Public Transportation

Impacts of Shared Mobility

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Cohen, Adam
2018

Shared mobility modes have reported a number of environmental, social, and transportation-related impacts. Several studies have documented the reduction of vehicle usage, ownership, and vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Cost savings and convenience are frequently cited as popular reasons for shifting to a shared mode. Shared modes can also extend the catchment area of public transit, potentially playing a pivotal role in bridging gaps in existing transportation networks and encouraging multi-modality by addressing the first-and-last mile issue related to public transit access (1). Shared...

Advancing Bus Rapid Transit and Transit Oriented Corridorsin California’s Central Valley

Braughton, Matthew
Brill, Matthew
Lee, Stephen
Binger, Gary
Cervero, Robert
2011

This study explores possibilities for advancing bus rapid transit (BRT) systems and associated higher density land development in the Central Valley of California. It uses photo-simulations and stakeholder reactions to visual images to gauge public attitudes toward what would be a fairly radical transformation of urban environments in traditionally car-oriented settings.The kinds of transformations that would be needed to economically justify higher quality BRT services will likely require better and more frequent bus as well as amenities in the form of street trees, landscaping, street...

From Elevated Freeway to Linear Park: Land Price Impacts of Seoul, Korea's CGC Project

Kang, Chang Deok
Cervero, Robert
2008

Freeways and other high-performance roadway investments have long been considered vital to the economic well-being of metropolitan areas. Empirical research shows that limited-access, grade-separated freeway systems increase a region’s economic productivity by lowering transportation costs, a factor input to economic production (Aschauer, 1990; Boarnet, 1997). Past studies also reveal that urban land markets capitalize the benefit of proximity to freeway interchanges, especially for non-residential uses and in areas experiencing worsening traffic conditions (Gillen, 1996; Boarnet, 1997;...

City-Scale Transport Modeling: An Approach for Nairobi, Kenya

Daganzo, C. F.
Li, Yuwei
Gonzales, Eric J.
Geroliminis, Nikolas
2007

Traffic congestion poses problems for cities around the world, especially in rapidly growing and motorizing cities like Nairobi, Kenya. We show here how we plan to use in the context of Nairobi a new theory that relates the mobility provided by a city’s street network to the number of vehicles on the network (including private cars and public transport) and to key aggregate descriptors of both the street infrastructure and the public transport services. Conventional micro-simulation models require vast quantities of data and produce unreliable detailed results. The new theory asserts that...

Bus Lanes with Intermittent Priority: Screening Formulae and an Evaluation

Eichler, Michael
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2005

This paper evaluates strategies for operating buses on signal-controlled arterials using special lanes that are made intermittently available to general traffic. The advantage of special bus lanes, intermittent or dedicated, is that they free buses from traffic interference; the disadvantage is that they disrupt traffic. We find that intermittent lanes, unlike dedicated ones, do not significantly reduce street capacity. Intermittence, however, increases the average traffic density at which the demand is served, and as a result increases traffic delay. These delays are more than offset by...

Urban Development on Railway-Served Land: Lessons and Opportunities for the Developing World

Cervero, Robert
2020

Under the right conditions -- serious traffic congestion, a permissive regulatory environment, and frequent and reliable transit services -- rail transit investments can powerfully shape cities and regions. Rail transit’s city‐shaping powers are due to market forces and policy interventions. By enhancing accessibility (the ability of those living, working, or shopping rail near stops to quickly reach desired destinations) rail services increase the value and desirability of properties in and around stations. Market pressures by themselves rarely produce transit oriented development. To...

Life-cycle Energy and Emissions Inventories for Motorcycles, Diesel Automobiles, School Buses, Electric Buses, Chicago Rail, and New York City Rail

Chester, Mikhail
Horvath, Arpad
2009

The development of life-cycle energy and emissions factors for passenger transportation modes is critical for understanding the total environmental costs of travel. Previous life-cycle studies have focused on the automobile given its dominating share of passenger travel and have included only few life-cycle components, typically related to the vehicle (i.e., manufacturing, maintenance, end-of-life) or fuel (i.e., extraction, refining, transport). Chester (2009) provides the first comprehensive environmental life-cycle assessment of not only vehicle and fuel components but also...

Deploying Lanes for High Occupancy Vehicles in Urban Areas

Cassidy, Michael J.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2007

Simulations and field experiments in previous works suggest that a freeway’s general purpose lanes (those not dedicated to high occupancy vehicles) discharge vehicles from bottlenecks at an equal or higher average rate when one of the lanes is devoted to high occupancy vehicles than when it is not. This result was used in these previous works to develop formulae for the total discharge rate of bottlenecks, with and without dedicated lanes, as a function of the percentage of high occupancy vehicles in the traffic stream.This present paper extends these ideas by examining the effect of...

How to Improve Bus Service

Daganzo, Carlos F
2008

Bus schedules cannot be easily maintained on busy lines with short headways: Experience shows that buses offering this type of service usually arrive irregularly at their stops, often in bunches. Although transit agencies build slack into their schedules to alleviate this problem, their attempts often fail because practical amounts of slack cannot prevent large localized disruptions from spreading system-wide. This paper describes a more resilient control scheme that overcomes this problem. The method also produces even headways with less slack than the conventional approach. Thus, buses...

Rail + Property Development: A model of sustainable transit finance and urbanism

Cervero, Robert
Murakami, Jin
2008

Hong Kong has aggressively pursued transit value capture to finance railway infrastructure through its “Rail + Property” development program, or R+P. More than half of all revenues received by the MTR Corporation, the owner-operator of Hong Kong’s largest railway network, come from property development. A wide variety of R+P projects presently exist in Hong Kong. Most focus on housing development though all have some degree of commercial development. Recent generation R+P projects have placed a stronger premium on urban design and quality of pedestrian environments. This has generally paid...