In recent years, technological and social forces have pushed smartphone applications (apps) from the fringe to the mainstream. Understanding the role of transportation apps in urban mobility is important for policy development and transportation planners. This study evaluates the role and impact of multimodal aggregators from a variety of perspectives, including a literature review; a review of the most innovative, disruptive, and highest-rated transportation apps; interviews with experts in the industry, and a user survey of former multimodal aggregator RideScout users. Between February...
In recent years, “smart city” technologies have emerged that allow cities, counties, and other agencies to manage their infrastructure assets more effectively, make their services more accessible to the public, and allow citizens to interface with new web-and mobile-based alternative service providers. This project developed an innovative user-friendly web interface for local and state policymakers that tracks and displays information on the adoption of such technologies in California across the policing, transportation, and water and wastewater sectors for a comprehensive set of local...
In recent years, “smart city” technologies have emerged that allow cities, counties, and other agencies to manage their infrastructure assets more effectively, make their services more accessible to the public, and allow citizens to interface with new web- and mobile-based operators of alternative service providers. This project reviews the academic literature and other sources on potential strengths, weaknesses, and risks associated with smart city technologies. No dataset was found that measures the adoption of such technologies by government agencies. To address this gap, a methodology...
The increasing use of transportation network companies and delivery services has transformed the utilization of curb space, resulting in a lack of parking and contributing to congestion. No systematic method exists for identifying curb usage patterns, but emerging machine learning technologies and low-tech data sources, such as dashboard cameras mounted on vehicles that routinely travel the area, have the potential of monitoring curb usage. To demonstrate how video data can be used to recognize usage patterns, we conducted a case study on Bancroft Way in Berkeley, CA. The project collected...
We present here a vehicle-actuated traffic signal control scheme for a simple geometry of a diamond interchange. The scheme is guaranteed not to have blockage, to adjust automatically to changing flows and operate on a shorter mean cycle time than most fixed-time plans, at least during times of heavy traffic.
The Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) is an incident management program implemented by Caltrans, the California Highway Patrol and local partner agencies to quickly detect and assist disabled vehicles and reduce non-recurring congestion along the freeway during peak commute hours. The first FSP program was piloted in Los Angeles, and was later expanded to other regions by state legislation in 1991. As of June 2018, there were fourteen participating FSP Programs operating in California, deploying 318 tow trucks and covering over 1,725 (center-line) miles of congested California freeways. The...
In recent years, “smart city” information and communication technologies have proliferated. For local government agencies, procuring and introducing these technologies offers the possibility to manage infrastructure assets more effectively, plan for preventive maintenance, and disseminate schedules and information about transit and other services. Many of these technologies are deployed by private firms in the context of local regulations and government-sponsored incentives. In the transportation sector, examples of “smart city” technology services provided by private firms include:...
Urban planners are increasingly concerned about the sprawling suburban development in metropolitan areas around the world, which they often blame for growing traffic congestion and excessive highway investment needs. This dissertation seeks to shed light on this issue by studying the relationship between morning commute congestion and urban form. The causes and consequences of traffic congestion have been extensively studied in the economics and engineering literatures. Unfortunately, most conclusions have been drawn from very idealized models, which either fail to consider adequately the...
This dissertation presents a vehicle reidentification algorithm for consecutive detector stations on a freeway, whereby a vehicle measurement made at a downstream detector station is matched with the vehicle’s corresponding measurement at an upstream station. The algorithm should improve freeway surveillance by measuring the actual vehicle travel times; these are simply the differences in the times that each (matched) vehicle arrives to the upstream and downstream stations. Thus, it will be possible to quantify conditions between widely spaced detector stations rather than assuming that...
In the fall of 1966 a short course on ’’Urban Mass Transit Planning” was developed by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn with the assistance of the New York State Science and Technology Foundation and the cooperation of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. The course was presented both by the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn and by the Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering, University of California, and University of California Extension, in Asilomar, Calif.A set of course notes was written for that offering and reproduced in limited quantity. Presented herein is an expansion...
