Federal Transit Research Articles

Line source response from geotechnical data

Predicting groundborne noise and vibration environmental impacts associated with rail transit projects involves determination of the line source response (LSR) to characterize ground vibration propagation characteristics. The presentation discusses the use of geotechnical data to develop model LSRs. GIS is then used to apply model LSR data on a larger scale and perform a detailed analysis using Federal Transit Administration (FTA) methodology, which can be refined with field testing at a later stage. Conceptual track vibration mitigation measures are discussed for controlling groundborne noise and vibration to nearby receptors.

Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.

Special issue on public transport systems

The Journal of Advanced Transportation has been a leader in the area of public transport for over four decades. This special issue presents an outstanding series of novel papers on public and freight transport systems in the areas of demand estimation, planning, and operations to highlight recent advances. In the following, we paraphrase information from the abstracts of the papers. The first two papers deal with demand estimation issues. In “A method to estimate the historical US air travel demand,” Tao Li, Hojong Baik, and Antonio A. Trani propose a route-based optimization model for estimation of the historical air travel demand in the USA. In the paper “Geographic information system - system dynamics procedure for bus rapid transit ridership estimation” by Luis David Galicia and Ruey Long Cheu, a two-step procedure for estimating the total daily ridership of a new bus rapid transit route is proposed. The two-step procedure has been validated with actual demographic and ridership data from two lines. The proposed procedure offers an approach that complements the ridership estimation methods currently accepted by the US Federal Transit Administration. The third and fourth papers deal with urban railway planning issues. In “A stochastic multi-period investment selection model to optimize strategic railway capacity planning,” Yung-Cheng Lai and Mei-Cheng Shih develop a stochastic multi-period investment selection model to assist railroads to allocate capital investments within the strategic capacity planning process. Their novel optimization framework provides a means to cope with unfulfilled demand and demand uncertainty in a long-term multi-period investment selection problem. Using this decision support tool will minimize the risk in strategic capacity planning, subject to demand uncertainty. In “Development of a transfer-cost-based logit assignment model for the Beijing rail transit network using automated fare collection data,” Bingfeng Si, Ming Zhong, Jianfeng Liu, Ziyou Gao, and Jianjun consider the major factors that influence the passenger flow pattern in the Beijing rail transit network through a logit-based network flow assignment model. A full transfer cost function, including transfer walking time, vehicle waiting time, and a penalty for additional transfers, is proposed to simulate passengers' transfer behavior. They show that the models developed are capable of reproducing transfer and route choices made by passengers. The next three papers deal with issues related to information provided to passengers in urban public transport systems. In “A methodology for schedule-based paths recommendation in multimodal public transportation networks,” David Canca, Alejandro Zarzo, Pedro L. González-R, Eva Barrena, and Encarnación Algaba analyze intermodal itinerary recommendations given to passengers in interurban networks with several public transportation modes. Additionally, time, and capacity constraints, as well as seat booking, are considered. The related optimization problem is modeled for a generic user request and solved with the use of a network graph transformation. In “Users' views on current and future real-time bus information systems,” Md. Matiur Rahman, S.C. Wirasinghe, and Lina Kattan examine the users' views and perceptions towards the possible future availability of real-time bus information systems through a face to face survey. The results showed that 35.5% of the respondents agreed that the current information system discouraged them from using public transport. Of those surveyed, 82% board the first arriving bus regardless of the route, even though it may take a longer in-vehicle time to complete the trip. A majority of the respondents (88%) indicated that real-time transit information would not be necessary if bus headways are less than 10 minutes. Information on the next bus arrival time received the highest priority. In “Railway passenger train delay prediction via neural network model,” Masoud Yaghini, Mohammad M. Khoshraftar, and Masoud Seyedabadi present an artificial neural network model to predict the delay of passenger trains in Iranian Railways. To evaluate the proposed model, they compared the results of three different data input methods as well as three different architectures with each other and with some common prediction methods such as decision tree and multinomial logistic regression. The final paper is on bus transit operations. In “A rule-based model for integrated operation of bus priority signal timings and travelling speed,” Wanjing Ma, Yue Liu, and Baoxin Han study the integrated operation of signal timings and bus speed to provide priority to busses at isolated intersections when real-time adjustment of bus speed is available. A set of integrated operational rules is developed for busses with and without schedule deviation with the objective of minimizing bus schedule deviation, bus fuel consumption, and emissions.

Motivations for Participation in a Crowdsourcing Application to Improve Public Engagement in Transit Planning

Governments increasingly turn to the Internet to aid in transparency, accountability, and public participation activities, and there is growing interest in innovative online problem-solving models to serve the public good. One such model, the crowdsourcing model, leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes. Understanding how and why people participate in these kinds of activities is important for developing better new media tools for the public good going forward. In 2009, the Federal Transit Administration supported the Next Stop Design project, an attempt to use crowdsourcing for public participation in transit planning. Based on interviews with 23 Next Stop Design participants, the present applied communication study discusses the motivations of those participants to engage the project.

A Model Housing Transportation Plan: Coordinating Housing and Transportation

The purpose of this study was to bring transit-oriented development planning together with affordable housing planning through the development of an implementable Model Housing Transportation Plan. The plan, with input from local, regional and federal planning, housing and transit agencies and other stakeholders, is unique to the site for which it was developed; however, it is intended to serve as an illustrative model for planning professionals, community advocates and community-based organizations in other jurisdictions with similar contexts. It endeavors to advance the nation’s understanding of the need for affordable housing near transit and to promote strategies and tools to empower stakeholders to implement housing transportation station area plans that benefit the entire region. And finally, it seeks to demonstrate how federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing (HUD) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) can work together to support local and regional efforts to develop coordinated housing and transportation plans.

Geographic information system‐system dynamics procedure for bus rapid transit ridership estimation

SUMMARYThis paper presents a two‐step procedure for estimating the total daily ridership (TDR) of a new bus rapid transit (BRT) route that runs along a corridor without a competing regular bus service. The first step of the procedure uses the Geographic Information System‐Business Analyst desktop to analyze and extract the total population, employed population, housing units within ¼ mile and ¼ to ½ mile from the BRT stations in the base year, and their respective annual growth rates. These values are then used as inputs into the second step. The second step of the procedure uses a simulation model constructed by the system dynamics approach. This simulation model, which embeds the known relationships between the demographic variables and proposed BRT system's infrastructure and operational features, initially estimates the TDR of the base year. Simulation is then performed to estimate the TDR from the base year until a future year defined by the user. The two‐step procedure has been validated with actual demographic and ridership data from the Las Vegas MAX BRT line and the Los Angeles Orange Line, respectively. The procedure has also been applied to the proposed BRT route along Mesa St. in El Paso, Texas, as a case study. The two‐step procedure offers a new and relatively simple approach that complements the three known BRT ridership estimation methods currently acceptable by the U.S. Federal Transit Administration. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Railway tunnel portal noise

Railway tunnel portal noise is a concern in environmental impact assessment for railway projects. Railway noise is amplified inside the tunnel due to multiple reflections of highly sound reflective tunnel walls and such noise is then radiated from the tunnel portal. Noise Sensitive Receivers (NSRs) which are situated in close proximity of railway tunnel portal are adversely affected by the portal noise radiation in additional to the ordinary railway noise. Standard railway noise calculation procedures (Calculation of Railway Noise by Dept of Transport in UK, Transit Noise and Vibration Impact Assessment by Federal Transit Administration in USA, etc.), however, do not include a correction for such portal noise effect. This paper presents the experimental results of railway tunnel portal noise collected from Tai Po Kau tunnel on the East Rail Line in Hong Kong and proposes appropriate the tunnel portal noise corrections.

Noise and vibration from railway inclined turnout

Railway noise and vibration control at turnouts and the associated groundborne noise and viaduct re-radiated noise are major environmental concerns for railway projects in urban area. For new railway lines in Hong Kong, inclined turnouts are used in mainlines (instead of vertical turnout) for smooth load transfer at turnout, and reduction of noise and vibration from the turnout. According to the practice in the world (Calculation of Railway Noise by Dept of Transport in UK, Transit Noise and Vibration Impact Assessment by Federal Transit Administration in USA, etc.), noise and vibration levels from turnout would be higher than that from normal railway track in the range of 2.5dB to 10dB. According to the practice in Hong Kong, +7dB turnout correction is adopted for airborne noise calculation, and +5dB and +10dB turnout corrections are adopted for groundborne noise calculation for inclined and vertical turnouts respectively. This paper presents noise and vibration measurement results at various setback disances from turnouts and discusses the turnout corrections for various operation conditions.

Commuter Rail

Federal regulators and passenger railways are both concerned about passengers with mobility impairments that limit their ability to use stairways. Federal policy and railway practice strongly encourage development of services that allow for level boarding and alighting from commuter rail trains. In addition to benefiting individuals who have trouble using stairs, level boarding can lead to significant improvements in service delivery for the rest of the public by reducing unproductive station dwell times, improving safety, and creating opportunities to improve crew efficiency. One obstacle to level boarding has been concerns presented by the freight railroads that operate over (and often own) trackage shared with the commuter trains. The freight operators wish to maintain a full horizontal clearance envelope allowing unrestricted operations. These concerns often limit the close door–platform interface necessary for level boarding. This paper summarizes current Federal Transit Administration policy on level boarding, discusses the benefits of level boarding, reviews the tension between freight clearance concerns and level boarding, and reviews the state of the practice in serving passengers with mobility impairments. On the basis of an industry review, it highlights three innovations that have been implemented or considered to expand the scope of level boarding among North American commuter railroads. Finally, it provides recommendations for further research.

Good Practices to Encourage Bicycling and Pedestrians on Federal Lands: 11 Components

The Paul S. Sarbanes Transit in Parks Technical Assistance Center, sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, recently completed the report Good Practices to Encourage Bicycling and Pedestrians on Federal Lands. The report was developed for federal land managers interested in creating or expanding bicycle and pedestrian options in their units and looking for more information about successful models and practices. Bicycle and pedestrian transportation has many benefits of interest to federal land managers, including resource protection, reducing green house gas emissions, achieving financial sustainability, and improving visitor enjoyment and health. After reviewing bicycle and pedestrian planning documents from federal land units and selected cities and counties, the technical assistance team identified 11 components of an effective bicycle and pedestrian plan: needs assessment; partnerships; goals, objectives, and performance measures; bicycle and pedestrian network plan; design guidelines; maintenance policy and procedures; pedestrian and bicycle support facilities; cost and funding analysis; encouragement, education, and enforcement programs; evaluation and monitoring; and updates. This paper describes each component and presents illustrative examples. The full report contains additional examples and a more in-depth discussion of each component of the plan.

Developing Sustainable Methods of Distributing Federal Transit Funds

FTA apportions Section 5307 urbanized area (UZA) formula funds to census-designated UZAs. When UZAs contain multiple recipients of Section 5307 funds, FTA leaves it up to local officials to determine the suballocations to the multiple recipients. Little documentation exists on the question of how to allocate the funds on a local level. The more agencies within a UZA, the more complex the issue becomes. Local officials within the UZAs must develop methods of allocating funds that satisfy the desires of each of the regional stakeholders. The nature in which metropolitan areas grow leads to multiple transit agencies existing within the UZA and desiring access to UZA formula funds. This report identifies seven complex metropolitan areas across the United States with multiple Section 5307 fund recipients, identifies the problems experienced with allocating Section 5307 funds at the local level, and identifies three models of funding distribution techniques. The models of funding distribution include formula, formula and regional project selection, and regional project selection and local negotiations. Though only three models are identified, there is much variation within each model. The report provides details on the allocation within each region.

End of the Highway Trust Fund?

More than at any other time, the status of the Highway Trust Fund is in doubt. Modern federal surface transportation policy began in 1956, and its survival is threatened by a lack of political will to increase the main source of revenue for the program: the federal excise tax on gasoline. In the short term, the federal highway and transit programs can survive with more borrowed money or with an increase in federal gas tax. However, even if the political will to do either of these things is found, both sources of revenue are unsustainable in the long term. As Congress faces this transportation funding crisis, it must consider how to avoid a similar problem in the future by transitioning to a reliable source of revenue immediately. Failing to do so would put the national transportation system and national competitiveness at risk. This paper explores the following three policy options for long-term federal transportation funding by presenting the advantages and disadvantages of each one: (a) continued current funding, (b) improved user fees, and (c) dedicated general revenue. These options offer general guidance for funding policy rather than detailed proposals; each option has possible variations. However, each option sets a specific direction for future federal transportation policy, and each provides policy trade-offs. The purpose of this paper is to describe the trade-offs regarding strategies for transitioning to a sustainable federal surface transportation program.

Integrated Bus Information System

West Virginia University, under contract to the Federal Transit Administration, has developed two tools to evaluate the pollutant emissions, greenhouse gases, and fuel economy of transit buses: a searchable database of transit vehicle emission data and a transit fleet emission inventory model. These tools, complemented by a transit vehicle life-cycle cost model developed by West Virginia University, Battelle, and Transit Resource Center for the Transportation Research Board, provide an interactive, approachable, and reliable method for users, primarily transit agencies, to evaluate overall fleet emissions and fuel consumption for optimization of fleet configuration and operation. These tools will be made available through an online website called the Integrated Bus Information System (IBIS). This paper describes development of the transit fleet inventory model and comparison with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) MOBILE6 and MOVES (motor vehicle emission simulator) emission inventory models. The IBIS model was developed from extensive chassis dynamometer data from several reference vehicles. Polynomial models were built through linear regression. These backbone models characterized the effects of driving activity on vehicle emissions and fuel consumption. Comparison of predicted emissions showed good agreement for hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, and oxides of nitrogen emissions and acceptable agreement for particulate matter emissions. The EPA MOBILE6 model assumed constant values as a function of duty cycle for carbon dioxide emissions and fuel economy. The West Virginia University IBIS model and EPA MOVES model displayed similar trends for carbon dioxide emissions, but MOVES predicted substantially lower carbon dioxide levels.

Bus Rapid Transit in the United States

A decade ago, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) was poised for rapid expansion in the USA. The US Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announced a ten-city BRT demonstration programme and an action plan was released seeking deployment of BRT in twenty-two cities by 2008. In 2004, the FTA released 'Characteristics of Bus Rapid Transit for Decision-Making' (CBRT), a comprehensive planning guide designed to help cities evaluate and implement new BRT systems. An updated version of the CBRT was released in 2009. Despite these strong efforts to support BRT deployments, the track record in the US appears mixed. On one hand, several cities implemented important, precedent-setting BRT projects. On the other, many cities cited in the action plan either significantly delayed or cancelled their projects. Moreover, most US BRT projects have been incremental improvements to existing bus services, not rail-like BRT systems typically found in other parts of the world, such as Latin America. The potential future direction of BRT in US cities is considered

Neo-Patrimonialism and Subnational Authoritarianism in Mexico. The Case of Oaxaca

How do subnational authoritarian enclaves emerge (or survive) in a democratic transition at the federal level? How can they endure large-scale social protests, like the one that shook Oaxaca in 2006? While federal tolerance for subnational authoritarian practices is a necessary condition, it is insufficient in itself to explain why subnational political systems sustain and eventually reproduce authoritarian practices in the first place. In this article, therefore, I focus on the internal dimension of subnational authoritarianism. I argue that, because of its reliance on two distinct sources of legitimacy, Oaxaca's neo-patrimonial domination system was able to respond to the formal democratizing pressures emanating from the federal transition without losing its authoritarian nature. This process of hybridization transformed Oaxacan institutions, but left social structures and the political dynamics that emerge from them – the sources of subnational authoritarianism – almost intact. By exploring the evolution of neo-patrimonialism and hybridization in Oaxaca from a theoretical perspective, I address the issues of change and continuity in the emergence of subnational authoritarian enclaves, in Mexico and elsewhere.

Variation in measured force density levels of light rail vehicles.

The procedure recommended by the Federal Transit Administration for detailed predictions of ground-borne vibration is based on measurements at an existing rail system and measurements at the target site. A force density level (FDL) is derived from train vibration and line source transfer mobility (LSTM) measurements at the existing system. This FDL is then combined with the LSTM measured at the target site to develop predictions. This empirical procedure usually provides more reliable predictions than computer modeling procedures. FDL is assumed to characterize the trains and track support system and LSTM is assumed to characterize the effects of local geology. Implicit assumptions when applying this procedure are that FDL is independent of the local geology and that the vehicle and track support system will be the same at the target site as they are at the vehicle test site. This paper considers the differences in FDLs measured at light rail systems in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Portland. Issues discussed are how to adjust for train speed, why the speed adjustments are system specific, causes for FDL variations when the vehicles and track support systems are nominally the same, and procedures for obtaining consistent FDL measurements.

The Thin Red Line

Many critics of the federal transit finance program in the United States have argued that grantsmanship excessively influences the planning process, as local officials pressure transportation planners to produce cost and ridership forecasts that favor locally preferred projects. This article extends this critique from cost and patronage forecasting to other aspects of transit planning, particularly routing and tunneling safety evaluations, through a case study of the planning for the Wilshire “Red Line” subway in Los Angeles—a long-debated and still active project. Specifically, we examine the decision-making process behind the decades of planning of the Wilshire Red Line subway, which has seen conventional routing and alignment studies alternately manipulated, ignored, and blocked in response to the shifting views of key public officials. While political influence over planning processes is both inevitable and probably desirable, the extent to which modal, cost, ridership, and route analyses of the proposed Wilshire subway have been crafted, manipulated, and ignored to serve prevailing, if ever shifting, local political preferences calls into question the role and legitimacy of such analyses.

Risk-Informed Transit Project Oversight

This paper presents an evolutionary process of integrating risk management into the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTAs) new-start transit project program. New-start transit projects generally request federal funding assistance through the FTA. FTA funding commitments occur early in the project’s development, and as such the project is subject to significant risk, which has historically caused early estimates to be unreliable. To provide more reliable funding commitments and to better inform decision-makers, the FTA introduced risk-assessment requirements in 2002. Results from the earliest efforts indicated two areas for improvement: a more holistic method for risk assessment, and a better integration of risk management into standard project management practices. Although there are insufficient results, to date, to fully validate this new process, the purpose of this paper is to provide information on background and methodology to industry risk practitioners and researchers.

Construction noise action area model.

A model developed by the Washington State Department of Transportation to be used by biologists to determine the action area for highway construction projects is presented. The model conservatively estimates the distance at which construction noise would match ambient background sound levels. The model propagates the combined maximum sound level (Lmax) for project construction equipment spherically over the soft and hard site characteristics to a point where it would converge with the ambient hourly equivalent (Leq) sound level. The ambient Leq sound level can be input into the model from actual measurements, documented reference sources, or from a table based on population density [Federal Transit Authority (FTA) Noise Assessment Guidance (2006)]. The model then combines the ambient sound level with the traffic sound level based on the national mean emission curves. The input for traffic volume, vehicle type, and speed is propagated cylindrically from the source until the traffic source drops to the ambient level. A macro, that applies a general atmospheric and molecular absorption adjustment to the calculated distances, produces the action area circumference both graphically and numerically as it relates to each of the sound sources. [Work supported by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) (1978).]

Estimation of race-neutral goals in public procurement and contracting

Federal guidelines require that public entities receiving federal transit authority (FTA) funds take affirmative steps to allocate funds to disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs). Business firms owned and operated by women and/or racial minority group members are presumptively classified as disadvantaged. To assure that the affirmative efforts to allocate contract dollars to DBEs don't discriminate against nonDBEs and white male-owned firms, the guidelines require that maximum use of race-neutral means be adopted to assure the inclusion of women and minority-owned firms in public contracting. The guidelines do not provide specific guidance on how to determine the size of the race-neutral portion of contracts awarded to DBEs. This article provides an empirically valid and easy to implement method for achieving race-neutral goals when a public agency or authority collects information on contracts with and without targeted goals.