Infrastructure

Remaking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge: A Case of Shadowboxing with Nature

Karen Trapenberg Frick
2016

On 17 October 1989 one the largest earthquakes to occur in California since the San Francisco earthquake of April 1906 struck Northern California. Damage was extensive, none more so than the partial collapse of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge’s eastern span, a vital link used by hundreds of thousands of Californians every day. The bridge was closed for a month for repairs and then reopened to traffic. But what ensued over the next 25 years is the extraordinary story that Karen Trapenberg Frick tells here. It is a cautionary tale to which any governing authority embarking on a...

Funding Resilient Infrastructure on the Quick: US Federal Transit Disaster Programs after Superstorm Sandy

Karen Trapenberg Frick
Forscher, E.
2018

The applied concept of resilience has garnered attention in the public eye and academic scholarship in the past decade. Through a rise in popularity, its meaning has morphed depending upon scale, audience, and what system must be resilient. This poses a problem of consistency for agencies, firms, and others working to make cities more adaptable to increasingly variable climate conditions. This work provides a critical examination of the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) $10.4 billion Emergency Relief program funding after Superstorm Sandy. The program, funded through the...

The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management

Karen Trapenberg Frick
2019

Governing authorities across the globe are embarking upon major infrastructure projects, also known as megaprojects, at an astonishing pace. Local areas are proceeding partly in the quest for new or renewed prominence on the global stage, but also to improve the resiliency of existing critical infrastructure due to increasing hazards, extreme events and aging infrastructure. They proceed so even in the face of a “calamitous history of cost overruns”, overestimation of benefits and schedule delays (Flyvbjerg, 2018, pp. 11–12). Much is at stake because of direct project costs, indirect...

Benchmarking “Smart City” Technology Adoption in California: Developing and Piloting a Data Collection Approach

Karen Trapenberg Frick
Kumar, Tanu, PhD
Mendonça Abreu, Giselle Kristina
Post, Alison, PhD
2021

In recent years, “smart city” technologies have emerged that allow cities, counties, and other agencies to manage their infrastructure assets more effectively, make their services more accessible to the public, and allow citizens to interface with new web- and mobile-based operators of alternative service providers. This project reviews the academic literature and other sources on potential strengths, weaknesses, and risks associated with smart city technologies. No dataset was found that measures the adoption of such technologies by government agencies. To address this gap, a methodology...

No Permanent Friends, No Permanent Enemies: Agonistic Ethos, Tactical Coalitions, and Sustainable Infrastructure

Karen Trapenberg Frick
2021

Turbulent debates between divergent actors are part of the fiber of planning. One manifestation of tensions is the emergence of tactical coalitions with citizens finding common ground across the political divide. This article seeks to theorize such coalition formation for which planning scholarship is sparse. Drawing from agonism, other scholarship, and three U.S. cases of sustainable infrastructure, I develop a typology of tactical coalitions based on their level of strategic interaction, duration, and transformation. This research and theorization provides compelling evidence that...

Rebuilding Common Purpose for the 21st Century with New Civic Infrastructure

Myers, Dowell
Karen Trapenberg Frick
2022

Increasing polarization and division are the greatest challenges to the U.S. today, because they prevent cooperation in decision making about growing problems of major consequence. The related long swing in rising individualism is assessed for how it undermines common purpose. We survey the ideological divide and how it intersects with preferred urban development patterns, negotiation styles (compromise or hard line), and diverse views on mitigations for stemming the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Analysis of the Agglomeration Benefits of Transit Investment: A Case Study of Portland and Dallas

Noland, Robert B.
Daniel Chatman
Klein, Nicholas J.
2013

The objective of this paper is to examine whether new firms are more likely to form near rail transit stations. Two relatively new light-rail systems, one in Portland, Oregon and the other in Dallas, Texas form the basis of the analysis. A geo-coded time-series database of firm births from 1991 through 2008 is analyzed using all firm births, firm births of various sizes, and firm births of specific industry sectors. A random effects negative-binomial model is used to examine associations between proximity to rail stations and other spatially defined variables. Results show that newly...

A Mode Choice Analysis of School Trips in New Jersey

Noland, Robert B.
Park, Hyunsoo
Von Hagen, Leigh Ann
Daniel Chatman
2014

This paper examines the mode choice behavior of children's travel to school based on surveys conducted at a sample of schools in New Jersey. The main focus is on a variety of network design, land use, and infrastructure variables that have typically been associated with walking activity. Using a mixed logit model, it is found that good connectivity, more intense residential land use, and better sidewalk infrastructure are associated with increased walking to school. The use of a mixed logit model allows the examination of individual heterogeneity. Results indicate substantial heterogeneity...

Market-Priced Parking in Theory and Practice

Manville, Michael
Daniel Chatman
2018

Performance pricing for parking is similar to congestion pricing for roads: both use prices to "clear the market" and prevent the overuse of scarce infrastructure. For researchers, SFpark provided a real-world test of performance pricing. Would raising the price for parking nudge occupancy down and vacancy up in one of America's densest and most congested cities? Many cities keep valuable street spaces free or under-priced, and as a result they fill up quickly, leaving shortages at busy times. Most cities prefer to keep roads and parking free, even though cities that have experimented with...

Dual Influences on Vehicle Speeds in Special-Use Lanes and Policy Implications

Jang, Kitae
Michael Cassidy
2011

Slow speeds in a special-use lane, such as a carpool (HOV) or bus lane, can be due to both high demand for that lane and slow speeds in the adjacent regular-use lane. These dual influences are confirmed from months of data collected from all freeway carpool facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both influences hold for other types of special-use lanes, including bus lanes. New US regulation stipulating that most classes of low-emitting vehicles, or LEVs, be banned from slow-moving carpool lanes. While LEVs invariably constitute only about 1 percent of the freeway traffic demand in the...