Transportation Commons^™

Understanding Economic And Business Impacts Of Street Improvements For Bicycle And Mobility – A Multicity Multiapproach Exploration, Jenny H. Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Final Reports

Many cities across the country, as part of Complete Streets initiatives or to promote community livability and environmental sustainability, have engaged in street improvement or transportation infrastructure upgrade projects that increase access and mobility for pedestrians and bicyclists through a reduction of on-street parking or traffic lanes. With various transportation modes competing for scarce resources (including right-of-way and transportation funding), city planners and transportation agencies often struggle with how to justify these infrastructure investments for non-motorized modes such as bicycling and walking, particularly when driving is still the predominant mode of transportation in most cities. There is a vital need …

Understanding Economic And Business Impacts Of Street Improvements For Bicycle And Pedestrian Mobility, Jenny H. Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Project Briefs

This research explored a systematic framework for evaluating the economic development effects of corridor-level bicycle or pedestrian street improvements across a number of corridors in multiple cities.

It is our hope that the results of our research will encourage the application of similar corridor selection processes, data collection efforts and multimethod analyses in additional corridors and cities around the country, and will provide a solid basis for policymakers, planners and other stakeholders considering street improvement infrastructure for pedestrian and bicycle mobility to make evidence-based investment decisions.

Connections With(In): Exploring The Intangibles Of Public Transit In Prague, Sarah Stapleton

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This project explores the connection (physically and metaphorically) local users have to the public transit systems in Prague, recognizing and highlighting their gathered subjective experiences through a creative piece. The methods included a review of the history, planning, and development of the public transit systems (metro and tram) across time, as well the sociopolitical timeframe these occurred through. After rooting her knowledge within the relevant literature and history, the author asked six local users of public transit a series of 10 questions about their relationships, memories, stories, and feelings connected to traveling through the public transportation systems. These interviews and …

A Rule Based Control Algorithm For On-Ramp Merge With Connected And Automated Vehicles, Ehsan Beheshtitabar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

One of the designs for future highways with the flow of Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) cars will be a dedicated lane for the CAVs to form platoons and travel with higher speeds and lower headways. The connectivity will enable the formation of platoons of CAVs traveling beside non-platoon lanes. The advent of connectivity between vehicles and the infrastructure will enable advanced control strategies ̶ improving the performance of the traffic ̶ to be incorporated in the traffic system. The merge area in a multilane highway with CAVs is one of the sections which can be enhanced by the operation of …

Personal Beliefs About The Effectiveness Of A Primary Seat Belt Law In Virginia Versus North Carolina, Rochelle A. Rushlow

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Seat belt law strength (primary versus secondary) affects the ability of law enforcement to enforce consistent seat belt use, especially in secondary seat belt law states. Certain demographics correlate with seat belt law effectiveness beliefs and overall seat belt use. The current study used an overall omnibus model to determine the strength of the relationship among demographics and beliefs in the effectiveness of primary seat belt laws. A survey was deployed to Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users who were Virginia or North Carolina residents, held a valid United States driver’s license, and were at least 18 years old. Three hundred twenty-four …

Truck Trailer Classification Using Side-Fire Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) Data, Olcay Sahin

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Classification of vehicles into distinct groups is critical for many applications, including freight and commodity flow modeling, pavement management and design, tolling, air quality monitoring, and intelligent transportation systems. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) developed a standardized 13-category vehicle classification ruleset, which meets the needs of many traffic data user applications. However, some applications need high-resolution data for modeling and analysis. For example, the type of commodity being carried must be known in the freight modeling framework. Unfortunately, this information is not available at the state or metropolitan level, or it is expensive to obtain from current resources.

Nevertheless, using …

The Urban Heat Island Effect In Nevada, Ember Smith, Kaylie Pattni, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Environment

This fact sheet explores the temperature difference between Nevada cities and their undeveloped surrounding areas using reports by the Urban Land Institute, Climate Central, National Public Radio (NPR), and various governmental organizations. We investigate what “urban heat islands” are, their effects, the correlation between heat and income, and factors that contribute to rising temperatures in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, and Reno.

The Impacts Of The Bicycle Network On Bicycling Activity: A Longitudinal Multi-City Approach, Wei Shi

Dissertations and Theses

Bicycling is a promising approach to improve health, environment, and economic development of urban places. Theoretically, a bicycle network's component goes beyond lanes and paths, and would generate greater impacts than the sum of its parts. However, most previous research focused on how individual types of bicycle-related infrastructure could promote bicycling. Few empirical studies investigated how bicycle networks impact bicycling activity. This project attempts to address this question. Specifically, how to properly measure bicycle networks, and what impacts bicycle networks have on bicycling activity, e.g. bike ridership and bike mode choice, across different cities and longitudinally.

To address the first …

Against The Wind: A Study On Aviation As A Female Career Choice, Bonnie Gagliardo

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study is to identify and describe the educational and social experiences that sparked the interest of female pilots as young women to pursue a career in aviation.

Methodology: This qualitative phenomenological study utilized semi- structured interviews to explore the lived experiences of female pilots, to understand if there were common social and educational factors which influenced them to become interested in aviation. Using convenience sampling, eleven pilots who hold a Federal Aviation Administration Commercial or Airline Transport Pilot’s License were selected to participate in this study.

Findings: The findings from this …

Webinar: When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure: A Community-Engaged Assessment Of Transportation Gaps, Jandel Crutchfield, Kate Hyun

TREC Webinar Series

This study used a community-engaged interdisciplinary approach to assess the gaps between economic growth and transportation infrastructure development, and the impact of potential gaps on access to opportunities for environmental justice populations within North Central Texas, where population growth has increased over 100% since 2000.

The interdisciplinary team, comprised of social work and civil engineering researchers, in partnership with the regional homeless coalition, measured residents’ perspectives of:

• the economic growth in the area over the past decade,
• the extent to which transportation infrastructure has matched the economic growth, and
• the implications for access to affordable quality housing, employment, quality public …

Outcomes Of Utilizing Uber Health To Improve Access To Healthcare At An Urban Student Run Free Clinic, Ciara Ivanics Ms, Emily Lau, Julie Fynke Mph, Ralph Williams Md, Juliann Binienda Phd

Medical Student Research Symposium

Introduction: The patient population of the Robert R. Frank Student Run Free Clinic (SRFC) often cite transportation as their most significant barrier to receiving care. Utilization of ridesharing services may reduce this barrier and improve patient adherence to clinic appointments.

Methods: All patients at the SRFC from February 2019 through November 2019 were offered participation in this IRB-approved randomized control trial (n=37). The intervention group was offered a roundtrip, free, pre-scheduled Uber Health ride, while the control group was offered free public transportation or utilized their own transportation. Participants received an appointment reminder by phone within two days of their …

The Future State Of Mobility, Jerome Quandt

Purdue Road School

Formed in 2018, the Illinois Autonomous Vehicles Association (ILAVA) is a privately funded non-for-profit organization focused on establishing thought leadership in the state of Illinois, by identifying and addressing the current and emerging opportunities related to the inevitable growth of CAV technologies throughout the transportation network. Through the deployment of scalable and sustainable business solutions, facilitating industry education and establishing thought leadership, ILAVA is creating an ecosystem that defines Illinois as #TheFutureStateofMobility.

Perceptions Et Attitudes Face À La Conduite Automobile Dans Un Contexte De Travail Chez Les Policiers En Fonction Et Les Aspirants Policiers, Martin Lavallière, François Bellavance

Rapports de recherche scientifique

La conduite automobile représente une composante importante du travail policier. De la patrouille à la conduite en situation d’urgence, le policier se doit d’être constamment à la recherche d’informations pour lui permettre de préserver sa sécurité derrière le volant et celle de la population qu’il dessert. Des études sur les accidents routiers au travail ont montré que les policiers ne sont pas à l’abri des collisions routières et que celles-ci, lorsqu’elles surviennent, sont potentiellement mortelles. L’objectif de cette étude est de 1) documenter les perceptions et les attitudes face à la conduite automobile en fonction de l’appartenance à un groupe …

Using Reinforcement Learning To Minimize The Probability Of Delay Occurrence In Transportation, Zhiguang Cao, Hongliang Guo, Wen Song, Kaizhou Gao, Zhengghua Chen, Le Zhang, Xuexi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Reducing traffic delay is of crucial importance for the development of sustainable transportation systems, which is a challenging task in the studies of stochastic shortest path (SSP) problem. Existing methods based on the probability tail model to solve the SSP problem, seek for the path that minimizes the probability of delay occurrence, which is equal to maximizing the probability of reaching the destination before a deadline (i.e., arriving on time). However, they suffer from low accuracy or high computational cost. Therefore, we design a novel and practical Q-learning approach where the converged Q-values have the practical meaning as the actual …

Guidelines For Using Streetlight Data For Planning Tasks, Hong Yang, Mecit Cetin, Qingyu Ma

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has purchased a subscription to the StreetLight (SL) Data products that mainly offer origin-destination (OD) related metrics through crowdsourcing data. Users can manipulate a data source like this to quickly estimate origin-destination trip tables. Nonetheless, the SL metrics heavily rely on the data points sampled from smartphone applications and global positioning services (GPS) devices, which may be subject to potential bias and coverage issues. In particular, the quality of the SL metrics in relation to meeting the needs of various VDOT work tasks is not clear. Guidelines on the use of the SL metrics …

Visualizing Statewide Trips: Tools To Leverage Gps Data In Transportation Planning, Nikola Markovic

TREC Project Briefs

The University of Utah has a new data visualization service to offer to state DOTs and other agencies. Using Small Starts funding from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), researcher Nikola Markovic and his team have developed a suite of visual analysis tools to demonstrate how GPS trajectory data can help accurately model and analyze mobility trends. These data are typically purchased from vendors, which means that transportation agencies must first understand the benefits before they decide to invest in data acquisition.

Visual Exploration Of Utah Trajectory Data And Their Applications In Transportation, Seth Miller, Zachary Vander Laan, Yinhu Wang, Nikola Markovic

TREC Final Reports

Transportation agencies have an opportunity to leverage massive GPS trajectory data to support their analyses and enhance their decision making. However, these data are typically purchased from vendors, which means that transportation agencies must understand their benefits before they decide to invest in data acquisition. To help transportation agencies better understand the tremendous value of trajectory data, the PI of the project acquired Utah GPS trajectory data from one of the leading GPS data providers and conducted visual analyses demonstrating applications of trajectory data in various areas of transportation. The analyses focused on (a) evaluating the data itself by exploring …

"I Like It, But I Don't Use It": Impact Of Carsharing Business Models On Usage Intentions In The Sharing Economy, Ruediger Hahn, Felix Ostertag, Adrian Lehr, Marion Buettgen, Sabine Benoit

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Carsharing is often promoted as a potentially environmental-friendly alternative to individual car ownership. However, various carsharing programs have displayed limited success in the past. An initial field study of a new carsharing service is such a story of failure: The introduction of this new service at a medium-sized German university generated unexpectedly low adoption rates so that the service was eventually scaled down and then suspended. Quantitative field study results as well as additional qualitative focus groups reveal that missing compatibility is a key barrier to adoption. Drawing on extant conceptual frameworks of user participation in sharing business models, a …

The Southwest Corridor Light Rail Project, Fiona Cundy, Patrick Sweeney

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Southwest Corridor Light Rail Project is an expansion of the MAX light rail system into Southwest Portland, Tigard and Tualatin. Not only will the project add 11 miles of light rail track and 13 stations to the system, it also includes new bicycle facilities, sidewalks, safer crossings, improvements to local bus service, and significant upgrades to stormwater treatment infrastructure. As a cooperative effort between regional partners, the project is seen as a catalyst to help realize broader shared goals of fostering equitable communities, ensuring healthy environments, and providing robust mobility options for all modes. Currently in the planning and …

Foot Traffic & Walkable Urbanism, Ember Smith, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Transportation & Infrastructure

This fact sheet highlights the performance and expansion of WalkUPs (regionally significant, walkable areas) with a focus on Denver, Los Angeles, Orlando, Phoenix, and Las Vegas as detailed in Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros, a report by George Washington University.