Promoting Intermodal Connectivity at California’s High Speed Rail Stations

High-speed rail (HSR) has emerged as one of the most revolutionary and transformative transportation technologies, having a profound impact on urban-regional accessibility and inter-city travel across Europe, Japan, and more recently China and other Asian countries. One of HSR’s biggest advantages over air travel is that it offers passengers a one-seat ride into the center of major cities, eliminating time-consuming airport transfers and wait times, and providing ample opportunities for intermodal transfers at these locales. Thus, HSR passengers are typically able to arrive at stations that are only a short walk away from central business districts and major tourist attractions, without experiencing any of the stress that car drivers often experience in negotiating such highly congested environments. Such an approach requires a high level of coordination and planning of the infrastructural and spatial aspects of the HSR service, and a high degree of intermodal connectivity. But what key elements can help the US high-speed rail system blend successfully with other existing rail and transit services? That question is critically important now that high-speed rail is under construction in California. The study seeks to understand the requirements for high levels of connectivity and spatial and operational integration of HSR stations and offer recommendations for seamless, and convenient integrated service in California intercity rail/HSR stations. The study draws data from a review of the literature on the connectivity, intermodality, and spatial and operational integration of transit systems; a survey of 26 high-speed rail experts from six different European countries; and an in-depth look of the German and Spanish HSR systems and some of their stations, which are deemed as exemplary models of station connectivity. The study offers recommendations on how to enhance both the spatial and the operational connectivity of high-speed rail systems giving emphasis on four spatial zones: the station, the station neighborhood, the municipality at large, and the region

Emergency Management Training and Exercises for Transportation Agency Operations, MTI Report 09-17

Training and exercises are an important part of emergency management. Plans are developed based on threat assessment, but they are not useful unless staff members are trained on how to use the plan, and then practice that training. Exercises are also essential for ensuring that the plan is effective, and outcomes from exercises are used to improve the plan. Exercises have been an important part of gauging the preparedness of response organizations since Civil Defense days when full-scale exercises often included the community. Today there are various types of exercises that can be used to evaluate the preparedness of public agencies and communities: seminars, drills, tabletop exercises, functional exercises, facilitated exercises and full-scale exercises. Police and fire agencies have long used drills and full-scale exercises to evaluate the ability of staff to use equipment, protocols and plans. Transit and transportation agencies have seldom been included in these plans, and have little guidance for their participation in the exercises. A research plan was designed to determine whether urban transit systems are holding exercises, and whether they have the training and guidance documents that they need to be successful. The main research question was whether there was a need for a practical handbook to guide the development of transit system exercises

Assessing Importance and Satisfaction Judgments of Intermodal Work Commuters with Electronic Survey Methodology, MTI Report WP 12-01

Recent advances in multivariate methodology provide an opportunity to further the assessment of service offerings in public transportation for work commuting. We offer methodologies that are alternative to direct rating scale and have advantages in the quality and precision of measurement. The alternative of methodology for adaptive conjoint analysis for the measurement of the importance of attributes in service offering is implemented. Rasch scaling methodology is used for the measurement of satisfaction with these attributes. Advantages that these methodologies introduce for assessment of the respective constructs and use of the assessment are discussed. In a first study, the conjoint derived weights were shown to have predictive capabilities in applications to respondent distributions of a fixed total budget to improve overall service offerings. Results with the Rasch model indicate that the attribute measures are reliable and can adequately constitute a composite measure of satisfaction. The Rasch items were also shown to provide a basis to discriminate between privately owned vehicles (POVs) and public transport commuters. Dissatisfaction with uncertainty in travel time and income level of respondents were the best predictors of POV commuting

A Comparative Analysis of High-Speed Rail Station Development into Destination and Multi-Use Facilities: The Case of San Jose Diridon

As a burgeoning literature on high-speed rail development indicates, good station-area planning is a very important prerequisite for the eventual successful operation of a high-speed rail station; it can also trigger opportunities for economic development in the station area and the station-city. At the same time, “on the ground” experiences from international examples of high-speed rail stations can provide valuable lessons for the California high-speed rail system in general, and the San Jose Diridon station in particular. This study identifies and draws lessons from European HSR stations that share similarities across several criteria with the San Jose area context. From an initial consideration of twenty European HSR stations, the researchers chose five stations for in depth case studies: Euralille and Lyon Part Dieu in France, Rotterdam Centraal and Utrecht Centraal in the Netherlands, and Torino Porta Susa in Italy. Additionally, the study drew information from relevant local actors and stakeholders to better tailor recommendations to the particular California context.Through the undertaking of different research tasks–literature review, case studies of European railway stations, survey of existing station plans and other planning documents for the Diridon station, station area analysis, and interviews with station area planners and designers–the study compiles timely recommendations for the successful planning of the Diridon station and other stations along the California high-speed rail corridor

A Decision Support System for Intermodal Logistics under Considerations for Costs of Security

Global supply chains have been challenged by the increased awareness of security risks, including those of terrorism, theft, and damage, and the potential in these risks for significant damages. Additionally, the pressure security initiatives and regulations, particularly at sea and air ports, threaten to add to congestion at these hubs in the international flow of goods and materials. Improving the efficiency of the flow of goods and materials, and therefore the stability and competitiveness of their supply chains, is the focus of this research. A decision support to combine strategic objectives with operational transport decision making is built to incorporate security considerations

A conceptual information sharing framework to improve supply chain security collaboration

Modern Supply Chains are critical in terms of efficiency, economic activities and commercial impact, particularly in case of security incidents. Inland terminals, commercial ports and dry ports constitute key gateways for the transportation flows in these modern supply chains and are require enhanced security procedures. This paper develops a framework that facilitates the sharing of information among various supply chain stakeholders, which is expected to improve the security level from a value chain perspective. In this context, we propose the upgrade of the current security strategies utilizing existing processes, equipment in order to minimise time and cost currently needed but more importantly improving the level of security in the supply chain. A conceptual rule and role-based data fusion framework is developed enabling the seamless and timely exchange of messages. The proposed Data Fusion Framework has a simple architecture that supports quick integration to either network-based, distributed systems or conventional stand-alone systems and adheres to common data fusion principles. The proposed framework considers different components (e.g. sensors, algorithms and fusing procedures) in an equipment agnostic approach so as to enable easy access and easy usage of security information.N/