Month: August 2021

Sydney’s motorists are still suffering breakdowns despite the lockdown | SMH

| David Levinson

Andrew Taylor of the Sydney Morning Herald writes “Sydney’s motorists are still suffering breakdowns despite the lockdown” about a relative spike in NRMA calls (calls have not fallen as much as traffic). My quote:

David Levinson, professor of transport engineering at the University of Sydney, said an increase in battery call-outs could indicate less driving, as a battery will drain more if a car is unused, rather than being recharged daily.

“People may prefer to call NRMA than ask their neighbours for a battery jump start in these conditions, presuming professionals are more likely to be vaccinated,” he said.

“Even more speculatively, additional NRMA calls may be made by people who are especially lonely for any kind of in-person interaction during lockdown, and otherwise would not have made a call.”

Calls have fallen, but not as much as traffic has (according to the article numbers: 17.5% NRMA vs. 50% traffic compared with 2019), but I am not sure that is surprising.


1. NRMA may be substituting for people traveling to service stations (servos, or whatever the local Australian term is for car repair). Cars that are not properly maintained are more likely to fail.

2. The people who belong to NRMA are not the same as the general population. My guess is they have higher than average income, and thus be more likely to be office workers (and thus be more likely to be working from home during this period), but you would have to ask them for the socio-economics and demographic makeup of their membership. But they also may be located disproportionately in areas that are not as subject to as stringent a lockdown as non NRMA members are (i.e. their membership rate in hard lockdown areas is lower than average).

3. An increase in battery call outs could be indicative of less driving, as the battery will drain more if the car is unused, rather than being recharged daily. (This is also consistent with increased calls from home.) After not starting the car for a month, people find the battery is dead.

4. Speculatively, people may prefer to call NRMA than ask their neighbours for a battery jump start in these conditions, presuming professionals are more likely to be vaccinated.

5. Even more speculatively, additional NRMA calls may be made by people who are especially lonely for any kind of in-person interaction during lockdown, and otherwise would not have made a call.

NRMA Roadside Assistance. Image from the Internet somewhere.

Towards a General Theory of Access: Video

| David Levinson

Levinson, D. M., & Wu, H. (2020). Towards a general theory of access. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 13(1), 129-158. https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2020.1660

This paper integrates and extends many of the concepts of accessibility deriving from Hansen’s (1959) seminal paper, and develops a theory of access that generalizes from the particular measures of access that have become increasingly common. Access is now measured for a particular place by a particular mode for a particular purpose at a particular time in a particular year. General access is derived as a theoretical ideal that would be measured for all places, all modes, all purposes, at all times, over the lifecycle of a project. It is posited that more general access measures better explain spatial location phenomena.

    WSTLUR Awards

    | David Levinson

    The World Society for Transport and Land Use Research presents awards at each Symposium. The conference took place last week, and I had the honour of bestowing the Best Paper and Best Student-Led Paper awards (and the honour of being the namesake of one of the awards). Congratulations to the winners who are:

    David Levinson Award for Best Paper

    WSTLUR 2021 (Portland)

    • Viewpoint: Turning streets into housing
      Adam Millard-Ball, University of California Los Angeles 

    Honorable mention best paper

    • The inevitability of automobility: how private car use is perpetuated in a Greenfield estate
      Jennifer Kent, University of Sydney 

    Best Student-Led Paper 

    WSTLUR 2021 (Portland)

    • Traffic-Land Use Compatibility and Street Design Impacts of Automated Driving in Vienna, Austria
      Emilia Brucke and Aggelos Soteropolis, Technical University of Vienna 

    Honorable mention best student-led paper

    • Traffic Noise Feedback in Agent-Based Integrated Land-Use/Transport Models
      Nico Kuehnel (Technical University of Munich), Dominik Ziemke (Technical University of Dresden, and Rolf Moeckel (Technical University of Munich) 

    Best PhD Dissertation

    WSTLUR 2021 (Portland)

    Honorable Mention Best PhD Dissertation

    Accessibility-oriented planning: Why and how to make the switch

    | David Levinson

    Laura Aston and I are presenting: Accessibility-oriented planning: Why and how to make the switch
    We will talk about the Transport Access Manual, and our recent article in ITE Journal.

    AUGUST WEBINAR
    Accessibility-oriented planning
    Why and how to make the switch

    Date:  Tuesday, 17 August 2021
    Time:  4:30 pm to 6:00 pm AEST
    Venue: Online
    Cost:  free

    Accessibility is not a new measure of transport system performance. It was conceptualised in its present form more than 60 years ago. It has garnered attention of late, buoyed by the dual concerns of equity and sustainability in transport, as well as the increased availability of data and software to measure it. The Transport Access Manual has been developed to demystify access measurement. In this seminar, David Levinson and Laura Aston discuss the essential elements of access measurement.

    Presenters:


    David Levinson
    Professor David M. Levinson teaches at the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney, where he leads TransportLab and the Transport Engineering Research group, and directs the Master of Transport. His most recent research emphasises transport-land use interactions, accessibility, and transport system evolution.


    Laura Aston
    Laura is a sustainable transport professional with experience across research, government and consulting. She has contributed to projects which aim to increase access by active and public transport modes through urban design and land use integration. Laura holds a PhD from Monash University for research exploring the link between the built environment and public transport use.

    Please register your attendance and receive a link to the online meeting via Trybooking.

    ** Attendance at this event may be claimed as 1.5 hours of CPD. **

    Update: The Webinar can be seen here.

    COVID-19, Travel Time Reliability, and the Emergence of a Double-Humped Peak Period

    | David Levinson

    Recently published:

    • Gao, Yang, and David Levinson. 2021. “COVID-19, Travel Time Reliability, and the Emergence of a Double-Humped Peak Period.” Findings, August. [doi].

    This paper explores the travel time variance, occupancy heterogeneity level, and average network traffic flow of Minneapolis-St. Paul freeway network and determines the time-lag relationship between travel time variance and the spatio-temporal distribution of congestion (occupancy). It finds COVID-19 reduced the travel time variability of the urban freeway network and notably makes visible a double-humped peak period in the diurnal traffic flow curve.

    We believe the reason for the emergence of the double-humped pattern is the changing composition of the commuting workforce. 

    Transportist: August 2021

    | David Levinson
    Accessibility for asynchronous aspatiality. Living in Lockdown.

    Posts

    Notes from a Prison Colony: As I write this, my city is now in the eighth year of nearly continuous “lockdown” to “eliminate” the dread virus Covid.

    Reviews of the Post: 

    • (1) This post reads like a potential script for a “Black Mirror” episode. “I am only sorry we didn’t begin lockdowns before the virus arrived. I will be sad to see them removed.” But it feels more like a future documentary.
    • (2) Thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece on COVID19’s “Chet” variant in the 8th year of lockdown and its impact on our city and lives.
    • (3) This is an award winning quality satire, seriously. 
      • (4) What! – this is satire? Feels like a credible futurist prediction.
    • (5) Brilliant

    Polls

    Where is Sydney now on the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle with respect to COVID-19/Delta, cause it sure isn’t Acceptance. The mood is (ref):

    • Denial 22.2%
    • Anger 25%
    • Depression 30.6%
    • Bargaining 22.2%

    Videos

    • The Transportation Experience is now on Video

    I have used The Transportation Experience as a primary text for my Transport Policy, Planning, and Deployment class at Minnesota and Sydney for a number of years, and a few other schools use it as well. Over that time, the presentation has evolved. In 2019 I decided to flip the class for 2020, so it would be less of me lecturing, and more interactive. That proved fortuitous planning, as we soon went online, and asynchronous lecturing became standard.

    There is no good reason to keep the videos bottled up, knowledge should be free.  I don’t think I will lose any students or book sales by making these videos available more widely, so I am making them available more widely.

    To that end, the videos accompanying The Transportation Experience are now online, you can see them on the YouTube Playlist, and the specific videos by chapter listed in the Table of Contents. Happy viewing.

    Preface  [Video] 

    Part One – Wave One: 1790–1851 
    1. Rivers of Steam [Video] 
    2. Design by Design: The Birth of the Railway [Video] 
    3. The Turnpike Era [Video] 

    Part Two – Phase 1 of the Life-Cycle 
    4. Inventing and Innovating [Video] 

    Part Three – Wave Two 1844–1896 
    5. Maritime Modes [Video] 
    6. Railroads Deployed [Video] 
    7. Good Roads [Video] 
    8. Transit [Video] 
    9. Telegraph [Video] 

    Part Four – Phase 2 of the Life-Cycle 
    10. Magic Bullet  [Video] 

    Part Five – Wave Three 1890-1950 
    11. American Shipping  [Video] 
    12. Taking Flight [Video] 
    13. Railroads Regulated [Video] 
    14. Bustitution [Video] 
    15. Public Roads [Video] 
    16. Urban Planning: Who Controls the Turf?  [Video] 
    17. Telephone  [Video] 

    Part Six – Phase 3 of the Life-Cycle 
    18. Aging  [Video]

    Part Seven – Wave Four: 1939-1991 
    19. Logistics  [Video] 
    20. The Jet Age [Video] 
    21. Railroads Rationalized [Video] 
    22. Interstate [Video] 
    23. Recapitalization [Video] 
    24. Lord Kelvin’s Curse [Video] 

    Part Eight – Life-Cycle Dynamics 
    25. Lifecycle [Video] 
    26. Meta-cycles [Video] 

    Part Nine – Wave Five: Modern Times 
    27. Energy and Environment [Video] 
    28. Higher-speed rail [Video] 
    29. Internet [Video] 
    30. Technology: Hard and Soft [Video] 

    Part Ten – Beyond the Life-Cycle 
    31. Policy [Video] 
    32. Speculations [Video] 

    Part Eleven – Afterwords: Reflections on Transportation Experiences 
    33. I-35W [Video] 
    34. Design of a Life [Video] 
    35. Commencement [Video] 

    Part Twelve – End Matter 
    Appendix 
    Notes 
    Bibliography

    Conferences

    TransportLab has presentations at WSTLUR next week:

    Tuesday August 10 at 6 am  Sydney time

    … Jennifer Kent: Special Session on Dogs

    Tuesday August 10 at 7  am  Sydney time

    1C. Accessibility: Frameworks, Concepts, and Theories

    … David Levinson and Hao Wu. Towards a General Theory of Access

    Tuesday August 10 at  8 am  Sydney time

    2B. Accessibility. Moderator: David Levinson

    … Bahman Lahoorpoor, Hema Rayaprolu, Hao Wu and David Levinson. Access-oriented design? Disentangling the effect of land use and transport network on accessibility…

    … Jeff Allen, Steven Farber, Stephen Greaves, Geoffrey Clifton, Hao Wu, Somwrita Sarkar and David M Levinson. Immigrant settlement patterns, transit accessibility, and transit use

    Wednesday August 11 at 1 am Sydney time

    5A. Cycling and health. Moderator: Jennifer Kent

    Wednesday August 11 at 9 am Sydney time

    7A. Land Development & Auto-dependance.

    … Jennifer Kent. The inevitability of automobility: how private car use is perpetuated in a greenfield estate

    7C. Accessibility Impacts

    … Hema Rayaprolu and David Levinson. Rent/price ratios and access to jobs by transit

    Research and Presentation

    • Laura Aston and David Levinson (2021) Accessibility-Oriented Planning: Why and How to Make the Switch. ITE Journal(August). p25-29. … Discusses the Transport Access Manual.
      • AUGUST WEBINAR
        Accessibility-oriented planning
        Why and how to make the switchDate:  Tuesday, 17 August 2021
        Time:  4:30 pm to 6:00 pm AEST
        Venue: Online
        Cost:  freeAccessibility is not a new measure of transport system performance. It was conceptualised in its present form more than 60 years ago. It has garnered attention of late, buoyed by the dual concerns of equity and sustainability in transport, as well as the increased availability of data and software to measure it. The Transport Access Manual has been developed to demystify access measurement. In this seminar, David Levinson and Laura Aston discuss the essential elements of access measurement.

    Research by Others

    News & Opinion

    Job and Worker Density and Transit Network Dynamics

    | David Levinson

    Recently published:

    • Li, Manman, Cui, Mengying, and Levinson, D. (2021) Job and Worker Density and Transit Network Dynamics. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. [doi]

    This paper proposes a general framework to explore the interaction between land use and transport systems. Hypotheses about those relationships are generated. A series of statistical tests are conducted to explain the co-development of land use and transit networks for metropolitan areas at a micro-geographic scale and to disentangle causes and effects. The specific case of Minneapolis – Saint Paul (Twin Cities) metropolitan is examined using a panel of block-level land use and stop-level transit data. The results show that the development of land use, specifically, resident workers, can lead to the increase in bus demand, and thus further induce the increase in bus supply; the co-development of bus demand and supply is simultaneous on a yearly basis.

    Hypotheses about relationships between land use and bus network

    TransportLab at the World Symposium for Transport and Land Use Research

    | David Levinson

    TransportLab has presentations at WSTLUR next week:

    Tuesday August 10 at 6 am  Sydney time

    … Jennifer Kent: Special Session on Dogs

    Tuesday August 10 at 7  am  Sydney time

    1C. Accessibility: Frameworks, Concepts, and Theories

    … David Levinson and Hao Wu. Towards a General Theory of Access

    Tuesday August 10 at  8 am  Sydney time

    2B. Accessibility. Moderator: David Levinson

    … Bahman Lahoorpoor, Hema Rayaprolu, Hao Wu and David Levinson. Access-oriented design? Disentangling the effect of land use and transport network on accessibility…

    … Jeff Allen, Steven Farber, Stephen Greaves, Geoffrey Clifton, Hao Wu, Somwrita Sarkar and David M Levinson. Immigrant settlement patterns, transit accessibility, and transit use

    Wednesday August 11 at 1 am Sydney time

    5A. Cycling and health. Moderator: Jennifer Kent

    Wednesday August 11 at 9 am Sydney time

    7A. Land Development & Auto-dependance.

    … Jennifer Kent. The inevitability of automobility: how private car use is perpetuated in a greenfield estate

    7C. Accessibility Impacts

    … Hema Rayaprolu and David Levinson. Rent/price ratios and access to jobs by transit