How Differences in Roadways Affect School Travel Safety

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Three children 14 and younger are killed daily in the United States and almost 500 more are injured in traffic crashes, often while traveling to or from school. Previous studies examine the effect of built environmental characteristics on school travel safety, but are limited. I simultaneously evaluate the impact of street segment–level and neighborhood-level design characteristics on crashes involving elementary school–aged child pedestrians during school travel time around 78 elementary schools in Austin (TX). I find that more school travel–related collisions happen on highways and interstates and arterial roads and where there are traffic-generating land uses and transit stops. Fewer crashes occur on local roads and when there are connected sidewalks. Unfortunately, I do not consider microlevel features of the built environment; more-over, the crash data may include children's crashes not related to school travel.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should collaborate with a wide variety of agencies and organizations at different levels of government as well as with parents and neighborhood residents to create pedestrian-friendly schools that reduce or overcome current barriers to safe, human-powered school travel. Planners should address both current school safety problems at existing schools and help ensure better school siting and complementary planning and transportation decisions in the future.     

The first Chicago area transportation study projections and plans for metropolitan Chicago in retrospect

This paper is an evaluation of the first Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS) projections and plans for metropolitan Chicago. The CATS work was completed during 1956 to 1962, and the projection year was 1980. The CATS forecasts of population and employment were much too high, but it turned out that the travel demand forecasts were reasonably accurate because offsetting prediction errors were made. Partly because vehicle ownership was underpredicted, CATS did not fully anticipate the increase in per capita travel demand. The CATS transportation plan derived from the predictions included an elaborate highway plan, but no part of this plan has been built as of 1987. A more modest, but still rather extensive, mass transit plan was proposed. This plan was essentially implemented. Construction of the final part of the (revised) mass transit plan is now underway. The mass transit plan had the support of the City of Chicago municipal government and funding from the US federal government. The highway plan had neither.     

Polycentrism as a sustainable development strategy: empirical analysis from the state of Maryland

We present in this paper an analysis of economic centers and their role in shaping employment development patterns and travel behavior in the state of Maryland. We begin by identifying 23 economic centers in the Baltimore-Washington region. We then examine these centers first in their role as centers of economic activity and then in their role as nodes in the state’s transportation system. Finally, we identify the commute sheds of each center, for multiple modes of travel and travel times, and examine jobs–housing balance within these various commute sheds. We find that Maryland’s economic centers not only promote agglomerative economies and thus facilitate economic growth; they also generate a disproportionate number of trips and promote transit ridership. These results provide empirical support for policies that promote polycentric urban development, and especially policies that promote polycentric employment development. Further, they suggest that polycentrism as a sustainable development strategy requires careful coordination of regional transportation systems designed to balance jobs and housing within a center’s transit commute shed. Based on these findings we recommend that the Maryland state development plan, and regional sustainable communities plans across the nation, encourage the concentration of employment within economic centers and encourage housing development within the transit commute sheds of those centers.     

Metropolitan Transportation Planning: Lessons From the Past,Institutions for the Future

Problem, research strategy, and findings: There are more than 400 U.S. metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) overseeing multiple transportation projects totaling billions of dollars, yet these crucial organizations and their history and current role are generally unknown or confusing to many planning practitioners and scholars. MPOs face major challenges in developing meaningful long-range regional transportation plans, challenges rooted in their history that planners should understand as they grapple with metropolitan planning efforts. MPOs may approve projects and their funding, but disparate agencies and often competitive local governments control budgets and actually build projects. MPOs, moreover, do not fully represent all regional interests and have no control over the local land use decisions that would support less autocentric communities and human-powered modes. I provide a metareview of the history of regional transportation planning and the MPOs responsible for it, describing U.S. metropolitan transportation planning from the early 20th century. Federal legislation in the 1960s first suggested a regional forum for conversations about metropolitan transportation. Federal legislation in subsequent decades made incremental if incomplete progress toward creating a meaningful regional forum, adapting institutions and practices to increase stakeholder involvement as well as the scope of transport planning, yet MPOs have multiple limitations that planners can address.

Takeaway for practice: History suggests that MPOs can be a force for regional change. Planners and policymakers could anchor future reforms to MPOs’ existing legal and administrative frameworks. Planners should revisit the membership and voting structures of MPO boards to ensure better stakeholder representation and permit some MPOs to generate and direct transportation funds at the local level.     

From the Editors

Problem: Reducing gasoline consumption could sharply curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Ongoing research seeks to document factors associated with green travel behavior, like walking and transit use.

Purpose: We seek to determine whether green beliefs and values are associated with green travel behavior. We measure whether residents of communities with environmentalist attributes drive less, consume less gasoline, and are more likely to commute by private vehicle. We explore several channels through which green beliefs and values may affect travel behavior and vice versa.

Methods: We drew our demographic, transportation, and built environment data from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing including the Public Use Microdata Sample and the 2001 National Household Travel Survey, and constructed our indicators of green ideology using voting records, political party membership, and data on hybrid auto ownership. We estimated ordinary least squares regression and linear probability models using both individual households and small areas as units of analysis.

Results and conclusions: We find green ideology is associated with green travel behavior. People with green values are more likely than others to be located in communities with high population densities and proximity to city centers and rail transit stations, which are attributes conducive to environmentally friendly travel. We also find that residents of green communities engage in more sustainable travel than residents of other communities, even controlling for demographics and the effects of the built environment. Green ideology may cause green travel behavior because greens derive utility from conservation or because greens locate in, or create, areas with characteristics that promote sustainable travel. We also discuss the possibility that green travel behavior may cause green beliefs.

Takeaway for practice: If greens self-select into dense, central, and transit-friendly areas, the demand for these characteristics may rise if green consciousness does. Alternatively, if these characteristics cause green consciousness, their promotion promises to increase green behavior. The implications of our finding that residents of green communities engage in more sustainable travel patterns than others depends on the causal mechanism at work. If greens conserve because they derive utility from it, then environmental education and persuasion may bring about more sustainable travel. Alternatively, if green travel behavior causes green beliefs, it is possible that attracting more travelers to alternate modes and reducing vehicle miles traveled may increase environmental consciousness, which may in turn promote other types of pro-environment behavior.

Research support: None.     

A Broader Context for Land Use and Travel Behavior,and a Research Agenda

Problem: Planning studies of land use and travel behavior focus on regression analysis of travel as a function of traveler demographics and land use near study subjects’ residences. Methodological debates have tended to focus almost exclusively on the possibility that persons choose their residence based on how they wish to travel. This longer view steps back from the confines of the regression-based literature to explain the historical roots, methods, and results of the literature, and to assess how the land use–travel literature must be transformed to be more relevant to planning.

Purpose: There are many summaries and meta-analyses of the impact of land use on travel. The goal here is not to understand how we might better specify a regression or summarize the results of past studies, but rather to explain how a literature that has become fundamental to planning scholarship is failing to be sufficiently planning focused. At the same time, this longer view describes how the literature can be transformed to address the planning challenges of today and tomorrow.

Methods: This longer view summarizes over 100 articles, covering transportation methods from the dawn of the interstate highway era to topics that include program evaluation, land development, and cognitive aspects of travel behavior. The primary focus is on the land use and travel literature, but the review and analysis is broad ranging and places the literature and its challenges within the broader context of recent developments in the social sciences, planning, policy, and electronic data collection.

Results and conclusions: This longer view elucidates three research frontiers that will be necessary to move the land use–travel literature forward. First, behavioral models of land use and travel must expand to consider how land is developed, how places are planned, and how cities are built. Second, the land use–travel literature should build a robust retrospective program evaluation tradition, which is currently almost completely absent in a scholarly field dominated by cross-sectional hypothesis tests and forecasting models. Third, economic social welfare analysis must be carefully researched, including questions of preferences for neighborhood types and whether such preferences are fixed or malleable.

Takeaway for practice: Planning is about city building, and the literature and practice on land use and travel behavior should adapt to better support city building. This requires both a serious commitment to social science research and planning's characteristically broad view of context, problem, and place. In an era of climate change, and amidst debates about sustainability, the land use–travel literature must more aggressively examine the process of plans and place making, evaluate the increasingly innovative transportation policies being implemented at the local level, and develop methods that allow more informed discussion about the costs and benefits of transportation policies.

Research support: None.     

Redefining Car Access

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Ride-hail services such as Uber and Lyft have the potential to redefine car access and travel, but unclear associations with the built environment and resident characteristics have undermined planners’ abilities to make informed decisions. I use detailed data of 6.3 million Lyft trips in Los Angeles (CA) to examine the associations between Lyft travel, the built environment, and neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics. Although data are limited to one American city, findings present a comprehensive understanding of Lyft use across an array of built environments. I find that, far from being limited to dense urban cores, Lyft provides automobility in suburban and even rural neighborhoods. Findings suggest that unlike taxis, ride-hailing does not exclude low-income neighborhoods and communities. Instead, Lyft provides car access in neighborhoods where its closest substitute, the household car, is scarcest. Most travelers use ride-hailing to fill an occasional rather than regular travel need, but a small share of users made the most ride-hail trips. Travelers without smartphones or bank accounts, however, may be excluded from ride-hailing.

Takeaway for practice: Widespread Lyft use demonstrates that planners should anticipate ride-hailing not just in urban centers but across a wide array of built environments. Negative associations between Lyft travel and off-street parking suggest that ride-hailing can provide new modal options where parking is already constrained or where new parking restrictions are introduced. Planners should work with communities and transit agencies to adopt strategies or enter partnerships that extend ride-hail, or other technology-enabled mobility services, to travelers without smartphones or bank accounts.     

The Growing Role of Transportation Funding in Regional Habitat Conservation Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Regional conservation initiatives struggle to meet funding needs when complying with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1996 and need money early to pay for required planning and to acquire land to mitigate the impact of development. Transportation agencies struggle to comply with the ESA and have increasingly been willing to fund regional habitat conservation plans (RHCPs) to do so. We review documents from 22 RHCPs and interview representatives of 16 RHCPs to understand how transportation agencies have contributed to funding RHCPs. We find that transportation agencies mitigate their impacts and provide early and consistent financing to facilitate the planning process, help RHCPs establish initial conservation preserves, and allow RHCPs to capitalize on lower land prices during downturns in the development market. We only sample RHCPs in a few states, however, and these examples may not comply with laws in others. Many of the cases studied are recent; time is needed to assess their long-term success. We recommend further study to assess applications to sectors beyond transportation and beyond the areas we studied.

Takeaway for practice: Transportation agencies have struggled to meet environmental requirements and habitat conservation agencies have typically considered transportation agencies threats to the environment. Where adversarial relationships can be overcome, partnerships between transportation and conservation programs can effectively finance habitat conservation while facilitating capital investments in transportation systems.     

The planned destruction of Chinatowns in the United States and Canada since c.1900

ABSTRACT

Unlike virtually all other old immigrant enclaves in North American cities, the historic downtown Chinatowns of big cities in the United States and Canada largely survive, though not for lack of plans to destroy them. City Beautiful era plans, development projects, and other public and private interventions displaced or sought to eradicate Chinatowns, from Los Angeles to Victoria to Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. Urban renewal era projects destroyed large portions of many Chinatowns, and some entirely. This article traces these broad patterns and trends of planned and realized destruction and preservation across 15 of the major cities in twentieth-century Canada and the United States.     

美国双城地区购物中心的发展与规划

明尼苏达州双城地区是美国中西部最大的都市区之一,购物中心的发展在这里有比较特殊的历史。本文介绍双城地区购物中心的发展历史与现状（包括购物中心的种类、分布和发展挑战）,并探讨了购物中心的规划。购物中心的规划与城市管治的模式关系密切。和美国很多其他都市区一样,双城地区的城市管治有着显著的分散化、分权化和自由化的特征。同时,都市区内各个城市之间彼此独立但又相互合作,有专门的组织（譬如大都市理事会）负责规划、协调都市区的整体发展。在研究购物中心的规划时,文章首先介绍购物中心的规划过程、规划的主要参与者及资金来源;然后分析了公众参与、城市发展规划（特别是土地利用规划和交通规划）和区域经济政策（特别是《财政分税法案》）对购物中心发展的影响。毫无疑问,购物中心对城市的发展也有重要影响。最后,文章还简要讨论了双城地区购物中心的发展对城市人口分布以及城市交通发展的影响。     

Trade Uber for the Bus?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Few studies have examined ride-hail users’ individual preferences between ride-hail and transit. Based on a survey of ride-hail users in the Philadelphia (PA) region, I examine who uses ride-hail and investigate ride-hail users’ willingness to use ride-hail versus transit. My results suggest that more than one-quarter of respondents replaced transit with ride-hail in their last ride-hail trips. Mixed logit regression analysis based on stated preference choice experiments indicate that higher-income respondents and respondents over 30?years old are increasingly willing to choose ride-hail over transit, even though their actual ride-hail usage is lower than that among lower-income and younger respondents. Results also show that female respondents are more willing to choose ride-hail over transit than male respondents and less frequent transit users are more likely to choose ride-hail than frequent transit users. Higher cost and longer trip duration are significant deterrents for travel by either mode. Respondents consider the time spent on walking to and from transit more burdensome than in-vehicle travel time and wait time for transit and ride-hail. They consider waiting for ride-hail less burdensome than waiting for transit. Survey sampling and design limitations provide lessons for future ride-hail studies.

Takeaway for practice: Practitioners should ensure convenient, affordable travel options for lower-income residents, who are more frequent but less willing ride-hail users than higher-income residents. Female respondents’ safety concerns about transit should urge transit agencies to recognize female transit riders’ travel needs. The relationship between age and willingness to use ride-hail reminds planners to anticipate greater substitution of ride-hail for transit as the more tech-savvy generation starts entering their 30s. Last, fare reduction alone may not be enough to prompt ride-hail users to switch to transit. Service improvements that shorten the overall trip duration are imperative to make transit more attractive.     

Toward a Richer Picture of the Mobility Needs of Older Americans

Problem, research strategy, and findings: People older than 65 are the most rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, yet our cities and transportation systems are not age friendly. Low-income, minority, older adults residing in inner-city neighborhoods are largely transit dependent, rely significantly on walking for transportation, and thus have particular mobility needs. We used a mixed-methods approach that drew information from the California Household Travel Survey but also from direct interaction (through focus groups, interviews, and neighborhood walking audits) with 81 low-income, inner city–living older adults to understand their travel patterns and mobility challenges and needs. We find that despite some positive mobility indicators in the inner city (mixed-use environment, frequent bus service, and short travel distances), these elders face significant mobility challenges because of a deteriorated built environment, heavy traffic, homelessness, and crime. A limitation of this research is that the small sample did not allow the study of possible gender or race/ethnicity differentiation in the travel patterns and needs of older adults.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should not rely only on information from the census and other aggregate data sources to understand the mobility needs of older adults but should complement this information with direct interaction with the communities for which they are planning. Although some social problems limiting the mobility of older adults are difficult to tackle, environmental and streetscape improvements can significantly enhance their mobility.     

Building Water-Efficient Cities

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Cities across the United States must have reliable and consistent water supplies to support public health, promote economic growth, and protect the environment. The way we build and design cities influences water consumption patterns; however, the most significant factors of the built environment and their associations with water use are not well explored. In this study we seek to reveal the ways in which characteristics of the built environment influence urban water use. We analyze spatially detailed data sets of water use and the built environment in four different cities in the western United States. Our findings indicate the built environment in these cities has a substantial influence on single-family residential water use. Specifically, we find that vegetated land cover, housing density, and lot size are influential determinants of water use. However, we did find variation in the strength and significance of these variables between the cities, and there remains a need for city-specific analyses.

Takeaway for practice: The results indicate even small changes to design and permitting for single-family residential properties can produce substantial cumulative water savings for cities. Based on our findings, we propose planning and design strategies such as form-based codes, zoning, and municipal ordinances to help growing cities reduce their water use. We present estimates of the water conservation impacts these strategies might achieve and provide specific examples of planning documents, municipal ordinances, and land use plans some cities are already using to reduce their water use. Overall, our study provides empirical evidence to further support integrating land use planning and water management.     

Book Reviews and Notes

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Planners need a clear understanding of what influences walking and bicycling behavior to develop effective strategies to increase use of those modes. Transportation practitioners have largely focused on infrastructure and the built environment, although researchers have found that attitudes are also very important. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) suggests that behavior such as active transportation results from a mixture of personal attitudes toward these modes, subjective norms, and a person's perceived behavioral control, giving us a way to conceptualize psychological factors that influence travel behavior. Using data from a random phone survey of three neighborhoods in Portland (OR), we test whether TPB explains the possible causal relationships among the built environment, socio-demographics, and active transportation. We find that both the built environment and demographics influence cycling and walking, although indirectly, by influencing attitudes and perceived behavioral control. Moreover, it is important to look at bicycle-specific infrastructure separately from other environmental characteristics. For example, relatively flat neighborhoods with well-connected, low-traffic streets and multiple destinations were associated with more frequent bicycling, but striped bike lanes were not.

Takeaway for practice: Practitioners cannot rely solely on changing the environment to increase bicycling. Programs such as public events and individualized marketing that influence attitudes may be necessary to reinforce positive environmental features. This is particularly true for women and older adults. Moreover, adding bike lanes to an otherwise poor bicycling environment may not increase bicycling in any significant way.     

Complementary Pricing and Land Use Policies: Does It Lead to Higher Transit Use?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: A shift toward more sustainable transportation requires both adequate pricing of externalities from driving and supportive land use policies. However, proponents of each approach often under-estimate the complementarity and potential synergy between them. This study investigates the interaction effects between gasoline prices and land use (policy) variables using a panel dataset of transit ridership in 67 urbanized areas between 2002 and 2010. We found that while doubling the average gasoline price would increase transit ridership by 8.4% in an urbanized area with mean density and no regional containment policy, in areas with slightly higher density and a regional containment policy, the impact of higher gasoline prices would rise to 21%. In communities that had adopted a package of smart growth land use options, the impact of higher gasoline prices on transit use is even greater.

Takeaway for practice: Pricing schemes will be more effective where alternatives to automobility and supportive land use policies exist. The impacts of urban form on travel behavior are also strengthened when driving externalities are correctly priced. Planners and policymakers should take advantage of the complementarity between pricing and land use planning approaches by implementing policies in combined and well-coordinated ways.     

The built environment,transportation policy,and population health: a comparison of two cities

This preliminary study assesses the relationship between active transportation, the built environment, and population perceived health in two comparable cities in the Southeastern United States at different stages of improving infrastructure for active commuting. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey data from 2006 to 2012 were analyzed for Charlotte, NC, and Jacksonville, FL. The annual difference between the percentage of Charlotte respondents rating physical health as good compared to Jacksonville’s increased at a rate of 13% based on an exponential growth regression model (p = 0.02). Supportive urban and transportation policies aimed at facilitating healthy behaviors are associated with healthier communities.     

Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon took its initial growth as a port and regional metropolis serving the Columbia River basin and the Pacific Northwest. It remains a regional transportation, finance, and service center, to which has been added a substantial electronics industry. The city and its region are best known for innovative policy initiatives dealing with urban planning, regionalism, growth management, and community development and revitalization. The city-region is served by the only elected metropolitan government in the United States. That government, Metro, has authority to structure regional spatial planning and also administers an urban growth boundary to maintain compact and efficient urban form. Development within the City of Portland has been directed since the 1970s by an alliance of downtown business interests and older middle class neighborhoods that have benefitted from a strong urban core. Much of city policy and grassroots effort from the 1990s has focused on the challenge of extending the benefits of this alliance to lower-income neighborhoods through community development and affordable housing efforts.     

Planning and Social Media: A Case Study of Public Transit and Stigma on Twitter

Problem, research strategy, and findings: How media portray public transit services can affect the way voters and stakeholders think about future transit investments. In this study, I examine social media content about public transit from a large sample of Twitter comments, finding that they reflect more negative sentiments about public transit than do the comments about most other public services, and include more negative material about transit patrons. However, transit agencies may be able to influence the tone of those comments through the way they engage with social media. Transit agencies that respond directly to questions, concerns, and comments of other social media users, as opposed to merely “blasting” announcements, have more positive statements about all aspects of services and fewer slurs directed at patrons, independent of actual service quality. The interaction does not have to be customer oriented. Agencies using Twitter to chat with users about their experiences or new service also have statistically significantly more positive sentiments expressed about them on social media. This study's limitations are that it covers only one social media outlet, does not cover all transit agencies, and cannot fully control for differences in transit agency service.

Takeaway for practice: Planners committed to a stronger role for public transit in developing sustainable and equitable cities have a stake in the social media strategy of public transit agencies; moreover, they should not let racial and sexist slurs about patrons dominate feeds. Planners should encourage interactive social media strategies. Even agencies that only tweet interactively a few times a day seem to have more civil discussions surrounding their agencies and announcements on Twitter than agencies that use their feed only to blast service announcements.     

Neighborhood Air Quality,Respiratory Health,and Vulnerable Populations in Compact and Sprawled Regions

Problem: Recently, public health researchers have argued that infill development and sprawl reduction may improve respiratory outcomes for urban residents, largely by reducing vehicle travel and its attendant mobile-source emissions. But infill can also increase the number of residents exposed to poor air quality within central cities. Aside from emissions studies, planners have little information on the connections between urban form, ambient pollutant levels, and human exposures or how infill changes these.

Purpose: We examined neighborhood exposures in 80 metropolitan areas in the United States to address whether neighborhood-level air quality outcomes are better in compact regions than in sprawled regions.

Methods: We used multilevel regression models to find the empirical relationship between a measure of regional urban form and neighborhood air quality outcomes.

Results and conclusions: Ozone concentrations are significantly lower in compact regions, but ozone exposures in neighborhoods are higher in compact regions. Fine particulate concentrations do not correlate significantly with regional compactness, but fine particulate exposures in neighborhoods are also higher in compact regions. Exposures to both ozone and fine particulates are also higher in neighborhoods with high proportions of African Americans, Asian ethnic minorities, and poor households.

Takeaway for practice: Compact development and infill do not solve air quality problems in all regions or for all residents of a given region. Planners should take differences in neighborhood air quality and human exposure into account when planning for new compact developments rather than just focusing on emissions reductions.

Research support: This project was supported by a grant from the ShenAir Institute at James Madison University and by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.     

Foundations of Real Estate Development Financing: A Guide to Public–Private Partnerships,Arthur C. Nelson

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Advocates of accessibility as a transportation performance metric often assert that it requires higher density. Conversely, traditional transportation planning methods have valued speed per se as an indicator of success in transportation. In examining these claims, we make two methodological innovations. The first is a new intermetropolitan gravity-based accessibility metric. Second, we decompose the impact of density on accessibility to highlight the distinct opposing influences of speed and proximity in a manner that illustrates different families of relationships between these two factors. This reveals that denser metropolitan regions have slower travel speeds but greater origin-destination proximity. The former effect tends to degrade accessibility while the latter tends to enhance it. Despite theoretical reasons to expect that the speed effect dominates, results suggest that the proximity effect dominates, rendering the denser metropolitan areas more accessible.

Takeaway for practice: Having destinations nearby, as when densities are high, offers benefits even when the associated congestion slows traffic. Where land use policy frequently seeks to support low-development densities in part in an attempt to maintain travel speeds and forestall traffic congestion, our findings suggest that compact development can often improve transportation outcomes.

Research support: Environmental Protection Agency project RD-83334901-0, FHWA Cooperative Agreement Number: DTFH61-07-H-00037, and the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan.