Book review: Transport for suburbia: Beyond the automobile age, by Paul Mees

JTLU vol 5, no 2, pp 121-122 (2012)This book review summarizes and evaluates Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age, by Paul Mees (Earthscan Publishing, 2010). The argument in Transport for Suburbia is that density is not a necessary prerequisite for an effective transit system, and that transfers can be used as a tool to expand the scope of a transit network. Mees presents this argument and his suggestions for improving transit service through a series of narratives about car culture, land use, and best and worst case transit system scenarios

Nice Stations: An Exploration of Nice Ride Bike Share Accessibility and Station Choice

Little is known about how people integrate bike share trip segments into their daily travel. In this study, we evaluate how people navigate from place to place using the Nice Ride Minnesota bike share system in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. We measure changes in job accessibility due to the addition of Nice Ride stations and develop a theoretical model for bike share station choice. The mapped results suggest that Nice Ride provides the strongest job accessibility improvement at the 30-minute threshold in a band just beyond the central business district where walking would not be feasible. We then model people's choice of origin station to evaluate their sensitivity to time spent walking, distance, and a set of station amenity and neighborhood control variables. As expected, people prefer to use stations that do not require deviating from the shortest path to reach a station. For commuters, each additional minute of walking decreases a station’s chance of being chosen, regardless of the overall trip length. Commuters also chose stations closer to parks. Conversely, users making non-work trips are sensitive to the ratio of walking to biking time (with a preference for time spent biking). Stations in neighborhoods with lower crime rates were more likely to be chosen for all trip purposes. The results from this study are important for planners who need a better understanding of bike share user behavior to design or optimize their system. The findings also provide a strong foundation for future research about bike share system modeling

Travel Behavior Over Time

Using detailed travel surveys (the Travel Behavior Inventory) conducted by the Metropolitan Council of the Minneapolis/Saint Paul (Twin Cities) Region in Minnesota for 1990, 2000-2001, and 2010-2011, this report conducts an analysis of changes in travel behavior over time. Specifically looking at changes in travel duration, time, use, and accessibility; telecommuting and its relationship with travel and residential choices; transit service quality and transit use; effects of age and cohort; and changes in walking and bicycling. Much has changed in this period, including the size of the region, demographics, economics, technology, driver licensing, and preferences, examining in turn the effects of investment, development, and population change on behaviors for the Minneapolis-St. Paul region as a whole and for areas within the region. While this research cannot hope to untangle all of the contributing factors, it aims to increase understanding of what did happen, with some explanation of why. This will inform transportation engineers, planners, economists, analysts, and decision makers about the prospective effects of future changes to networks, land use, and demographics while also evaluating the effects of previous network investments

Transportation Impact of Transitways: A Case Study of Hiawatha Light Rail Transit in Minneapolis

The Metropolitan Council in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area (Twin Cities) aims to greatly increase transit ridership in the next two decades. A network of transitways is an essential component to achieve the ridership goal. Since transitways represent significant infrastructure investments from federal, state, and local governments, the public and planners are interested in their ridership bonus. This study investigated transportation impact of the Hiawatha light rail transit (LRT) using a 2011 dataset collected in the Twin Cities. By employing a match-pair cross-sectional design, we surveyed residents living in the middle section of the Hiawatha LRT corridor and those in two urban control corridors and two suburban control corridors in the region. We first explored the reasons that motivated residents moving into the LRT corridor (or residential preferences) and their connections with transit use. Then we employed a propensity score matching approach to study the impact of Hiawatha LRT on transit use for residents who moved to the corridor before its opening and for those who moved after its opening. Finally, we tested the carryover effect of the LRT and built environment effect on active travel: walking to stores and strolling. The study produced interesting results and offered important implications for land use and transportation policies associated with light rail transit.Washington County, Hennepin County, Ramsey County, Minnesota Department of Transportation, Anoka County, University Metropolitan Consortiu

The influence of light rail transit on transit use: An exploration of station area residents along the Hiawatha line in Minneapolis

Rail transit is often implemented in the corridors already with high transit demand. When evaluating their ridership benefits, previous studies often choose the city/county/region as control groups, rather than comparable corridors without rail, and hence overstate their impacts. In this study, we employ propensity score matching to explore the impact of Hiawatha light rail transit (LRT) on transit use. We find that compared to residents in similar urban corridors, the Hiawatha LRT promotes transit use of residents who have lived in the corridor before its opening, and that residents who moved to the corridor after its opening use transit as often as new residents in the comparable urban corridors without LRT. We conclude that besides LRT, land use and transportation policies are necessary for ridership growth

Nice Ride Minnesota Program Evaluation Bemidji Bike Rental System

Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesot