Travel Behavior

Multi-Lane Hybrid Traffic Flow Model: Quantifying the Impacts of Lane-Changing Maneuvers on Traffic Flow

Laval, Jorge A.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
2004

A multi-lane traffic flow model realistically captures the disruptive effects of lane- changing vehicles by recognizing their limited ability to accelerate. While they accelerate, these vehicles create voids in the traffic stream that affect its character. Bounded acceleration explains two features of freeway traffic streams: the capacity drop of freeway bottlenecks, and the quantitative relation between the discharge rate of moving bottlenecks and bottleneck speed. The model com- bines a multilane kinematic wave module for the traffic stream, with a detailed constrained-motion model to...

An Analysis of Air Passenger Average Trip Lengths and Fare Levels in US Domestic Markets

Huang, Sheng-Chen Alex
2000

At a national level it is common to express the amount of air travel in terms of the number of revenue passenger miles flown or the number of enplaned passengers. This provides a way to resolve the difficulty of how to aggregate measures of air travel in many different markets of many different distances. However, information about the distribution of trip lengths is lost in the process. This information is of interest for a number of reasons. The type of aircraft that is most appropriate for different markets depends on the distances involved. The length of the trip is also likely to...

Riding First Class: Impacts of Silicon Valley Shuttles on Commute & Residential Location Choice

Dai, Danielle
Weinzimmer, David
2014

Employer-provided private shuttles have become a prominent part of the transportation network between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. As the Bay Area plans for transportation investments to meet sustainability goals and accommodate future population and employment growth, an understanding of the role of regional commuter shuttles becomes increasingly important. This study investigates the impacts of private shuttles on commute mode and residential location choice by conducting a travel time comparison and surveying shuttle riders. The authors find that the provision of shuttles and...

A Brief History of Transportation Policies and Institutions

Deakin, Elizabeth
2021

A Brief History of Transportation Policy and Institutions presents the development of transportation systems in the United States, with particular attention to California. The review includes key technological advances in transportation and the institutions that were developed to implement them. The paper also discusses the problem of organizational inertia and the issues associated with changing organizational culture to better reflect the problems of the day. Review of Statewide Transportation Plans for California reviews the most recently adopted CTP and other key transportation plans...

Spatial Models of Morning Commute Consistent with Realistic Traffic Behavior

Lago, Alejandro
2003

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...

Are shelters in place? Mapping the distribution of transit amenities via a bus-stop census of San Francisco

Moran, Marcel E
2022

Transit stops serve as crucial components of journeys for riders, but their condition is often left out of equity considerations. Two important empirical questions are what stop amenities, such as places to sit, clear sign age, shelters for inclement weather, and unobstructed curbs are present, and how are they distributed across systems, which may reveal neighborhood or route-specific disparities. San Francisco, CA represents an ideal case for which to pursue this question, given it maintains a ‘transit first’ policy directive that mandates public space prioritize transit over private...

A Revealed Preference Methodology to Evaluate Regret Minimization with Challenging Choice Sets: A Wildfire Evacuation Case Study

Wong, Stephen D
Chorus, Caspar G
Shaheen, Susan A
Walker, Joan L
2020

Regret is often experienced for difficult, important, and accountable choices. Consequently, we hypothesize that random regret minimization (RRM) may better describe evacuation behavior than traditional random utility maximization (RUM). However, in many travel related contexts, such as evacuation departure timing, specifying choice sets can be challenging due to unknown attribute levels and near-endless alternatives, for example. This has implications especially for estimating RRM models, which calculates attribute-level regret via pairwise comparison of attributes across all alternatives...

Authorized Vehicles Only: Police, parking, and pedestrian access in New York City

Moran, Marcel E
2023

Sidewalks and crosswalks serve little purpose for pedestrians if they are routinely obstructed by automobiles. In New York City, local journalists and transportation advocates have drawn attention to this occurring, particularly in certain settings. Specifically, there is consistent photographic evidence that streets surrounding New York Police Department (hereafter, NYPD) offices are replete with cars parked on the sidewalk and within crosswalks. Though clearly problematic for pedestrians and abutting residents and local businesses, this type of parking behavior has not been studied...

Overview of Shared Mobility

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Cohen, Adam
2018

Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other travel mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to have short-term access to a transportation mode on an as-needed basis (1). Shared mobility includes various service models and transportation modes that meet diverse traveler needs. Shared mobility can include roundtrip services (vehicle, bicycle, or other travel mode is returned to its origin); one-way station-based services (vehicle, bicycle, or other mode is returned to a different designated station location); and one-way free-floating services (...

Impacts of Shared Mobility: Pooling

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Cohen, Adam
2018

Shared-ride services—transportation modes that allow riders to share a ride to a common destination—include various forms of ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling); ridesplitting and taxisplitting; and microtransit. With the proliferation of smartphones and mobile Internet, it has become more convenient to share rides. Shared-ride services are having a transformative impact on many global cities by increasing vehicle occupancy through smartphone apps. Empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that pooling provides numerous benefits, such as reductions in energy consumption and emissions...