Transportist: December 2020

| David Levinson

Welcome to the latest issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the  transportist.org or on Twitter. 

Books:

Transport Access Manual: A Guide for Measuring Connection between People and Places 

Now available: Transport Access Manual: A Guide for Measuring Connection between People and Places by The Committee of the Transport Access Manual.   (Download PDF) (Paper)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Transport Access Manual cover
Transport Access Manual: A Guide for Measuring Connection between People and Places by The Committee for the Transport Access Manual.   (Download PDF) (Paper)

This Manual is a guide for quantifying and evaluating access for anybody interested in truly understanding how to measure the performance of transport and land use configurations. It contains enough to help transport and planning professionals achieve a more comprehensive look at their city or region than traditional transport analysis allows. It provides a point of entry for interested members of the public as well as practitioners by being organized in a logical and straightforward way.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. CONCEPTS

  1. Access and Mobility: Clearing Up the Confusion
  2. Fundamental Model of Access
  3. Access, Movement, and Place
  4. Access and Equity
  5. Strategies for Access
  6. Roadmap for Using this Manual

2. USES

  1. Baseline Trend Analysis
  2. Performance Monitoring
  3. Performance Standards
  4. Goals
  5. Transport Project Evaluation
  6. Land Use Change Evaluation
  7. Metrics for Disadvantaged Populations
  8. Transport Equity Analysis
  9. Financial Costs of Access
  10. Predictor of Travel Behavior

3. MEASURES

  1. Primal Measures: Opportunity-Denominated Access
  2. Dual Measures: Time-Denominated Access

4. CALCULATIONS

  1. Identify Objectives
  2. Stratify Analysis
  3. Determine Travel Costs
  4. Determine Opportunities at Destinations
  5. Accumulate Opportunities Reachable from Origins
  6. Assess Competitive Access
  7. Calculate Dual Access
  8. Summarize Measures
  9. Visualize Results

5. BIASES

  1. Edge Effects
  2. Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP)
  3. Modifiable Temporal Unit Problem (MTUP)
  4. Starting Point Effects
  5. Starting Time Effects

6. DATA

  1. People
  2. Places
  3. Movement
  4. Time
  5. Financial

7. FUTURES

  1. New and Emerging Travel Modes
  2. Equity of Future Technologies
  3. Conclusions

APPENDICES

A. CONSEQUENCES

  1. TransportModeling
  2. EconomicGeographyModeling
  3. Location of Activities and Investments
  4. Real Estate Prices
  5. Spatial Mechanisms
  6. Productivity: the Agglomeration Effect
  7. Wages
  8. Employment Rates
  9. Effects on Gross Domestic Product

B. PLANNING

  1. Benefits of Access Planning
  2. Audience for Access Metrics
  3. Reflective of Planning Goals
  4. Improving the Adoption of Access Tools

C. SELECTION

  1. Components
  2. Classification and Assessment
  3. Selection of Measures

D. TOOLS

  1. Tools to Quantify and Visualize Access
  2. Access-Focused Scenario Planning Software

E. SAMPLE R SCRIPT FOR DUAL ACCESS CALCULATION

F. MANAGING

  1. Project Team and Stakeholders
  2. Budget and Resources
  3. Software Installations and Subscriptions

G. SAMPLE RFP FOR ACCESSIBILITY PLATFORM

H. FURTHER READING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FEATURES

  • 230 pages.
  • Color Images.
  • ISBN: 9781715886431
  • Publisher: Network Design Lab

PURCHASE

Classic Transportist Posts

  • I wrote this in 2014 PHASING IN ROAD PRICING ONE ELECTRIC VEHICLE AT A TIME … this is now salient because Australian states are about to implement this (South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales). 
    • General view: Good in theory, depends in practice on the rates and fuel taxes. But given nearly 100% of new cars will be EVs sooner than most people think, and they don’t pay fuel taxes, and they do use roads, and right now their owners have above average incomes, it seems a perfect time to get road pricing implemented without the huge political fight that would come if it is done too late. Of course this might be a disincentive to purchase EVs, but it’s a relatively small charge now, and new EV purchases can be incentivized separately, if that were important. (But why EVs not E-Bikes etc.) 
    • Would this have happened had I not moved to Australia? We will never know. 
  • I wrote this in 2008 MEMO TO THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ON TRANSPORTATION POLICY
    • These recommendations are still mostly pretty good — which is depressing, as it indicates we have made very little progress in domain of transport. Maybe the next President will take it up.

Transportist Posts

Findings

  • Jabbari, Parastoo, and Don MacKenzie. 2020. “Ride Sharing Attitudes Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States.” Findings, November. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.17991.
  • Wu, Xinyu, Frank Douma, Jason Cao, and Erika Shepard. 2020. “Preparing Transit in the Advent of Automated Vehicles: A Focus-Group Study in the Twin Cities.” Findings, November. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.17872.
  • Jamal, Shaila, and Antonio Paez. 2020. “Changes in Trip-Making Frequency by Mode during COVID-19.” Findings, November. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.17977.
  • Tokey, Ahmad Ilderim. 2020. “Change of Bike-Share Usage in Five Cities of United States during COVID-19.” Findings, November. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.17851.
  • Du, Jianhe, and Hesham A. Rakha. 2020. “COVID-19 Impact on Ride-Hailing: The Chicago Case Study.” Findings, October. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.17838.

Talks 

  • I spoke at the Festival of Urbanism on November 18. Mobility and Housing Futures about the “New New Normal: Mobility and Activity in the ‘After Times’”. A narrated slide-deck of the talk is available on YouTube.
  • I will be speaking at Australia Build conference on the Thirty-Minute City. December 10, 14:40.
  • I will be speaking at the NeurIPS conference on End of Traffic and Future of Access. December 11, 19:15 AEDT.

Conferences

News & Opinion

Books