Public Bikesharing in North America During a Period of Rapid Expansion: Understanding Business Models, Industry Trends & User Impacts, MTI Report 12-29

Public bikesharing—the shared use of a bicycle fleet—is an innovative transportation strategy that has recently emerged in major cities around the world, including North America. Information technology (IT)-based bikesharing systems typically position bicycles throughout an urban environment, among a network of docking stations, for immediate access. Trips can be one-way, round-trip, or both, depending on the operator. Bikesharing can serve as a first-and-last mile connector to other modes, as well as for both short and long distance destinations. In 2012, 22 IT-based public bikesharing systems were operating in the United States, with a total of 884,442 users and 7,549 bicycles. Four IT-based programs in Canada had a total of 197,419 users and 6,115 bicycles. Two IT-based programs in Mexico had a total of 71,611 users and 3,680 bicycles. (Membership numbers reflect the total number of short- and long-term users.) This study evaluates public bikesharing in North America, reviewing the change in travel behavior exhibited by members of different programs in the context of their business models and operational environment. This Phase II research builds on data collected during our Phase I research conducted in 2012. During the 2012 research (Phase I), researchers conducted 14 expert interviews with industry experts and public officials in the United States and Canada, as well as 19 interviews with the manager and/or key staff of IT-based bikesharing organizations. For more information on the Phase I research, please see the Shaheen et al., 2012 report Public Bikesharing in North America: Early Operator and User Understanding. For this Phase II study, an additional 23 interviews were conducted with IT-based bikesharing organizations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico in Spring 2013. Notable developments during this period include the ongoing expansion of public bikesharing in North America, including the recent launches of multiple large bikesharing programs in the United States (i.e., Citi Bike in New York City, Divvy in Chicago, and Bay Area Bike Share in the San Francisco Bay Area). In addition to expert interviews, the authors conducted two kinds of surveys with bikesharing users. One was the online member survey. This survey was sent to all people for whom the operator had an email address.The population of this survey was mainly annual members of the bikesharing system, and the members took the survey via a URL link sent to them from the operator. The second survey was an on-street survey. This survey was designed for anyone, including casual users (i.e., those who are not members of the system and use it on a short-term basis), to take “on-street” via a smartphone. The member survey was deployed in five cities: Montreal, Toronto, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and Mexico City. The on-street survey was implemented in three cities: Boston, Salt Lake City, and San Antonio

Territories in the Middle of the Ford. Mapping and Knowledge for Nature-Based Approach in the South Italy

The paper investigates a particular phenomenon of the industrialization of Southern Italy, starting from the second post-war period, and, in particular, the unsolved relationship between some large industrial areas and the territories of the medium and small cities on which such productive “plates” have been installed. The town planning policies and instruments with which the industrialization of Southern Italy was planned, on the contrary, foresaw a strong integration between urban fabric and industrial agglomerations. Through the case study of the province of Caserta, the research illustrated by the paper investigates, first of all, the policies that supported this process of industrialization and what the territorial effects of this phenomenon were. Next, the paper illustrates the method of knowledge and mapping of the territory of the case study of the industrial development area of Caserta. The data will be collected in a GIS platform that will return the following condition that is nowadays not available: analytical maps of the brownfield areas and the identification of the areas still intact, agricultural or green areas, urban areas and infrastructures, which trace a cognitive framework addressed to the project in which it will possible to experiment some possible eco-innovative and nature-based solutions

Evaluation of the frequency of left renal vein variations in computed tomography and its relationship with cancer development

Background: Left renal vein (LRV) variations occur in 0.8–10.2% of the population. The most common LRV variations are retroaortic left renal vein (RLRV) and circumaortic left renal vein (CLRV). The purpose of this study is to determine the frequency of LRV variations in a large series on computed tomography (CT) and to investigate the association between LRV and malignancy development.Materials and methods: Between January 2015 and January 2017, an abdominal CT examination of 12,341 (5505 female, 6836 male) patients was evaluated retrospectively in this study. Patients’ clinical and demographic data were recorded using the Hospital Information System.Results: Left renal vein variations were detected in 314 (2.54%) of the 12,341 patients within the study. Of the 314 cases found to have LRV variations, 227 (1.84%) had RLRV, and 87 (0.70%) had CLRV. There was no statistical difference in total LRV variations (p = 0.083) and CLRV variation (p = 0.96) groups in terms of gender. However, the RLRV variation was found to be 1.32 times higher in males than in females (p = 0.039). Of the 314 patients with LRV variations, 73 (23.2%) had any sort of concomitant malignancy.Conclusions: A high incidence of malignancy was detected in patients with LRV variations. Of the LRV variations, RLRV variation is more common than CLRV variation. The presence of total LRV variations and CLRV variations is not associated with gender; whereas the presence of RLRV variation is more common in males

New Generation Sensor Web Enablement

Many sensor networks have been deployed to monitor Earth’s environment, and more will follow in the future. Environmental sensors have improved continuously by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent. Due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and differing accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observation systems is not straightforward. A coherent infrastructure is needed to treat sensors in an interoperable, platform-independent and uniform way. The concept of the Sensor Web reflects such a kind of infrastructure for sharing, finding, and accessing sensors and their data across different applications. It hides the heterogeneous sensor hardware and communication protocols from the applications built on top of it. The Sensor Web Enablement initiative of the Open Geospatial Consortium standardizes web service interfaces and data encodings which can be used as building blocks for a Sensor Web. This article illustrates and analyzes the recent developments of the new generation of the Sensor Web Enablement specification framework. Further, we relate the Sensor Web to other emerging concepts such as the Web of Things and point out challenges and resulting future work topics for research on Sensor Web Enablement

Assessing the impact of rail investment on housing prices in north-west Sydney

Rail investments alter the accessibility and amenity of residential properties, and thus affect housing prices and overall affordability. This project investigates the impact of the Epping-Chatswood rail link in North-west Sydney on home prices, testing out alternative methodologies for estimating price impacts through spatial analysis of historical property sales data obtained from the RP Data Australia. The paper focuses on one station, comparing price trends before and after the construction of the rail link was announced in 2002, and before and after the opening of the rail line in early 2009. The paper concludes with an assessment of the usefulness of alternative methodologies

Framework for land value capture from investments in transit in car-dependent cities

Many car-dependent cities have major transit projects stuck in financial and economic assessment due to inadequate links between land use, transport, and funding. This has left most urban transport networks underfunded and requiring significant government support. During this widening transit funding gap, there has been an international increase in demand on transit systems, which is in part a response to the global peak in car use per capita. This paper demonstrates to transit proponents and practitioners how to facilitate infrastructure projects by optimizing induced and activated land-use change. A five-step framework for assessment is proposed that includes assessing the regional and local legislation and regulations to determine what alternative funding opportunities are available, undertaking accessibility beneficiary analysis, analyzing the project-induced land value uplift, developing an alternative funding strategy to implement integrated land-use and transport planning mechanisms, and preparing a procurement and delivery strategy. The proposed assessment framework enables transit business cases to extend project funding for integrated transit and land-use projects, especially in car-dependent cities. This is demonstrated through a case study of Perth, Western Australia

What causal drivers influence carbon storage in Shanghai, China's urban and peri-urban forests?

Studies have documented many biophysical factors that are correlated with urban forest carbon storage. This urban forest function is also increasingly being promoted as a nature-based solution for cities. While urbanization affects both the structure and function of urban forest ecosystems, quantitative analyses of specific casual drivers of carbon storage in urban versus periurban forests are scarce. To address this lack of information, we used field data of random plots located along an urban to rural gradient in Shanghai, China, region-specific biomass equations, and path analysis of commonly studied urban forest socioeconomic and ecological drivers to analyze their effects on above ground tree carbon storage. An urbanization index was also developed to quantitatively differentiate urban from peri-urban sites along the transect. Results show that in both urban and peri-urban forests, percent tree and shrub cover had a significant and positive effect on tree and shrub carbon, but tree and shrub density had an even greater effect. Further, tree and shrub species diversity had no effects on carbon storage, while the effects of species composition on tree and shrub carbon in urban forests was different from those in peri-urban areas. Peri-urban forests also exhibited a significant effect of percent tree and shrub cover on tree and shrub species diversity. This approach, using a path analysis of field and plot data and site-specific dendrometric and urbanization information, can be used to quantitatively identify little explored causal dependences between drivers and ecosystem services without relying exclusively on spatial land cover data often not available in developing countries. © 2017 by the authors