David Levinson

Nexus at 92nd Transportation Research Board Meeting (TRB 2013)

| David Levinson

Nexus group members (myself included) and affiliated researchers will again be presenting papers at next week’s Transportation Research Board Conference in Washington DC. Our papers are listed below. (I will be at many, but not all of these places). We hope to see you there.

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Day and Time Session Session Name/Article Name Place
Sunday 173 Aligning Organizations with Needs of Their 21st Century Missions Hilton, Georgetown East
1:30PM- 4:30PM   Enterprising Roads: Alternative Governance for America’s Highways  
       
Monday 280 Planning Applications: Sustainability and Transportation Networks Hilton, Lincoln West
10:15AM- 12:00PM   Network Structure and the Journey to Work: Intrametropolitan Analysis  
       
Monday 413 Innovations in Statewide Multimodal Planning Hilton, International Center
4:15PM- 6:00PM   Understanding the Impact of Gasoline Price Changes on Traffic Safety: A Time Geography Approach  
       
Monday 424 Understanding Interactions at Transit Stop and Route Levels: Tools to Estimate Accessibility and Demand Hilton, International Center
4:15PM- 6:00PM   The Time Between: Continuously Defined Accessibility Functions for Schedule-Based Transportation Systems  
       
Tuesday 504 Emerging Learning Environments to Meet the Needs of the Transportation Workforce of Tomorrow Hilton, International Center
8:30AM- 10:15AM   Multiagent Route Choice Game for Transportation Engineering  
       
Tuesday 691 Transportation Agglomeration and Network Effects in Urban and Rural Economies Hilton, Columbia Hall 8
7:30PM- 9:30PM   Agglomeration, Accessibility, and Productivity: Evidence for Urbanized Areas in the United States  
    Rural Highway Expansion and Economic Development: Impacts on Private Earnings and Employment  
       
Wednesday 733 Finding Our Way: Modeling Route Choice Hilton, International Center
8:30AM- 10:15AM   Route Choice Dynamics After a Link Restoration  
    Network Structure and Travel Time Perception  
       
Wednesday 731 Activity and Travel Behavior Mega-Session Hilton, International Center
8:30AM- 10:15AM   Uncovering Influence of Commuters’ Perception on Reliability Ratio  
       
Wednesday 724 Safety: Performance, Data, and New Advances, Part 1 (Part 2, Session 725) Marriott, Salon 2
8:30AM- 10:15AM   Urban-Rural Difference of Gasoline Price Effects on Traffic Safety

Transportation Team Trivia Night

| David Levinson

I will be your congenial (not congenital) host of WTS MN/YPT Transportation Team Trivia Night :

“Join WTS Minnesota and YPT for our first-ever Transportation Team Trivia night, hosted by David Levinson.
Are you a master of obscure transportation knowledge?
WTS Minnesota and YPT Minneapolis (Young Professionals in Transportation) are joining forces to bring you a night of transportation team trivia fun!
Using the classic pub trivia format, U of M professor David Levinson (the Transportationist himself) will host a five-round multimodal trivia bonanza on September 11 at Republic, home to one of the best craft beer lists in Minneapolis.
There is no cost to attend, and all are welcome, so bring your friends and colleagues! The winning team will receive bragging rights and a prize to be announced.
Get there early to take advantage of Republic’s excellent happy hour specials. No need to form a team in advance–just show up ready to test your knowledge and have fun with colleagues!
The details
When: Tuesday, September 11, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
5:30 p.m. Happy Hour (food and drink specials available until 6:00 p.m.)
Trivia begins promptly at 6:00 p.m. and will go until approximately 8:30 p.m.
Where: Republic, Aux 1 room
Who: Transportation students and professionals of all ages
Cost: Free (food and beverages will not be provided)
RSVP: Appreciated, but not required. RSVP to Katie Roth by 4:00 p.m. on September 11.”

The Future of Greater MSP’s Cultural and Physical Environment

| David Levinson

I get to talk about Flying Cars and Transportation Technology for about 8 seconds in this 3:40 Greater MSP video: The Future of Greater MSP’s Cultural and Physical Environment


(Just don’t call it the Twin Cities anymore)
((The interview was ~ 30 minutes, I talked about lots of other cool things as well, they just survive on the cutting room floor))

Network Structure and Travel Behavior: GTI/UTC Lunchtime Lecture Series

| David Levinson

From February: GTI/UTC Lunchtime Lecture Series – Dr. David Levinson – YouTube: “Network Structure and Travel Behavior”

(57:22)

Abstract: Transportation networks have an underlying structure, defined by the layout, arrangement and the connectivity of the individual network elements, namely the road segments and their intersections. The differences in network structure exist among and between networks. This presentation argues that travellers perceive and respond to these differences in underlying network structure and complexity, resulting in differences in observed travel patterns. This hypothesized relationship between network structure and travel is analyzed using individual and aggregate level travel and network data from metropolitan regions across the U.S. Various measures of network structure, compiled from existing sources, are used to quantify the structure of street networks. The relation between these quantitative measures and travel is then identified using econometric models.

Who should pay for roads, transit projects?

| David Levinson

I was interviewed by Dan Haugen of Midwest Energy News:

Who should pay for roads, transit projects? :

“It’s true that local property taxes, not gas taxes, pay for building and maintaining most roads, says David Levinson, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Minnesota, but whether or not that’s a subsidy for drivers is debatable.
“There isn’t a person in the United States who doesn’t get some use out of the roads,” says Levinson, who also writes the Transportationist blog. Even people who don’t drive still benefit from things like fire protection, ambulance services, and mail delivery — all of which depend on roads. “I suppose you could be Ted Kaczynski, but even he had to use the U.S. Postal Service to mail his bombs.””

Linklist: February 24, 2012

| David Levinson

357 Transportation Infographics and Data Visualizations @ Visual.ly

Bloomberg: U.S. Postal Service to Cut 35,000 Jobs as Plants Are Shut:

“The service plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a telephone interview today. The closings will cut about 35,000 jobs, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman.”

Blair Barnhardt at Kansas University discusses The Three Legged Stool | Saving America’s Infrastructure [YouTube], which makes use of our Brookings Report: Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third: A New Strategy for America’s Highways (starting at the 23:47 mark running to about 36:00)

. There is also a LinkedIn Group: StreetSaver Pavement Management Group. In fact it is the source of some homework assignments in his course.

Linklist: February 14, 2012

| David Levinson

Yglesias: Developers Should Be Able To Bribe Homeowners [Yes and Yes]

Liz Hoffman @ Law360 (behind a firewall) Obama Budget Would Double Infrastructure Spending:

““Most of what’s being proposed are nonstarters,” said David Levinson, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. “Infrastructure is a big part of what [Obama] is trying to do on the economy, but he’s unlikely to get most of what he’s asking for.”
” [The interview was much longer, but I guess this was the money quote].