Assessing Transportation Impacts Using Vehicle Miles Traveled Rather Than Level of Service Can Incentivize Infill Development

Local governments have long relied on Level of Service (LOS), a measure of automobile congestion, as the basis for assessing transportation impacts of land use development projects. However, use of the LOS metric creates an incentive for projects that contribute to urban sprawl while penalizing denser development projects that could allow people better accessibility to jobs and services through alternate modes like walking, bicycling, or transit. Starting July 1, 2020, local governments in California are required to use vehicle miles traveled (VMT) rather than LOS to measure land use projects’ transportation impacts. Researchers at UC Davis studied how this change affects the approval process for urban development. Because most agencies have not yet switched to using VMT in their analyses, the researchers looked back at environmental documents for development projects in the City of Los Angeles between 2001 and 2016 and determined whether these projects could have benefited from using a VMT metric instead of LOS for measuring their transportation impacts. Findings are summarized in this policy brief.View the NCST Project Webpag

Making Bicycling Comfortable: Identifying Minimum Infrastructure Needs by Population Segments Using a Video Survey

In this study, researchers use survey data to analyze bicycling comfort and its relationship with socio-demographics, bicycling attitudes, and bicycling behavior. An existing survey of students, faculty, and staff at UC Davis (n=3089) who rated video clips of bicycling environments based on their perceived comfort as a part of the UC Davis annual Campus Travel Survey (CTS) is used. The video clips come from a variety of urban and semi-rural roads (designated California state highways) around the San Francisco Bay Area where bicycling rates vary. Results indicate considerable effects of socio-demographics and attitudes on absolute video ratings, but relative agreement about which videos are most comfortable and uncomfortable across population segments. In addition, presence of bike infrastructure and low speed roads are the strongest video factors generating more comfortable ratings. However, the results suggest that even the best designed on-road bike facilities are unlikely to provide a comfortable bicycling environment for those without a predisposition to bicycle. This suggests that protected and separated bike facilities may be required for many people to consider bicycling. Nonetheless, the results provide guidance for improving roads with on-street bike facilities where protected or separated facilities may not be suitable.View the NCST Project Webpag

Investigating the Influence of Dockless Electric Bike-share on Travel Behavior, Attitudes, Health, and Equity

Cities throughout the world have implemented bike-share systems as a strategy for expanding mobility options. While these have attracted substantial ridership, little is known about their influence on travel behavior more broadly. The aim of this study was to examine how shared electric bikes (e-bikes) and e-scooters influence individual travel attitudes and behavior, and related outcomes of physical activity and transportation equity. The study involved a survey in the greater Sacramento area of 1959 households before (Spring 2016) and 988 after (Spring 2019) the Summer 2018 implementation of the e-bike and e-scooterservice operated by Jump, Inc., as well as a direct survey of 703 e-bike users (in Fall 2018 & Spring 2019). Among householdrespondents, 3–13% reported having used the service. Of e-bike share trips, 35% substituted for car travel, 30% substituted for walking, and 5% were used to connect to transit. Before- and after-household surveys indicated a slight decrease in self-reported (not objectively measured) median vehicle miles traveled and slight positive shifts in attitudes towards bicycling. Service implementation was associated with minimal changes in health in terms of physical activity and numbers of collisions. The percentages of users by self-reported student status, race, and income suggest a fairly equitable service distribution by these parameters, but each survey under-represents racial minorities and people with low incomes. Therefore, the study is inconclusive about how this service impacts those most in need. Furthermore, aggregated socio-demographics of areas where trips started or ended did not correlate with, and therefore are not reliable indicators of, the socio-demographics of e-bike-share users. Thus, targeted surveying of racial minorities and people with low-incomes is needed to understand bike-share equity

American Micromobility Panel (Part 2): Transit Connection, Mode Substitution, and VMT Reduction

This study examined the sustainability of shared micromobility services using data from 48 cities in the US using a 21-day smartphone travel diary and survey data. Population-weighted analysis indicated a much smaller share of transit connection than in prior reported studies, with more reliable data. However methodological decisions could be a cause for such discrepancies suggesting a sensitivity analysis of this same data may be a good next research step. Results also indicated median VMT reduced per micromobility trip to be roughly 0.15 miles for e-scooter share trips and 0.25 miles for bike share (including e-bike) trips. Models of mode substitution confirm prior evidence of factors affecting car substitution including trip distance as the strongest factor. This study also proposed two frameworks for building a sketch planning tool for examining VMT reduction from future micromobility services. This tool could help cities and regions better plan for the micromobility services to achieve real VMT and GHG reduction goals. While more research is needed to employ this framework, it helps motivate a series of additional research topics to inform a decision support tool for shared micromobility planning. View the NCST Project Webpag

Examining the Effects of a Bike and E-Bike Lending Program on Commuting Behavior

In 2015, Google added a new transportation demand management (TDM) program to increase bike commuting to their two main campuses in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, California. An initial survey of employees indicated that bike ownership and worry about maintenance were primary bicycling barriers. With this information, Google began a program that loaned high-quality electric-assisted and conventional bicycles for a period of six months at no cost to interested employees. This research evaluates the effectiveness of the program at changing travel behavior to the corporate campuses by using self-reported and smartphone-integrated travel data. The lending program at Google represents one of, if not the largest, employer-sponsored bike and e-bike lending program in North America with over 1,000 bikes in its inventory. Thus, the evaluation of this program is a critical first step for understanding how bike lending can influence travel behavior in North American suburban contexts

Research Synthesis for the California Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force

This research synthesis consists of a set of white papers that jointly provide a review of research on the current practicefor setting speed limits and future opportunities to improve roadway safety. This synthesis was developed to inform thework of the Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force, which was formed in 2019 by the California State Transportation Agencyin response to California Assembly Bill 2363 (Friedman). The statutory goal of the Task Force is to develop a structured,coordinated process for early engagement of all parties to develop policies to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. Thisreport addresses the following critical issues related to the work of the Task Force: (i) the relationship between trafficspeed and safety; (ii) lack of empirical justification for continuing to use the 85th percentile rule; (iii) why we need toreconsider current speed limit setting practices; (iv) promising alternatives to current methods of setting speed limits;and (v) improving road designs to increase road user safety

Phase II

UC-ITS-2020-05Dock-less, electric bike-share services offer cities a new transportation option with the potential to improve environmental, social, and health outcomes. But these benefits accrue only if bike-share use replaces car travel. The purpose of this study is to examine factors influencing whether bike-share substitutes for driving and the degree to which and under what circumstances bike-share use reduces car travel. Major findings in this report include (1) bike-share in the Sacramento region most commonly substitutes for car and walking trips, (2) each bike in the Sacramento bike-share fleet reduces users\u2019 VMT by an average of approximately 2.8 miles per day, (3) areas with a higher proportion of low-income households tend to use bike-share less, (4) bike-share availability appears to induce new trips to restaurants and shopping and for recreation, (5) bike-share trips from commercial and office areas were more likely to replace walking or transit trips, while bike-share trips from non-commercial areas (and trips to home or restaurants) were more likely to replace car trips, (6) expanding the bike-share service boundary at the same fleet density decreases system efficiency and VMT reductions per bike. Our result suggests the need for an efficient rebalancing strategy specific to areas by time of day to increase the service efficiency and its benefits. Further analysis of the data used in this study to examine questions such as how bike share can improve transit connections and factors inducing bike use at the individual level will contribute to the development of more robust models and provide additional insights for bike share operation strategies and policy implementation

American Micromobility Panel: Part 1

Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 024 USDOT Grant 69A3551747114This report presents preliminary findings from the American Micromobility Panel, the largest study of shared micromobility services in the United States incorporating riders from multiple major operators. Micromobility services (bike-share and scooter-share) have recently emerged in many U.S. cities. Given that the substitution of bicycling, scooting, and other small vehicle travel for car travel will help cities reach numerous planning goals (e.g., accessibility, emissions, climate, health, equity, etc.), there is a need for understanding the effects of these mobility services. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of micromobility services on travel behavior and outcomes such as mode shift, car ownership, access, equity, safety, and physical activity

Bicyclist Behavior in San Francisco: A Before-and-After Study of the Impact of Infrastructure Investments

65A0527 TO 012This study explores bicyclist behavior in San Francisco using data collected before and after major bike infrastructure investments. From early 2011 to December 2013, investments of $3.3 million correlated with a 14% increase in counts of bicyclists, part of a 96% increase in bicyclist counts from 2006 to 2013. To better understand the relationship between these investments and changes in bicycling behavior, the authors build on the successful GPS travel survey conducted in 2010 by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA). The authors used data from the smartphone based GPS data collection method (the CycleTracks application developed by SFCTA) which records bicyclists\u2019 routes. In addition, they administered a detailed web-based survey to CycleTracks users in order to better characterize the factors associated with their bicycling behavior. The authors examine the relationship between bicycle infrastructure and behavior of bicyclists so as to assess the effectiveness of existing investments, and to provide guidance on efforts that are effective at increasing bicycling

Impacts of E-Bike Ownership on Travel Behavior: Evidence From Three Northern California Rebate Programs

Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 060 USDOT Grant 69A3551747114E-bike incentive programs are being utilized across the United States to encourage the adoption of active transportation. This study assesses the impacts of three e-bike rebate programs in Northern California using survey results gathered by each agency. Three research questions are answered through this study: \u201cHow has e-bike ownership impacted the mode choices, trip purpose, and travel frequency of our sample?\u201d, \u201cHow much do e-bike rebate recipients reduce their mobile greenhouse gases (GHGs)?\u201d, and \u201cHow did the design of each program impact who was able to participate and the program outcomes?\u201d. To answer these, the research team merged and cleaned the survey data from the three programs, explored descriptive statistics, and undertook an estimation of GHG emissions reductions. This analysis highlighted changes in travel behavior, car travel replacement, the impact of program designs, and various equity impacts. E-bike recipients reported more regular bike use after getting their e-bike, although their frequency of bike travel began to decline in the long-term. Respondents also reported high rates of occasional car trip replacement (1-3 times per week and 1-3 times per month). The vast majority of e-bike use in the sample was for recreational travel. Although the GHG reductions analysis estimated a monthly diversion of 12-44 kilograms of CO2 per rebate participant. The authors conclude with an equity analysis that explores how program design influenced who participated in these rebate programs. This found that low-income requirements are successful at targeting those with the most need for financial assistance, though these requirements do not help meet other equity metrics by association