Contemporary research indicates that the era of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is not only inevitable but may be reached sooner than expected; however, not enough research has been done to address road infrastructure readiness for supporting AV operations. Highway agencies at all levels of governments seek to identify the needed infrastructure changes to facilitate the successful integration of AVs into the existing roadway system. Given multiple sources of uncertainty particularly the market penetration of AVs, agencies find it difficult to justify the substantial investments needed to make these infrastructure changes using traditional value engineering approaches. It is needed to account for these uncertainties by doing a phased retrofitting of road infrastructure to keep up with the AV market penetration. This way, the agency can expand, defer, or scale back the investments at a future time. This dissertation develops a real options analysis (ROA) framework to address these issues while capturing the monetary value of investment timing flexibility. Using key stakeholder feedback, an extensive literature review, and discussions with experts, the needed AV-motivated changes in road infrastructure were identified across two stages of AV operations; the transition phase and the fully-autonomous phase. For a project-level case study of a 66-mile stretch of Indiana’s four-six lane Interstate corridor, two potential scenarios of infrastructure retrofitting were established and evaluated using the net present value (NPV) and ROA approaches. The results show that the NPV approach can lead to decisions at the start of the evaluation period but does not address the uncertainty associated with AV market penetration. In contrast, ROA was found to address uncertainty by incorporating investment timing flexibility and capturing its monetary value. Using the dissertation’s framework, agencies can identify and analyze a wide range of possible scenarios of AV-oriented infrastructure retrofitting to enhance readiness, at both the project and network levels.

This thesis set out to explore the forces that determine the rise and fall of industrial leadership. It attempted to do this by applying an industry life cycle model to the shipping industry. The industrial life cycle was posited on the basis of existing literature, particularly the growth of knowledge, evolutionary and institutional literature, which lend themselves to patterns of industrial growth and entrapment. On this basis, this thesis set out to examine whether industrial leadership can be explained by a four-staged process of imitation, catch up, advance and entrapment. However, this thesis has exposed something more complicated. Processes of imitation, catch up advance and entrapment were shown to be at work in the shipping industry, but they were tempered by the effects of military and political forces that may not be exogenous, and the trend from regionalism to globalisation. The original model did not encompass early indigenous developments that are not based on imitation that do not immediately lead to a position of advanced leadership. In this light, a better description of the first stage would be capability building.

Car usage is determined by several facts, e.g. living conditions determined by geographical matters. There is a political will to control car usage with different kinds of incentives since car usage generates environmental problems. This essay analyses the differences between car usage in urban areas as opposed to thinly populated areas in Sweden and their significance on governmental incentives. By using statistics differences in car ownership during ten years between thinly populated areas, areas in the countryside and urban areas is studied. Among other things living conditions determined by geographical matters that can explain the differences and problems with fuel taxes and road pricing is being discussed in the analyse.

Les marges de progression pour le système ferroviaire français et européen restent nombreuses tant du point de vue de la gouvernance que de la compétitivité. C’est la conclusion à laquelle tend ce travail. Les résultats du consortium de recherche Enerdata-LET (2014) montrent que dans le respect du facteur 4 à horizon 2050, le report de la demande en transport vers le ferroviaire pourrait être massif. Face à cela, la situation de la LGV Paris-Lyon, déjà à la limite de la saturation, interroge sur la capacité du système à accueillir de nouveaux trafics. Deux écoles s’affrontent sur cette question. D’un côté, les tenants du SNIT proposent un quasi doublement du réseau LGV pour répondre aux futurs besoins tandis que la commission « Mobilité 21 » privilégie la recherche de rendements croissants à partir de l’existant. Sans prétendre résoudre le débat, ce travail tente d’apporter des éléments de compréhension sur l’interaction entre demande et offre dans le ferroviaire.L’étude de la concordance entre augmentation de la demande et offre ferroviaire nous mène à poser la question de la performance. Elle sous-entend d’être en premier lieu capable de définir la capacité d’une infrastructure ferroviaire. En second lieu, la mise en évidence de limites conduit à interroger le phénomène de saturation ou congestion. Enfin, interroger la notion de saturation mène inévitablement à mettre en perspective la relativité des limites et à poser la question de leur dépassement.L’objectif de cette recherche est d’appliquer cette problématique au système ferroviaire en tenant compte de ses spécificités. On tient compte de sa constitution en tant qu’industrie de réseau et de monopole naturel dans le cas de l’infrastructure (gestionnaire d’infrastructure). Sans prétendre trancher le débat sur le mode de gouvernance, on considère que cette particularité peut influencer le comportement des acteurs et indirectement la performance du système. On considère également l’évolution législative du système au niveau européen. On ne peut aborder la question de la performance sans resituer le secteur dans son contexte juridique. Enfin, l’essentiel de l’analyse repose sur l’étude de la saturation de la LGV Paris-Lyon. On considère cette LGV représentative de la performance souhaitée pour le réseau ferroviaire français. Elle concentre à la fois les défis techniques et économiques de la capacité qui constituent le cœur de notre réflexion sur la performance, ses conditions et les marges de progression du réseau français. / There is still much progress to make concerning the French and the European railway networks, both from governance and competitiveness standpoints. This is the conclusion this work lead to. The results from the Enerdata-LET research consortium (2014) illustrate that, considering factor 4 for horizon 2050, the modal shift of demand in transport towards railway could be massive. Regarding this, the situation of Paris-Lyon high-speed line, already up to its saturation level, addresses the issue of the capacity a system possesses to bear new traffics. Two schools oppose there. On one side, the supporters of the SNIT suggest a quasi-doubling of the high-speed railway network, in order to cope with futures needs, whereas on the other side, the “Mobilité 21” commission gives priority to the search of increasing returns from the existing infrastructure. Without claiming to solve the issue, this work attempts to bring up comprehension elements on the interaction between demand and offer in the railway sector.Studying the accordance between an increase in railway demand and offer leads us to question performance. It means being able to define capacity of the railway infrastructure, first. But it also means questioning its limits, which addresses the phenomenon of saturation, also called congestion. Eventually, this all inevitably leads to put into perspective the relativeness of these limits and to question the ways to overcome them. The objective of this research is to apply this issue to the railway system, accounting its specificities. We consider its constitution as a network industry and as a natural monopoly, when considering the infrastructure (infrastructure manager). Without pretending to conclude the debate on governance, we consider that this particularity might influence actors and, thus, performance. We also consider the legal framework at the European scale. One can’t question performance without framing the railway sector within its legal context. Then, the main purpose of the analysis stands in the study of saturation of the Paris-Lyon high-speed line. We consider the line as representative of the expected performance level of the whole French railway network. It challenges both technical and economic capacities that are in the core of our rationale on performance, its requirements and the opportunities of the French network.

<p>  </p> <p>Transportation access is an important indicator of the quality of life and if it is inequitable, it will limit the work, leisure, and other essential opportunities for people and worsen the access for the disadvantaged groups. In the U.S., increased auto-dependency and the lack of other feasible alternative transportation modes exacerbate the negative impacts of this inequity, especially for the people without automobiles. The transportation equity in terms of the number of feasible transportation mode alternatives to serve a trip (i.e. mobility option equity) has not been extensively evaluated in the literature. Existing studies mainly analyzed the access to transportation infrastructures (e.g., bus stops, bike lanes, shared bike stations) based on the proximity at the zonal level. However, having access to a certain trip mode based on proximity does not necessarily add to the mobility option equity. First, mismatch may exist between the infrastructure and an individual’s travel demand. For example, if someone lives closely to a bus station but the bus route that can be accessed does not align with this person’s trip destination, they will not be able to use bus as a feasible mode for this trip. Second, existing accessibility-based studies often lack consideration of the trip feasibility (in terms of cost, quality, and safety) of using transportation infrastructures at the route level. For example, if a walking trip route is generated without considering the existence of sidewalks, the individual might have to walk on a unsafe busy road. In this case they will not be able to walk to satisfy their travel demand. Therefore, better transportation equity metrics concerning the feasibility of using transportation infrastructures to serve individuals’ travel demands are needed. </p> <p>To address this gap, this thesis defined the “travel-demand-relevant access” (mobility-need-relevant access) metric to evaluate transportation access in the context of individual travel demands and route-level infrastructure constraints and developed a framework to use GPS data to quantify the proposed metric for transportation equity analysis. Assessing which transportation modes are feasible alternatives to serve a trip, requires trip-level disaggregated travel demand data and detailed transportation infrastructure information. The recent development of information and communication technologies and open data efforts provide unprecedented opportunities for such trip-level analysis. With these developments it is now possible to evaluate the feasibility of a mode both the cost- and quality-based measures. The cost-based method estimates the monetary and time cost of using each mobility option and compares it with prominent trip mode (car) to examine “forced car use” concerning the travel demand. The quality-based method comprises accessibility and mobility-based performance measures to evaluate the feasibility of a certain trip mode regarding the ease of use and safety with relation to the infrastructure characteristics. The mobility options/alternatives deemed feasible with these two methods were used in the equity analysis, where the travel-demand-relevant access on the spatial and sociodemographic level was evaluated. </p> <p>The proposed framework was applied to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Area (MPA) as a case study. The key insights of this study can be listed as (1) it is important to consider travel-demand-relevant access to evaluate transportation equity because we found that 40% of the trips that were identified as accessible by public transit are not feasible when travel-demand-relevant access is considered; (2) suburban areas on average have 12% less mobility options available compared with  the urban core which forces high car ownership in these areas; amd (3) people with non-college educational attainment, households with more crowded rooms, and larger families are the negatively impacted disadvantaged groups while census block groups with high composition of white middle-class suburban families have the lowest number of options (1.5 on average) available. </p> <p>The suburban populations with a low number of mobility options (with a vehicle) are not necessarily at a disadvantage in terms of mobility option equity, since suburban areas are by design made to be car dependent. However, the lower number of feasible mobility options in these areas possesses a risk for the future if the consequences are not evaluated carefully. In terms of urban migration, if out-migration from the urban core to suburban areas keeps increasing as the pandemic trend suggests, the forced car ownership in suburban areas could increase and create/worsen transport deserts. This increase in vehicle ownership contradicts equity and environmental goals regarding transportation. If we observe an increase in the suburban to urban core migration trend, it can force disadvantaged groups to move into suburban areas because of gentrification and increasing prices. These disadvantaged groups could suffer from the limited amount of mobility options in suburban areas, since their access to opportunities would decrease. </p>

<div>This research analyzes over 60,000 awarded highway contracts from 18 states throughout the United States. Analysis was performed on the state and aggregate level. The contracts were awarded from the years 2008 through 2018. Statistical analysis utilizing Pearson's Correlation and Ordinary Least Squares regression for each sample was performed to identify each variables relationship between the budget and awarded values.</div><div>The research examined effects of economic indicators, contractor descriptors and yearly/seasonal adjustments These variables included DBE Participation Goal, Number of Bidders, Project Dollar Value, Project Duration, Unemployment Rate, S&P 500 Index, Volatility Index, quarter, and year of project award. The results were examined by using a combination of simple statistical summaries and econometric coefficients called a cost vector. <br></div><div>Summary statistics observed Bid Difference at 8.5% below the Engineer's Estimate. The study observed DBE Participation Goals averaged 3.74% of the value of contracts, with an observed average of 4.5 bidders per contract. <br></div><div>The research determined that 55% of observed states had a positive significant correlation with DBE Participation Goal and Bid Difference. This correlation translated to nearly $80 million in additional cost. In addition, the research determined that all 19 groups in this study had a negative significant correlation with the Number of Bidders. The correlation translated to a savings of nearly $500 million. <br></div>