Transportation Commons^™

Impact Of Optimally Minimizing Delay Times On Safety At Signalized Intersections In Urban Areas, Case Study: The City Of Virginia Beach, Eugene Vida Maina, Albert Forde, R. Michael Robinson

VMASC Publications

Optimally minimizing delay times at signalized intersections can significantly improve both traffic flow and safety. However, most traffic flow optimizing tools do not measure the effect on safety. This study uses nonlinear programming (NLP) algorithms to optimally minimize delay times and employs both Safety performance functions (SPFs) and empirical Bayes (EB) before-after methodology to measure the impact on safety presented as a Crash Modification Factor (CMF). A crash modification factor (CMF) is a multiplicative factor used by transportation practitioners to compute the expected number of crashes at specific study site(s) after a countermeasure has been proposed or is implemented. Using …

Panic That Spreads Sociobehavioral Contagion In Pedestrian Evacuations, Terra Elzie, Erika Frydenlund, Andrew J. Collins, R. Michael Robinson

VMASC Publications

Crowds are a part of everyday public life, from stadiums and arenas to school hallways. Occasionally, pushing within the crowd spontaneously escalates to crushing behavior, resulting in injuries and even death. The rarity and unpredictability of these incidents provides few options to collect data for research on the prediction and prevention of hazardous emergent behaviors in crowds. This study takes a close look at the way states of agitation, such as panic, can spread through crowds. Group composition—mainly family groups composed of members with differing mobility levels—plays an important role in the spread of agitation through the crowd, ultimately affecting …

A Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Korea's "Advance Passenger Information System", Chanyoung Lee

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Since the tragic 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States in 2001, many countries have been following the US's decisions on the introduction of an air security program. At the heart of the program is the Advance Passenger Information System or the API system. Considering major developed countries' stances and related international organizations' efforts toward the API system's advance, it seems that the introduction of the API system is expected to be a necessity or a kind of obligation both to border control agencies and air flight companies in the near future. However, this does not mean that the introduction …

A Multi-Objective Sustainable Model For Transportation Asset Management Practices, Marketa Vavrova

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Transportation Asset Management (TAM) practices have gained popularity in the United States and worldwide with the aim to provide the required level of service for the transportation infrastructure network in the most cost-effective manner. However, TAM is a complex decision-making process because many objectives and different perspectives, often producing conflicting goals, must be considered.

This Dissertation presents a Multi-Objective Sustainable (MOS) model to integrate economic, social, and environmental sustainable objectives into TAM decision-making. The objective is to develop a holistic multi-objective asset management approach integrating environmental and social sustainability related performance measures with traditional indicators, such as asset condition and …

A Discretionary Lane Changing Decision Model Based On Fuzzy Inference System, Esmaeil Balal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A lane changing event involves up to five vehicles: the subject vehicle, preceding and following vehicles in the original lane, and the preceding and following vehicles in the target lane. Understanding the behavior of the subject vehicle with respect to the surrounding vehicles is fundamental to the study of the safety of a lane change maneuver and for the modeling of lane changing behavior. First, the statistical properties of 10 lane changing parameters were defined and studied using the Next Generation SIMulation (NGSIM) vehicle trajectory data collected at the I-80 Freeway in Emeryville, California, and then tested with data collected …

Night Access Plan, Lea Anderson, David Backes, Abe Moland, Taylor Phillips, Rae-Leigh Stark, Shane Valle

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Oregon Health and Science University is a microcosm of the 24-hour city, and it’s essential that patients, employees, students and others have safe and convenient 24-hour access to its medical campuses. Access to and from the main campus is always complicated, but even more so at night. The Night Access Plan lays out a strategy to make getting to and from OHSU at night and early in the morning safer, more convenient, and affordable.

A video about this project may be viewed here.

This project was conducted under the supervision of Matthew Gebhardt, Susan Gibson-Hartnett, Ethan Seltzer and Marisa …

Environmental Factors Associated With Body Mass Index Among Long Haul Truck Drivers, Charlotte Hughes Huntley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In 2009–2010, the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults was 40%, and the prevalence was 69% among long haul truck drivers. Researchers have not established a clear relationship between working environment and weight among truck drivers. This quantitative cross-sectional study, using an ecological framework, evaluated the relationship between the working environment (sleep performance, food choices, driving environment, and activity level) and weight severity (e.g., body mass index [BMI]) among long haul truck drivers. One hundred and twenty six adults (46 + 10, years of age), including both genders (male = 97 and females = 29) completed an online questionnaire evaluating …

How Can We Have A Better Public Transportation System? –An Exploratory Agent Based Model, Boyu Liu

Pomona Senior Theses

Public transportation plays an integral part in a city's development, but transportation professionals disagree about whether it is feasible to increase the capacity of public transportation systems at a reasonable cost; and if it is, how. This study develops an agent based model that aims to answer this question and provide a framework to compare the effects of improvements in different aspects of the public transportation service. The results of this study show that it is possible to increase ridership enough to compensate for the increased operational cost, but only in certain circumstances. Interesting phenomenon that might have showed up …

Integrating A Simple Traffic Incident Model For Rapid Evacuation Analysis, Andrew J. Collins, R. Michael Robinson, Peter Foytik, Craig Jordan, Barry C. Ezell

VMASC Publications

Road transportation networks are a segment of society's critical infrastructure particularly susceptible to service disruptions. Traffic incidents disrupt road networks by producing blockages and increasing travel times, creating significant impacts during emergency events such as evacuations. For this reason, it is extremely important to incorporate traffic incidents in evacuation planning models. Emergency managers and decision makers need tools that enable rapid assessment of multiple, varied scenarios. Many evacuation simulations require high-fidelity data input making them impractical for rapid deployment by practitioners. Since there is such variation in evacuation types and the method of disruption, evacuation models do not require the …

Utilizing High Resolution Bus Gps Data To Visualize And Identify Congestion Hot-Spots In Urban, Nicholas B. Stoll, Travis B. Glick, Miguel Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Congestion and travel delay on urban roadways can influence the roadways’ operating costs and service attractiveness. This research used 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; these tools allowed larger traffic trends to be visualized along urban corridors and streets. With buses as probes and examining aggregated bus behavior, contoured speed plots were used to understand the behavior of roadways outside the zone of influence of bus stops. Speed plots were used to discover trends and travel patterns with only a …

The End Of The Road: The State Of Urban Elevated Expressways In The United States, Daniel Waqar

Brookings Mountain West Publications

In a January 2016 meeting, the Clark County Commission heard a proposal from the County Public Works Department about a $200 million plan to build two urban elevated expressways constructed above existing roadways, potentially linking McCarran International Airport with the Las Vegas Strip’s resort corridor. Commissioners lauded the project with a “high degree of confidence” for funding sources and praised the “magnificent way of moving traffic” and “out of the box thinking” of these urban elevated expressways. Yet the positive feedback that County Commissioners showered on this proposal flies in the face of decades of history on urban elevated expressways. …

Effects Of Ceo Changes On Senior Management Leadership Teams Of U.S. Airports, Gale Larine Laroche

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Changes in the top leadership position in U.S. airports occur frequently. The purpose of the present phenomenological study was to understand the shared, lived experiences of senior managers who work in a U.S. airport and who have undergone a change in the top leadership position. Airports are of critical importance to their local regions and communities and are economic engines for their respective regions. The results of the study may provide positive social change for airport staff and the surrounding community by drawing attention to the complexity in leadership transition. The study was grounded in organizational stress, uncertainty theory of …

Do Characteristics Of Walkable Environments Support Bicycling? Toward A Definition Of Bicycle-Supported Development, Christopher D. Muhs, Kelly Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Does walkability equate with bikeability? Through a comprehensive review of studies of the built environment and bicycling, including mode choice, route choice, safety, and urban design literature, this paper addresses this question. Previous work has raised the issue that the two modes are functionally different, despite them often being combined into a nonmotorized category, and has highlighted research challenges. Existing studies of bikeability have largely focused on infrastructure. This paper contributes to the literature on bicycling and the built environment by providing a thorough review of past research with a focus on the relationships between land use, urban form, and …

Accuracy Of Bicycle Counting With Pneumatic Tubes In Oregon, Krista Nordback, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri, Taylor Phillips, Carson Gorecki, Miguel Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Interest in counting bicycles and establishing nonmotorized counting programs is increasing, but jurisdictions still struggle with how to integrate bicycle counting into standard practice. In this paper, the authors share findings and recommendations for how to minimize error for bicycle counting from tests conducted in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Transportation. This research studied three types of off-the-shelf pneumatic tube counters for counting bicycles, including equipment from five manufacturers: two bicycle-specific counters, three varieties of motor vehicle classification counters, and one volume-only motor vehicle counter. Tests were conducted both in a controlled environment and in on-road mixed traffic to …

An Overview Of System Design Issues Related To Safety Aspects Of Bicycle Infrastructure, Jan L. Botha

Mineta Transportation Institute

The purpose of this report is to provide a critical review of the current practices and policies regarding infrastructure design for bicycling. The infrastructure is discussed primarily from a system perspective.

The wide range of bicyclists’ physical characteristics (such as size, power, skill, response to road and traffic conditions) makes it challenging for the designer to design bicycle facilities with the same sophistication and safety as facilities for motor vehicles. An attempt should be made to integrate the design standards for motor vehicles and bicycles into common design manuals. Incompatibility of the standards may make it clear when separate facilities …

Editorial: Selected Papers From The 18th Air Transport Research Society World Conference, Bordeaux (France), 2014, Chunyan Yu, Seock-Jin Hong

Publications

The 18th Air Transport Research Society World Conference (ATRS) was held in Bordeaux, France, from July 17 to July 20, 2014. The conference attracted some 347 participants, and 321 papers were presented. The guest editors have selected six papers to be included in this special issue. These papers cover a wide range of topics presented and discussed at the conference and offer important contribution to the literature on air transport.

Bike-Geist Nyc, Jack D'Isidoro

Capstones

More people ride bicycles in New York City than ever before, and that number continues to grow. At the turn of the 20th century, this city was the epicenter of a cultural obsession with bicycles, and is on the verge of a second renaissance with these simple machines. This project highlights different iterations of bicycle culture within modern New York City, and the socioeconomic, interpersonal, and self-expressive stories it produces.

Potentiality Of A Shipbuilding Industry In South Africa : Regulation Or No Regulation, Khethukuphila Sabelo Ngubane

World Maritime University Dissertations

The shipbuilding industry is undoubtedly critical for the economic growth with the offshore market still proving to be the increasingly important market segment of the industry. The industry is labour and capital intensive. The shipbuilding’s ability to contribute towards economic growth enables developing nations to create new job opportunities for local citizens, and as a result reducing poverty. South Africa is a developing nation that is faced with a high unemployment rate of 25%, and has identified the ocean economy as a potential driver to stimulate and sustain economic growth through the marine transport manufacturing industry. However, recent figures in …

South African Owned Shipping And Potential Benefit For South Africa : A Ship Owners’ Perspective, Tebogo Gift Mabiletsa

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Seafarer Training In Somalia As A Deterrent To Piracy, Koki Matsushima

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.