Month: September 2018

Effects of Timetable Change on Job Accessibility

| David Levinson

Recent working paper:

Accessibility change between old and new timetables.
Accessibility change between old and new timetables.

Accessibility is often not a performance measure for transit services. This study is conducted following the introduction of new timetables which intended to improve passenger throughput for Sydney’s transit services, but resulted in major delays experienced by passengers thereafter. Accessibility at 30-minute travel threshold before and after the timetable change are calculated between 8 to 9 am, to measure accessibility benefits, if any, from the new timetable. The results show a lack of systematic improvement by the new table, and downgrade of accessibility on average. The overall person-weighted accessibility dropped by 3%, from 45,070 to 43,730, and 63.3% of the population’s access to jobs would be adversely affected after its implementation. This study advocates for the inclusion of accessibility metrics into transit performance measures to connect with people who use transit.

Towards a Transport Accessibility Manual

| David Levinson

Transport policy decision follow from application of rules and standards. To the dismay of many in the transport community, these standards often come from another time with different values, including US documents such as:

  • ITE’s Trip Generation Manual
  • AASHTO’s Green Book
  • TRB’s Highway Capacity Manualfinal_cbsa_35620

While those aren’t going to change overnight, new preferences can be documented and embedded if they too become standards.

One of the key problems is what to value when investing in transport or regulating land development. Readers of this blog will likely  prioritize accessibility — the ease of reaching valued destinations. This connects transport and land use, considering both how easy it is to move and where things are located. While many planners know how to measure this, many don’t, and all could benefit from standardizing application to best practice.

To that end, I think we need a working group to develop such a standard, which would clarify topics like how to measure, how to compute, how to present, and what to consider. Let me know if  you are interested, and I will add you to a mailing list to discuss this. I hope there can be a meeting at TRB in DC in January.

Transport Findings: A Prospectus

| David Levinson
I tweeted last weekend
which garnered many likes. But of course Twitter is no place to have a discussion like this. So
This is what I am thinking:
TransportFindings
  1. Journal Name: Transport Findings
  2. Open Access. Flat $50 fee payable on submission (with no guarantee of acceptance) and $50 payable on acceptance. This filters the cranks, covers limited typesetting, article charges, hosting, etc. See Scholastica website  for their costs, (the platform looks good for this) if I read it right, this price would more or less cover fixed costs if we had 50 articles per year. This handbook is also of interest
  3. Maximum word count of 1000 (including References). Maximum Figure count of 3, Table count of 3.
  4. The new journal would not be affiliated with existing journals (this creates confusion on the part of authors and reviewers).
  5. Peer Review by 1 Reviewer drawn from the Editorial Advisory Board. (We add to the EAB if we cannot find someone who can review the article). Everyone who has reviewed in the past 3 years stays on the EAB.  The Review should be done in 1 month. So while the Review is anonymous, the reviewers overall are all known.
  6. Articles must be either New Question, New Method, New Data, or New Finding (i.e. it can almost exactly replicate a previous study and find something different), or some combination of the above.
  7. The acceptance test is whether it satisfies the above and appears scientifically correct (no obvious mistakes/flaws) and replicable, and quality of English.
  8. The journal has Accept/Reject decisions only. (Obviously people can submit again if they want to change the manuscript, however NEW submission, NEW reviewer, NEW fee). Acceptance Letters can add some minor comments. No Revise & Resubmit.
  9. Scope: Findings in the broad field of transport
  10. All data must be publicly available if possible (goes to replicability, caveats for personally identifying information)
  11. No special issues, themes, or anything like that, the journal is basically just a list of peer-reviewed short articles in reverse chronological order.
  12. There is a standard template for article submission, (I would say a web form, but that can’t handle equations, figures, or tables well). something like
TITLE
AUTHORS (NAME, AFFILIATION, CONTACT)
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
1. QUESTION AND HYPOTHESES
2. METHODS AND DATA
3. FINDINGS
REFERENCES
No sections titled: Intro, No Lit Review, No Theory, No Discussion, No Conclusions

Comments on Twitter, I guess.

Now I am not thinking I should run this journal (I already have my hands full), but that it should exist. I am happy to help if someone has the energy to organize it. It should be fairly straight-forward and mostly self-organizing to the point of being self-sustaining, but it does need an initial investment of energy to get there.

Transport Research Association for NSW (TRANSW)

| David Levinson

image001What is TRANSW?

The Transport Research Association for NSW (TRANSW) is a new joint initiative of the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales (UNSW), University Technology, Sydney (UTS), and Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW). It aims to foster and support cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional transport research and practice. For more information, please visit transw.org.au. TRANSW will be launched this year and its Inaugural Symposium will be held in Sydney CBD on Thursday 15 November 2018. Please save the date!

Annual Symposium

The annual Symposium provides a platform for transport research students, academics, and practitioners to discuss relevant topics in transport. Research students will have the opportunity to showcase their research and attendees will have the opportunity to meet transport students, academics, and practitioners in an informal setting.

The Symposium will be organised each year by one of the participating universities. The Inaugural Symposium on 15 November 2018 is organised and sponsored by the University of Sydney and registration is available free of charge for researchers in transport from the three participating universities as well as for transport experts at Transport for NSW. Personal invitations will be sent by email on 15 October 2018.

Expression of interest to present (research students only)

We would like to invite research students (MPhil and PhD) from the participating universities to submit an expression of interest (EoI) to present at the Symposium on one of the themes (listed below) that are based on the strategic research directions of the Transport for NSW Research Hub.

For the EoI, please send an email with subject header “EoI” to info@transw.org.au before Tuesday 25 September 2018 and we will email you a personal invitation to submit an abstract (maximum 300 words) via our online webportal.

Symposium themes

  1. Future mobility
  • Traffic flow simulation, management and control
  • Travel demand forecasting and survey methods
  • Travel behaviour and values
  • Transport network modelling and optimisation
  • Scenario analysis
  1. Successful places
  • Integrated transport and urban planning
  • Land use
  1. Sustainability
  • Active travel and health
  • Public transport
  • Energy and emissions
  1. Technological drivers of change
  • Big data in transport
  • Impact of alternative-fuel and autonomous vehicles
  • Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS)
  1. Freight transport
  • Maritime and aviation
  • City logistics
  1. Safety and security
  • Traffic safety analysis and evaluation
  • Disaster planning and resilience
  1. Valuing wider benefits
  • Transport economics, pricing, and appraisal
  • Evaluation and benefits realisation of transport projects and programs
  • Transport business strategy

Important dates

15 September 2018

25 September 2018

30 September 2018

12 October 2018

15 October 2018

5 November 2018

15 November 2018

 Abstract submission opens (research students only)

Deadline for expression of interest (research students only)

Deadline for abstract submissions

Notification of acceptance of abstracts for presentation

Registration opens

Registration closes

Inaugural TRANSW Symposium

 

Symposium Committee

Emily Moylan

Taha Rashidi

Claudine Moutou

Paul Gaynor

 University of Sydney

University of NSW

University of Technology, Sydney

Transport for NSW

The Transportist: September 2018

| David Levinson
Welcome to the September 2018 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter.

Posts

Conferences

  • Save the date for the World Symposium on Transportation & Land Use Research in Portland, OR July 13-15, 2020

Jobs

News

Automated, Autonomous, Driverless, and Self-Driving Vehicles, and Semi-Autonomous Systems 

Shared Vehicles/Ride-sharing/Ride-hailing/Taxis/Car Sharing

Electric Vehicles [and Renewable Energy]

Human Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/etc

Human Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads

Transit

​Land Use/Architecture

Justice/Equity

Kerbs and Sidewalks

Retail, Freight, Waste, and Logistics

Technology History

Education

Isochrones and Maps

Aviation

Fantasy

 

Research & Data

by Us

by Others

Books

Elements of Access: Transport Planning for Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners. By David M. Levinson, Wes Marshall, Kay Axhausen.

When pushing the pedestrian button works and when it doesn’t | SMH

| David Levinson

Nigel Gladstone of The Sydney Morning Herald answers: When pushing the pedestrian button works and when it doesn’t.

(The answer is it doesn’t work in the CBD during the day).

My quote:

Monetizing the beg button

Professor David Levinson from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney said traffic signals in the city should be shifted to be more pedestrian friendly to encourage more walking.

“Traffic signals give priority to motor vehicles over pedestrians. This inequality undermines many of the stated goals of transport, health and environment policy,” Professor Levinson said.

“Sydney uses adaptive signals so that they’re designed to maximise the throughput for cars and so they’ll extend the green light for cars but that results in there being more ‘don’t walk’ time for pedestrians.”