Active Transportation and Health Effects of Safe Routes to Schools (SR2S) Projects and Planning

On July 29, 2005 Congress passed the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), the federal government’s transportation bill, in part, designating $612 million over five years to go to a relatively new funding program: Safe Routes to School (SR2S). The legislation mandated that state departments of transportation (DOTs) receive annual funding in an amount proportional to the number of primary and middle school grade children enrolled in their states. State DOTs could then grant that money to state, local, and regional agencies, as well as non-profit organizations to fund SR2S programs. Improving public health (and increasing active transportation) is both an explicit and implicit factor motivating this piece of legislation. In the years since its passage into law, the effectiveness of SR2S projects at improving public health have been tested and researched. This perspective documents our current state of understanding of the effects of SR2S projects on public health and active transportation in the U.S

Measuring Incremental SB743 Progress: Accounting for Project Contributions Towards Reducing VMT Under California\u27s Senate Bill 743

On September 27, 2013, California’s governor signed Senate Bill (SB) 743 into law, in part mandating the transition from a level-of-service-based (LOS) measure of transportation environmental impacts to a vehicle-miles-traveled-based (VMT) one in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Several California jurisdictions, including San Jose, Pasadena, and San Francisco, have moved quickly to comply with SB 743, so it is no surprise that several of these early-adopter cities have been working hard to develop powerful VMT estimation methods and tools using the most recent research available. This perspective uses the experiences of an early-adopter city, San Jose, to identify and illustrate the challenges faced by California planners trying to meet the legal requirements of SB 743 and the practical needs of their communities in developing the VMT calculation methods

The Benefits of Transit in the United States: A Review and Analysis of Benefit-Cost Studies

This white paper presents the findings from a review and analysis of the available literature on benefit-cost (b-c) estimates of existing U.S. transit systems. Following an inventory of the literature, the b-c estimates from each study were organized according to the type of study area (e.g., rural, small urban, urban, etc.). Through this process, categories of monetary transit benefits were identified. The estimated dollar value for each benefit category was divided by the total estimated costs of providing the transit services, thus creating a benefit-specific b-c ratio for each category and allowing benefits from each study to be compared on an equal basis. Some of these differences are attributable to the population size and densities of the service areas (context) with rural and small urban areas generally yielding lower b-c values than urbanized areas. However, differences remained even after the context was accounted for; suggesting appropriate transit investments in rural and small urban areas can yield benefits substantially greater than costs. The benefits of transit were measurable and strong in a variety of operating environments; not just in large cities. Key findings from this review and analysis were: Transit benefits often substantially exceed costs in rural and small urban areas—not just big cities; Transit typically pays for itself in congestion relief benefits for mid- to large-sized urban areas; Jobs and economic stimulus are among the largest benefit categories of transit; Transit improves health care access and outcomes while reducing costs; Transit saves people money, with transit in larger urban areas benefiting more people; Low b-c ratios aside, transit saves lives, with evidence presented that b-c analysis methods are likely undervaluing the role transit plays in reducing accidents and their costs to society; and Greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and other important but undervalued transit benefits categories should be considered in future studies

Household Income and Vehicle Fuel Economy in California

This white paper presents the findings from an analysis of the fiscal implications for vehicle owners of changing from the current statewide fuel tax to a “road user charge” (RUC) based on vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). Since 1923, California’s motor vehicle fuel tax has provided revenue used to plan, construct, and maintain the state’s publicly funded transportation systems. Over time, improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency and the effects of inflation have reduced both the revenue from the fuel tax and its purchasing power. Thus, there is growing interest among policy makers for replacing the state’s per-gallon fuel tax with an RUC based on VMT. This study analyzes the 2010-2011California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) to identify the potential effects this policy change would be likely to have on households across the state. The analysis found that while daily household fuel consumption and VMT both appear to increase with household income, urban and rural households show roughly the same amount of fuel consumption and VMT. No statistically significant difference in cost was found between the two programs in any income group. This suggests that an RUC designed to collect the same amount of revenues statewide as the current fuel tax would not place a significant financial burden on California households

Neighborhood Crime and Travel Behavior: An Investigation of the Influence of Neighborhood Crime Rates on Mode Choice, MTI Report 07-02

While much attention has been given to the influence of urban form on travel behavior in recent years, little work has been done on how neighborhood crimes affect this dynamic. This research project studied seven San Francisco Bay Area cities, and found substantiation for the proposition that neighborhood crime rates have an influence on the propensity to choose non-automotive modes of transportation for home-based trips. Specifically, high vice and vagrancy crime rates were associated with a lowered probability of choosing transit in suburban cities for both work and non-work trips, high property crime rates were associated with a lower probability of walking for work trips in urban cities and inner-ring suburban cities, high violent crime rates with a lower probability of walking for work trips in suburban study cities, while higher property crime rates in San Francisco were associated with an increased probability of walking for non-work trips. While the signs of these significant relationships generally conformed to the author’s expectations—i.e., that high crime rates reduce the probability of choosing non-automotive modes of travel—the authors did not find statistically significant relationships for all city/trip model runs, suggesting that these relationships differ depending on the urban form and trip type contexts

Neighborhood Crime and Transit Station Access Mode choice - Phase III of Neighborhood Crime and Travel Behavior

This report provides the findings from the third phase of a three-part study about the influences of neighborhood crimes on travel mode choice. While previous phases found evidence that high levels of neighborhood crime discourage people from choosing to walk, bicycle and ride transit, consistent with the authors’ hypothesis, they also produced counterintuitive findings suggesting that in some cases, high crime neighborhoods encourage transit ridership at the expense of driving—the opposite of what common sense would suggest. Phase 3 tested possible explanations for these counterintuitive findings with a series of methodological improvements. These improvements were: Improvement 1: Used the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system‘s 2008 Station Profile Survey travel data set to replace the Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) 2000 data used in previous phases. Improvement 2: Separated drop-off and drive-alone modes in logit models. Improvement 3: Variables at the corridor level replaced previous variables at the transportation analysis zone (TAZ) level. Improvement 4: Average parcel size (APS) variable replaced the intersection density measure of urban design. Improvement 5: Used nested logit modeling techniques. These yielded strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that high-crime neighborhoods encourage driving, and they generated none of the counterintuitive findings from previous phases

The Potential for Using Loyalty Rewards and Incentives Programs to Encourage Transit Ridership and Regional Transportation and Land Use Integration

Transit smart cards can be used as a tool for increasing transit ridership, increasing retail sales in transit-oriented developments (TODs) and eventually, increasing opportunities for retail development in TODs. Instead of providing separate loyalty rewards for each store, or chain of stores, such cards would provide loyalty rewards—in several possible forms, including free transit ride credits, cash rewards, retail purchase discounts, sweepstakes rewards—to all transit riders who patronize TOD retail businesses. Additional rewards could also be given to transit riders who live, work, and shop in TODs, and even to riders who take transit for specific shopping trips in TODs. In this way, smart cards and transit loyalty programs could become not only useful tools for increasing transit ridership, but also tools for targeted economic development of individual TODs, a means to increase economic opportunities and equity for low-income residents and shoppers in inner-city commercial zones, and in their most fully-realized expression, as tools for regional planners to concentrate retail, services and housing in priority development areas consistent with smart-growth planning principles. This literature review and case study research resulted in the identification of a number of practical lessons, and promising directions for future research: 1. There is a lack of research linking transit smart cards, transit ridership, and shopping behavior in TODs. 2. It is important to retain existing transit riders (reducing ridership “churn”), potentially through the use of loyalty rewards programs and incentives programs to keep these riders or win back those who have given it up. 3. There is both need and potential for rebranding transit’s public image. 4. There are risks of overreach when implementing a transit loyalty rewards and incentives program. 5. There is high potential of incentives and loyalty rewards programs in building transit ridership, TOD, and beyond

POTENTIAL ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE REVISED ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY "CAFO RULE"

Environmental Economics and Policy,