Rail

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

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

Encouraging Mode Shift from Truck to Rail for California Produce

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

California is one of the largest producers of perishable produce in the world. 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 truck. This project builds on the initial work from the “Rail and the California Economy” project by examining the potential of shifting the movement of perishable produce in California from truck to rail. The final report provides a review of the state of the California rail system in terms of perishable produce transport and where...

Assessing and Improving the Equity Impacts of California High-SpeedRail

Ding, Kaijing
Mark Hansen
2025

This study assesses the impact of high-speed rail on accessibility to employment and educational opportunities for the census tracts in the California Central Valley. The accessibility is assessed for driving only mode and transit only mode for the baseline scenario and driving plus HSR mode and transit plus HSR mode for the scenario after HSR start operation. We plot the accessibility distribution for census tracts and calculate the spatial equality index of accessibility distribution to compare the accessibility before and after HSR starts operation, as well as the accessibility for...

Evaluating the Economic Impacts of Light Rail by Measuring Home Appreciation: A First Look at New Jersey’s River Line

Daniel Chatman
Tulach, Nicholas K.
Kim, Kyeongsu
2012

Economic benefits are sometimes used to justify transport investments. Such was the case with the River Line of southern New Jersey, USA, which broke ground in 2000 and began operating in 2004. Recently, the line has been performing near full capacity and there is evidence that it has spurred development. Disaggregate data on owned-home appreciation are used to investigate the initial economic impacts of the line, looking carefully at non-linearity in the appreciation gradient, differential effects of station ridership and parking, redistribution of property appreciation gains and...

An Analysis of the Agglomeration Benefits of Transit Investment: A Case Study of Portland and Dallas

Noland, Robert B.
Daniel Chatman
Klein, Nicholas J.
2013

The objective of this paper is to examine whether new firms are more likely to form near rail transit stations. Two relatively new light-rail systems, one in Portland, Oregon and the other in Dallas, Texas form the basis of the analysis. A geo-coded time-series database of firm births from 1991 through 2008 is analyzed using all firm births, firm births of various sizes, and firm births of specific industry sectors. A random effects negative-binomial model is used to examine associations between proximity to rail stations and other spatially defined variables. Results show that newly...

Does TOD Need the T?: On the Importance of Factors Other Than Rail Access

Daniel Chatman
2013

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Transit-oriented developments (TODs) often consist of new housing near rail stations. Channeling urban growth into such developments is intended in part to reduce the climate change, pollution, and congestion caused by driving. But new housing might be expected to attract more affluent households that drive more, and rail access might have smaller effects on auto ownership and use than housing tenure and size, parking availability, and the neighborhood and subregional built environments. I surveyed households in northern New Jersey living within...

Transit Access and the Agglomeration of New Firms : A Case Study of Portland and Dallas.

Noland, Robert B.
Daniel Chatman
Klein, Nicholas J.
2014

The objective of this paper is to examine whether new firms are more likely to form near rail transit stations. Two relatively new light-rail systems—one in Portland, Oregon, and the other in Dallas, Texas—form the basis of the analysis. A geocoded, time-series database of firm births from 1991 through 2008 is analyzed using all firm births, firm births of various sizes, and firm births of specific industry sectors. A random effects, negative binomial model is used to examine associations between proximity to rail stations and other spatially defined variables. Results show that newly...

Does Transit-Oriented Development Need the Transit?

Daniel Chatman
2015

Urban planners have invested a lot of energy in the idea of transit-oriented developments (TODs). Developing dense housing near rail stations with mixed land uses and better walkability is intended to encourage people to walk, bike, and take transit instead of driving. But TODs can also be expensive, largely because rail itself is expensive. In one study, the average cost for light rail construction was $61 million per mile in 2009...

Firm Births, Access to Transit, and Agglomeration in Portland, Oregon, and Dallas, Texas

Daniel Chatman
Noland, Robert B.
Klein, Nicholas J.
2016

The formation of new firms is one process by which economies grow and innovate. Public transportation services may facilitate the birth of new firms by both providing better access and causing local densification that leads to agglomeration economies. In this study firm births are investigated to determine how they are related to newly provided light rail transit service in two metropolitan areas in the United States. A geocoded time-series database of firm establishments in Dallas, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, from 1991 through 2008 is used. The data set allows the study of spatial...

Access and the Choice of Transit Technology

Sivakumaran, Karthik
Li, Yuwei
Michael Cassidy
Madanat, Samer
2014

An urban transit system can be made more cost-efficient by improving the access to it. Efforts in this vein often entail the provision of greater mobility, as when high-speed feeder buses are used to carry commuters to and from trunk-line stations. Other efforts have focused on the creation of more favorable land-use patterns, as occurs when households within a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) are tightly clustered around trunk stations. The efficacy of these mobility and land-use solutions are separately examined in the present work. To this end, continuum approximation models are used...