The Transportation Dividend: Transit Investments and the Massachusetts Economy

As home to America's first subway, Boston has been a transit-oriented city for more than a century. In fact, much of our regional economic success is due to the connectivity that a transit system provides. It is no coincidence that the area served by the MBTA houses almost 70 percent of the state's population, offers 74 percent of the jobs, and generates 84 percent of Massachusetts's gross domestic product. The MBTA is the backbone of our economy and any successful strategy for continued growth and prosperity for the region must begin with smart investment in this system.Luckily, the calculus is straightforward as the benefits from our transit system far outweigh the costs we dedicate to support it. A new report from A Better City, made possible through support from both the Barr Foundation and The Boston Foundation, measured the MBTA's performance and economic impact. It found that through travel time and cost savings, vehicular crashes avoided and reduced auto emissions, the MBTA provides an estimated $11.4 billion in value to Greater Boston each year for both transit users and non-users alike. Boston residents experience all of these benefits from the T's annual operating budget of approximately$2 billion.The report also considered the alternative, examining what would it cost if our transit system did not exist. Our economy would require the capital cost of nearly 2,300 additional lane miles of roads and 400,000 more parking spaces. If we needed to build that today, the cost for this vehicular infrastructure would be over $15 billion. The MBTA is a bargain today and for the future

From Automobiles to Alternatives: Applying Attitude Theory and Information Technologies to Increase Shuttle Use at Rocky Mountain National Park

This thesis examines potential strategies for increasing voluntary shuttle use at Rocky Mountain National Park (ROMO) and the gateway community of Estes Park, Colorado. The first chapter of this two-part study evaluates the impact of a pilot intelligent transportation system (ITS) on visitor awareness and use of shuttles during the summer of 2011. Two forms of ITS, dynamic message signs (DMS) and highway advisory radio (HAR), were evaluated. Specifically, the ITS was meant to influence day-visitors to park at a new park-and-ride lot just east of Estes Park where they could then board a connector shuttle and transfer to any of four shuttle routes servicing the town and park. Surveys were administered onboard the park-and-ride shuttle (N = 68) and at two locations in downtown Estes Park (N = 490). Our analysis revealed that the DMS contributed to increased awareness of the shuttles. However, the HAR did not contribute substantially to awareness or use of the visitor shuttles. Our analysis offers additional recommendations for increasing voluntary shuttle use, such as providing direct routes between the park-and-ride and popular park attractions. The results of this study demonstrate the utility of ITS as a transportation management tool in a national park setting, but also highlight the importance of selecting appropriate technologies that meet the needs of park visitors. The second chapter explores strategies for optimizing the use of ITS by applying the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) to identify the beliefs that inform choice of travel mode among ROMO and Estes Park visitors. Using results of a mail survey (N = 222), the theory of planned behavior was applied to the prediction of intention and use of visitor shuttles. Perceived behavioral control was found to have a significant influence on intention to use shuttles. Past experience with park shuttles was tested as an additional predictor of behavior and shown to significantly improve the prediction of shuttle use. Past experience with public transit was also added to the model, but with no significant contribution, thereby demonstrating the inherent difference between travel behaviors in everyday settings as opposed to recreation settings. These results were then coupled with segmentation analysis to identify unique segments of visitors. The segments were statistically similar in terms of demographic characteristics, yet heterogeneous in their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control regarding shuttle use. Of the three segments identified, Bus Backers were found to hold the most positive beliefs about shuttles and Potential Mode-shifters were identified as the segment offering the most potential for mode change due to their neutral attitudes and beliefs. Strategies were identified to maintain and improve use of shuttles among these segments. Our study broadens the application of segmentation analysis to transportation in a park setting and demonstrates its important contribution

A Recent Connected Vehicle - IoT Automotive Application Based on Communication Technology

Realizing the full potential of vehicle communications depends in large part on the infrastructure of vehicular networks. As more cars are connected to the Internet and one another, new technological advancements are being driven by a multidisciplinary approach. As transportation networks become more complicated, academic, and automotive researchers collaborate to offer their thoughts and answers. They also imagine various applications to enhance mobility and the driving experience. Due to the requirement for low latency, faster throughput, and increased reliability, wireless access technologies and an appropriate (potentially dedicated) infrastructure present substantial hurdles to communication systems. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the wireless access technologies, deployment, and connected car infrastructures that enable vehicular connectivity. The challenges, issues, services, and maintenance of connected vehicles that rely on infrastructure-based vehicular communications are also identified in this paper

City of Clearlake: 2040 General Plan Update Fall 2012/ Winter 2013

This document was produced for the City of Clearlake, CA as part of the Clearlake General Plan Update by the 2012-2013 Community and Regional Planning Studio of the Master of City and Regional Planning Program at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo California

Role of Deep Learning in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

The portable capability of MANETs has specially delighted in an unexpected expansion. A massive need for dynamic ad-hoc basis networking continues to be created by advancements in hardware design, high-speed growth in the wireless network communications infrastructure, and increased user requirements for node mobility and regional delivery processes. There are several challenging issues in mobile ad-hoc networks, such as machine learning method cannot analyze features like node mobility, channel variation, channel interference because of the absence of deep neural layers. Due to decentralized nature of mobile ad hoc networks, its necessitate to concentrate over some extremely serious issues like stability, scalability, routing based problems such as network congestion, optimal path selection, etc. and security

Serverless Vehicular Edge Computing for the Internet of Vehicles

Rapid growth in the popularity of smart vehicles and increasing demand for vehicle autonomy brings new opportunities for vehicular edge computing (VEC). VEC aims at offloading the time-sensitive computational load of connected vehicles to edge devices, e.g., roadside units. However, VEC offloading raises complex resource management challenges and, thus, remains largely inaccessible to automotive companies. Recently, serverless computing emerged as a convenient approach to the execution of functions without the hassle of infrastructure management. In this work, we propose the idea of serverless VEC as the execution paradigm for Internet of Vehicles applications. Further, we analyze its benefits and drawbacks as well as identify technology gaps. We also propose emulation as a design, evaluation, and experimentation methodology for serverless VEC solutions. Using our emulation toolkit, we validate the feasibility of serverless VEC for real-world traffic scenarios.We would like to thank Asama Qureshi for his contribution to the traffic visualizer application. We would also like to acknowledge support through the Australian Research Council's funded projects DP230100081 and FT180100140. This work is also partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, the European Union-NextGenerationEU through the UNICO 5G IþD SORUS project and by the NWO OffSense, EU Horizon Graph-Massivizer and CLOUDSTARS projects

Connecting Alaskans: mixed-use safety and accessibility challenges in rural environments

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Connectivity in transportation networks, or lack thereof, is a challenge that many people have to deal with. Alaska has many rural communities that are inaccessible by conventional modes of transportation. In order for people to reach these communities and move between them unconventional modes of transportation are needed. However, very few studies have been done on unconventional transportation modes such as ATVs and snowmachines and the level to which they contribute to connecting people and how to help limit traumatic injuries of users. This study focuses on Alaska and three primary datasets. First, the Pacific North West Transportation Survey developed by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Idaho. Second, Alaska Trauma Registry data obtained from Division of Public Health and Safety. Thirdly, publicly available GIS transportation network and populated place data. These three data sets accomplish the following objectives: (1) document preferences and perceptions of mixed-use safety, (2) to better understand the reasons for injuries and fatalities involving ATVs and snowmachines, and (3) to identify potential mixed-use conflict areas by geographic mapping of traumas. From this analysis a better understanding of ATV mode use was discovered. ATVs are used for a variety of trip purposes including: commuting, running errands, chores, and recreation. ATVs are used on and near roadways 24% of the time. There are twice as many ATV-related traumas in connected places than in isolated places, and 3 times more ATV related traumas in highway connected places than secondary road connected places. Snowmachines are used on and near roadways 23% of the time and have 3 times as many traumas in highway connected places than secondary road connected places. Highway connected places have a significantly higher risk of having ATV and snowmachine traumas than road connected places. This indicates that part of the issue could be the amount of traffic in connected areas, or perhaps the frequency of use of ATVs rather than automobiles in non-connected areas leading to fewer mixed-use scenarios

A Survey on platoon-based vehicular cyber-physical systems

Vehicles on the road with some common interests can cooperatively form a platoon-based driving pattern, in which a vehicle follows another one and maintains a small and nearly constant distance to the preceding vehicle. It has been proved that, compared to driving individually, such a platoon-based driving pattern can significantly improve the road capacity and energy efficiency. Moreover, with the emerging vehicular adhoc network (VANET), the performance of platoon in terms of road capacity, safety and energy efficiency, etc., can be further improved. On the other hand, the physical dynamics of vehicles inside the platoon can also affect the performance of VANET. Such a complex system can be considered as a platoon-based vehicular cyber-physical system (VCPS), which has attracted significant attention recently. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on platoon-based VCPS. We first review the related work of platoon-based VCPS. We then introduce two elementary techniques involved in platoon-based VCPS: the vehicular networking architecture and standards, and traffic dynamics, respectively. We further discuss the fundamental issues in platoon-based VCPS, including vehicle platooning/clustering, cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC), platoon-based vehicular communications, etc., and all of which are characterized by the tight coupled relationship between traffic dynamics and VANET behaviors. Since system verification is critical to VCPS development, we also give an overview of VCPS simulation tools. Finally, we share our view on some open issues that may lead to new research directions