ITS Berkeley

Examining Individuals' Desire for Shorter Commute: The Case of Proximate Commuting

Rodriguez, DA
2002

Much of the theoretical and empirical debate about transport and land-use planning has focused upon the strength and vitality of the connection between the two. Studies increasingly find that this connection is weakening and thus attempts to address urban transport problems with land-use policies are ineffective. The author introduces proximate commuting, a novel employer-based program that decreases urban commuting by providing marginal accessibility improvements to its participants. With the aid of a case study involving a commercial bank in the Western Detroit Metropolitan Area,...

Effects of Truck Driver Wages and Working Conditions on Highway Safety: Case Study

Rodriguez, DA
Rocha, M
Khattak, AJ
Belzer, MH
2003

The role of human capital and occupational factors in influencing driver safety has gained increased attention from trucking firms and policy makers. The influence of these factors, along with demographic factors, on the crash frequency of truck drivers is examined. A unique driver-level data set from a large truckload company collected over 26 months was used for estimating regression models of crash counts. On the basis of estimates from a zero-inflation Poisson regression model, results suggest that human capital and occupational factors, such as pay, job tenure, and percentage of...

3. The Effects Of Trucking Firm Financial Performance On Driver Safety

Rodrı́guez, DA
Rocha, M
Belzer, MH
2004

This chapter uses trucking firm-level information to address the paucity of multivariate analysis accounting for the safety effect of various types of truck driver compensation and firm financial performance. Using negative binomial regression models, we find that small firms with high liquidity are correlated with better safety performance. Likewise, small firms that devote a higher share of their revenues to labor expenses tend to have better safety outcomes. Although the dataset is limited in many ways, these associations suggest that small firms may be particularly sensitive to...

Analysis of Bogota's Bus Rapid Transit System and its Impact on Land Development

Taiga, F
Rodriguez, DA
2004

Recent experiences in Latin American cities supporting world-class public transportation systems have resulted in the creation of livable spaces with a significant potential to spur land development. In cities like Bogota, Colombia, and Curitiba. Brazil, bus rapid transit (BRT) has re-emerged as a cost-effective transportation alternative for satisfying growing demands for urban mobility. Bogota's BRT system has allowed for a 32 percent reduction in average travel times and significant reduction in accident and air pollution levels along the busway corridors. Although previous...

The Relationship Between Non-Motorized Mode Choice and the Local Physical Environment

Rodrı́guez, DA
Joo, J
2004

By estimating multinomial choice models, this paper examines the relationship between travel mode choice and attributes of the local physical environment such as topography, sidewalk availability, residential density, and the presence of walking and cycling paths. Data for student and staff commuters to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill are used to illustrate the relationship between mode choice and the objectively measured environmental attributes, while accounting for typical modal characteristics such as travel time, access time, and out-of-pocket cost. Results...

Spatial Choices and Excess Commuting: A Case Study of Bank Tellers in Bogota, Colombia

Rodrı́guez, DA
2004

This study uses disaggregate data from Bogotá, Colombia to examine the presumption that individuals engaging in excess commuting have satisfactorily traded commuting for other location benefits. By estimating involuntary and voluntary excess commuting, the study illustrates that deviations from the minimum commute implied by the urban spatial structure are expected due to temporal and structural constraints, even when the journey-to-work is a household’s only locational concern. Therefore, the usefulness of excess commuting estimates for informing policy choices hinging on the...

The Impact of Neo-Traditional Neighborhood Developments on Travel Behavior

Khattak, AJ
Rodriguez, DA
2004

Although previous research has supported the view that neo-traditional or new urbanist designs result in more walking activity, several questions remain: Do residents of these neighborhoods substitute walking for driving trips, or do they make more trips overall? What is the role of self-selection of residents in these developments? This paper aims to address these questions by examining differences in travel behavior in a matched pair of neighborhoods (one conventional and one neo-traditional) in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. A detailed behavioral survey of 453 households and...

Can Neighborhood Design Encourage Physical Activity?

Rodriguez, DA
Khattak, AJ
Evenson, KR
2004

Although new urbanism continues to gain popularity worldwide, many of its effects remain unexamined. If neighborhood design can support or impede active lifestyles, we hypothesize that residents of new urbanist neighborhoods will exhibit higher levels of physical activity than residents of conventional communities. Following a quasi-experimental research design, this study evaluates physical activity patterns of residents in two distinctly designed neighborhoods, a new urbanist and a conventional suburban neighborhood in a central North Carolina community. The two neighborhoods were...

Value of Accessibility to Bogotá's Bus Rapid Transit System

Rodriguez, DA
Targa, F
2007

With several successful cases world‐wide, bus rapid transit (BRT) has reemerged as a cost‐effective transportation alternative for urban mobility. Despite the resurgence of BRT, there is a world‐wide paucity of research examining its ability to spur and development. By estimating spatial hedonic price functions, the paper determines the extent to which access to BRT stations in Bogotá, Colombia, currently are capitalized into land values. Results suggest that for every 5 min of additional walking time to a BRT station, the rental price of a property decreases by between 6.8 and 9.3...

Análisis Comparativo de Tres Estructuras de Empaque para Café Tostado y Molido

Castaño, JJ
Mayorga, IM
Rodriguez, D
Lozano, A
2005

En el presente experimento se estudiaron durante un período de almacenamiento de 9 meses, tres estructuras para el empaque de café tostado. Las tres estructuras fueron: BOPP/BOPPmet/PPcoex, PET/BOPPmetaltabarrera/PEblanco y PET/FOILALUM/PEblanco, siendo la primera y la tercera dos estructuras empleadas con alguna frecuencia por la industria torrefactora nacional. la segunda es una estructura desarrollada por la empresa Biofilm S.A. de las tres estructuras teóricamente la de mejores características es la tercera. Para el estudio se empacó en estas tres estructuras café tipo consumo,...