Transportation Commons^™

Pavement Condition Survey Using Drone Technology, Lerose Lane, Dingxin Cheng

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Timely repairs of pavement defects are essential in protecting both public road and highway systems. Identification of pavement distresses is necessary for planning pavement repairs. This has previously been performed by engineers surveying the roadways visually in the field. As drone usage has progressed, it has become clear that drones are a valuable tool to enhance visual documentation, improve project communication, and provide various data for processing. The use of drone technology has improved both the speed and accuracy of capturing data. Available software has allowed the data to be processed and analyzed in an office environment. This report summarizes …

Enhancing Older Adults’ Mobility In Active Living And Tiered Living Communities, Yongping Zhang, Carol Kachadoorian, Wen Cheng, Edward Clay

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The U.S. population is aging rapidly. As people get older, they increasingly face issues such as increased susceptibility to injuries and the need to be assisted with many day-to-day activities. Older adults have the opportunity to opt-in to live in an older adult community (OAC) based on their needs and capabilities. This study comprehensively reviews existing governing development regulations and design criteria related to the older adults’ communities, conducts surveys among people involved with some of these communities in California, and recommends improvements to community design for active living and tiered living communities. This study proposes a new scoring system …

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 …

Public Acceptance Of Guidance And Regulations For Space Flight Participation, Cory Trunkhill, Robert Joslin, Joseph Keebler

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Space flight participants are not professional astronauts and not subject to the rules and guidance covering space flight crewmembers. Ordinal logistic regression of survey data was utilized to explore public acceptance of current medical screening recommendations and regulations for safety risk and implied liability for civil space flight participation. Independent variables constituted participant demographic representations while dependent variables represented current Federal Aviation Administration guidance and regulations. Odds ratios were derived based on the demographic categories to interpret likelihood of acceptance for the criteria. Significant likely acceptance of guidance and regulations was found for five of twelve demographic variables influencing public …

Explore Regional Variation In The Effects Of Built Environment On Driving With High Resolution U.S. Nationwide Data, Liming Wang

PSU Transportation Seminars

There have been numerous studies on the relationship between travel behavior and built environment over the last few decades. Prior studies have mostly focused on producing point estimates of model coefficients and ended up with a wide range of estimates for the built environment elasticity of travel behavior, including household Vehicle Miles Traveled. With few exceptions, previous studies use data from a single region or a small number of regions, and thus are not able to sufficiently investigate the regional variation in built environment elasticity.

On the other hand, a few papers have addressed the heterogeneity of elasticity among different …

Experimental Investigation Of The Self-Healing Potential Of Bacteria For Sustainable Concrete Structures, Pitiporn Asvapathanagul, Simone Galano, Andrea Calabrese, Mehran Rahmani, Maggie Ly, Daniela Flores, Michael Hernandez, Nicholas Banuelos

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Although concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, its limited tensile strength makes cracking a common phenomenon in concrete elements. This study investigates the potential of autonomous self-healing as an eco-friendly and lowcost method to increase the durability of concrete. The crack-healing potential of different types of high-alkaline-tolerant bacteria or calcite-precipitation microorganisms is investigated. High-alkaline-tolerant bacteria and calcite-precipitation microorganisms were used to retrofit lab-fractured concrete samples. The samples healed with each of these bacteria groups were cast and tested under compressive load up to failure to measure the compressive strength of the concrete samples. The outcomes …

The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Tang Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the distributional impacts of transportation networks in China.We show that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space, and ignoring these variations biases the estimates of travel time. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model that allows for multiple modes and routes of transportation and forward-looking migration decision.We find aggregate welfare gain and less spatial income inequality led …

Preconstruction Support Cost Hours Estimating On Caltrans Pavement Rehabilitation Projects, Nigel Blampied, Tariq Shehab, Elhami Nasr, Laxmi Sindhu Samudrala

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Because the construction phase accounts for the majority of project costs for pavement rehabilitation projects, most research on infrastructure project cost estimating focuses on that phase, rather than on the preconstruction phases. Nevertheless, costs incurred prior to construction, referred to in this report as "preconstruction costs" are significant and worthy of consideration (See Section 2.1 of the report for a more detailed and precise definition of preconstruction). In the 20202021 fiscal year, for instance, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) spent more than $169 million on preconstruction work for pavement rehabilitation projects. This report presents the results of a study …

Land Use Analysis On Vertiports Based On A Case Study Of The San Francisco Bay Area, Wenbin Wei, Kerry Rohrmeier, Tiffany Martinez, Michael Winans, Heungseok Park

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Vertiport research and development trails in the emerging commercial air taxi sector known as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). Published scholarship remains limited as federal, state, and local governments have yet to create or implement policies for the rapidly progressing larger AAM ecosystem, which is designed around autonomous electric vehicle takeoff and landing aircraft. With the potential for frequent low altitude flights, long-range planning must demonstrate awareness, knowledge, and utilization of geographic information science to select safe and just vertiport locations. This study summarizes the AAM literature and offers planners a set of stakeholder-informed parameters to use in a no-cost preliminary …

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 …

The Use And Influence Of Health Indicators In Municipal Transportation Plans​​, Kelly Rodgers

PSU Transportation Seminars

As a social determinant of health, transportation significantly contributes to well-being through several pathways. Researchers and practitioners have called for health indicators as one way to integrate public health concerns into transportation decision-making. However, it is unclear how indicators are used and what their impact is on policy. This case study of five cities explored how health-related indicators are being used in municipal transportation plans, whether they are institutionalized into transportation agency decision-making processes, and what influence they have on administrative decision-making. In addition, this research also explored the conceptual use of indicators as it relates to social learning and …

Sex In The Cities: A Comparative Analysis Of Vienna And The United States’ Efforts In Gender Mainstreaming Transportation, Sarah Miller

Student Research Submissions

The paper focuses on the differences in transportation systems between the United States and Vienna, Austria. Research shows that women have been an overlooked group of people within cities. Due to this, cities have not been designed for them and an example of this is transportation. Some cities like Vienna, Austria have made it their mission to create gender-equitable cities. To better understand this problem women were interviewed who had experience in the Viennese and American systems to analyze the differences. Also, certain government agencies were contacted to understand this problem from a governance standpoint. All of the interviews supported …

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 …

Modeling And Evaluating Alternatives To Enhance Access To An Airport And Meet Future Expansion Needs, Srinivas S. Pulugurtha, Abimbola Ogungbire, Chirag Akbari

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

The continued growth of air travel calls for the incessant construction effort at many airports and their surroundings. Thus, there is a need to determine how airports can better manage existing infrastructure to accommodate this growth. This study, therefore, focuses on (1) investigating how changes in transportation infrastructure have affected travel time reliability (TTR) of the surrounding road network within the airport vicinity over time, and, (2) exploring selected unconventional intersection designs and proposing new inbound/outbound access routes from the nearby major roads to the airport. The efficiency of road networks that surrounds large airports is discussed using Charlotte Douglas …

Using Thermal Remote Sensing To Quantify Impact Of Traffic On Urban Heat Islands During Covid, My-Thu Tran, Bo Yang

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

A three-month lockdown in the U.S. at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 greatly reduced the traffic volume in many cities, especially large metropolitan areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area. This research explores the impact of transportation on climate change by using remote sensing technology and statistical analysis during the COVID-19 lockdown. Using thermal satellite data, this research measures the intensity of the urban heat island, the main driver for climate change during the urbanization process. The research team acquired morning and afternoon MODIS data in the same periods in 2019 before the pandemic and 2020 …

Tourism, Mapping, Retail And Recreational Trails: A Case Study Of Connectivity Between Trails And Adjacent Downtowns In Anniston, Alabama, Usa, Jennifer Green

Theses

This study examines the estimated increase in economic impact on a geography’s local economy by creating cross-marketing efforts between expanding an established outdoor recreation trail to a closely located city downtown commerce district. This research will analyze the resulting potential rise in sales/lodging tax revenues for that city by mapping the trail and downtown district, and cross-marketing the other to users of both or either venue. Potential increase in economic impact will be estimated utilizing IMPLAN methodology by assessing the economic impact on the local economy that a percentage range of increased spending resulting from this cross-marketing effort could generate.

What Do Americans Think About Federal Tax Options To Support Transportation? Results From Year Thirteen Of A National Survey, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

This report summarizes the results from the thirteenth year of a national public opinion survey asking U.S. adults questions related to their views on federal transportation taxes. A nationally-representative sample of 2,620 respondents completed the online survey from January 31 to March 10, 2022. The questions test public opinions about raising the federal gas tax rate, replacing the federal gas tax with a new mileage fee, and imposing a mileage fee just on commercial travel. In addition to asking directly about support for these tax options, the survey collected data on respondents’ views on the quality of their local transportation …

Do Travel Costs Matter For Persons With Lower Incomes? Using Psychological And Social Equity Perspectives To Evaluate The Effects Of A Low-Income Transit Fare Program On Low-Income Riders, Katharine Mcmahon, Morgan Taylor, Liu-Qin Yang, Liming Wang, Aaron Golub, Greg Townley

TREC Final Reports

Objective: Access to transit can deliver a host of benefits to the riders and to the region. Previous research aiming to study these benefits has primarily relied on data collected from the opening of new routes or transit systems and focused on the general population. Little is known how low-income riders (LIR) react and benefit in response to when the cost barrier to access to transit is removed. With an intention to increase ridership while addressing the needs of transit-dependent riders in the region, TriMet (Portland, OR) expanded the Honored Citizens Program (HCP) in July 2018 to include low-income …

Towards Data And Solution-Focused Approaches For Homeless Populations On Publictransit, Anne Nordberg, Jaya Davis, Stephen Mattingly, Nithisha Gudipati, Ebonie Kinney, Hadiisha Butts

TREC Final Reports

People experiencing homelessness frequently rely on public transit systems and facilities as more than a mode of transportation to needed services, but also as safe shelters from weather and danger. This is a challenge for many transit agencies and impacts transit employees and passengers. Dallas and the surrounding counties have the largest homeless population in Texas, and they utilize the services of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) that serves 220,000 people per day in Dallas County and 12 surrounding counties. While there is much research focused on people experiencing homelessness, there are gaps in understanding how this population utilizes …