Travel Behavior

Associations of Urban Environment Features with Hypertension and Blood Pressure Across 230 Latin American Cities

Avila-Palencia, I
Rodriguez, D
Miranda, J
Moore, K
Gouveia, N
Moran, M
Caiaffa, W
Roux, AV Diez
2022
Features of the urban physical environment may be linked to the development of high blood pressure, a leading risk factor for global burden of disease. We examined associations of urban physical environment features with hypertension and blood pressure measures in adults across 230 Latin American cities. In this cross-sectional study we used health, social, and built environment data from the SALud URBana en América Latina (SALURBAL) project. The individual-level outcomes were hypertension and levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The exposures were city and subcity built...

Impacts of Commute Trip Reduction Programs, Rail Station Area Built Environment Changes, and Ride-Hailing Services on Traveler Behavior

Li
Rodriguez, D
Montilla, M
Chatman, D
Chen, P
Yang, X
Winters, P
2022

This project consists of three related studies investigating strategies to address urban congestion: a) employer-based travel demand management strategies, b) improvement of transit station area built environments, and c) understanding the impacts of ride-hailing. Collectively, the three studies represent complementary strategies to address urban congestion. However, each of them focuses on a particular approach from managing demand side incentives to supply side service disruptions.

Comparing Effects of Euclidean Buffers and Network Buffers on Associations Between Built Environment and Transport Walking: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Li, J
Peterson, A
Auchincloss, AH
Hirsch, JA
Rodriguez, D
Melly, SJ
Moore, K
Roux, AV Diez
Sánchez, BN
2022

Transport walking has drawn growing interest due to its potential to increase levels of physical activities and reduce reliance on vehicles. While existing studies have compared built environment-health associations between Euclidean buffers and network buffers, no studies have systematically quantified the extent of bias in health effect estimates when exposures are measured in different buffers. Further, prior studies have done the comparisons focusing on only one or two geographic regions, limiting generalizability and restricting ability to test whether direction or magnitude of...

City-Level Travel Time and Individual Dietary Consumption in Latin American Cities: Results from the SALURBAL Study

Guimaraes, J
Acharya, B
Moore, K
López-Olmedo, N
Menezes, M
Rodriguez, D
Stern, D
Friche, A
Wang, X
Delclòs-Alió, X
Sarmiento, O
Cardoso, L
2022
There is limited empirical evidence on how travel time affects dietary patterns, and even less in Latin American cities (LACs). Using data from 181 LACs, we investigated whether longer travel times at the city level are associated with lower consumption of vegetables and higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and if this association differs by city size. Travel time was measured as the average city-level travel time during peak hours and city-level travel delay time was measured as the average increase in travel time due to congestion on the street network during peak hours...

Is City-Level Travel Time by Car Associated with Individual Obesity or Diabetes in Latin American Cities? Evidence from 178 Cities in the SALURBAL Project

Delclos-Alió, X
Rodríguez, D
Olmedo, N
Ferrer, C
Moore, K
Stern, D
Menezes, M
Cardoso, L
Wang, X
Guimaraes, J
Miranda, J
Sarmiento, O
2022
There is growing evidence that longer travel time by private car poses physical and mental risks. Individual-level obesity and diabetes, two of the main public health challenges in low- and middle-income contexts, could be associated to city-level travel times by car. We used individual obesity and diabetes data from national health surveys from individuals in 178 Latin American cities, compiled and harmonized by the SALURBAL project. We calculated city-level travel times by car using the Google Maps Distance Matrix API. We estimated associations between peak hour city-level travel time by...

Bicycle Use in Latin American Cities: Changes Over Time by Socio-Economic PositionBicycle Use in Latin American Cities: Changes Over Time by Socio-Economic Position

Avila-Palencia, I
Gouveia. N
Jáuregui, A
Mascolli, M
Rodriguez, D
Slovic, A
Sarmiento, O
2023

We aimed to examine utilitarian bicycle use among adults from 18 large Latin American cities and its association with socio-economic position (education and income) between 2008 and 2018. Data came from yearly cross-sectional surveys collected by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). A total of 77,765 survey respondents with complete data were used to estimate multilevel logistic regression models with city as random intercept and year as random slope. Individuals with high education and high-income levels had lower odds of using a bicycle compared with participants with lower...

Evaluating the Effects of a Classroom-based Bicycle Education Intervention on Bicycle Activity, Self-Efficacy, Personal Safety, Knowledge, and Mode Choice

Nachman, Elizabeth R.
Rodríguez, Daniel A.
2019

This study provides an evaluation of the impacts of classroom-based adult bicycle education on bicycling activity, confidence and competency self-perceptions while bicycling, knowledge of the bicycling rules of the road, and mode choice in a sample of residents of the San Francisco Bay Area in the US. Changes were measured with self-administered surveys completed before and six weeks after the course intervention. Self-reported data were validated using objective data collected using the Ride Report app. We used multivariable regression analyses to examine changes in self-...

Tracking the State and Behavior of People in Response to COVID-19 Through the Fusion of Multiple Longitudinal Data Streams

Bouzaghrane, MA
Obeid, H
Hayes, D
Chen, M
Li, M
Parker, M
Rodriguez, D
Frick, K
Sengupta, R
Walker, J
2023

The changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of comprehensively considering its impacts and considering changes over time. Most COVID-19 related research addresses narrowly focused research questions and is therefore limited in addressing the complexities created by the interrelated impacts of the pandemic. Such research generally makes use of only one of either (1) actively collected data such as surveys, or (2) passively collected data from sources such as mobile phones or financial transactions. So far, only one other study collects both active and passive...

Marked Crosswalks, Station Area Built Environments, and Transit Ridership: Associations Between Changes in 877 US TOD Stations, 2010–2018

Li, M
Rodriguez, D
2024
Transit ridership across the US has experienced a decline over the past decade. Researchers, policy-makers and advocates have suggested that transportation and land use policies be modified to encourage transit-friendly environments. Despite the importance of studying the relationship between built environment and transit use, previous research on this topic exhibits several limitations in terms of scope, resolution and robustness of research design, due to availability of built environment and ridership data. Using a historical marked crosswalk dataset generated from Google Street View along...

Early Pandemic Behaviors and the Role of Vaccines in Reversing Pandemic Mobility Trends: Evidence from a US Panel

Obeid, H
Anderson, M
Bouzaghrane, MA
Li, M
Parker, M
Hayes, D
Frick, K
Rodriguez, D
Chatman, D
Sengupta, R
Walker, J
2024
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted travel behavior and resulted in the emergence of new mobility trends. In this paper, we study the degree to which vaccines played a role in reversing pandemic-induced travel behaviors and contributed to a “return to normal.” Using five waves of original U.S.-based survey data combined with passive smartphone tracking data collected in 2020 and 2021, we show that in the early phases of the pandemic, the behavioral response of people in the United States was heterogeneous: individuals with low levels of concern about being infected with COVID-19 engaged in...