Public Transit Infrastructure Research Articles

Valuing public transit: The L‐train shutdown

AbstractIn this article, I quantify the value of access to public transit in New York using the surprise, hurricane‐related announcement of the temporary shutdown of an important piece of transportation infrastructure: the L‐train connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. My approach allows me to measure changes in housing sales prices by using a change in public transit infrastructure, that is, (a) temporary, and (b) not an outcome of city transit planning, but rather an unexpected consequence of a natural disaster. I find that the L‐train's shutdown announcement caused a temporary decrease in sales prices for affected housing units of 6.4%. This estimate suggests a monthly capitalization rate of public transit access of around $863 for housing units where the L‐train is the nearest subway stop, demonstrating that households in NYC ascribe a high value to transit access. Using these estimates, the benefits of the repair outweigh the costs, with the benefit‐to‐cost ratio of the repairs ranging from 2.76 to 2.78.

Mapping Access to Children's Hospitals in Texas.

Vehicle access, travel time, and distance to hospitals and emergency rooms with sufficient patient beds are critical healthcare accessibility measures, especially for children who require specific pediatric services. In a large state like Texas with vast rural areas and limited public transit infrastructure, 75% of the children live over an hour from the closest facility that provides pediatric emergency services or specialty care. In view of this challenge, this study first sought to map the prevailing geographical accessibility to children's hospitals and, second, to model the hospital beds per capita for each hospital's service area within the state of Texas. The results showed disparities in accessing emergency pediatric care, especially in rural areas. However, despite major metro areas recording better geographical accessibility to pediatric healthcare, residents in these areas may experience limited hospital bed availability. The findings indicate an urgent need for more pediatric healthcare services in rural Texas. Given the increasing population growth in metro areas and their surroundings, there is also a need for the expansion of healthcare infrastructure in these areas.

How long will it take? Commuting time and differential access to an urban community college

AbstractIn this chapter, we examine how spatial access, the extent to which individuals must traverse space or time to reach a community college, varies by time of day across socio‐demographic groups. We specifically measure spatial access as the time required to travel to a community college by public transit, a common mode of transportation for many urban residents. Our findings revealed substantive variation in travel times between socio‐demographic groups suggesting varying levels of spatial access. They also highlight how public transit infrastructure, residential patterns, and community college locations interact to influence how long students must travel to access postsecondary opportunities.

Investment timing and length choice for a rail transit line under demand uncertainty

This paper is motivated by the inadequate treatment of uncertainty in public transit infrastructure investments. As observed in the past, rare but dramatic events can heavily disrupt public transit system operations and negatively affect the transit riders. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic caused an 80%-90% transit demand decline in March 2020 in the U.S. However, the existing transit infrastructure planning studies have not modeled such sudden demand shocks. We thus improve the modeling realism of uncertain transit demand by formulating demand evolution as a jump-diffusion process, which is a combination of continuous-time Brownian motion and a discrete counting process, namely Poisson process, and present analytical optimization models for the development of a rail transit line under such uncertainty. We jointly optimize two related decisions, namely the timing for introducing rail transit to a commuter corridor and length choice for the rail line. We refute a misconception that investment in a project should always start immediately if a positive cost saving over the planning horizon is expected. We also find that investment timing and sizing decisions are closely related and behave quite differently for the same change in some parameters, such as the infrastructure construction period. The developed modeling and analysis framework should be transferable to other civil infrastructure development and investment problems under uncertainty.

Urban transport emissions under current and alternative mitigation policy scenarios for the Mumbai Metropolitan region

This paper first estimates the emission inventory for Mumbai Metropolitan Region's (MMR) urban transport under business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. The inventory includes five major pollutants, viz. CO2, CO, NOx, PM, and HC. We used a bottom-up approach based on a traditional four-step travel demand model for the base year (2005) and horizon years (2031 & 2050) to obtain vehicle kilometer traveled (VKT) and vehicular emission factors adopted from the existing literature. The paper then proposes five emission mitigation scenarios for horizon years, including improvement of public transit infrastructure, increase in vehicle operating costs and inclusion of electric vehicles (EVs), to evaluate their impact on the urban transport of MMR. A combination of multiple policies- including the combined effect of land use, increase in vehicle operating cost and transit infrastructure- will reduce private vehicle mode share, VKT, and CO2 emission by ∼21%, ∼19%, and ∼4% compared to the BAU scenario in 2050.

The impact of urban form on daily mobility demand and energy use: Evidence from the United States

The causal relationship between urban form, in particular density, and travel demand is subject to debate. Here, we investigate this relationship using a structured regression approach applied to a large-scale layered dataset of travel patterns and urban form. We find that residents of the densest urban areas use 80% less energy for transportation than residents of rural areas and explore the causal factors influencing this relationship. We find that the primary driver of the density–energy use relationship is the larger number of nearby destinations available to urban dwellers, followed by differences in road network properties and public transit infrastructure. The energy benefits of urban dwelling are weakened when there are more destinations available 10–100 km away due to urban sprawl. While these causal factors are correlated with density, urban form can substantially affect travel energy use even within a given density bracket. We also show that urban form predominantly influences how and where people travel, rather than how often and how long. These results outline pathways for cities and communities to reduce the environmental impact of travel while increasing access to relevant destinations.

Inclusive growth, public transit infrastructure investments and neighbourhood trajectories of inequality in Montreal.

Investing in accessible, affordable and sustainable modes of transportation is increasingly seen as an important policy tool for fostering the development of more inclusive cities and combating the rise in inequality. In this article, we review how the concept of inclusive growth has gained traction at the local level framed within a discourse of building more equitable and sustainable cities with a particular emphasis on transportation infrastructure projects as a way of operationalizing the concept as a policy tool. Using Montreal as a case study, we then proceed to evaluate two competing proposals for major public transit infrastructure projects (the Pink line and the REM Phase II) to see if one may potentially offer more inclusive outcomes in terms of transit access and mobility. We do so by first examining changes in the spatial configurations of neighbourhood income disparities in the city between 1981 and 2016. After identifying a pattern of growing spatial polarization between higher- and lower-income neighbourhoods, we use a buffer analysis of transit stations to assess which of the two proposed transit infrastructure projects is best positioned to curb the growth of neighbourhood disparities. Our results suggest the proposed Pink line project provides more coverage in terms of accessibility and connecting economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods from Montreal Nord to Lachine with the downtown core.

Pavement crack detection with hybrid-window attentive vision transformers

Pavement, as a kind of common public transit infrastructure, plays an important part in the daily passing and transportation-associated activities. The good conditions and smooth traffics of pavements matter significantly to the pavement users. However, due to long-time services, pavements often suffer from different kinds and severities of distresses, which might bring inconvenience to the pavement-related events, or even cause terrible traffic hazards. In this regard, we put forward a novel hybrid-window attentive vision transformer framework, called CrackFormer, for pavement crack detection aiming at providing an effective and automated solution to serving the pavement distress inspecting and repairing works. The CrackFormer employs a transformer-based high-resolution network architecture to rationally exploit and fuse multiscale feature semantics. To be specific, a hybrid-window based self-attention scheme is designed to extract feature semantics of entities both locally with dense windows and globally with sparse windows, which effectively improves the semantic details and accuracies. Moreover, a weighted multi-head self-attention philosophy is developed to recalibrate the contributions of different heads according to their relevance, which well enhances the feature encoding robustness and saliency. The CrackFormer is systematically tested on seven pavement crack detection datasets. Quantitative evaluations show that the CrackFormer achieves an overall performance with the precision of 0.9376, recall of 0.9352, and F1-score of 0.9364, respectively. In addition, qualitative examinations and comparative analyses all confirm the excellent performance of the CrackFormer for recognizing and delineating the pavement cracks of varying patterns under diverse pavement surface conditions.

Computer vision-based generating and updating of the public transit bus stop inventories

An updated asset inventory enables public transit agencies to make informed decisions on the maintenance and improvement of their physical assets. Conventional asset inventory surveys mainly rely on manual site visits and subsequent analysis, which are time consuming and expensive. Many research projects developed methods to automate condition assessment of civil infrastructure assets, such as road surfaces, structures, and sewage systems; however, research on the automated detection and condition assessment of public transit infrastructure is very limited. This research aims to contribute to addressing this gap by introducing an automated computer vision-based system to detect main assets in transit bus stops and update asset inventories using video frames captured by on-board cameras on operating buses. This system uses existing hardware systems on public buses to gather required data and then uses Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) to recognize public transit assets. In addition, a related method was proposed to process manually collected images for semi-automated asset inventory updating. The experimental results showed more than 95% detection rates in videos, which demonstrate potentials for practical applications.

Daily travel behaviors and transport mode choice of older adults in Mexico City

Our paper adds to the aging mobilities literature by addressing the need for more empirical studies in the Global South and utilizing the 2017 Household Origin-Destination Survey (HODS 2017) to broadly understand the mobility of older adults in Mexico City. We use descriptive statistics to reveal travel behavior patterns and construct a multinomial logit model to understand variations in mode choice of older adults in Mexico City. Our analysis does provide an emphasis on differences by income class, gender, and neighborhood level access to public transportation. Results uncovered transport-related inequalities as poorer older adults travel for longer periods of time compared to their wealthier peers. In terms of travel behaviors, we found that 40.5% of older adults reported using public and paid transit, 32% walked, 26.5% drove, and only 1.2% biked. Also, we learned that when older adults have access to good public transit infrastructure, they use it, regardless of car ownership status. Also, mobilities resulting from gender differences among older adults showed that older females are less likely to use structured public transit, walking, and biking in comparison to older males. Lastly we outline research limitations and recommendations for future transport policies.

Public transit infrastructure and heat perceptions in hot and dry climates

Many cities aim to progress toward their sustainability and public health goals by increasing use of their public transit systems. However, without adequate protective infrastructure that provides thermally comfortable conditions for public transit riders, it can be challenging to reach these goals in hot climates. We took micrometeorological measurements and surveyed riders about their perceptions of heat and heat-coping behaviors at bus stops with a variety of design attributes in Phoenix, AZ, USA, during the summer of 2018. We identified the design attributes and coping behaviors that made riders feel cooler. We observed that current infrastructure standards and material choices for bus stops in Phoenix are insufficient to provide thermal comfort, and can even expose riders to health risks. Almost half of the study participants felt hot or very hot at the time they were surveyed, and more than half reported feeling thermally uncomfortable. On average, shade reduced the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) by 19 °C. Moreover, we found significant diurnal differences in PET reductions from the shade provided by various design attributes. For instance, all design attributes were effective in reducing PET in the morning; however, a vegetated awning did not provide statistically significant shade reductions in the afternoon. Temperatures of sun-exposed surfaces of man-made materials exceeded skin burn thresholds in the afternoon, but shade was effective in bringing the same surfaces to safe levels. Aesthetically pleasing stops were rated as cooler than stops rated as less beautiful. We conclude that cities striving to increase public transit use should prioritize thermal comfort when designing public transit stops in hot climates.

Estimating the Impacts of Proximity to Public Transportation on Residential Property Values: An Empirical Analysis for Hartford and Stamford Areas, Connecticut

Public transit infrastructure may increase residential property values by improving accessibility and reducing commute expenses in urban areas. Prior studies have investigated the impacts of the proximity to public transportation on property values and obtained mixed conclusions. Many of these studies were focused on one transit mode for a single city. In this study, a hedonic pricing model is constructed to investigate the impacts of commuter rail/Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and bus lines separately in two different areas: the Stamford area (Stamford–Darien–New Canaan) and the Hartford area (Hartford–West Hartford–East Hartford), Connecticut. Comparison of the results from Ordinary Least Square and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) indicates that estimation accuracy can be improved by considering local variation. Results from GWR show that impacts of proximity to bus and rail/BRT on property values vary spatially in the Hartford area. Negative impacts of bus stops are found in downtown Hartford and positive impacts in the west and east sides of Hartford. Impacts from rail/BRT are relatively minor compared with bus lines, partly due to the relatively recent launching of the BRT and Hartford rail line. In contrast, most properties in the Stamford area show appreciation towards rail service and depreciation to bus service. This study reveals the roles of different public transit systems in affecting residential property values. It also provides empirical evidence for future transit-oriented development in this region for uplifting the real estate market.

Wheels on the Bus: Impact of Vaccine Rollouts on Demand for Public Transportation

Public transit ridership tumbled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to enormous budget deficits and prompting slashed or eliminated service offerings across the United States. These service cuts may cause a vicious cycle and end up hurting the most vulnerable riders who cannot afford to switch to other options. In this paper, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 vaccination progress on the demand for public transportation. To overcome well-documented challenges associated with empirically estimating the impact of vaccinations, we leverage unique features of the COVID-19 vaccination process to identify an instrumental variable. By merging the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination data with several sources of mobility and transportation data, we construct a sample connecting vaccination rates with the demand for public transportation. Using the instrumental variable approach, we estimate a one-percentage-point increase in the vaccination rate led to a 0.676% increase in the mobility in public transit centers. In addition, the extended vaccination leads to a significant increase in the number of trips across all distance ranges. We also examine trip modality and show extended vaccination contributed to increased mobility in bus stations, railway stations, and airport terminals. Our findings demonstrate the significant impact of vaccine rollouts on the demand for public transportation and provide strong support for restoring and revitalizing public transit infrastructure in anticipation of vaccine-buoyed demand recovery.

Built Environment Approaches to Increase Physical Activity: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association.

Engaging in regular physical activity is one of the most important things people can do to improve their cardiovascular health; however, population levels of physical activity remain low in the United States. Effective population-based approaches implemented in communities can help increase physical activity among all Americans. Evidence suggests that built environment interventions offer one such approach. These interventions aim to create or modify community environmental characteristics to make physical activity easier or more accessible for all people in the places where they live. In 2016, the Community Preventive Services Task Force released a recommendation for built environment approaches to increase physical activity. This recommendation is based on a systematic review of 90 studies (search period, 1980-June 2014) conducted using methods outlined by the Guide to Community Preventive Services. The Community Preventive Services Task Force found sufficient evidence of effectiveness to recommend combined built environment strategies. Specifically, these strategies combine interventions to improve pedestrian or bicycle transportation systems with interventions to improve land use and environmental design. Components of transportation systems can include street pattern design and connectivity, pedestrian infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, and public transit infrastructure and access. Components of land use and environmental design can include mixed land use, increased residential density, proximity to community or neighborhood destinations, and parks and recreational facility access. Implementing this Community Preventive Services Task Force recommendation in communities across the United States can help promote healthy and active living, increase physical activity, and ultimately improve cardiovascular health.

Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical framework

Cities account for 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, and their share is increasing due to rapid urbanization. While compact urban forms with public transit are viewed as important strategies for reducing emissions, environmental benefits must be weighed against the costs of public transit infrastructure, road improvements to alleviate congestion in dense urban space, and more expensive housing resulting from land use restrictions. The literature largely lacks a theoretical framework for assessing these tradeoffs. This paper derives analytical insights into urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation by formulating a social planner’s utility maximization problem. The planner chooses the residential densities of urban zones as well as investments in road and public transit infrastructures that link these zones to the city center. Road travel is subject to congestion. Any feasible solution must accommodate a fixed total population and ensure that residents of all zones have the same maximum utility. GHG emissions associated with housing, road travel, and public transit generate damages. Analytical results show that incorporating GHG damages into urban planning always leads to an optimal solution with a more compact urban form, and reduces automobile travel in each zone if a specific condition involving the marginal congestion cost and the marginal effectiveness of road investment is satisfied. Numerical examples demonstrate that near-optimal emissions reductions and utility improvements can be achieved via public transit investment and mode shifting even if the planner inherits and cannot modify a suboptimal land use and road configuration.

A Study of Illumination Level at Public Transit Infrastructure in Butterworth, Penang.

Illumination level is an important thing in our daily life. Therefore, it is necessary for the building or any infrastructure to achieve the minimum recommendations of illumination. This case study was focus on the evaluation of illumination level at public transit infrastructure which is Pengkalan Sultan Abdul Halim Ferry Terminal. The aim of this study is to evaluate either the illumination level in selected area is comply to the standard of Panduan Teknik JKR or not. Field measurement was conducted, and the reading of lux meter were recorded. The illumination level of the selected location is in good condition during the day. The walkways area achieved 100% of recommendation standard followed by waiting area is about 85%. Only ticket counter in satisfactory level with 86.20% and only 13.80% achieved the minimum requirement. Only walkways achieved 65.4% of satisfactorily standard and 34.6% in bad condition for the night situations. The bad condition of illumination at ticket counter and waiting area during the night. The 100% of the area are in bad condition which is dangerous to the users. From the results, it is suggested to do routine maintenance to improve the illumination level and achieve the minimum requirement of standard.

Urban Land Use and Transportation Planning for Climate Change Mitigation: A Theoretical Framework

Abstract Cities account for 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, and their share is increasing due to rapid urbanization. While compact urban forms with public transit are viewed as important strategies for reducing emissions, environmental benefits must be weighed against the costs of public transit infrastructure, road improvements to alleviate congestion in dense urban space, and more expensive housing resulting from land use restrictions. The literature largely lacks a theoretical framework for assessing these tradeoffs. This paper derives analytical insights into urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation by formulating a social planner’s utility maximization problem. The planner chooses the residential densities of urban zones as well as investments in road and public transit infrastructures that link these zones to the city center. Road travel is subject to congestion. Any feasible solution must accommodate a fixed total population and ensure that residents of all zones have the same maximum utility. GHG emissions associated with housing, road travel, and public transit generate damages. Analytical results show that incorporating GHG damages into urban planning always leads to an optimal solution with a more compact urban form, and reduces automobile travel in each zone if a specific condition involving the marginal congestion cost and the marginal effectiveness of road investment is satisfied. Numerical examples demonstrate that near-optimal emissions reductions and utility improvements can be achieved via public transit investment and mode shifting even if the planner inherits and cannot modify a suboptimal land use and road configuration.

Impacts of Rail Transit Accessibility on Firm Spatial Distribution: Case Study in the Metropolitan Area of Washington, DC

Agglomeration economies can arise in areas with high concentrations of firms, which can be facilitated by improved transportation accessibility. Accessibility can be improved by public transit infrastructure, especially in combination with careful planning for transit-oriented development (TOD) that creates compact, high density, mixed-use, and pedestrian-friendly built environments in proximity to public transit infrastructure. Although the literature on TOD has increasingly shown positive effects on residential development and property values, its effects on commercial and industrial development, location of firms, and associated agglomeration economies are less clear and require more empirical study. This study analyzes firm location patterns by industry/sector in the metropolitan area of Washington, DC and examines whether significant spatial clusters have developed in relation to: 1) the presence of Metrorail stations; and 2) the presence of specific industry firms in the earlier year, using kernel density analysis and multinomial logit (MNL) regression. The analysis results indicated that firms in certain industries, such as finance and insurance/real estate and public administration, are more likely to benefit from proximity to Metrorail stations than other industries. Furthermore, firms in several industries show the effects of agglomeration within the same industry while several combinations of industries exhibit cross-industry agglomeration effects. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of which industry sectors are more likely to be located in proximity to rail transit stations and TOD areas and to the understanding of agglomeration effects within the same industry and between different industries.

Do Bus Rapid Transit Systems Improve Accessibility to Job Opportunities for the Poor? The Case of Lima, Peru

Investments in public transit infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean often aim to reduce spatial and social inequalities by improving accessibility to jobs and other opportunities for vulnerable populations. One of the central goals of Lima’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project was to connect low-income populations living in the peripheries to jobs in the city center, a policy objective that has not yet been evaluated. Building on secondary datasets of employment, household socio-demographics and origin–destination surveys before and after the BRT began operations, this paper examines the contribution of Lima’s BRT system to accessibility to employment in the city, particularly for low-income public transit users. We estimated the effects on potential accessibility to employment, comparing impacts on lower versus higher income populations, and assessed the changes in location-based accessibility to employment before (2004) and after implementation (2012) for treatment and comparison groups. We found that the BRT line reduced travel times for commuters to reach jobs, in comparison with traditional public transport in the city. However, the coverage of the BRT declines in areas with high concentrations of poor populations, limiting the equitability of accessibility improvements. The analysis by socioeconomic sub-groups found positive effects of the BRT system on accessibility for the higher income areas. Relative to the control group, accessibility increased in the 10-km boundary area of the BRT by 0.01, a seven percent increase relative to the treatment baseline accessibility index in the higher socioeconomic (SES) areas of the city. In contrast, in the areas with high concentrations of lower SES populations, the double difference estimate indicated an 11 percent decrease relative to the baseline accessibility index (0.09). We build on case-specific findings and international literature to reflect on policy avenues to include the poor in the mobility benefits of BRT systems. These measures include targeted fare subsidies for low-income groups, fare integration with other forms of public transport that reduce the cost of transfers, and the increase of coverage of the BRT through the integration of stations with non-motorized infrastructure.

Geospatial Analysis of Building Structures in Megacity Dhaka: the Use of Spatial Statistics for Promoting Data-driven Decision-making

Information on spatial building structures is limited, but it can support efficient planning and management in the context of fast-growing big cities in many developing countries. In this paper, we present a spatial analysis approach that includes an estimate of building intensity in the megacity of Dhaka and a spatial analysis using spatial statistics. The entire city was divided into regular grids and the building intensity (both horizontal and vertical) was extracted using vector type building information; the spatial statistics were calculated on the basis of Moran’s I and Gini indices. The variability of the estimated spatial statistics is interpreted according to co-relationship or clustering patterns with the location of the central business district (CBD) area as well as the public bus transit infrastructure (routes and stops). The results show that the residential building structure intensity is prominent and the concentrations are distributed all over the city. The mixed-use type building structures show highest clustering, with fewer outliers in the old part of the city. The vertical-use intensities indicate extreme clustering within highly intensified building activity in the nearby CBD area. The higher presence of low-low clustering of horizontal intensity indicated low development at the suburban area. However, the strongly clustered grid cells within residential sector as well as horizontal development classes are less accessible by bus transit within a defined catchment area, whereas the service sector and vertical development type seem to be more accessible. This type of geographic approach, visualization, and statistical information can help in making data-driven planning decisions with the advantage of monitoring urban development; however, the modeling sensitivity and uncertainties in the building data set remain open for further investigation.