How and Where Should I Ride This Thing? “Rules Of The Road” for Personal Transportation Devices

In recent years, “Personal Transportation Devices” (PTDs) have exploded onto streets and sidewalks. These small devices transport individual persons at slow speeds and are either human-powered or motorized. Examples include electric (kick) scooters, skateboards, e-skateboards, roller blades, and Segways. One key to successfully integrating PTDs into community streets will be the implementation of consistent and suitable regulations over user behavior: “rules of the road” for PTD riders. To help local officials identify appropriate rules for rider behavior, this report documents and analyzes existing PTD regulations across 176 jurisdictions and then presents recommendations for a set of state-level “rules of the road” designed to balance safety and freedom of movement for all road users, including PTD riders.To identify the current state of PTD rules of the road, we documented and analyzed the existing regulations at three levels of government: all 50 states and 5 U.S. territories, 101 cities, and 20 college campuses. This review found that PTD users operate in a murky regulatory environment, with rules often poorly defined, contradictory, or altogether absent.Results of this analysis, a literature review, and interviews with 21 stakeholders, were used to craft a model state-level regulatory code that aims to introduce consistent and well-grounded regulation of PTDs. The general philosophy underpinning the model legislation is that PTD rules should protect public safety, permit PTD use as a convenient travel option, be easy to understand and remember, allow for new devices without new regulations, and be based on facts about PTD use and users. Working from these principles, core recommended elements of the recommended PTD regulations are as follows: states should set comprehensive regulations for PTD riders (with local gov-ernments given flexibility to limit certain uses when necessitated by local conditions); PTDs should be regulated as a class, not device-by-device; and PTD users should be permitted to ride on both streets and sidewalks, subject to rules that protect safety and free movement for all travelers

Exploring Bicycle and Public Transit Use by Low-Income Latino Immigrants: A Mixed-Methods Study in the San Francisco Bay Area

Latin American immigrants will continue to make up a large share of transit ridership, bicycling and walking in the United States for the foreseeable future, but there is relatively little research about them. This mixed-methods study compares the travel patterns of low-income immigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area with that of other groups and investigates the barriers and constraints faced by low-income immigrants when taking transit and bicycling. Much of the previous work on immigrant travel has relied on national surveys and qualitative analysis, which underrepresent disadvantaged population groups and slower modes of travel, or are unable to speak to broader patterns in the population. We conducted interviews with 14 low-income immigrants and a paper-based intercept survey of 2,078 adults. Interviewees revealed five major barriers that made public transit use difficult for them, including safety, transit fare affordability, discrimination, system legibility, and reliability. Although crime was the most prominent issue in interviews, the survey results suggest transit cost is the most pressing concern for low-income immigrants. Low-income immigrants were less likely than those with higher-incomes to have access to a motor vehicle, and were less likely than higher-income immigrants or the U.S.-born of any income to have access to a bicycle or bus pass. Finally, although most barriers to public transit use were the same regardless of nativity or household income, low-income immigrants were much less willing to take public transit when they had the option to drive and less willing to bicycle for any purpose. The prevalence of concerns about transit affordability, crime, and reliability suggest transit agencies should consider income-based fare reductions, coordinated crime prevention with local law enforcement, and improved scheduling

2012 Census of California Water Transit Services ,MTI Report 12-02

The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics conducts a nationwide census of ferry boat operators for the U.S. Department of Transportation and the collected information is used for statistical purposes. The Caltrans Division of Local Assistance has been asked by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to gather data regarding ferry operations under MAP-21, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act. MAP-21 includes a new formula program for ferry boats and ferry terminal facilities eligible under 23 USC 129(c) which authorizes federal participation in toll roads, bridges, tunnels, and ferries. FHWA has asked that Caltrans assure the ferry boat data is current for MAP-21. The Mineta Transportation Institute was contacted by Caltrans to conduct this research. The research team compiled a spreadsheet and accompanying maps that include ferry boats, routes, and operators along with a number of related characteristics including ownership (public or private), daily trip counts, regulation of fares, terminal locations (street address and coordinates), boarding statistics, and route segment lengths. The spreadsheet contains fields that will allow it to be linked in a Geographic Information System to Caltrans Earth software for further analysis. Additionally, where relevant, the report includes a brief description of expansion plans for certain ferry service providers

Harmonizing Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in Transportation and Land-Use Planning in California Cities

Abstract: Recent extreme weather events in California—wildfires, drought, and flooding—make abundantly clear the need to plan effective responses to both the causes and the consequences of climate change. A central challenge for climate planning efforts has been identifying transportation and land-use (TLU) strategies that simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions (“mitigation”) and adapt communities so that they will be less affected by the adverse impacts of climate change (“adaptation”). Sets of policies that collectively address both mitigation and adaptation are known as “integrated actions.” This study explores municipal climate planning in California to determine whether cities incorporate integrated actions into their plans, assess the potential drivers of conflict between mitigation and adaptation in municipal plans, and identify ways the State of California can help cities more effectively incorporate integrated actions. The study methods consisted of a detailed analysis of climate planning documents from 23 California cities with particularly long histories of climate planning, plus interviews with 25 local, regional, and state officials who work on municipal climate planning. The authors found that some cities did adopt packages of integrated actions, and, promisingly, two cities with recently updated climate plans explicitly focused on the need for integrated actions. However, most cities addressed climate mitigation and adaptation in separate efforts, potentially reducing synergies between the two types of action and even creating conflicts. Since the first generation of climate action plans focused primarily on mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs), adaptation strategies have not yet been effectively or fully combined into mitigation plans in many cities. Also, a cross-comparison of plan content and interview data suggests that cities often had sets of policies that could potentially create conflicts—mitigation policies that would undermine adaptation capacity, and vice versa. In addition, where a city did adopt integrated actions, these efforts are typically not labeled as such, nor do the policies appear within the same policy document. The study findings suggest promising steps that both municipal and state governments can take to support integrated TLU actions at the local level. For example, cities can proactively link the content in climate mitigation and adaptation plans—a process that will require building the capacity for cross-collaboration between the various departments in charge of developing, implementing, and monitoring climate-related plans. As for the state government, it can provide funding specifically for planning and implementing integrated actions, offer technical support to help municipalities adopt programs and projects that produce integrated mitigation and adaptation benefits, and fund research in the area of integrated actions

Where Do Riders Park Dockless, Shared Electric Scooters? Findings from San Jose, California

Dockless, shared, electric kick-scooters started popping up on U.S. city streets without warning in 2017. Reaction to the shared scooters came swiftly and strongly. On the one hand, the scooters have proven popular with riders, attracting investment capital and expanding service to additional cities. But others have been less enthusiastic, with a central complaint being how shared scooters are parked. This perspective explores the extent to which parked shared scooters pose a problem to others on streets, sidewalks, and public spaces, using empirical evidence documenting where scooters have been parked in downtown San Jose, California

Efficacy in Emergency Legal Preparedness Underlying the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

From its relative obscurity over the past three decades, Ebola viral disease (“EVD”) emerged as a substantial global biothreat in 2014 and 2015. The current outbreak of varied strains of Ebola, beginning in March 2014 in Guinea, is projected to impact hundreds of thousands of people over months, years, or even indefinitely. As of October 31, 2014, the spread of EVD was concentrated in several Af- rican countries (e.g., Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and an unrelated outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo), with limited additional cases in Nigeria, Senegal, and Mali. Over 2,700 people are known to have died from Ebola in fewer than eight months in Liberia alone; the actual death toll may be far higher. At one point, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) estimated a worst-case scenario of 1.4 million new cases arising largely in already affected countries by early 2015. Reported cases in the affected regions are considerably less than these estimates, but with a fatality rate hovering near 50%, thousands more West Africans may perish before the end of this current outbreak

Efficacy in Emergency Legal Preparedness Underlying the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

From its relative obscurity over the past three decades, Ebola viral disease (“EVD”) emerged as a substantial global biothreat in 2014 and 2015. The current outbreak of varied strains of Ebola, beginning in March 2014 in Guinea, is projected to impact hundreds of thousands of people over months, years, or even indefinitely. As of October 31, 2014, the spread of EVD was concentrated in several Af- rican countries (e.g., Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and an unrelated outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo), with limited additional cases in Nigeria, Senegal, and Mali. Over 2,700 people are known to have died from Ebola in fewer than eight months in Liberia alone; the actual death toll may be far higher. At one point, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) estimated a worst-case scenario of 1.4 million new cases arising largely in already affected countries by early 2015. Reported cases in the affected regions are considerably less than these estimates, but with a fatality rate hovering near 50%, thousands more West Africans may perish before the end of this current outbreak

SemEHR:A general-purpose semantic search system to surface semantic data from clinical notes for tailored care, trial recruitment, and clinical research

OBJECTIVE: Unlocking the data contained within both structured and unstructured components of electronic health records (EHRs) has the potential to provide a step change in data available for secondary research use, generation of actionable medical insights, hospital management, and trial recruitment. To achieve this, we implemented SemEHR, an open source semantic search and analytics tool for EHRs. METHODS: SemEHR implements a generic information extraction (IE) and retrieval infrastructure by identifying contextualized mentions of a wide range of biomedical concepts within EHRs. Natural language processing annotations are further assembled at the patient level and extended with EHR-specific knowledge to generate a timeline for each patient. The semantic data are serviced via ontology-based search and analytics interfaces. RESULTS: SemEHR has been deployed at a number of UK hospitals, including the Clinical Record Interactive Search, an anonymized replica of the EHR of the UK South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation Trust, one of Europe's largest providers of mental health services. In 2 Clinical Record Interactive Search-based studies, SemEHR achieved 93% (hepatitis C) and 99% (HIV) F-measure results in identifying true positive patients. At King's College Hospital in London, as part of the CogStack program (github.com/cogstack), SemEHR is being used to recruit patients into the UK Department of Health 100 000 Genomes Project (genomicsengland.co.uk). The validation study suggests that the tool can validate previously recruited cases and is very fast at searching phenotypes; time for recruitment criteria checking was reduced from days to minutes. Validated on open intensive care EHR data, Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III, the vital signs extracted by SemEHR can achieve around 97% accuracy. CONCLUSION: Results from the multiple case studies demonstrate SemEHR's efficiency: weeks or months of work can be done within hours or minutes in some cases. SemEHR provides a more comprehensive view of patients, bringing in more and unexpected insight compared to study-oriented bespoke IE systems. SemEHR is open source, available at https://github.com/CogStack/SemEHR