ITS Berkeley

Upzoning Under SB 50: The Influence of Local Conditions on the Potential for New Supply

Nolan, Jared
2019

In this brief, we explore what might happen were SB 50 to pass by taking a detailed look at local market conditions in four case study neighborhoods. Local context shapes financial and physical feasibility. When SB 827, the predecessor to SB 50, was under consideration, estimates of its impact on new housing supply were optimistic. Yet, most of these estimates focused on aggregate development potential and did not consider the on-the-ground reality of other zoning provisions that may influence development, what types of projects might pencil out, or what the existing stock looks like.

Could Transportation Network Companies help Improve Rail Commuting?

Darling, Wesley
Cassidy, Michael J.
2024

Commuter rail is known to have a “first- and last-mile” problem (i.e., a lack of options for getting commuters to and from a rail station). The first- and last-mile dilemma creates inequalities in access. For example, high-income commuters drive to work (forgoing transit altogether), middle-income commuters drive to a rail station and pay to park, and low-income commuters rely on feeder buses or walking to reach a rail station. Transportation network companies (TNCs), like Uber and Lyft, are a viable option for connecting travelers to rail stations, especially for those who don’t own a car...

UC Berkeley Develops New User-Friendly Tool to Expedite the Evaluation of Connected Automated Vehicle Technologies

Fu, Zhe
Liu, Hao, PhD
Lu, Xiao-Yun, PhD
2020

Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) are similar to other automated vehicles with the distinguishing difference being that CAVs obtain information about road conditionsdirectly from other vehicles and infrastructure (e.g., traffic signals, road sensors) rather than relying solely on onboard sensors. Different CAV technologies are currently being tested and evaluated to assess the prospects for future implementation. These tests involve moving CAV-equipped vehicles on a physical test track and recording how the vehicles operate under different traffic conditions (Figure 1). Since it is...

How is the COVID-19 Pandemic Shifting Retail Purchases and Related Travel in the Sacramento Region?

Forscher, Teddy
Deakin, Elizabeth, PhD
Walker, Joan, PhD
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2021

A significant portion of the population stayed, and continue to stay, at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With more people staying home, online shopping increased along with trips related to pickups and deliveries. To gain a better understanding of the change in retail purchases and related travel, UC Berkeley researchers compared pre-pandemic shopping to pandemic-related shifts in consumer purchases in the greater Sacramento area for nine types of essential and non-essential commodities (e.g., groceries, meals, clothing, paper products, cleaning supplies). In May 2020, the research team...

Public-Private Partnerships Show Promise for Shifting Export of California Produce from Truck to Rail

Seeherman, Joshua, PhD
Caicedo, Juan
Jung, Jae Esther
Hansen, Mark, PhD
2018

California is one of the largest producers of perishable produce in the world; producing about 25 million tons of fruits and vegetables each year. This sector supports a large transportation industry that handles the exports of these goods. Starting from the 1950’s, the export of produce has gradually shifted modes from rail to trucks. Currently, only 3% of California’s produce is being exported by rail. However, this share has begun to increase due to efforts in private industry to monetize this space, with total rail tonnage exceeding one million for the first time in decades starting in...

Distance-dependent Congestion Pricing for Downtown Zones

Daganzo, Carlos F
Lehe, Lewis J
2014

A growing literature exploits macroscopic theories of traffic to model congestion pricing policies in downtown zones. This study introduces trip length heterogeneity into this analysis and proposes a usage-based, time-varying congestion toll that alleviates congestion while prioritizing shorter trips. Unlike conventional trip-based tolls the scheme is intended to align the fees paid by drivers with the actual congestion damage they do, and to increase the toll’s benefits as a result. The scheme is intended to maximize the number of people that finish their trips close to their desired...

Development Of System Safety Performance Measures In Support Of The Global Analysis And Information Network

Gosling, Geoffrey
1998

In May 1996, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a new and innovative approach to reach the goal of "zero accidents," known as the Global Analysis and Information Network (GAIN). This is envisaged as a privately owned and operated international information infrastructure for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of aviation safety information that would involve the use of a broad variety of worldwide aviation data sources, coupled with comprehensive analytical techniques, to facilitate the identification of existing and emerging aviation safety problems. In support of...

Discretization and Validation of the Continuum Approximation Scheme for Terminal System Design

Ouyang, Yanfeng
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2003

This paper proposes an algorithm that automatically translates the "continuum approximation" (CA) recipes for location problems into discrete designs. It is applied to terminal systems but can also be used for other logistics problems. The study also systematically compares the logistics costs predicted by the CA approach with the actual costs for discrete designs obtained with the automated procedure. Results show that the algorithm systematically finds a practical set of discrete terminal locations with a cost very close to that predicted. The paper also gives conditions under which the...

Simulation Techniques to Obtain Confidence Intervals for Willingness to Pay Measures

Espino, Raquel
Ortuzar, Juan de Dios
Roman, Concepcion
2004

We obtain confidence intervals for willingness-to-pay (WTP) measures derived from a mode choice model estimated to analyse travel demand for suburban trips in the two main interurban corridors in Gran Canaria island, using a mixed RP/SP data base. We considered a specification of the systematic utility that incorporates income effect and interactions among socioeconomic variables and level-of-service attributes, as well as between travel cost and frequency. As our model provides rather complex expressions of the marginal utilities, we simulated the distribution of the WTP (in general,...

Multi-Lane Hybrid Traffic Flow Model: Quantifying the Impacts of Lane-Changing Maneuvers on Traffic Flow

Laval, Jorge A.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2004

A multi-lane traffic flow model realistically captures the disruptive effects of lane- changing vehicles by recognizing their limited ability to accelerate. While they accelerate, these vehicles create voids in the traffic stream that affect its character. Bounded acceleration explains two features of freeway traffic streams: the capacity drop of freeway bottlenecks, and the quantitative relation between the discharge rate of moving bottlenecks and bottleneck speed. The model com- bines a multilane kinematic wave module for the traffic stream, with a detailed constrained-motion model to...