Public Transportation

Over a five-year period, the University of California Berkeley’s Global Metropolitan Studies-China Program conducted research in partnership with local counterparts in Beijing, Shanghai, Jinan, Chengdu, and Kunming. Research focused on strategies for maintaining and increasing the sustainability of the cities’ transportation systems in the face of rapid economic growth and accelerating motorization, and included planning, analysis, and design of projects on transit-oriented development, non-motorized transportation, and bus rapid transit. In this paper, we focus on two cases that exemplify...

Traveler response to the introduction of parking user fees at heavily patronized park-and-ride facilities within the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District of California is investigated. After an analysis of systemwide impacts, detailed research at two stations was performed with mail-back surveys, license plate surveys, and focus groups. The primary finding is that introduction of daily parking fees did not cause significant changes in access mode choice, facility location, or line-haul mode of park-and-ride users. New, higher-fee, daily reserved spaces were popular...

Gender-based violence on public transportation in Mexico City, Mexico, is a growing concern. Current efforts to counteract the violence have focused on transit vehicles for exclusive use by women and children and campaigns to promote the report of offenses. To characterize the problem, this study conducted a transit user survey, workshops with transit users, interviews with operators, and interviews with experts in the field. The study found that, even though transit users believed that the gender-exclusive transport service reduced problematic encounters, they did not view the service as...

Growing poverty in America’s suburbs challenges their image as single-family residential communities for middle class, predominantly white families. Research shows that suburban areas now have the largest share of households under the poverty line. Since these areas have lower density development and lower levels of public transit service compared to urban areas, living in the suburbs may pose accessibility challenges for low-income households, particularly those without a personal vehicle. To explore housing and transportation issues associated with the suburbanization of poverty, we...