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Public involvement is defined as a two-way communication aimed at providing information to the public and incorporating the views, concerns, and issues of the public in transportation decision making. According to U.S. Census data, 60% of U.S. counties are considered rural. Rural communities face unique challenges such as scarce resources, technological and geographical issues, and demographic shifts, which can limit effective engagement capabilities. Engagement strategies that are effective for urbanized and metropolitan areas may not be as effective for these rural communities. This study employed a mixed methods research approach to identify readily deployable practices for meaningful rural community engagement in transportation planning. The research methodology involves a literature review, interviews with supervisors from offices of community transportation, interviews with 24 community leaders in four case communities in Tennessee, and two rounds of Delphi community survey. The research process brought together all key stakeholders to build a true consensus of best practices to engage rural communities in transportation planning. Data analysis showed rural communities feel detached and unaware of the role of Departments of Transportation (DOT) in and their plans for community transportation. Engaging rural communities using social media and conducting virtual meetings can reach wider sections of the community. Lack of consistent internet coverage in rural communities, however, means this type of outreach cannot replace in-person engagement. Securing the support of community leaders, building partnerships, and having a presence in the community will increase trust in DOTs and foster better engagement. A list of recommendations is provided that will enhance rural community engagement for longrange transportation planning in predominantly rural states.

Human Activity Recognition has become a popular research topic among data scientists. Over the years, multiple studies regarding humans and their daily motion habits have been investigated for many different purposes. This fact is not surprising when we look at all the opportunities and applications that can be applied and utilized thanks to the results of these algorithms. In this project we implement a system that can effectively collect sensor data from mobile devices, process it and by using supervised machine learning successfully predict the class of a performed activity. The project was executed based on datasets and features extracted from GPS sensors. The system was trained using various machine learning algorithms and Python SciKit to guarantee optimal solutions with accurate predictions. Finally, we applied a majority vote rule to secure the best possible accuracy of the activity classification process. As a result we were able to identify various activities including walking, cycling, driving and public transportation methods bus and metro with 90+% accuracy. / Att utföra aktivitetsigenkänning på människor har blivit ett populärt forskningsämne bland datavetare, där flertalet studier rörande människor och deras dagliga rörelsevanor undersökts för många olika syften. Detta är inte förvånande när man ser till de möjligheter och användningsområden som kan tillämpas och utnyttjas tack vare resultaten från dessa system. Detta projekt går ut på att implementera ett system som mha samlad sensordata från mobila enheter, kan bearbeta den och genom s.k övervakad maskininlärning med goda resultat bestämma den aktivitet som utförts. Projektet genomfördes baserat på dataset och egenskaper extraherade från GPS-data. Systemet tränades med olika maskininlärningsalgoritmer genom Python SciKit för att välja den bäst lämpade metoden för detta projekt. Slutligen tillämpade vi majority votemetoden för att säkerställa bästa möjliga noggrannhet i aktivitetsklassificeringsprocessen. Resultatet blev ett system som framgångsrikt kan identifiera aktiviteterna gå, cykla, köra bil samt med ett ytterligare fokus på kollektivtrafikmetoderna buss och tunnelbana, med en noggrannhet på över 90%. / Kandidatexjobb i elektroteknik 2020, KTH, Stockholm

Mobility within the community is a necessary part of urban life for enhancing personal well-being and happiness. However, autistic individuals may not be the natural players in this context and have risks of using public transport, including getting disoriented, meltdown or shutdown, and being discriminated against in motion. This can be attributed to their difficulties in social communication and cognitive abilities brought about by autism. However, autistic individuals’ lived experience is rarely explored in the field. Thus, this study aims to examine their personal experiences and pay attention to how autism is enacted in public transport settings, and various encounters in a material environment. A two-month ethnographic study was used from the perspective of a micro-lens of a specific autistic adult individual. Through a narrative analysis of “key events” happening in the process of movements, the materiality of mobility by taking public transport for autistic individuals’ ordinary life was presented.  The findings and analysis are unfolding from three oriented dimensions. Firstly, I point out that as a material practical form of moving, encounters of the autistic participant with other passengers in a public moving space are merely a temporary gathering, shaping a relationship that avoids communication. Additionally, risks exist including information overload and being disoriented that show how autism is enacted in public transportation settings. Secondly, I suggest that as the material basis of the movements of taking public transport, the outside landscape presents the materialistic appearance of the modern city, bringing a sense of security as well as a channel for the autistic participant to learn new things, but at the same time the de-naturalization and modernity exacerbates the autistic one’s negative relation to the urban environment. Last, I demonstrate how the coercive nature of the technological objects intervenes in the originally pure tension between autistic individual and moving services, thus indirectly exposing the loss of discursive power and resources experienced by the participant.  Based on these findings, I draw on the discussions of the strategies and the built environment. From the standpoint of the former, it shows that prioritizing fast mobility has led to the neglect of actual needs for a higher standard of moving experience. This also indicates that the autistic one's resistance to movement often manifests as an attachment to the fixed and secure space of the home, forming the strategies of responsiveness and resistance. The latter suggests the ‘perspective turn’ to the social model of disability, realizing that being disabled might be a universal experience of a person, and everyone could be in a state of disability either permanently or temporarily. Therefore, optimizing the built environment of public transport not only benefits autistic individuals but also represents an investment in broader social well-being.

This diploma deals with the changes and challenges that transportation companies will face at the beginning of 2010 due to the liberalization of the public transportation market. It is structured into a first part describing the theory and a second part that applies the theory into praxis. The theory focuses on the development of public transportation, the nomenclature, and specific terms related to the public transportation market, legal changes, financials and other influencing effects. The complete diploma is written with focus on bus transportation. The second part analyzes the current situation on the Czech public bus transportation market and further expected changes starting with 2010. General recommendations are made and possible strategies described how to establish in the market. Finally there is made an explicit recommendation for a specific bus company

Esta dissertação propõe um modelo tecnológico de automação para realização de pesquisas no setor do transporte público, com o objetivo de contribuir para o aprimoramento da coleta de dados, avaliação e manutenção da qualidade dos serviços prestados à população. O trabalho justifica-se pela necessidade de superação de lacunas existentes para obtenção de informações, o que repercute na gestão do sistema de transporte público como um todo. Devido à relevância crescente do tema da mobilidade urbana e os impactos que provoca na qualidade de vida das pessoas, o objeto de estudo escolhido foram os deslocamentos dos passageiros por meio do uso de ônibus na cidade de São Paulo. O modelo proposto integra a tecnologia de identificação por radiofrequência (RFID - Radio Frequency IDentification), em cartões inteligentes, utilizados atualmente para pagar a tarifa, com tecnologias de rastreamento da frota, que, por meio de GPS (Global Position Systems), fornecem informações sobre os locais de circulação dos ônibus. Os resultados obtidos mostram que esta integração pode resolver os problemas da falta de precisão no levantamento de dados sobre os locais onde são iniciadas e finalizadas as viagens de passageiros, bem como tornar sistemáticos os levantamentos de tais dados, sem necessidade de pesquisas manuais, o que representa economia de recursos. Constitui uma proposta inovadora com grande utilidade para ampliar as condições que favorecem a mobilidade urbana e é convergente no desenvolvimento de cidades inteligentes. / This dissertation proposes a technological model for automation for conducting surveys in the public transport sector, in order to contribute to the improvement of data collection, evaluation and maintenance of quality of services rendered to the population. The work is justified by the need to overcome gaps for obtaining information, which affects the management of the public transport system as a whole. Due to the increasing relevance of the issue of urban mobility and its impact on quality of life, the chosen object of study were the passenger movements through the bus use in the city of São Paulo. The proposed model integrates the radio frequency identification technology - RFID, on smart cards currently used to pay the fare, with fleet tracking technologies, which, through GPS (Global Position Systems), provide information on the bus traffic locations. The results show that this integration can solve the problems of lack of precision in data about where passenger trips are initiated and completed as well as make systematic withdrawals of such data without the need for manual searches, saving features. It is an innovative proposal with great use to expand the conditions that improve urban mobility and is convergent to the development of smart cities.

Public transport policies play a key role in shaping the social and spatial structure of cities. These policies influence how easily people can access opportunities, including health and educational services and job positions. The accessibility impacts of transport policies thus have important implications for social inequalities and for the promotion of just and inclusive cities. However, in the transportation literature, there is still little theoretically informed understanding of justice and what it means in the context of transport policies. Moreover, few studies have moved beyond descriptive analyses of accessibility inequalities to evaluate how much those inequalities result from transport policies themselves. This is particularly true in cities from the global South, where accessibility and equity have so far remained marginal concerns in the policy realm. This thesis builds on theories of distributive justice and examines how they can guide the evaluation of transport policies and plans. It points to pathways for rigorous assessment of the accessibility impacts of transport policies and it contributes to current discussions on transportation equity. A justice framework is developed to assess the distributional effects of transport policies. This framework is then applied to evaluate recent transport policies developed in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in preparation to host sports mega-events, such as the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, which included substantial expansion of the rail and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) infrastructure. This research presents ex-post analyses of the policies implemented between 2014 and 2017 and ex-ante analysis of an as yet unfinished BRT project. It evaluates how the planned transport legacy of those mega-events impacted accessibility to sports venues, healthcare facilities, public schools and job opportunities for different income groups. The results show that there were overall accessibility benefits from the expansion in transport infrastructure between 2014 and 2017, but these were generally offset by the reduction in bus service levels that followed an economic crisis that hit the city after the Olympics. Quasi-counterfactual analysis suggests that, even if the city had not been hit by the economic crisis, recent transport investments related to mega-events would have led to higher accessibility gains for wealthier groups and increased inequalities in access to opportunities. Results suggest that those investments had, or would have had, greater impact on inequalities of access to jobs than in access to schools and healthcare facilities. The evaluation of the future accessibility impacts of the unfinished BRT corridor, nonetheless, indicates that such project could significantly improve access to job opportunities for a large share of Rio's population, particularly lower-income groups. Spatial analysis techniques show that the magnitude and statistical significance of these results depend on the spatial scale and travel time threshold selected for cumulative opportunity accessibility analysis. These results demonstrate that the ad-hoc methodological choices of accessibility analysis commonly used in the academic and policy literature can change the conclusions of equity assessments of transportation projects.