Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Measuring The Accuracy Of Bus Rapid Transit Forecasts, John Perry

Journal of Public Transportation

The research of Dr. Bent Flyvbjerg in the 1990s and early 2000s showed that urban rail projects often cost more than estimated and carried fewer riders than projected, a troubling trend suggesting that the forecasts for urban rail projects were too optimistic in terms of cost and ridership. Inspired by that research, this analysis seeks to extend that framework to analyze Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). A study of forecast vs. actual costs and ridership was conducted for 19 BRT projects in the United States. From this, it was found that the cost projections for these projects tended to be quite …

The Causal Effect Of Bus Rapid Transit On Changes In Transit Ridership, Orion T. Stewart, Anne Vernez Moudon, Brian E. Saelens

Journal of Public Transportation

Numerous studies have reported ridership increases along routes when Bus rapid transit (BRT) replaces conventional bus service, but these increases could be due simply to broader temporal trends in transit ridership. To address this limitation, we compared changes in ridership among routes where BRT was implemented to routes where BRT was planned or already existed in King County, Washington. Ridership was measured at 2010, 2013, and 2014. Ridership increased by 35% along routes where BRT was implemented from 2010 to 2013 compared to routes that maintained conventional bus service. Ridership increased by 29% along routes where BRT was implemented from …

An Iterative 3d Gis Analysis Of The Role Of Visibility In Ancient Maya Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

For several decades, Geographic Information Systems (GISs) have held center stage in archaeological studies of ancient landscapes. Recently, three-dimensional (3D) technologies such as airborne LiDAR and aerial photogrammetry are allowing us to acquire inordinate amounts of georeferenced 3D data to locate, map, and visualize archaeological sites within their surrounding landscapes. GIS offers locational precision, data overlay, and complex spatial analysis. Three-dimensionality adds a ground-based perspective lacking in two-dimensional GIS maps to provide archaeologists a sense of mass and space more closely attuned with human perception. This article uses comparative and iterative approaches ‘tacking back and forth’ between GIS and 3D …

A New Market Segmentation Approach: Evidence From Two Canadian Cities, Dea Van Lierop, Ahmed El-Geneidy

Journal of Public Transportation

Traditionally, transit market research has categorized passengers into two distinct groups: captive riders and choice riders. Market analyses that depend on such broad categories are likely to overlook important details about the needs and desires of their customer base. This study attempts to better understand the complexities of the different groups who take transit by using information from five years of customer satisfaction questionnaires collected by two Canadian transit providers. Employing a series of clustering techniques, the analysis reveals that nine market segments are present across different modes in both transit agencies. Three different overarching groups of transit users are …

Destination Portland: Post-Great Recession Migration Trends In The Rose City Region, Jason R. Jurjevich, Greg Schrock, Jihye Kang

Publications, Reports and Presentations

This report explores how individuals decide to move to Portland, why they stay and how the region’s growth challenges might introduce costs that disproportionately burden people of color and young people of lower socioeconomic status.

Estimating Walking And Bicycling At The State Level, Krista Nordback, Mike Sellinger, Taylor Phillips

TREC Final Reports

Estimates of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) drive policy and planning decisions for surface transportation. No similar metric is computed for cycling and walking. What approaches could be used to compute such a metric on the state level? This report discusses three such approaches, identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each, and applies them to Washington State. The first approach employs travel survey data. The second approach is sample-based using pedestrian and bicycle count data. The third approach is an aggregate demand model approach using demographic data combined with count data. Due to data limitations, none of these methods could be …

A Model For Better Crosswalk Safety, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

NITC researchers from Portland State University developed models to find what factors affected vehicles’ compliance with pedestrian safety laws.

The results suggest that treatments discouraging accelerating toward a crosswalk could help increase pedestrian safety.

North Clackamas School District Population And Enrollment Forecasts 2017-18 To 2026-27, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Scott Stewart, Xi Yang

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the North Clackamas School District (NCSD) in recent years and forecasts of district-wide and individual school enrollments for the 2017-18 to 2026-27 school years.

The Economic Value Of Tree Preservation In A Weak Land Development Market Region, Wendy A. Kellogg, Brian Mikelbank, Robert Laverne, Kathryn W. Hexter

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

New residential development is most often a death sentence for the trees that stand in its way. This behavior might be altered if developers thought there was an economic value to being more selective. Unfortunately, the relationship between tree preservation and new development is not well studied. The purpose of this study was to characterize the economic value gained from the preservation of mature trees during the land development process. The study focused on six counties constituting the greater Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., real estate and land development market. A mixed quantitative and qualitative approach was used. GIS-based data and a …

Deregulating Electricity Prices Saves Ohio $3 Billion Each Year, Andrew R. Thomas, William M. Bowen, Edward W. Hill, Adam Kanter, Taekyoung Lim

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Project Plan - Mentoring, Abigail Lisjak, Patrick Gray, Timothy Leonard, Adam Foster

Sustainability and Connectivity

A presentation that includes the ideal goal for the project as well as how the project can relate to the other projects in the class.

Paris And The Birth Of The Modern Fantastic During The Nineteenth Century, Patricia Garcia

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Paris and the Birth of the Modern Fantastic during the Nineteenth Century" Patricia Garcia discusses the unprecedented growth of Europe's urban centers during the nineteenth century in relation to the realist novel and takes urban and literary Paris as a paradigm. However, nineteenth-century Paris was also to become the epicenter of another narrative form: the fantastic. Garcia's objective is to explore how the modern city fueled the development of the fantastic by combining the literary and urban angle: how do works of the fantastic write the city? What role does the modern city play in the emergence …

Mobile Cities, Modelling Policies: Importing/Exporting The Singapore ‘Model’ Of Development, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A recent focus of research has been the making, mobility and mutations of urban policy. The global circulation of urban models – or exemplars of best practices and values that are deemed to be desirable and achievable – has gained significant traction. Such models are those that are dislocated from their place of origin, and transplanted to an adopted site. This chapter draws on the case of Singapore: one of the most emblematic examples of an importable/exportable urban model – a prototype for growth-oriented urban development with its normative and technical plans for growth and management – to foreground problems …

Boundaries That Matter: Redistricting Congressional Election Districts, Mark J. Salling Phd, Gisp

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland on February 26, 2017 by Mark Salling, PhD, GISP.

Impact Of Bike Facilities On Residential Property Prices, Wei Shi

PSU Transportation Seminars

As many cities are investing in street improvement or transportation infrastructure upgrade projects to provide better bike access or more complete bike networks, the economic value of bike infrastructure and bike facilities remains an area where many practitioners, planners and policy makers are seeking more conclusive evidence. Using residential property values as indicators of consumer preferences for bicycle infrastructure, this study focuses on advanced bike facilities which represent higher levels of bike priority or bike infrastructure investments that have been shown to be more desirable to a larger portion of the population. Estimating ordinary least squares hedonic pricing models and …

City Of Oberlin, Comprehensive Housing Study And Needs Analysis, Kirby Date, Kathryn W. Hexter, Charlie Post, N. Colt Ossoff, Arleesha Wilson

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The Center for Community Planning and Development was engaged by the City of Oberlin, Ohio to develop a comprehensive housing needs assessment. A fact-finding study with recommendations, it is intended to support future policy discussion and visioning as part of the City’s planned comprehensive plan process in the coming year. This study was completed with input and guidance from the City and a Housing Study Steering Committee of community stakeholders, a Community Open House, and interviews with residents, workers, business owners, and community leaders. Data analysis demonstrated a need for additional housing for low-income families, starter housing for younger households, …

Exploring The Positive Utility Of Travel And Mode Choice, Patrick Allen Singleton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Why do people travel? We traditionally assume traveling is a means to an end, travel demand is derived (from the demand for activities), and travel time is to be minimized. Recently, scholars have questioned these axioms, noting that some people may like to travel, use travel time productively, enjoy the experience of traveling, or travel for non-utilitarian reasons. The idea that travel can provide benefits and may be motivated by factors beyond reaching activity destinations is known as “the positive utility of travel” or PUT.

This study presents a conceptual and empirical look at the positive utility of travel and …

Webinar: Integrating Explicit And Implicit Methods In Travel Behavior Research: A Study Of Driver Attitudes And Bias, Tara Goddard

TREC Webinar Series

Car crashes are still a leading cause of death in the United States, with vulnerable road users like bicyclists and pedestrians being injured or killed at rates that outpace their mode share.

Planners, engineers, and advocates are increasingly adopting Vision Zero and Tactical Urbanism approaches and trying to better understand the underlying causes of dangerous roadway interactions. However, existing research into crash causation has focused on instrumental factors (e.g. intersection type, vehicle speed) while little research has probed the role of attitudes or socio-cognitive mechanisms in interactions between roadway users.

Social psychology suggests that attitudes and social cognitions can play …

Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps To Model Policy Issues In The Face Of Uncertainty And Limited Data, Brian Gregor

PSU Transportation Seminars

Planners and policymakers are often faced with the need to make decisions about issues for which there is uncertainty and limited data. For example, transportation planners are now faced with the prospect that new transportation technologies such as autonomous vehicles could greatly alter future transportation system needs. Decisions about these types of issues are difficult to reason about and consequently are likely to be ignored or made on the basis of simplistic logic. Although modeling could be helpful, especially for issues involving complex systems, it is rarely used because models usually require large amounts of data and and handle uncertainty …

Big Steps Before The Big One: How The Portland Area Can Bounce Back After A Major Earthquake, City Club Of Portland (Portland, Or.)

City Club of Portland

No abstract provided.