17-06 Public vs Private Transportation Network Accessibility and Maternal-Infant Health Outcomes Across the Urban-Rural Boundary in Kalamazoo County, Michigan

This project is twofold. The first part of the project deals specifically with the benefits of multimodal transportation modeling to understand community structure of public health access in a community. Maternal risk and infant outcomes are examined in Kalamazoo County, MI with respect to transportation network accessibility by public transit and private vehicle across the urban-rural continuum. Infants born to mothers just outside the urban core had a higher rate of poor outcomes. Maternal risk factors, by contrast, were associated with the accessible rural areas – areas outside the city proper, but within 30 minutes by car to services. When as much variability as possible (departure time, routes, modes, time of day) was included in the model, very detailed community structure information emerged. This structural information is not specifically causal, but differences in behaviors and use of services, as well as differences in urban poverty and rural poverty were apparent. The second part of the project considered raster-based methods to provide insights into siting intervention locations at efficient and equitable locations for repeating cases of risk – in this case, repeating cases of sexually transmitted infections. The results provide metrics for decision makers to compare intervention locations by efficiency and equity across multimodal optimization

Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) Effects on Assessment of Accessibility via Public Transit

Integrating accessibility by public transit with land use planning is a crucial precondition for sustainable urban development. Accessibility by public transit has been widely assessed in a GIS environment using aggregated zonal data, such as traffic analysis zones, census tracts, dissemination areas, dissemination blocks, 200 * 200 m grids and 50 * 50 m grids. Nevertheless, it has been proved that the scale and zoning scheme of zones may alter analysis results, which is known as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). Therefore, it is essential to know how the MAUP affects assessment of accessibility. This research addressed the MAUP effects, when evaluating accessibility based on cumulative opportunity measures. This research applied a cumulative accessibility measure, which calculated accessibility in terms of the number of urban nodes that could be reached within a given travel time or distance. The City of Windsor, Canada, was used as the study area. The MAUP effects were examined based on 6 types of zones (e.g. census tracts, dissemination areas, dissemination blocks, 0.6 km, 0.3 km and 0.15 km grids) at comparable scales or zoning schemes. It was found that the MAUP may significantly alter assessment results of accessibility and should be paid highly attention to. The two outcomes of the MAUP effects on accessibility measurements are: changes of accessibility score and alterations of policy implications that are based on accessibility measurements. Three ways were discussed to deal with the MAUP impacts on accessibility measurements: using disaggregate data if possible, using low aggregated data and selecting zones according to research purposes

An assessment of the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) in monitoring and evaluating the progress of in-situ upgrading of informal settlements : a case study of Cato Crest Informal Settlement, eThekwini Municipality.

Master of Housing.As a point of departure, this study investigates the innovative use of geographic information system (GIS) as a technological tool for urban governance in South Africa used for monitoring and evaluating informal settlement upgrading projects, using the case of Cato Crest informal settlement in eThekwini municipality. In South Africa, the number of informal settlements continues to increase perpetuated by phenomena such as rapid urbanisation and poverty; notwithstanding of the goal of the Department of Human Settlements to eradicate all informal settlements by 2014. The BNG advocates for in-situ upgrading as the preferred approach for settlement upgrading as it seeks to improve settlements in their current location through the provision of services, and secured land tenure. In-situ upgrading is a holistic approach with an emphasis on eliminating social exclusion, poverty, and vulnerability. Favouring neoliberal policies has resulted in increased poverty as people are not able to compete in formal housing markets due to insufficient capital. Technological adaptation is barred by lack of support from top management and capital resources. This research adopted a qualitative research design, utilizing primary and secondary sources of data, employing semi-structured interviews, questionnaire, observation, GIS based methods of digitizing, and buffering as data collection methods. Data is analysed through thematic analysis and GIS technology, and findings presented in cartographic display. The research has found that, among other things, eThekwini municipality utilizes GIS through the ISP to inform decisions for housing projects. However, GIS continues to face barriers in monitoring and evaluating in-situ upgrading of informal settlements as spatial data is updated annually; thus unable to map spontaneous land invasions as they occur throughout a year cycle. Notwithstanding, the in-situ upgrading of Cato Crest informal settlement has impacted the community positively through the provision of services, and secured land tenure, preserve socio-economic networks, and integration of the settlement into the broader urban fabric

Comparação de diferentes perspetivas de equidade no transporte público, aplicação ao estudo da Linha Circular do Metropolitano de Lisboa

A existência de alternativas eficazes e eficientes ao transporte individual acabam por se tornar indispensáveis para a sustentabilidade dos grandes centros urbanos, devido ao crescente e cada vez mais frequentes congestionamentos nas cidades. O transporte público é primordial para o desenvolvimento sustentável das cidades, sendo a organização da rede dessa infraestrutura de fundamental importância a fim de permitir deslocamentos eficientes e confortáveis, e que permitam a seus usuários a maior acessibilidade as oportunidades essenciais para uma boa qualidade de vida com ao menor custo possível. Proporcionando aos seus utilizadores, sejam eles frequentes ou temporários, por opção ou por necessidade, uma ideia de inclusão. Todavia, essa inclusão apesar de buscar a igualdade de acesso, não deve ser restrita a parâmetros de igualdade, e sim, equidade e justiça. As metodologias de análise da acessibilidade para os setores do transporte público assentam, geralmente, em parâmetros baseados no utilitarismo e dentro dele, as análises de custo benefício, que por não estarem preocupados com a distribuição dos custos e benefícios, acabam por gerar resultados demasiadamente otimistas, onde o incremento de acessibilidade é entendido como positivo. O desenvolvimento de ferramentas de análise baseadas na equidade e em suas teorias de justiça, é uma tentativa de responder aos questionamentos acerca da distribuição dos custos de alterações nas infraestruturas de transporte, tendo atenção especial as camadas menos favorecidas ou mais propensas a processos de exclusão social. Assim, procurou-se compilar um conjunto de estudos que tivessem como foco as teorias de justiça e sua aplicabilidade ao setor de transportes, para assegurar o levantamento de medidas que resultassem em um indicador de acessibilidade, que permitissem a criação de um parâmetro de avaliação entre duas realidades (atual e a proposta de alteração), numa tentativa de construir uma metodologia que possa ser replicada em outras interfaces. Um dos principais pontos é a introdução dos GTFS como gerador de percursos otimizados e a conexão dos valores obtidos com o levantamento das realidades socioeconómicas em ambiente SIG, para a avaliação da distribuição baseados nas teorias de justiça.The existence of effective and efficient alternatives to individual transportation are becoming indispensable to large urban centers’ sustainability because of the growing and more frequent congestion in cities. Public transportation is primordial to the sustainable development of cities, its organization as a network infrastructure is essential in order to allow efficient and comfortable displacements that make possible to its users a better access to life quality improvement opportunities at the lowest possible cost. Offering to its users, whether frequent or temporary, by option or need, an idea of inclusion. However, this inclusion, despite seeking equal access, should not be restricted to equality parameters, but to those of equity and justice. Accessibility analysis methodologies for public transportation are, usually, based on utilitarian parameters, amongst them, cost benefit analysis, that, by being unconcerned with costs and benefits’ distribution, wind up generating over optimistic results, where accessibility increment is understood as positive. The development of analysis tools based on equity and its justice theories is an attempt to respond to questions associated to the distribution of changes in transport infrastructures’ costs, paying special attention to less favored social strata or more prone to social exclusion processes. Therefore, this document aimed at compilating a set of studies that focused on justice theory and its applicability to the transportation sector, to assure the collection of measures that would result in an accessibility indicator, that would allow the creation of a parameter to evaluate two realities (current and alteration proposal) in an attempt to build a single methodology able to be replicated in other interfaces. One of its main aspects is the introduction of GTFS as an optimized route generator and the connection of obtained values to socioeconomic data in GIS, to enable a distribution evaluation based on justice theories

Accessible neighbourhoods: towards active transportation

A growing number of researchers have recently focused on improving the sustainability of transportation systems by converting routine motorised travel into active modes of transport. The importance of physical activities and its impacts on health not only attracts the attention of practitioners, but it has also turned planners and policy makers towards achieving transportation sustainability through enhancing active travel behaviours. In order to identify effective strategies at increasing pedestrian and bicycle transportation in a specific local area, planners need to identify how the current levels of accessibility in neighbourhoods could affect transport modes choice. Although many studies have been conducted on active transportation modelling, the importance of accessibility has been neglected. Hence, in the first stage, this research developed new approaches measuring walking, cycling and public transport accessibilities within spatial extents. Thereafter, the accessibility measures were classified into an access level measure using clustering analysis. In the second stage of the study, Negative Binomial regression (NBR) models used to examine how accessibility could affect active transportation. Key findings indicated that more accessible neighbourhoods had more walking, cycling and public transport trips