportation. In these environments, older immigrants are likely to depend on others to provide private transportation. Negative aspects of this reliance on …

Sustaining Multimodal Choices: Examining Travel Behavior For Non-Work Trips Beyond Covid-19, Yizhao Yang, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Final Reports

Increasing the usage of sustainable travel modes requires changes in both environmental and psychological dimensions. A knowledge gap exists concerning the mechanism via which various factors interact to shape travel decision. Gaining such knowledge requires our ability to examine people’s behavioral adjustment in reaction to environmental and psychological changes or interventions.

This project uses COVID-19 as a natural experiment, treating the significant disruption induced by the pandemic as an intervention to study changes in travel behaviors and adoption of different travel choices following the COVID pandemic. This project builds upon a 2020 study conducted by the PI’s. It adopts a …

Smart Transportation In Small- And Medium-Sized Cities In Central California, Hongwei Dong

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The research on smart transportation in the United States has centered on large metropolitan areas. The adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities outside of large metropolitan areas is less studied and understood. This study examined the adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities in Central California. The analysis was based on the online survey responses from 29 transportation officials and professionals who worked for 18 municipal government departments and six metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in Central California as well as in depth semi-structured interviews with seven of them. The study showed that smart transportation in …

A Gravity Model Integrating Land-Use And Transportation Policies For Sustainable Development: Case Study Of Fresno, California, Chih-Hao Wang, Na Chen

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The idea of urban compaction has been long proposed and promoted to address the problem of urban sprawl in many American cities. However, there are still rare successful cases of such implementation in the United States. This study uses a classic gravity model, TELEM (Transpiration, Economic, and Land-Use Model) to examine to what extent a land-use or transportation policy must be regulated to make the urban compaction occur in a typical auto-dependent city—Fresno, California. Five scenarios are considered (BL, L1, L2, T1, and T2), in which the baseline (BL) is a natural growth scenario. Without any policy interventions, the city …

Grabbing The Paycheck: A Glimpse Into The Modern Economic Livelihoods Of Xe Máy Grab Drivers In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Maddie Davis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Woven into the very fabric of urban life in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam is commuting via motorcycle (Vietnamese: xe máy). The versatility of xe máy can be witnessed in the surge of rush hour traffic, the shipment of a great variety and quantity of goods, and the crunch of people in order to get the whole family atop a single bike. Due to xe máy as the primary way much of the population gets around, Ho Chi Minh City’s transportation infrastructure and traffic patterns are highly conducive to this method of transit. Resulting from these favorable conditions, a multitude …

Pedestrian Behavior Study To Advance Pedestrian Safety In Smart Transportation Systems Using Innovative Lidar Sensors, Taylor Li, Sirisha M. Kothuri, Katherine L. Keeling, Xianfeng Terry Yang, Farzana R. Chowdhury

TREC Final Reports

Pedestrian safety is critical to improving walkability in cities. Although walking trips have increased in the last decade, pedestrian safety remains a top concern. In 2020, 6,516 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes, representing the most deaths since 1990 (NHTSA, 2020). Approximately 15% of these occurred at signalized intersections where a variety of modes converge, leading to the increased propensity of conflicts. Current signal timing and detection technologies are heavily biased towards vehicular traffic, often leading to higher delays and insufficient walk times for pedestrians, which could result in risky behaviors such as noncompliance. Current detection systems for pedestrians at …

Rural Gentrification And The Spillover Effect: Integrated Transportation, Housing, And Land Use Challenges And Strategies In Gateway Communities, Danya Rumore, Philip Stoker

TREC Final Reports

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities throughout the West are experiencing rapid growth and increased visitation. These “gateway communities” comprise a significant portion of the rural West, constituting about 31% of all communities and more than 60% of those under 25,000 people. Our prior NITC-funded research shows that growth and increased tourism create a range of “big city challenges” for gateway communities, particularly a significant increase in housing prices, which pushes the local workforce to outlying areas and other rural communities. As a result, despite being small towns, many developed gateway communities have …

Network Effects Of Disruptive Traffic Events, Juan Medina, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu

TREC Final Reports

Current traffic management strategies are based on expected conditions caused by recurring congestion (e.g., by time of day, day of week), and can be very effective when provisions are also given for reasonable variations from such expectations. However, traffic variations due to non-recurrent events (e.g., crashes) can be much larger and difficult to predict, making also challenging efforts to identify, measure, and forecast their disruptive effects. This project explores a proactive approach to deploy a tool for managing non-recurrent congestion by identifying and quantifying the effects of disruptive traffic events at a microscopic level using a comprehensive set of data …

New Lidar System Pinpoints Pedestrian Behavior To Improve Eficiency And Safety At Intersections, Taylor Li, Sirisha M. Kothuri, Xianfeng Terry Yang

TREC Project Briefs

Pedestrian safety is critical to improving walkability in cities. To that end, NITC researchers have developed a system for collecting pedestrian behavior data using LiDAR sensors. Tested at two intersections in Texas and soon to be tested at another in Salt Lake City, Utah, the new software created by a multi-university research team is able to reliably observe pedestrian behavior and can help reduce conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles at signalized intersections. The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is already working on implementing this new LiDAR system to improve data collection at intersections.

Enabling Decision-Making In Battery Electric Bus Deployment Through Interactive Visualization, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu, Gabrielius Kudirka, Biao Kuang, Yirong Zhou, Jianlin Chen

TREC Final Reports

The transit industry is rapidly transitioning to battery-electric fleets because of the direct environmental and financial benefits they could offer, such as zero emissions, less noise, and lower maintenance costs. Yet the unique spatiotemporal characteristics associated with transit system charging requirements, as well as various objectives when prioritizing the fleet electrification, requires the system operators and/or decision-makers to fully understand the status of the transit system and energy/power system in order to make informed deployment decisions. A recently completed NITC project, No. 1222 titled An Electric Bus Deployment Framework for Improved Air Quality and Transit Operational Efficiency, developed a bi-objective …

Resurfacing A Trail In Oregon Using Volcanic Ash, Charles Riley, Ashton Greer

TREC Project Briefs

In the latest instance of taking research to practice, researchers at Oregon Tech have completed a pilot section of trail using a NITC-developed sustainable paving method. A quarter-mile section of the Klamath Geo Trail, just east and up the hill from the Oregon Tech Klamath Falls campus, has been successfully resurfaced using volcanic ash from Mount Mazama.

Applying A Mt. Mazama Volcanic Ash Treatment As A Trail Accessibility Improvement, Charles Riley, Ashton Greer, Matthew D. Sleep

TREC Final Reports

A procedure has been developed for implementing a topically applied Mt. Mazama volcanic ash trail surface amendment for improving trail firmness and stability. This project involved implementation of previously conducted Mt. Mazama volcanic research by applying a Mazama Ash and Portland Cement solution over a 0.2-mile section of the Geo Trail at the Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls campus. Testing was performed to verify ideal Ash-to-Cement-to-Water ratios. A procedure was developed and applied for batching and mixing the dry materials on-site, spreading and integrating the dry material with the existing trail surface, and wetting and compacting the surface. After …

Transit Equity: Trends In Commuting Among The Employed Population In New York City, 1990-2019, Beiyi Hu

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines key trends in commuting among the employed population in New York City between 1990 and 2019.

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2021.

Discussion:

Between 1990 and 2019, most of the employed …

Commuting Times To Work In The United States, 1990-2018, Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report documents the evolution of commuting times in the United States between 1990 and 2018, focusing on disparities with respect to race and ethnicity, sex, marital status, income, and poverty status

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: …

Pedestrian Wayfinding Under Consideration Of Visual Impairment, Blindness, And Deafblindness: A Mixed-Method Investigation Into Individual Experiences And Supporting Elements, Martin Swobodzinski, Amy T. Parker, Elizabeth Schaller, Denise Snow

TREC Final Reports

In this report we discuss to-date findings of a project that aimed at assessing individual and environmental affordances in the context of human pedestrian wayfinding of visually impaired, blind, and deafblind travelers in public spaces. Our project afforded collaboration, co-design, and co-creation of knowledge between the investigators, partners at the American Printing House of the Blind and GoodMaps, the Portland State University Digital City Testbed Center, and members of the disability community. The objective of the project was to better understand how different wayfinding aids, that is, wayfinding apps, tactile maps, and verbal route descriptions, are employed by visually impaired, …

Accessing Opportunities For Household Provisioning Post-Covid-19, Kelly Clifton, Amanda Howell, Kristina M. Currans, Gabriella Abou-Zeid, Max Nonnamaker, Paula C. Carder

TREC Final Reports

In this project, we used a mixed-methods study to collect critical information to evaluate the extent to which people modified their shopping behavior, either by choice or necessity, to meet their provisioning needs during the COVID-19 crisis and the following recovery. First, four waves of a cross-sectional survey were administered online to a representative sample of households in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington. This longitudinal, comparative study responded directly to a critical research gap and advanced behavioral science by providing a rich survey dataset to support and test theories of behavioral change and technology adoption. Second, focus groups were …

Statistical Inference For Multimodal Travel Time Reliability, Avinash Unnikrishnan, Miguel Figliozzi, Subhash C. Kochar

TREC Final Reports

Travel time reliability is a key metric of interest to practitioners and researchers because it affects travel choice and the economic competitiveness of urban areas. This research focuses on three travel time reliability metrics – buffer index, modified buffer index, and the relative width of travel time distributions. The key novel contributions of this research include using the multivariate delta method to prove that the sampling distributions of the three travel time reliability metrics are asymptotically normal. The asymptotic standard error for the three reliability metrics is derived. The asymptotic normality and the standard error result are used to arrive …

Community Transportation Academy: Course Curriculum And Implementation Handbook, Nathan Mcneil, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Final Reports

A Community Transportation Academy (CTA) is a course that harnesses the knowledge, technical expertise and passions of practicing transportation professionals in a city to immerse a cohort of interested and dedicated community members in transportation issues over a two to three month curriculum.

The CTA curriculum was developed by drawing from the Portland Traffic and Transportation (PTT or Portland CTA) course, along with the Wasatch Transportation Academy (WTA or Wasatch CTA, which was inspired by the Portland course). Planning academy courses in cities around the country are also good models to look to for how to structure and operate such …

Launching The Wasatch Transportation Academy, Nathan Mcneil, Keith Bartholomew, Matthew Ryan

TREC Final Reports

The “Community Transportation Academy” model seeks to break down the barriers for community members to participate in transportation decision-making processes. Since 1991, the Portland Traffic and Transportation Course has held at least one course each year, connecting Portland residents with top planners, engineers, and decision-makers from agencies working on transportation in the region, with the goal of conveying the factors professionals consider, ranging from technical considerations, legal and policy mandates, other tradeoffs, and how the community can engage with and influence decisions. This project sought to implement a transportation academy in the Salt Lake City region inspired by the Portland …