2010-06-02 – David Levinson, Transportist

Review of Transit Apps in NY Times Phone Smart – With Transit Map Apps, No Refolding Required
Among those interviewed:

Brendan Nee, one of AnyStop’s developers, said the app was best suited to those who already knew their routes, and wanted to optimize the timing of their journeys. In that respect, longer-term visitors and commuters will find it more useful than tourists.

Brendan is one of my former students before defecting to the People’s Republic of Berkeley. We wrote the working paper:
Nee, Brendan and David Levinson (2004) Value of Information for Transit Riders. back before there was real-time mobile information of any usefulness.
Brendan also orchestrated the data collection for the study that became Zhang, Lei and David Levinson (2008) Determinants of Route Choice and the Value of Traveler Information: A Field Experiment. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2086:81-92.
So exposure to academic research can lead to marketable products.

Recent working paper

Huang, Arthur and Levinson, David, (2010), Modeling the Minneapolis Skyway Network, No 000075, Working Papers, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.

Adopting an agent-based approach, this paper explores the topological evolution of the Minneapolis Skyway System from a microscopic perspective. Under a decentralized decision-making mechanism, skyway segments are built by self-interested building owners. We measure the accessibility for the blocks from 1962 to 2002 using the size of office space in each block as an indicator of business opportunities. By building skyway segments, building owners desire to increase their buildings’ value of accessibility, and thus potential business revenue. The skyway network in equilibrium generated from the agent model displays similarity to the actual skyway system. The network topology is evaluated by multiple centrality measures (e.g., degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality) and a measure of road contiguity, roadness. Sensitivity tests such parameters as distance decay parameter and construction cost per unit length of segments are performed. Our results disclose that the accessibility- based agent model can provide unique insights for the dynamics of the skyway network growth.