Policy

Compulsory Convenience? How Large Arterials and Land Use Affect Midblock Crossing in Fushun, China

Wendy Tao
Shomik Mehndiratta
Elizabeth Deakin
2010

Abstract: This study focuses on how street design and land uses influence pedestrian behavior in a medium-sized Chinese city, Fushun. In cities throughout China, the change from workplace-managed and assigned housing to market housing has had profound effects on pedestrians. Coupled with motorization, pedestrian trips are increasingly external, pushed out of the protected space of the gated block and onto massive arterials that now carry automobiles, trucks, and buses in growing numbers. Long blocks, unenforced zebra crossings, and inadequate green time at traffic signals do not equitably...

Best Practices for the Public Management of Electric Scooters

Karl Reinhardt
Elizabeth Deakin
2020

This research projects evaluates the social, environmental, and safety impacts of shared electric scooters (e-scooters)’ through a literature review, a nationwide scan of state and local laws and regulations, and a case study of Oakland’s experience with e-scooters, including an analysis of the city’s user survey and our own in-depth interviews. E-scooters offer an enjoyable, low-cost travel option, but are used mainly by young, affluent, white males. To improve equity, cities are requiring e-scooter rental companies to serve low-income and minority communities and some further mandate...

Socioeconomic Differences in Household Automobile Ownership Rates: Implications for Evacuation Policy

Elizabeth Deakin
Steven Raphael
Alan Berube
2006

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has laid bare many of the disparities that continue to separate Americans by race and class. One disparity that was immediately apparent in Katrina’s aftermath concerned the size and composition of the area’s population lacking access to an automobile. These households, largely dependent on the limited emergency public transportation available to evacuate the city in advance of the storm, were those most likely to be left behind. In New Orleans, this population seemed quite large in size – and overwhelmingly black and poor.

An integrated assessment of factors affecting modal choice: towards a better understanding of the causal effects of built environment

Samira Ramezani
Barbara Pizzo
Elizabeth Deakin
2018

This paper discusses the methodological challenges in understanding causal relationships between urban form and travel behavior and uses a holistic quasi-experimental approach to investigate the separable marginal influence of each of several urban form factors on mode choice as well as the complex relationships between those factors and a wide range of personal traits. Data analysis and models are used to reveal the effect of such interactions on mode choice for both work and non-work trips in Rome, Italy. It is found that population density does not have a significant marginal positive...

Economic and Travel Impacts of Bypass Roads: A Comparative Study of Israel and the U.S.

Pnina Plaut
Elizabeth Deakin
2006

In this study we are documenting and comparing the economic and travel impacts of bypass roads in the United States and Israel on the towns near which they are constructed. Using historical research, on-site observations, interviews, surveys, and data analyses we consider the effects of bypasses on local and through traffic, travel patterns, development patterns, and the local urban economy in the immediately affected communities. We aim elucidate how road design, market forces, local politics, land use policies, planning and zoning and location-specific factors interact to produce the...

Public Health Sector Influence in Transportation Decision-Making: The Case of Health Impact Assessment

Carolyn McAndrews
Elizabeth Deakin
2020

Health impact assessment (HIA) is a method of analyzing and communicating the potential health-related outcomes of policies and projects in a variety of fields, including transportation. The transportation policy process already has formal routines to incorporate information about air quality, noise, safety, and other health issues. However, the HIA method could broaden the set of issues under consideration (e.g., physical activity), the types of decisions assessed, and the actors involved. In theory, HIA seeks to influence transportation decisions and serve as a platform for public...

Inhalation Intake of Ambient Air Pollution in California's South Coast Air Basin

Julian Marshall
Patrick Granvold
Abigail Hoats
Thomas McKone
Elizabeth Deakin
William Nazaroff
2006

Reliable estimates of inhalation intake of air pollution and its distribution among a specified population are important for environmental epidemiology, health risk assessment, urban planning, and environmental policy. We computed distributional characteristics of the inhalation intake of five pollutants for a group of ∼25,000 people (∼29,000 person-days) living in California's South Coast Air Basin. Our approach incorporates four main inputs: temporally resolved information about people's location (latitude and longitude), microenvironment, and activity level; temporally and spatially...

Transfer of Innovative Policies between Cities to Promote Sustainability: Case Study Evidence

Greg Marsden
Karen Frick
Anthony May
Elizabeth Deakin
2010

This paper describes how cities approach the challenging task of identifying, considering, and adopting innovative transport policies. Drawing on political science literature, the paper begins by establishing a framework for analyzing the process of policy transfer and policy learning. Cities were selected on the basis of their reputation for having adopted innovative policies. Data were collected from project reports and in-depth interviews with 40 professionals comprising planners, consultants, and operators in 11 cities across North America and northern Europe. This paper presents the...

Good Practice in the Exploitation of Innovative Strategies in Sustainable Urban Transport: City Interview Synthesis

Greg Marsden
Karen Frick
Elizabeth Deakin
2009

A literature review of policy transfer in transport and cognate fields was conducted. It shows that there is little evidence on how cities learn from each other and even less on how this process occurs in the transport sector.The review identified a series of key aspects of policy transfer which the literature suggests might be important in understanding the process of, advantages and barriers to transferring innovative transport policies.Interviews were then conducted in 11 cities to further investigate the process of policy transfer and the role of academics within this. Seven cities...

Bounded Rationality in Policy Learning Amongst Cities: Lessons from the Transport Sector

Greg Marsden
Anthony May
Elizabeth Deakin
2012

The internationalization of policy regimes and the reorganization of the state have provided new opportunities for cities to bypass nation-state structures and work with other cities internationally. This provides greater opportunity for cities to learn from each other and could be an important stimulus to the transfer of policies across the globe. Few studies exist however which focus on the processes that shape the search for policy lessons and how they are affected by the institutional context within which they are conducted. This paper describes research conducted in the field of urban...