Thesis. 1977. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaf 121. / by Serge Tsygalnitzky. / M.S.

Thesis. 1975. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Bibliography: leaf 100. / M.C.P.

Thesis. 1975. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.S.

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 325-329. / Ph.D.

The governance of urban transport involves a complex amalgam of intergovernmental actors, revenue sources and normative justifications. In recent decades, there has been a clear shift toward decentralized approaches to urban transport investment. This devolution of responsibility supports the development and deployment of new governance strategies that rely heavily on sub-regional implementation strategies and that justify urban transport in terms of economic development, not mobility impacts. This dissertation provides a grounded view of the devolution of urban transport planning through an in-depth case study of the implementation of a modern streetcar investment in Kansas City, Missouri. Using a combination of institutional analysis and phronesis, it illuminates the antecedents of local governance strategies, like value capture and non-profit governance, and shows how local conditions and history are shaping transport policy in unanticipated ways. While new governance strategies support enhanced investment, they also shape who benefits from new investments. In the Kansas City case, policies in the streetcar’s proximity emphasized the importance of lifestyle diversity and nurturing the development of an emerging arts community but eschewed notions of race and income diversity in ways that reflect and exacerbate the city’s dismal history of segregation. Devolution is facilitating new governance arrangements that reflect local conditions but, as this case shows, these new strategies may also be setting urban transport on a troubling institutional trajectory that – without intervention – will only lead us away from equitable and inclusive cities.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH / Bibliography: leaves 177-180. / by Peter Paul Belobaba. / M.S.

Esta pesquisa tratou de uma avaliação do processo de planejamento de transportes urbanos e suas implicações para o funcionamento das cidades. Foi feita inicialmente uma revisão dos métodos mais consagrados de planejamento, aqui chamados de tradicionais, contrastando- os com abordagens alternativas que visam a mobilidade urbana sustentável. Alguns planos de transportes e de mobilidade, principalmente referentes a casos brasileiros, foram analisados e, a partir daí, foi selecionada para estudo de caso a Região Metropolitana de Belém - RMB. Para esta região foram desenvolvidos nove estudos de transportes no período de 1978 a 2010. Nas propostas destes estudos percebe - se, de maneira geral, um viés de favorecimento dos modos motorizados de transportes. Mesmo com o grande número de estudos, no entanto, a mobilidade urbana em Belém não chegou a ser considerada como boa durante a investigação. Isso foi verificado com o cálculo do Índice de Mobilidade Urbana Sustentável para diferentes cenários, centrados nos anos de 1980, 1991, 2001 e 2011. Outro experimento envolveu a avaliação dos possíveis impactos das medidas propostas nos estudos caso fossem implantadas. Os estudos melhor avaliados foram os Planos Diretores de Transportes Urbanos concluídos em 1991 e 2001. Embora a preocupação com os impactos ambientais causados pelo sistema de transportes esteja presente em todos os estudos, as propostas não contemplaram bem esta questão. O discurso de melhoria do meio ambiente começou de maneira mais moderada nos primeiros planos e foi ganhando mais força ao longo do tempo, até mesmo pelas exigências, cada vez maiores, da legislação nacional e local. Apesar disso, no conjunto dos planos, o Domínio \"Aspectos Ambientais\" foi, comparativamente, o menos importante. A ideia de que, na medida em que as pessoas melhoram de condição econômica elas deixam de utilizar o transporte público e passam para o automóvel, parece levar a um problema sem solução. Não são consideradas medidas que restrinjam o uso do automóvel, o que poderia levar a melhores soluções. Outros fatores que impedem a implantação de um sistema de transportes mais adequado é a inexistência de uma estrutura de gerência metropolitana e os entraves para alterar o arranjo atual das empresas de transporte coletivo e suas áreas exclusivas de operação. Embora não tenha aqui sido feita uma avaliação detalhada de outros casos, as práticas observadas no caso de Belém são seguramente muito próximas daquilo que ocorre em outras cidades e regiões metropolitanas brasileiras. Por outro lado, a entrada em vigor em 2012 da lei que estabelece as diretrizes para a Política Nacional de Mobilidade Urbana abre perspectivas para uma mudança nos procedimentos de planejamento visando à mobilidade urbana sustentável. / The research dealt with the process of urban transportation planning and its consequences on the cities\' functioning. It started with a literature review, which was carried out for comparing the well established planning methods, here named as traditional, with the ones that propose an alternative approach aiming at a sustainable urban mobility. Some transportation or mobility plans, mainly from Brazilian cities, were thoroughly examined thereafter. Their inspection led to the selection of the RMB (which is the abbreviation of Belém Metropolitan Area, in Portuguese), as a case study. From 1978 to 2010, nine transportation studies or plans had been produced for that region. In general, most proposals found in these studies are biased towards motorized transport modes. Despite all these studies, however, the mobility of Belém was never classified as good along the investigation. This was assessed with the estimation of a Index of Sustainable Urban Mobility - I_SUM for different scenarios in the years 1980, 1991, 2001 and 2010. Another experiment consisted of an evaluation of the potential impact of the solutions proposed in the reports. As a result, the better ranked studies were the Urban Transportation Master Plans developed in 1991 and 2001. Also, although a concern about the environmental impacts of the transportation system had been found in all studies, this question was far from being solved. The arguments in favor of environmental improvements started with moderate emphasis in the first plans and grew stronger toward the recent plans, in part due to local and national legislation. Nevertheless, the set of plans performed poorly in the Environmental Aspects Domain. The idea that improvements on people financial condition leads to a modal shift from transit to cars seems to produce an unsolvable problem. Restrictions on motoring would possibly open space for better solutions, but they were never effectively consid ered in the analyzed plans. In the case considered, the lack of a metropolitan organization for the mobility management and the present setting of bus companies exclusive operational areas also make difficult the implementation of better transportation system. Even though detailed analyses were not conducted here for other cases, the practice observed in Belém is surely quite similar to what is found in other Brazilian cities and metropolitan areas. In contrast, the fact that a federal law establishing the guidelines for a National Policy for Urban Mobility was recently passed, opens prospects of changes on planning procedures aiming at a sustainable urban mobility.

Thesis (M.Arch. (Prof.))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning, 2016. / This thesis explores the role of the Johannesburg Minibus Taxi Industry as a city- making device, both as a concentrator as well as a separator of different people and different industries. The taxi industry’s role in the city oscillates between an activity- generator and inhibitor depending on what state the mini-bus taxi is in. By concentrating people during drop- off or pick- up phases of a commute, the density of commuters afford traders and other commercial entities an accessible market to exploit and sell their wares to, but during off-peak hours the taxi industry is static and doesn’t attract activity, other than taxi- centric activity. The city provides limited amount of space for the taxi to operate in, which forces taxis to territorialise public streets spaces during off- peak hours when the industry is in a lull. These territorialised spaces are then limited to a set taxi- centric function and are prevented from becoming spaces with a greater variety of function or activities. By introducing a space that allows taxis to park, or hold, off street as a means to allow current streetscapes, currently defi ned as taxi spaces, to become open to a reinterpretation by citizens and to fulfi l needs of the citizenry will afford the city a greater level of workability and engagement from all parties involved. In order to achieve a city that is reinterpretable by its citizenry and to do it successfully, the need to establish what constitutes a good urban form is paramount. Dense, diverse, multi- functional and interesting urban morphology is key, but none of this can be addressed if the status quo of the urban environ remains the same. By proposing the construction of a mixed-use taxi holding space on the existing Jack Mincer Taxi Rank, in order to allow taxis currently parking and holding on street to be able to hold in a safe and secure building. This proposal will serve as a catalyst in development for the surrounding urban context which will allow for the redesign of these previously taxi- focused urban spaces to evolve into mixed- use developments that provide housing, commercial opportunities as well as recreational spaces in the existing End Street Park. R einvigorating the existing urban condition through reconfi guring the surrounding urban condition, there is an opportunity to relook at the existing taxi industry itself and its workings and reimagine it. To create a system that allows for greater economic opportunities for associations, owners and drivers. However, in order to achieve a greater level of effi ciency in the current taxi industry, numerous changes need to be made to implement these processes, the least of which will drastically affect and reduce the amount of taxi drivers on the roads. Since drivers are already in a constricted position in terms of job opportunities, these individuals will invariably be victimised and be forced into a position of joblessness, due to South Africa’s struggling economy. By introducing an enterprise component to the project that will help facilitate skill- creation and foster entrepreneurship in drivers, and former drivers, the industry becomes an important stepping stone in developing a workable economy that supports and engenders greater and varied economic activity, by directly encouraging the development of entrepreneurs and skill development. Furthermore, by not just targeting the taxi industry directly, but also by engaging with industries dependent on the taxi industry, this intervention further develops the market district in the region, and further enables traders in the region to exploit the pedestrian market and encourage a richer economic activity on the chosen site, and the surrounding urban context. This intervention is not just reconfi guring an urban condition, but also an industry’s effect on that condition, through the introduction of the Urban Taxi Terminal. / EM2017

This thesis explores pattern recognition in the dynamic setting of public transportation, such as a bus, as people enter and later exit from a doorway. Matching the entrance and exit of each individual provides accurate information about individual riders such as how long a person is on a bus and which stops the person uses. At a higher level, matching exits to entries provides information about the distribution of traffic flow across the whole transportation system. A texel camera is implemented and multiple measures of people are made where the depth and color data are generated. A large number of features are generated and the sequential floating forward selection (SFFS) algorithm is used for selecting the optimized features. Criterion functions using marginal accuracy and maximization of minimum normalized Mahalanobis distance are designed and compared. Because of the particular case of the bus environment, which is a sequential estimation problem, a trellis optimization algorithm is designed based on a sequence of measurements from the texel camera. Since the number of states in the trellis grows exponentially with the number of people currently on the bus, a beam search pruning technique is employed to manage the computational and memory load. Experimental results using real texel camera measurements show good results for 68 people exiting from an initially full bus in a randomized order. In a bus route simulation where a true traffic flow distribution is used to randomly draw entry and exit events for simulated riders, the proposed sequential estimation algorithm produces an estimated traffic flow distribution which provides an excellent match to the true distribution.

The continuing evolution of urban travel patterns and changing policy goals and priorities requires that transportation researchers and practitioners improve their abilities to plan and forecast the demand for travel. Walking and bicycling - the primary forms of active travel - are generating increasing interest for their potential to reduce automobile use, save governmental and consumer costs, and improve personal and social health outcomes. Yet, current transportation planning tools, namely regional travel demand forecasting models, poorly represent these active travel modes, if at all. More broadly, travel models do an incomplete job of representing the decision-making processes involved in travel choices, especially those factors influencing walking and bicycling. In addition to limitations of data and statistical analysis methods, the research upon which modeling tools are based has yet to settle on a comprehensive theory of travel behavior that accounts for complex relationships around a variety of personal, social, and environmental factors. While modeling tools have explained travel primarily through economic theories, contributions from the geography and psychology fields prove promising. A few scholars have attempted to link these travel behavior explanations together, some with a focus on walking and bicycling, but these theories have yet to make a significant impact on travel modeling practice. This thesis presents a unifying interdisciplinary framework for a theory of travel decision-making with applications for travel demand modeling and forecasting and a focus on walking and bicycling. The framework offers a guide for future research examining the complex relationships of activities, built environment factors, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, attitudes and perceptions, and habit and exploration on individual short-term travel decisions (with considerations of the influence of medium- and long-term travel-related decisions). A key component of the theory is a hierarchy of travel needs hypothesized to be considered by travelers in the course of their decision-making processes. Although developed to account for the factors that particularly influence decisions surrounding walking and bicycling, the framework is postulated to apply to all travel modes and decisions, including frequency, destination, mode, time-of-day, and route. The first section of the thesis reviews theories from the fields of economics, geography, psychology, and travel behavior that have a large influence on the development of the theory of travel decision-making. In the next and largest chapter, the components and relationships in this theory, including the hierarchy of travel needs, are defined and presented with supporting empirical evidence from travel behavior research. This thesis's final section views the theory of travel decision-making through the lens of applicability to travel demand modeling and forecasting. The state of current travel forecasting tools, travel behavior research, data, and analysis methods with respect to each aspect of the theory is reviewed. Research and data needs are identified. In closing, some opportunities for operationalizing the theory in travel demand models and using these transportation planning tools for analyzing walking, cycling, and other policies are hypothesized and discussed. This thesis, and the theory and applications discussed within, contribute to the academic study of travel behavior, the practical modeling of travel demand, and walking and bicycling research and planning.