Curitiba’s Integrated Transportation Network (ITN), in Brazil, has been highly regarded as a model of sustainable transportation for several years. Since its inception, the system has not only been molded to address the three core dimensions of sustainability –environmental, social and economic- but has also successfully brought together the government, the private sector and the general public. The purpose of this study is to describe the case of Curitiba’s planning process and transportation system. More specifically, this report first examines the conditions that led to a system to be well-regarded as sustainable and then determines some lessons learned that can guide the implementation of similar systems in other cities. / text

A comprehensive framework is presented for the integration of electrified transportation and renewable energy through repurposing batteries of plug-in electric vehicles towards a sustainable energy future. The framework considers future market penetration scenarios of plug-in electric vehicles, availability of batteries at their vehicular end of life, and the storage capacity required to generate base-load wind power in the region of study. The objective is to develop a model that can be used as a policy tool to investigate how different scenarios and pertinent parameters can effectively meet the challenges of sustainability in the energy and transportation sectors when the ultimate goal is to simultaneously displace fossil fuels with new generation of low-cost intermittent renewable energy. A sample case study is performed for Canada to investigate and verify the performance of the model. The analysis shows that the proposed approach can further improve the energy sustainability performance of Canada in 2050 by 1.65–4.11%, depending on the confidence level and in addition to electrification of transportation. In the framework, a statistical algorithm is developed to calculate the capacity of an energy storage system required for delivering base-load electricity for a wind farm in the future electric grids. The algorithm contributes towards the goal of utilizing low- cost intermittent wind energy to base-load power generation in the future electric grids. The introduced algorithm presents three methods to perform the sizing calculations each representing a scenario associated with the stages of the wind energy industry. The results of the studied case are applied to estimate the cost of wind energy to produce rated power at different confidence levels, which show cost-effectiveness and less intermittency on the power systems allowing for larger penetrations of renewables. Advanced statistical methods are used to more accurately characterize the operational wind power output versus manufacturer’s power curve. This is essential for effective integration of wind power into the power systems. Four parametric and nonparametric models are applied to estimate the power curve of wind turbines based on the available operational wind power data. The results of this study suggest that the penalized spline regression method presents a better performance over the other analyzed methods. Finally, an experimental testing is performed in laboratory to show the proof of concept of the capacity degradation of used batteries of plug-in electric vehicles in stationary applications using a 25 kWh repurposed energy storage system obtained from a taxi fleet in their “as-is” condition. The proposed comprehensive framework herein presents an approach leading to a sustainable transportation system by providing low-cost renewable energy, and can be used as a gold standard to compare other policies like hydrogen energy technologies. / October 2015

This research report examines infrastructure strategies to increase the bicycle commute mode share. By analyzing existing conditions and results from on-campus participatory events, recommendations to improve and increase bicycling at the University of Texas at Austin campus are proposed. This report includes a literature review of sustainable transportation and university campuses, bicycle infrastructure best practices, bicyclist route preferences, evaluations of bicycle infrastructure, the role of bicycling in past master plans at the UT-Austin campus, and bicycling in other university’s plans. Existing conditions analyze the characteristics of streets in and around campus and data from the Bike-UT survey is discussed. Participatory research events are described and their findings analyzed to better understand how current bicyclists perceive spaces on campus and make their route choices. Finally, considering best practices, existing conditions, and findings from campus research events, recommendations are proposed to increase the bicycle mode share on the UT-Austin campus. / text

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Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur planerare i svenska städer kan arbeta för att minska invånarnas bilresande. I studien har Umeå kommuns arbete med hållbara resor analyserats genom att studera olika plandokument som tagits fram för att vägleda den samtida och framtida planeringen. Tidigare studier visar att det finns ett antal gemensamma nämnare för städer som visar på goda resultat för invånarnas val av hållbara resandet.  Planerarna har haft olika angreppssätt på prioriteringen av trafikstrukturen i dessa städer. Det gemensamma för städerna med goda resultat är att de har planerat långsiktigt, med ett hållbart resande i fokus. Av Umeå kommuns planeringsdokument framgår att visionen för tätorten har många delar gemensamt med dessa städer, varav målen för hur bilberoendet i staden ska byggas bort är det tydligaste. Efter att ha studerat Umeå tätorts nuvarande markanvändning, uppsatta planeringsmål och politiska beslut framgår det dock att översiktliga planeringsdokument och faktiska resultat ligger relativt långt ifrån varandra. Anledningarna till detta är många. Planerna är relativt nya och beskriver ett paradigmskifte, från att bilismen har varit en självklar del av stadsbilden till att hanteras med restriktioner, i framförallt stadskärnan.  Informanterna beskriver hur detta måste implementeras hos invånarna, men även hos tjänstemän på kommunen.

Transportation planning and urban development in the United States have synchronously emerged over the past few decades to encompass goals associated with sustainability, improved connectivity, complete streets and mitigation of environmental impacts. These goals have evolved in tandem with some of the relatively more traditional objectives of supply-side improvements such as infrastructure and capacity expansion. Apart from the numerous federal regulations in the US transportation sector that reassert sustainability motivations, metropolitan planning organizations and civic societies face similar concerns in their decision-making and policy implementation. However, overall transportation planning to incorporate these wide-ranging objectives requires characterization of large-scale transportation systems and traffic flow through them, which is dynamic in nature, computationally intense and a non-trivial problem. Thus, these contemporary questions lie at the interface of transportation planning, urban development and sustainability planning. They have the potential of being effectively addressed through state-of-the-art transportation modeling tools, which is the main motivation and philosophy of this thesis. From the research standpoint, some of these issues have been addressed in the past typically from the urban design, built-environment, public health and vehicle technology and mostly qualitative perspectives, but not as much from the traffic engineering and transportation systems perspective---a gap in literature which the thesis aims to fill. Specifically, it makes use of simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) to develop modeling paradigms and integrated frameworks to seamlessly incorporate these in the transportation planning process. In addition to just incorporating them in the planning process, DTA-based paradigms are able to accommodate numerous spatial and temporal dynamics associated with system traffic, which more traditional static models are not able to. Besides, these features are critical in the context of the planning questions of this study. Specifically, systemic impacts of suburban and urban street pattern developments typically found in US cities in past decades of the 20th century have been investigated. While street connectivity and design evolution is mostly regulated through local codes and subdivision ordinances, its impacts on traffic and system congestion requires modeling and quantitative evidence which are explored in this thesis. On the environmental impact mitigation side, regional emission inventories from the traffic sector have also been quantified. Novel modeling approaches for the street connectivity-accessibility problem are proposed. An integrated framework using the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory MOVES model has been developed, combining it with mesoscopic-level DTA simulation. Model demonstrations and applications on real and large-sized study areas reveal that different levels of connectivity and accessibility have substantial impacts on system-wide traffic---as connectivity levels reduce, traffic and congestion metrics show a gradually increasing trend. As regards emissions, incorporation of dynamic features leads to more realistic emissions inventory generation compared to default databases and modules, owing to consideration of the added dynamic features of system traffic and region-specific conditions. Inter-dependencies among these sustainability planning questions through the common linkage of traffic dynamics are also highlighted. In summary, the modeling frameworks, analyses and findings in the thesis contribute to some ongoing debates in planning studies and practice regarding ideal urban designs, provisions of sustainability and complete streets. Furthermore, the integrated emissions modeling framework, in addition to sustainability-related contributions, provides important tools to aid MPOs and state agencies in preparation of state implementation plans for demonstrating conformity to national ambient air-quality standards in their regions and counties. This is a critical condition for them to receive federal transportation funding. / text

The purpose of this paper is to compare the differences between North American and European tertiary educational organizations regarding their expressed concerns about sustainable development within the transportation sector and their commitment to the research of issues related to sustainable transport. For this study, we created a list of academic organizations based on the compendium of papers from the Transportation Research Board¡¦s 2012 annual meeting. Then we analyzed the content from the public websites of these organizations to distinguish differences in the way universities in North America and Europe designed courses related to sustainable transport. After analyzing information from about 5,000 such courses, we found that most of them were worth 3 credits, more courses were offered for graduate students than for undergraduates, lecturing was the most common teaching method, the most commonly offered course was Transportation Engineering, and, on average, North American universities offered more sustainable transport courses than their European counterparts.

How do land use characteristics affect individual and household travel behavior in a regional context? Can the investigation justify the land use policies to reduce automobile dependence and achieve the goals of sustainable development in the metropolitan areas? Previous research enhanced our understanding of the connections between land use and travel behavior. It also provided implications for managing automobile-dependent travel behavior. However, there are questions still left unanswered about the causal connections between them, and the effectiveness of the land use policies to manage travel demand. To address the issues, attention is focused on the effects of land use measures on travel behavior outcomes from different modeling perspectives. The travel demand modeling explores the associations between land use and travel behavior. In addition, the causal modeling helps clarify the causal connections between them. It includes the structural equation models (SEMs) and the directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). The study focuses on six counties of the Houston-Galveston Area Council (HGAC) area. Travel behavior outcomes contain individual mode choice, household automobile trip generation and household total vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Three dimensions (i.e., density, diversity and design) of six land use measures are considered, which are computed using quarter-mile buffers for both trip origins and destinations. Different travel outcomes and modeling strategies are examined for different travel purposes. The significance of land use measures in affecting travel behavior is found to be evident, while varying to a certain degree according to trip purposes, travel outcomes and methodologies. For individual model choice, multinomial logit (MNL) models, the SEMs and the DAGs for different trip purposes support the hypothesis that land use measures directly affect individual mode choice behavior when other factors are kept constant. There is also evidence from causal models that land use factors indirectly influence it through travel time. For household automobile trip generation, there is no evidence to assert that land use measures at origin significantly affect household automobile trip rates when travel cost and socioeconomic variables are controlled. However, it is confirmed that land use measures have indirect causal connections with automobile trips through travel costs for all trip purposes. For household total VMT, it is found that land use patterns around residential locations are not only significantly associated, but also causally connected with household VMT. To summarize, compact development with high density and improved network design generally contribute to the reduction in automobile dependent travel patterns in the HGAC region.

Since the industrial revolution, technological developments and increased population have caused environmental damages such as lavish use of sources, pollution increased waste areas, poisoned wastes, harmless gasses, decreased green areas, global warming and climate change, harming of the ozone layer, decreased forests areas and natural sources. Appearance of the term of Global Warming makes the humanity to revise their facilities in all fields. To protect the nature and architectural environment, firstly, green architecture, ecological architecture and then sustainability occurred. This term has been proposed not to be a new term but a response to environmental disturbances caused by human activities and it is re-conceptualization of architecture. Sustainable architecture or sustainability is lot more extensive than ecological and green architecture. It contains the imbalance between environmental problems which is natural environment and consumption that occurred all around the world. An important part of sustainability debate focused on urban planning and design for more sustainable forms and patterns. In particular it is discussed that planning and design of urban areas have a major effect on transport and therefore can help reduce car usage, emissions, global warming and climate change. There are many planning and design approaches and movement that introduce certain criteria and strategies to prevent car dependency and encourage people to use public transportation and walking. To achieve sustainable transport, there should be design for walkable and easy accessible areas. Planning movements, such as New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development, particularly came to the forefront of planning and influenced planning approaches. However, when review the literature, it is seen that planning movements, such as New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development originated and were implemented mostly in West Europeean and North American Cities. The purpose of this study is to find out whether all those criteria, principles and strategies are also relevant planning approaches for more non-western cities like Baku which has a very different planning background and therefore possibly different urban form and tranmsport issues. In order to answer the abovementioned question, planning and design approaches in the literatureand and in these recent planning movements were studied and a check list was formed which indicate planning and design approaches that can help attain a more sustainable transport outcome. The checklist was then applied to the case of Baku.

Bicycles offer an efficient, emission-free mode of transportation, particularly ideal for shorter distances in urban areas. Consequently, bicycling is increasingly being perceived as a viable and important part of the urban transportation mix. Despite increased progress and attention, few cities have successfully incorporated cycling as a key feature of their urban policy, or substantially increased cycling’s modal share. Meanwhile, research suggests that climate and weather influence cycling and transportation in urban areas, with cold climates in particular reducing the likelihood of cycling. This research examines how bicycling can be mainstreamed in winter cities, thereby improving cycling conditions and increasing modal share. Oulu, Finland serves as a case study. Located at 65 degrees latitude, Oulu has a twenty percent modal share for cycling. A close examination how cycling was mainstreamed is presented and synthesized. The goal is to present Oulu’s experience in bicycle planning as a model for other winter cities, particularly in Canada.