Travel Behavior

Local Option Transportation Taxes in the United States (Part One:

Goldman, Todd
Corbett, Sam
Wachs, Martin
2001

This study examines the extent to which states have devolved one of the most fundamental decisions in transportation policy—whether to use taxation powers to fund transportation improvements—to local and regional governments. The purpose of the study is to generate a baseline of knowledge on “local option transportation taxes” in all fifty states. We have examined the laws that states have used to authorize these taxes, the extent to which local areas have adopted them, and how the revenues are used and governed. This is not a study of local transportation finance in general. Local...

Financing Transportation in California: Strategies for Change (Final Draft)

Adams, Matthew
Hiatt, Rachel
Hill, Mary C.
Russo, Ryan
Wachs, Martin
Weinstein, Asha
2001

Quality of life in California depends in many ways on the freedom of people and goods to move safely from place to place when they want to do so, in a timely manner, at reasonable cost, and with reasonable choices among modes and routes of travel. However, our desire for mobility must be tempered by due concern for the natural and built environment, and like all aspects of public policy, the provision of mobility must be framed by realistic consideration of available financial resources. This report examines the system by which California raises money for transportation and assesses its...

Testing Wildfire Evacuation Strategies and Coordination Plans for Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Communities in California

Soga, Kenichi, PhD
Comfort, Louise, PhD
Li, Pengshun
Zhao, Bingyu, PhD
Lorusso, Paola
2024

In the event of a wildfire, government agencies need to make quick, well-informed decisions to safely evacuate people. Small communities, such as in Marin County, with a mix of residences and flammable vegetation in Wildland-Urban Interface zones tend to lack resources to conduct evacuation studies. Consequently, this study uses a framework of wildfire and traffic simulations to test the performance of potential evacuation strategies, including reducing the volume of evacuating vehicles through car-pooling, phasing evacuations by staggering evacuation times by zone, and prohibiting street...

Mission and Mix: A Study of the Changing Tasks and Staffing Requirements the California Department of Transportation

Jones, David W.
Taylor, Brian D.
1987

This study examines the organizational capabilities and staff skills that will be needed to execute the changing mission of the . California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). It is an engineering development study in the sense that it is concerned with the professional know-how that Caltrans will need in the future. It is, at the same time, a strategic planning study in the sense that strategic planning is the art of positioning organizations to both meet and make change.

Women and Cycling: A Case Study of the Use of San Francisco Bike Lanes

Deakin, Elizabeth
Bhamidi, Vidya
Funaki, Dorry
Colani, Tasha
2018

This paper presents a case study of the use of San Francisco bike lanes with a focus on women. Bike counts and intercept surveys of cyclists at three locations in San Francisco’s SoMa District were complemented by focus groups with cyclists, particularly women cyclists, and brief interviews with non-cyclists. Consistent with other US studies, we find that white men are disproportionately represented among the cyclists we observed, and that women bike less and bike shorter distances. However, at least in the SoMa sample, women are more likely to bike to work than men. Cyclists included...

Low-Income Student Bus Pass Pilot Project Evaluation: Final Report

McDonald, Noreen
Librera, Sally
Deakin, Elizabeth
Wachs, Martin
2003

In August 2002, AC Transit began offering free bus passes to low-income middle and high school students. At the same time, the agency reduced the cost of its monthly youth pass from $27 to $15. This dramatic reduction in costs for student riders resulted from a grassroots advocacy campaign that successfully focused local political attention on school transportation in an area where school busing had largely been eliminated for middle school and high school students. The creation of the program drew together state and local elected officials, youth advocates, schools, and transportation...

Research Synthesis for the California Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force

Grembek, Offer, PhD
Chen, Katherine
Taylor, Brian D., PhD
Hwang, Yu Hong
Fitch, Dillon, PhD
Anthoine, Sonia
Chen, Bingchu
Grover, Salvador
2020

This research synthesis consists of a set of white papers that jointly provide a review of research on the current practicefor setting speed limits and future opportunities to improve roadway safety. This synthesis was developed to inform thework of the Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force, which was formed in 2019 by the California State Transportation Agencyin response to California Assembly Bill 2363 (Friedman). The statutory goal of the Task Force is to develop a structured,coordinated process for early engagement of all parties to develop policies to reduce traffic fatalities to zero....

Lower and Upper Bounds for a Symmetric Multiple Depot, Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem

Rathinam, Sivakumar
Sengupta, Raja
2006

This paper extends the well known Held-Karp's lower bound available for a single Travelling Salesman Problem to the multiple depot case. The LP-relaxation of a symmetric multiple vehicle, multiple depot problem is shown to be lower bounded by an infinite family of bounds. Each lower bound can be computed in a tractable way using a matroid intersection algorithm. When the costs of travelling between any two locations satisfy triangle inequality, it is shown that there exists a 2-approximation algorithm for solving the multiple depot, multiple TSP. These results are useful in solving the...

Impacts of California's Graduated Licensing Law of 1998: An assessment by the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley of the effects of the law on fatal and injury crashes of 16 year-old drivers

Cooper, Douglas
Gillen, David
Atkins, Frank
2004

In July 1998 California changed its graduated driver licensing laws (GDL) for new drivers under the age of 18 to include restrictions on hours of driving, carrying teen-age passengers, and requiring more adult supervised driving practice. With fatal and injury crash data from California's Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System, this study, sponsored by the California State Automobile Association, used standard regression analysis as well as the Bai-Perron stochastic multiple structural break model to determine the effect of the law on teen-age passengers and crash rates of 16 year-old...

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Mobility Needs of an Aging Population in Contra Costa County

Ragland, David R, PhD, MPH
Schor, Glenn, PhD, MPH
Felschundneff, Grace
2020

In 2018, SafeTREC conducted a survey on transportation mobility issues among older adults in California. A follow-up survey planned for 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic changed life for all residents, was redesigned to assess mobility needs and changes during the Shelter-in-Place order and focused on COVID-19 impacts. Results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Shelter-in-Place order have had a major impact on senior mobility. Communications for many were restricted to phone, email, texts, social media and video chats. Among those with a medical problem, just over 60%...