Transportation planning initiatives are assumed to further the development of growing cities across the globe. Latin American cities, especially, suffer from a deficit of infrastructure that presents greater challenges to the efficient movement of people and goods, which makes transportation one of the biggest hindrances to development in Latin America. Throughout the twentieth century, development projects in the Dominican Republic were carried out in the contexts of foreign military occupation and state repression, whereby processes of technical modernization arrived alongside state-led violence. Meanwhile, grandiose infrastructure projects were paired with narratives of national greatness. Decisions regarding land use and distribution of public services remained inattentive of the poorest residents, causing enormous inequalities in increasingly urbanized cities. President Leonel Fernández campaigned for his third term promising to break from old forms of corruption, and has symbolically delivered this promise of progress through the construction of a new subway system. The Santo Domingo Metro revolutionizes transportation options in key areas of a chaotic and congested road system, where many public transportation vehicles are old and dilapidated. Metro can save hours in commute times, provide safe, reliable transit at low cost, and promote sustainability. However, critics note that billions of dollars invested on Metro expansion preempt the funding of health and education. Construction processes displace neighborhoods, while many communities situated near the stations still face daily hardships associated with inadequate housing and lack of sanitation. My paper blends the perspectives of technical transportation planning and critical development theory to understand whether the Metro will serve these communities by improving their access to services, schools, and job sites, or simply drain scarce funds from these very areas. This paper also critically evaluates the way that the current administration‘s symbol of progress at times mirrors the top-down political culture of the past. The Metro thus elucidates larger theoretical and practical questions regarding the interactions of transportation planning and political culture, and their impacts on spatial hierarchies and growth within urban spaces. / text

This thesis presents the results from a survey of transit agencies on web-based feedback tools and their role in enabling communication between agencies and riders. Motivation for the survey stems from the growing importance of web-based feedback tools in improving transit services. Web-based feedback can improve transit agencies' knowledge of issues relating to their systems while enhancing the transit riding experience. As the availability of Internet and smartphones increases among transit users, the tools available to gather feedback have grown in response. Web- and smartphone-based tools are instrumental in collecting a wide range of feedback, including commendations and complaints, maintenance issues, transit services, safety and security, long-term planning and other transit operations related issues. At the same time, transit agencies must determine how to best respond and manage the growing presence of information on the web relating to their agencies performance. Through a web-based survey administered to 130 transit agencies in the United States and Canada, information was gathered on the current and planned use of web-based tools by transit agencies. The overall survey results show that most transit agencies focus on sorting and responding to unsolicited feedback being collected primarily through social media, email, and online forms. Additionally, transit agencies see the benefits of web-based customer feedback, noting that the key to managing their systems into the future will involve developing agency-wide digital feedback plans that allow automation and integration across all feedback channels. Finally, transit agencies also noted that the primary downside to web-based feedback involved a lack of staff resources to support their systems. This thesis provides further analysis focusing on three questions regarding the survey results: - How can agency size, based on unlinked trips, influence the survey responses collected from agencies regarding their use of web-based feedback tools? - What variables from the survey can influence a transit agencies ability to provide web-based feedback tools to their riders? - What factors might contribute to differences in transit agencies rider access estimates to Internet and smartphones? While the results show that larger agencies are able to offer more web-based feedback tools to their riders, there were problems with transit agencies incorrectly estimating their riders’ access to Internet and smartphones. This could cause issues regarding agencies ability to understand which web-based tools they should implement to engage their riders. This thesis details one portion of an overall project, which will provide framework for agencies to assess their needs and resources to determine how to create their own effective customer feedback systems in relation to what web-based feedback tools will most benefit themselves and their riders.

This thesis evaluates how municipal transit ridership in mid-sized cities is influenced by external factors. External factors are forces outside a municipality’s direct control but potentially affect the municipality in some way, in particular its transit ridership. The thesis also determines the appropriateness of municipal levels of response to each factor. Two mid-sized municipalities in Ontario, Canada – the City of Kingston and Region of Waterloo – were studied. The evaluation, first, identifies the trends or “current conditions” between the municipalities and five sets of external factors to determine influence on ridership. The factors are 1. Population Growth and Density; 2. Demographics (Seniors, Students and Immigrants); 3. Regional Location; 4. Federal/Provincial Impacts; and 5. Fuel Prices. Second, the municipality’s level of response was measured in three ways. Staff awareness of the factor and its influence was gauged using key informant interviews and municipal councillor surveys conducted by the researcher. Internal policy and guidance documents measured whether policies relating to each factor are appropriate. Finally, observations of implemented initiatives determined whether they appropriately deal with each factor. The study finds that more external factors act on Waterloo than Kingston. Therefore, Waterloo has strong incentives to prioritize – among many municipal responsibilities – its transit system and to focus on increasing ridership. The strongest incentives for Waterloo are population growth, the student demographic and federal/provincial impacts. Kingston has only one strong incentive: the senior demographic. The study also finds that Waterloo has appropriate levels of response to more of the external factors than does Kingston. Recommendations for Kingston and Waterloo are provided for improving their levels of response to each set of factors. The paper concludes that municipal size is an important driver, but internal levels of response are critical success factors. The data analysis matrix developed for this study can be used by other municipalities to help identify appropriateness of internal responses as they relate to the influence of external factors within their municipality.

abstract: To guide the timetabling and vehicle assignment of urban bus systems, a group of optimization models were developed for scenarios from simple to complex. The model took the interaction of prospective passengers and bus companies into consideration to achieve the maximum financial benefit as well as social satisfaction. The model was verified by a series of case studies and simulation from which some interesting conclusions were drawn. / Dissertation/Thesis / Simulation File, including CSV data file / Masters Thesis Industrial Engineering 2014

It is observed that transit riders are responding to service changes while transit planning is responding to ridership changes, or that transit patronage and service supply are highly interrelated. It is also noticed that transit riders transfer from route to route, the introduction of new service may draw some riders from the existing routes, which implies transit patronage on a route is also affected by other parallel and intersecting routes. An analytic tool is needed to examine these complex relationships in the transit system. This study has developed a quantitative model by incorporating these interactions into a simultaneous system. The simultaneity of transit demand, supply and the interrelationship of inter-route effects are addressed in a three-equation simultaneous model: a demand equation, a supply equation and an equation for competing routes. These equations are estimated simultaneously using the three-stage-least-squares estimation method. The model is estimated at the route-segment level by the time of a day, and by the inbound and outbound directions. Data from Portland, Oregon metropolitan area are used as an extended case study. The socioeconomic and demographic data are allocated to an one-quarter-mile distance service area around a transit route by utilizing the technique of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The data allocation significantly reduces the measurement error. Inter-route relationships are also identified using GIS. The estimation results show that a service change on a route increases the transit patronage on that route, but it also decreases the ridership on its competing routes, so the net effect of that service improvement is smaller than the ridership increase on the subject route. A conventional single equation model under-estimates the ridership responses on the subject route, and over-estimates the net patronage response. This study is the first research to discuss the net effects of a service change at the route level. The model can be implemented for system-level policy analysis and route-level service and land use planning. It is especially useful for "what-if" scenario analysis at the route level to simulate the ridership impacts of service and land use changes.

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Public bike share systems have been recognized as an effective way to promote active and sustainable public transportation. With the health benefits of bike share becoming better understood, North American cities have continued to invest in cycling infrastructure and impose new policies to not only encourage the usage of bike share systems but also expand their operations to new cities. The city of Hamilton, Ontario, implemented its own bike share system in March 2015. Using the system’s global positioning system (GPS) data for annually aggregated trip departures, arrivals, and totals in 2017, this research explores various environment factors that have an impact on users’ bike share usage at hub level. Nine predictive linear regression models were developed for three different scenarios depending on the type of hubs and members for trip departures, arrivals, and totals. In terms of variance explained across the core service area, the models suggested the main factors that attract users were distance to McMaster University and the number of racks available at hubs. Furthermore, the working population and distance to the Central Business District and the closest bike lane in the immediate vicinity (200 m buffer) also played important roles as contributing factors. Based on the primary predictors, this research takes one step further and estimates potential trips at candidate sites to inform future expansion of public bike share system. The candidate locations were created on appropriate land uses by applying a continuous surface of regularly shaped cells, a hexagonal tessellation, on the area of interest. The estimated potential usage at candidate sites demonstrated that the east part of the city should be targeted for future bike share expansion. / Dissertation / Master of Science (MSc)

As urban growth accelerates and the need to address environmental issues regardingtransportation is larger than ever and many policymakers have chosen to adapt park and rideas one of their methods to reduce car traffic. However, the effect from adapting the policy isnot very well understood and since the policy can directly conflict with other policies relatedto land use it is important to know which effects can be expected. By knowing which effectsto expect, policy makers can make more sustainable choices in their policy adaption.This study has been carried out using data from two different counties to find out if theeffects from park and ride differ depending on the type of environment it serves. Further, anadditional analysis has been done using temporal data to measure the effect of adapting orexpanding a park and ride facility at a public transport station or stop.It was found that in a rural setting, the relation between park and ride and the number ofpassengers at a public transport station is strong. Stations with more parking spaces hadhigher ridership. This was not the case for stations located in a suburban environment, someeffect was indicated but the relationship was not as strong. The analysis of the two countiesdata showed unreasonably high passenger increases from P&R, indicating that some otherfactor also influences the result in this analysis.From the analysis of the temporal dataset the result showed that stations which adapted parkand ride did have a higher average passenger increase than the general trend within thetransport system. This indicates that park and ride do in fact increase public transportridership. / Den accelererande urbaniseringen har gjort behovet av att hantera miljöpåverkan ifråntransportsystemet större än någonsin och många beslutsfattare har valt att förordapendlarparkering (park and ride) som en metod för att minska biltrafik. Effekterna av attanvända denna planeringsmetod är dock inte fullt kända och eftersom pendlarparkeringar kanhamna i konflikt med andra planeringsmetoder som berör markanvändning så är det viktigtatt veta vilka effekter som kan förväntas av att införa pendlarparkeringar. Genom att vetavilka effekter som kan förväntas så blir möjligheterna bättre för beslutsfattare att tavälgrundade beslut och införa hållbara direktiv kopplade till stads och trafikplaneringen.Den här studien har utförts med data från två olika regioner för att ta reda på om effekterna avpendlarparkeringar skiljer sig beroende på vilken typ av miljö den är implementerad i.Dessutom har ytterligare en analys gjorts baserad på historiska data över resande, detta för attkunna mäta den direkta effekten av att införa eller expandera pendlarparkering på en hållplatsinom kollektivtrafiken.Resultatet visade att i glesbebyggda områden så var sambandet mellan antalet platser påpendlarparkeringar och antalet passagerare starkt. Statiner med fler pendlarparkeringsplatserhade fler resande än de med färre. Sambandet var inte lika starkt för stationer i förortsmiljö,ett visst samband kunde uppmätas men det var inte lika starkt. Analysen av de två regionernavisade dock på orealistiskt höga förhållanden mellan antalet pendlarparkeringsplatser ochantalet passagerare vilket indikerar att någon annan faktor också påverkar resultatet.Från analysen av historiska data över antal resande så visade resultatet att införandet avpendlarparkeringar ökar resandet med kollektivtrafiken i genomsnitt mer på de stationer därde införs jämfört med den generella trenden i kollektivtrafiksystemet. Detta indikerar attpendlarparkeringar har en positiv effekt på antalet resande med kollektivtrafiken.

Rail transit investments require highest amount of investment costs of all modes and considering the high cost involved, it is particularly important that their performance justifies this high cost and that expectations from these investments are met. Therefore, in the world, it has become an important field of research to study the performances of rail systems in order to assess whether these expectations are met. In Turkey, there is a growing interest in constructing rail transit systems in the cities. However, there has been limited number of studies on the performance of these investments. There are researches on individual systems / yet, there has not been a comprehensive, systematic and comparative evaluation of the rail transit experience of Turkish cities. It is not clear with what expectations these systems are built or whether these expectations are met. There seems to be an urgent need to study these rail investments, with a particular focus on their planning, investment objectives and outcomes. This thesis analyzes the expectations from the rail transit systems in Turkey and answers the question whether these expectations are met. In order to understand the objectives under the planning and decision making processes in the implementation of Turkish rapid rail transport investments, a sample group was selected among the cities currently operating rail transit systems: &amp / #272 / stanbul, Ankara, &amp / #272 / zmir and Bursa. The study sets the objectives in planning and implementing rail transit systems drawn by the answers in the semi-structured interviews. It compares the expectations with the actual outcomes. As the primary indicators of performance, cost and ridership forecast and outcome data are also collected and considered in the comparison. It is found that the main success in all case study cities was the increase in public transport usage after the opening of the rail transit systems. On the other hand, systems performed rather poor in terms of other expectations, such as attaining ridership forecasts, being built within budget, creating an integrated public transport system, traffic reduction, air pollution reduction, improvement of city image, etc. Hence there is a gap between expectations and outcomes.