Transportation Commons^™

Exploring Strategies To Improve Mobility And Safety On Roadway Segments In Urban Areas, Stephen Arhin

Mineta Transportation Institute

Several strategies have been proposed and developed to alleviate the congestion and throughput problem usually experienced in urban areas. These strategies include the use of Intelligent Transportation Systems, signal re-timing and signal coordination, among others. In urban areas, there are often combinations of signalized and un-signalized intersections on corridors that may impact throughput and mobility. This research investigated driver compliance rate (CR) with STOP-signs at All-Way STOP Control (AWSC) intersections that are in close proximity to upstream or downstream signalized intersections. Also, strategies to improve mobility and throughput on segments in an urban area were explored via modeling and simulation. …

Optimization Of A Cyclic Express Subway Service, Hai Wang, Jiangang Jin, Jingfeng Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With rapid population growth and increasing demand for urban mobility, metropolitan areas such as Singapore, Tokyo, and Shanghai are increasingly dependent on public transport systems. Various strategies are proposed to improve the service quality and capacity of bus and subway systems. Express trains-i.e., trains that skip certain stations-are commonly used, because they can travel at higher speeds, potentially reduce travel time, and serve more passengers. In this paper, we study cyclic express subway service (CESS), in which express trains provide routine transport service with cyclic (periodic) station-skip patterns that can be used in daily service. We propose an exact Mixed …

Column Generation Approach For Feeder Vessel Routing And Synchronization At A Congested Transshipment Port, Jian G. Jin, Qiang Meng, Hai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With increasing container-shipping traffic in major transshipment ports, unsynchronized shipping services at hub ports usually lead to loss of transshipment connections, significant vessel port-stay time, and congestion. This calls for the design of feeder vessel services to pick up from and deliver containers to neighboring local ports, and, at the same time, synchronize them with long-haul services in a manner that enables efficient container transshipment. In this paper, we present a mixed integer linear programming model to optimize the feeder vessel routes and hub port synchronization with an objective to minimize the total operating and connection cost. We exploit the …

Making Sustainable Roadways From 7,000 Year-Old Volcanic Ash, Matthew D. Sleep, Morgan B. Masley

TREC Project Briefs

Volcanic ash from Mt. Mazama, prevalent in Southern Oregon, could be used as a natural pozzolan for unpaved roadway improvements. Sustainability benefits would include reduced carbon emissions.

Evaluating San José'S 4th Street Pop-Up Bikeway: What Does The Public Think?, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute

Promoting cycling as an alternative means of daily travel has garnered significant attention at the local, state, national, and international levels for the past two decades. The benefits of increased cycling include improved public health, reduced vehicle emissions, reduced traffic congestion, as well as potential economic benefits. However, the percentage of commuters biking to work remains low in the U.S. This white paper explores people’s opinions regarding a temporary protected bikeway installation in the City of San José, California. Overall, findings indicate that the majority of respondents had an overall positive impression of the bikeway. Issues related to safety and …

Electric Kick Scooters On Sidewalks In Virginia But Not In California? A Review Of How States Regulate Personal Transportation Devices, Kevin Fang, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Ashley Hooper

Mineta Transportation Institute

Every weekday morning in San Francisco’s SoMa district, a stream of workers disembark from the city’s commuter rail station carrying an assortment of small, wheeled devices—kick scooters, electric skateboards, hoverboards, and more—which they then use to roll on to their offices. These “personal transportation devices” (PTDs)—also called micromobility or microtransit—encompass a growing set of devices that provide low-speed, flexible mobility for individual travelers. In recent years, the number of PTD types and their use has exploded with the introduction of new devices. This Perspective reports findings from a research project reviewing how these PTDs are regulated in the vehicle codes …

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

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report summarizes the results of the ninth year of a national random-digit-dial public opinion survey asking 1,201 respondents if they would support various tax options for raising federal transportation revenues. The ten specific tax options tested were seven variations on raising the federal gas tax rate, two variations on a new mileage tax, and creating a new federal sales tax. In addition, the survey collected data on standard sociodemographic factors, travel behavior (annual miles driven and vehicle fuel efficiency), respondents’ views on the quality of their local transportation system, and their priorities for government spending on transportation in their …

Bounded Rank Optimization For Effective And Efficient Emergency Response, Pallavi Madhusudan Manohar, Pradeep Varakantham, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Effective placement of emergency response vehicles (such as ambulances, fire trucks, police cars) to deal with medical, fire or criminal activities can reduce the incident response time by few seconds, which in turn can potentially save a human life. Owing to its adoption in Emergency Medical Services (EMSs) worldwide, existing research on improving emergency response has focused on optimizing the objective of bounded time (i.e. number of incidents served in a fixed time). Due to the dependence of this objective on temporal uncertainty, optimizing the bounded time objective is challenging. In this paper, we propose a new objective referred to …

A Survey Of Ride-Hailing Passengers, Steven Gehrke

PSU Transportation Seminars

In less than a decade, the ride-hailing industry, led by Uber and Lyft, has dramatically transformed the way we travel in our metro regions. Rider adoption of these on-demand mobility services has proceeded much quicker than our understanding of their impacts to our urban transportation systems. Planning for this transformation in personal mobility, which will have unintended consequences, has been made more difficult by the scarcity in meaningful data made available by these ride-hailing companies. Public agencies responsible for managing congestion and transit services are hindered in their ability to successfully plan for the integration of this emergent travel mode …

Utrecht, Bike Capital Of The World, Martijn Rietbergen

PSU Transportation Seminars

Utrecht is a bustling, bicycle-friendly city in the Netherlands. Every day, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., over 125,000 cyclists ride to their work, school, university, public transport, shops or home through the city centre.

The municipality wants to make cycling even more attractive for these and other cyclists. Consequently, the bicycle is given precedence in the mobility policy of the municipality of Utrecht. We want to be the most bike-friendly city in the world. We want to keep our growing city livable, accessible and economically strong, and we are convinced that the bicycle can and should play a major …

Science, Advocacy, Policy, Planning: Tools For Advancing Transportation Equity, Garrett S. Mcallister

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The theme of this portfolio is how different tools and approaches can be used for advancing transportation equity. Broadly defined, transportation equity is about fairness in transportation. There are a number of ways this fairness can be assessed. The most common way to assess transportation equity is by looking at the fairness of outcomes, distributed geographically, socially, or even by mode of transportation. Equity can also be defined by the fairness of processes. The first half of the portfolio illustrates some of the problems with the current transportation system and how it is unhealthy (Piece 1) and unjust (Piece 2). …

Analysis Of The Contribution Of Transportation And Land Use To Citizen Perceptions Of Livability, Rebecca Lewis

PSU Transportation Seminars

What is livability? How does the built environment influence resident perceptions of livability? Although livability is a broadly used term and a key goal in land use and transportation plans at the state level, it is unclear whether residents think their neighborhoods are livable and what contributes to their perception of livability. The purpose of the project was to understand how Oregonians, in neighborhoods of varying densities and within Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), perceive livability at the nexus of transportation and land use. We sought to understand how residents define and perceive livability in three different MPOs in the state: …

The Economics Of The World Cup, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

The quadrennial World Cup is perhaps the world’s most popular sporting event with millions of live fans and a worldwide television audience in the billions. It is also one of the most costly events to host with recent hosts countries such as Brazil and Russia spending around $12 billion putting on the tournament. This paper examines the costs and the benefits of hosting the World Cup with a focus on historical data and past economic impact studies.

Overcoming Barriers To Real-Time Transit Information, Sean J. Barbeau

TREC Project Briefs

This project focused on the community-driven creation of the GTFS-realtime v2.0 format, which establishes better guidance for transit agencies, application developers, and automatic vehicle location system vendors on what fields are required or optional under various transit use cases.

Transportation And Land Use—What Determines Livability?, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Parker

TREC Project Briefs

Livability is a key focus of transportation and land use planning throughout the United States, and a concept that has been guiding U.S. Department of Transportation policy since 2009. In Oregon, the state’s long-range transportation plan identifies “enhancing livability” as a key outcome, but little research has tackled how these planning efforts contribute to residents’ perceptions of livability. This project seeks to fill this research need by exploring the question, “How do residents understand the connection between transportation and land use planning, and its association with livability?”

A Fair Distribution Of Accessibility: Interpreting Civil Rights Regulations For Regional Transportation Plans, Karel Martens, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The US Department of Transportation requires metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to consider social equity in their plans and projects in accordance with civil rights–related laws. In this paper, we suggest four interpretations of directives’ distributional standards in relation to accessibility. Employing this framework, we review the equity assessments of regional plans of the ten largest MPOs in the United States. Against our expectations, we find that MPOs tend to employ relatively strong distributional standards, albeit never explicitly. We argue that more explicit guidance regarding standards would improve the fairness and consistency of planning practice

Improved Safety And Efficiency Of Protected/Permitted Right Turns In Oregon, David Hurwitz, Christopher M. Monsere, Sirisha Kothuri, Hisham Jashami, Kamilah Buker, Andrew Kading

TREC Final Reports

This research aimed to develop an understanding of the safety and operational implications of using the flashing yellow arrow (FYA) in permitted and protected/permitted right turn (PPRT) operations to maximize safety and efficiency. This report includes a review of more than 50 scientific and technical articles on the selection of right turn phasing alternatives and a review of Oregon crash data at intersections with exclusive right-turning lanes from 2011-2013. The study had three phases: 1) a web-based survey, 2) a microsimulation model, and 3) and a driving simulator study. The survey measured Oregon driver’s comprehension of right-turn signal display. Analysis …

How Public Transit Agencies Maintain Regulatory Compliance While Using Transportation Network Companies, Aaron Vogel

Master's Projects

The recent rise of Transportation Network Companies (TNC) has prompted some public transit agencies to collaborate with them to enhance their mobility options. Agencies around the country in cities like Pinellas Park, Fla., Boston, Mass., Dallas, TX and Livermore, Calif. are using TNCs as a part of their service delivery model to offer paratransit services, first and last mile solutions and general transit. This research focuses on the following questions:

1. How do public transit agencies adhere to regulatory requirements when implementing TNCs into their service plan?
2. Have agencies been challenged by any state or federal regulatory agencies on non-compliance by …

San Jose's Walk N' Roll Program: An Evaluation Of School Pedestrian Education Programs, Stephen Ngo

Master's Projects

The City of San Jose has been recognized as among the safest cities in the United States, but an area that the city seeks to improve in is reducing the number of traffic accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists. As stated by the city, “San Jose’s injury crash rate is about half the national average” (Vision Zero San Jose, 2015, p. 6), but, on average, 40 people are killed annually and 150 are seriously injured on San Jose’s streets. To address this, San Jose is using data, education, and technology to make a shift towards creating streets and roads that benefit …

Human Trafficking: Flying Under The Radar, Amber L. Hulsey

Dissertations

The global hegemon, the United States encompasses roughly 57,000 to 63,000 of the roughly 45.8 million slaves present across the world today (Walk Free Foundation 2016a). This dissertation research uses the theoretical lens of Human Security as a unique approach in that it is people-centered, focusing on the individual, rather than the more traditional theories in international relations that emphasize the state as the central actor. This dissertation focuses on the understudied area of human trafficking into and within the United States. More specifically, the objective of this research examines the movement of trafficked persons via air and details actions …