No description available.

No description available.

Communities across the United States, of all sizes, have accepted that maintaining the automobile-centric design of their cities is not a sustainable way to plan for the future growth, public health or safety of their cities or citizens. As a result, communities have begun to embrace a shift in their design and engineering standards to allow for pedestrian and bicycle friendly facilities that safely accommodate and encourage mode choice. Through the collective will of the public and city leadership, communities are rapidly moving toward implementing plans and design standards that re-establish the public right of way as safe and accessible for pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as automobiles. However, in the face of increasingly diminished federal and state transportation funding, cities are looking toward creative local funding mechanisms to pay for their bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. To understand the types of local funding being used, this thesis analyzes eleven different sized case study cities across the U.S. that are leaders in planning for, and implementing, multimodal capital projects and programs. These national leaders most widely used the county sales tax measure as a funding mechanism. Additional popular approaches were general fund allocations, transportation impact fees and bond issues. The case study analysis also revealed that cities often looked to more than one local funding source to fund their bicycle and pedestrian capital projects.

No description available.

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy / Startups can and do fail. For an entrepreneur, product developer, or researcher with a physical and capital-intensive product idea, this dissertation can serve as a resource to bridge the gaps between business, engineering, and design and reduce the risk of failure when trying to create a startup. The process described in this dissertation describes how to evaluate the key elements of an idea and conduct a series of interviews with potential customers to find evidence that supports pursing that idea further, challenge the startup team to change some aspect of the idea, or drop it altogether. Once the startup team has found a problem, as well as a solution to that problem, this dissertation describes an approach creating that solution. Then this dissertation describes an approach for critically evaluating the foundational elements of the problem and the solution. The goal for a critical evaluation is to identify additional foundational elements which relate to the product that may increase its value or decrease the risk of product failure.

No description available.

No description available.

Section of a novel.

Since the middle of the 20th century the car has been a permanent focus in urban planning. However, in recent years, the negative consequences of the car have become more obvious and there has been a shift towards a more sustainable approach. To reach the sustainable goals more people need to bicycle or walk instead of driving. In Sweden, it is the municipalities that have the responsibility for the bicycle planning, however a lot of focus still shines on the car. The aim of this study was to analyze and describe how Swedish municipalities promote cycling in their urban planning, focusing on the municipalities of Hudiksvall and Håbo. One municipality that had been praised for their bicycle planning and one which had got some critique. The study is based on both interviews with people working with planning at each municipality as well as planning document regarding bicycling. After analyzing the material, it emerged that Håbo already has a well-developed bicycle network, especially in the urban areas. While the bicycle network in Hudiksvall is quite deficient. Regardless of the different stages the of bicycle infrastructure development, they both face similar problems. The car norm. Therefore, both municipalities have to actively work to get their citizens to choose the bicycle over the car. Furthermore, both municipalities struggle with the financial support that is needed to promote bicycling instead of taking the driving.