Land Use and Built Environment

The Urban Built Environment and Adult BMI, Obesity, and Diabetes in Latin American Cities

Anza-Ramirez, C
Lazo, M
Zafra-Tanaka, J
Avila-Palencia, I
Bilal, U
Hernández-Vásquez, A
Knoll, C
Lopez-Olmedo, N
Mazariegos, M
Moore, K
Rodriguez, D
Sarmiento, O
Stern, D
Tumas, N
Miranda, J
2022

Latin America is the world’s most urbanized region and its heterogeneous urban development may impact chronic diseases. Here, we evaluated the association of built environment characteristics at the sub-city —intersection density, greenness, and population density— and city-level —fragmentation and isolation— with body mass index (BMI), obesity, and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Data from 93,280 (BMI and obesity) and 122,211 individuals (T2D) was analysed across 10 countries. Living in areas with higher intersection density was positively associated with BMI and obesity, whereas living in...

Cars in Latin America: An Exploration of the Urban Landscape and Street Network Correlates of Motorization in 300 Cities

Delclòs-Alió, X
Kanai, C
Soriano, L
Quistberg, D
Ju, Y
Dronova, I
Gouveia, N
Rodriguez, D
2023
Car use creates significant externalities for urban residents worldwide. City characteristics such as the configuration of the urban landscape and street network likely influence the use and attractiveness of automobiles, especially in rapidly urbanizing areas such as Latin America. The understanding of factors associated with motorization can inform planning measures to reduce car usage, and to promote healthier, safer, and more sustainable urban lifestyles. We harmonized official passenger vehicle data from 300 cities with >100,000 inhabitants in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, and...

A Scaling Investigation of Urban Form Features in Latin America Cities

Paiva, SS
Santos, GF
Castro, CP
Rodriguez, DA
Bilal, U
Filho, F
Anderson, F
Montes, F
Dronova, I
Barreto, M
Andrade, R
2023

This paper examines scaling behaviors of urban landscape and street design metrics with respect to city population in Latin America. We used data from the SALURBAL project, which has compiled and harmonized data on health, social, and built environment for 371 Latin American cities above 100,000 inhabitants. These metrics included total urbanized area, effective mesh size, area in km2 and number of streets. We obtained scaling relations by regressing log(metric) on log (city population). The results show an overall sub-linear scaling behavior of most variables, indicating a...

Marked Crosswalks, Station Area Built Environments, and Transit Ridership: Associations Between Changes in 877 US TOD Stations, 2010–2018

Li, M
Rodriguez, D
2024
Transit ridership across the US has experienced a decline over the past decade. Researchers, policy-makers and advocates have suggested that transportation and land use policies be modified to encourage transit-friendly environments. Despite the importance of studying the relationship between built environment and transit use, previous research on this topic exhibits several limitations in terms of scope, resolution and robustness of research design, due to availability of built environment and ridership data. Using a historical marked crosswalk dataset generated from Google Street View along...

Potential drivers of urban green space availability in Latin American cities

Bakhtsiyarava, M
Moran, M
Ju, Y
Zhou, Y
Rodriguez, DA
Dronova, I
de Pina, M
de Matos, V
Skaba, D
2024

Urban green spaces play a critical role in regulating air temperature, reducing air pollution and enhancing people’s well being. Yet, existing data and research on potential drivers of urban green space availability in Latin America are limited. Here, focusing on 371 large cities in 11 countries in Latin America, we described the total and per capita variability of urban green space, its spatial configuration and green urban parks across the categories of cities’ natural, built and socioeconomic environments. We tested the relative importance of geographic (climate) versus city-level...

Alternative Traffic Signal Illumination

Cohn, Theodore E.
Greenhouse, Daniel
Knowles, Richard
1998

New technologies have enabled the production of traffic signals that have significant advantages over standard incandescent signals, including greater energy efficiency and lower maintenance costs. Before the new signals are installed in the field, it is important to assure that they as visible as the older signals. We have developed a quality index we term the usability factor (UF) which can be used to evaluate the visibility of a new device relative to that of a standard reference lamp. We have measured UF's of a variety of new types of lamps by means of heterochromatic flicker...

Deploying Electronic Tolls

Levinson, David
Chang, Elva
2000

This paper examines the deployment of electronic toll collection (ETC) and develops a model to maximize social welfare associated with the toll plaza.

Safe Platooning In Automated Highway Systems

Alvarez, Luis
Horowitz, Roberto
1997

This report addresses the problem of designing safe controllers for the hybrid system composed by the interaction of the regulation and coordination layers in the hierarchical California PATH Automated Highway System (AHS) architecture. Conditions to achieve safe platooning under normal mode of operation are investigated. The results that are obtained allow for the decoupling of the design and verification of the regulation and coordination layers in the PATH AHS architecture.

Clean Hydrogen for Transportation Applications: Report

Miller, Marshall, PhD
Weinert, Jonathan
Nicholas, Michael
2006

The California Department of Transportation, as part of their involvement in the California Hydrogen Highway initiative, is planning to construct a hydrogen station at their new maintenance facility in Sylmar, CA (Shop 7, at the junction of I-5 and I-405). This report was written to provide Caltrans information on the design and cost of various hydrogen station types. This information will be used to guide decision-making in choosing the station type and size to meet the anticipated hydrogen vehicle demand at their new facility.

Assessing the Benefits and Costs of ITS Projects: Volume 2 An Application to Electronic Toll Collection

Gillen, David
Li, Jianling
Dahlgren, Joy
Chang, Elva
1999

The Carquinez Bridge ETC project is a pilot project of a statewide toll bridge improvement project undertaken by Caltrans. Caltrans owns and operates nine toll bridges statewide. Over the last five years, traffic on all area bridges has increased from 129 million vehicle crossings in Fiscal year (FY) 1992-93 to 140 million in FY 1996-97, with an average annual rate of 2 percent as indicated in Figure 1. However, the toll facilities are antiquated. The bridges use a toll collection system known as Toll Registration, Audit and Collection (TRAC) installed in the early 1980s, and tolls have...