Significant changes must occur in human interaction with the natural environment if the world is to move towards a state of sustainability. While the need for such change is widely recognized, planning in many sectors continues to lead to development that is unsustainable. Urban transportation planning is one such sector. Little attention has been given by sustainability-oriented researchers to the problem of resistance to change. Conversely, little attention has been given by organizational change theorists to local government planning organizations’ indifference to the sustainability imperative. As a consequence, while a great deal of research has examined the need to control the automobile in urban areas, little has been written about why such control still does not happen -- even when policies call for it. Vancouver, British Columbia is recognized for its progressive attempts to move towards sustainability. This progressive situation creates an environment in which barriers impeding change towards sustainability can be studied. While Vancouver’s municipal and regional policies explicitly call for a reversal in priorities which have traditionally favoured automobiles over transit, bicycles and pedestrians, operational decisions still favour the automobile. Most significantly, roads continue to be widened and new expressways are built to accommodate more automobile traffic. A qualitative case study approach was used to inquire into transportation planning in Vancouver. An analysis of documents and of interviews with key informants suggests that a system of institutional barriers exists which has structural, cultural, and human resource dimensions. Unsustainability is a function of organizational inertia which is not only supported by, but also takes advantage of and fosters, the wider political individualistic culture. Specifically, there are several reasons for the disjunction between Vancouver’s transportation policies and the decisions which are being made in transportation infrastructure development: an institutional structure which separates land-use and transportation planning, impedes comprehensive decision-making, and lacks mechanisms to publicize and assess cumulative environmental impacts; the existence of an organizational culture which seems to condone the use of subversive tactics to promote an informal transportation plan which perpetuates traditional, automobile-oriented values, beliefs and assumptions; and the lack of conceptual knowledge and skills necessary for organizational change to occur. The practical implications of these findings are that, in cases like Vancouver’s, sustainability can be fostered by three categories of mutually reinforcing actions: education, structural change, and planning practice. The actions in each category can build momentum towards second-order change using a social learning process to overcome societal values, beliefs and assumptions which promote an automobile-dominated transportation system. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

M.B.A. / The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that affect the service quality delivery implementation, benchmarking Translux and Greyhound, using the SERVQUAL model. 4 1.3 Objectives The study has the following objectives: 1.3.1 to determine the different customer-orientated approaches; 1.3.2 to investigate insights into the concept of marketing studies that support customer orientation; 1.3.3 to ascertain how to implement a customer-orientated approach in the industry; and 1.3.4 to determine the gaps between Translux and Greyhound service delivery and customer expectations. An assumption of the study is that the adoption of a customer-orientated philosophy will mean that the company has embraced the implications of the philosophy

This dissertation asks how activists, planners, and politicians reshaped transport institutions to prioritize buses over cars in London and Paris. The policy studied in both cities is the creation of a network of bus priority, known as the Red Routes and London Bus Priority Network in London and the Mobilien network in Paris. Using media analysis, archival research, and 30 interviews across the two cities, it traces the process of change in both cities and maps the deliberative system, the actors engaged in the decision-making process. It finds that empowered but not autonomous local governments—the boroughs in the case of London and the city of Paris in the case of Paris—were major actors in the change process, putting forth alternatives and deliberating with regional bodies to shape policies that took into account a variety of competing needs. It also finds that public conversation, debate, and conflict were essential to the process of institutional change, through which road governance was decentralized and local actors were empowered to control their own streets. These findings follow Iris Marion Young’s proposal that empowered but not autonomous local actors, subject to regional governments, is the most just model of urban governance.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil Engineering, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 253-266. / by Hani Sobhi Mahmassani. / Ph.D.

This thesis presents a collection of network optimization strategies aimed at aiding the local practitioner in selecting, implementing, and evaluating appropriate strategies to achieve community goals and objectives in the urban environment. The urban environment is often challenging due to the plethora of activity and variety in mode choice. Growing interest in sustainable transportation practices along with encouragement at the Federal, State, and Local levels to is leading to the growing use of non-motorized modes of transportation such as walking and bicycling. The combination of high population density and mixed land use in the urban environment creates unique safety and operational challenges. This research presents a synthesis of strategies designed to improve local transportation safety and efficiency by targeting speeding and cut-through volumes as improving pedestrian and bicycle facilities in urban areas such as those found in Western Massachusetts. Additionally, this research evaluates two local network optimization strategies; speed cushions and reverse angle parking. The effectiveness of the speed cushions in achieving the community’s goal of reducing speeds was evaluated and determined to be a recommended strategy for future implementation, especially when couple with enforcement. Reverse angle parking, however, was not determined to be an effective strategy due to the high occurrence of events as well as lower parking volume exhibited during implementation.

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This study investigates the structure of urban transportation systems, the bases of commuter mode selection, and the effects of alternate transportation system management policies. The study was based on the hypothesis that changes in transportation system management policies are possible which will significantly increase the demand for public transportation in urban areas.

Policy-makers of today's public transportation investment projects engage in debates in which the reasonableness and clarity of their judgment are tested many times. How to recommend the transportation system that achieves project's goals and different stakeholders' needs in a most logical and justifiable manner is the main question of this dissertation. This study develops a new decision-making approach, Belief Reasoning method, for evaluating public transportation systems in the planning process. The proposed approach applies a reasoning map to model how experts perceive and reason transportation alternatives to lead to the project's goals. It applies the belief measures in the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence as the mathematical mechanism to represent knowledge under uncertainty and ambiguity and to analyze the degree of achievement of stated goals. Three phases are involved in implementing the Belief Reasoning method. First, a set of goals, a set of characteristics of the alternatives, a set of performances and impacts are identified and the reasoning map, which connects the alternatives to the goals through a series of causal relations, is constructed. Second, a knowledge base is developed through interviewing the experts their degree of belief associated with individual premises and relations, and then aggregating the expert opinions. Third, the model is executed and the results are evaluated in three ways: (i) the transportation alternatives are evaluated based on the degree of belief for achieving individual goals; (ii) the integrity of the reasoning process is evaluated based on the measures of uncertainty associated with information used; and (iii) the critical reasoning chains that significantly influence the outcome are determined based on the sensitivity analysis. The Belief Reasoning method is compared with the Bayesian reasoning, which uses the probability measures as the measure of uncertainty. Also it is compared with the Analytical Hierarchy Process method, which uses a hierarchical tree structure and a weighting scheme. The numerical examples in transit planning are developed for comparison. The proposed Belief Reasoning method has advantages over these traditional evaluation and reasoning methods in several ways. • Use of a reasoning map structure together with an inference process, instead of a tree structure together with a weighting scheme, allows modeling interdependency, redundancy and interactions among variables, usually found in transportation systems. • Use of belief measures in Dempster-Shafer theory can preserve non-deterministic nature of inputs and performances as well as handle incomplete or partial knowledge of experts or citizens, i.e. "I don't know" type opinion. The "degrees of belief" measures allow experts to express their strength of opinions in the conservative and optimistic terms. Such operation is not possible by the probability-based approach. • Dempster-Shafer theory can avoid the scalability issue encountered in Bayesian reasoning. It can also measure uncertainty in the reasoning chains, and identify information needed for improving the reasoning process. • Use of Dempster's rule of combination, instead of the average operator in probability theory, to merge expert opinions about inputs or relations is a better way for combining conflicting and incomplete opinions. In the dissertation, the Belief Reasoning method is applied in real-world Alternatives Analysis of a transit investment project. The results show its potential to analyze and evaluate the alternatives and to provide reasons for recommending a preferred alternative and to measure the uncertainty in the reasoning process. In spite of some shortcomings, discussed in the dissertation, the Belief Reasoning method is an effective method for transportation planning compared with the existing methods. It provides means for the planners and citizens to present their own reasons and allows review and analysis of reasoning and judgments of all participating stakeholders. The proposed method can promote focused discourse among different groups of stakeholders, and enriches the quality of the planning process. / Ph. D.

This thesis describes the work done in the second stage of the implementation of the Automatic Passenger Counter (APC) system at the Roanoke Valley - Metro Transit Company. This second stage deals with the preparation of a few reports and plots that would help the transit managers in efficiently managing the transit system. The reports and plots give an evaluation of the system and service operations by which the decision makers can support their decisions. For an efficient management of the transit system, data on ridership activity, running times schedule information, and fare revenue is required. From this data it is possible to produce management information reports and summary statistics. The present data collection program at Roanoke Valley Metro is carried by using checkers and supervisors to collect ridership and schedule adherence information using manual methods. The information needed for efficient management of transit operations is both difficult and expensive to obtain. The new APC system offers the management with a new and powerful tool that will enhance their capability to make better decisions when allocating the service needs. The data from the APC are essential for the transit properties' ongoing planning and scheduling activities. The management could easily quantify the service demands on a route or for the whole system as desired by the user. / Master of Science

This study examined the factors related to travel mode choices in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area. Changes in population, life style and economy of the Dallas-Fort Worth region over the last few decades demand a careful re-examination of travel demand tools and methods. The purpose of the study was to provide an understanding of transportation modal choice in the region. Those demographic variables best predicting the choices were identified. The Home Interview Survey, a set of disaggregate data from the 19 84 North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) Regional Travel Survey, was analyzed using logistic regression. The major findings of the research indicate that about 97 percent of the travelers in the study area used private cars and 3 percent used public transit. Household income and cars-vans were significant explanatory variables. The impact of household income and number of car-vans available upon an individual's decision for travel mode choice were very important. The number of car-vans available in the household, and age of respondents were significant predictors in travel mode. Household members with incomes of $30,000 to $39,000 and those with incomes of at least $50,000 tended to use more private cars than did other income groups. Also, household members with incomes below $9,000 used more public transportation. People reporting a lower preference for cars were younger than 26 years or older than 55 years of age.