The thesis presents an opportunity to study relationship between rapid rail transit system and urban development through measuring various changes caused by the rapid rail transit improvement in Washington, D.C., Beijing, China, and Vancouver, Canada. Due to the reason that the three systems are all well-planned systems, they are not only the important parts of urban public transit, but also tools for guiding urban and regional development. Three principal goals are identified for these systems: relieve traffic congestion; provide a transit alternative to the automobile drivers; and support a compact pattern of regional town centers out from an over-developed downtown area to form a polycentric urban pattern. The rapid rail transit is found to serve a majority of riders going to and from work. It attracts not only former auto drivers but also new riders from other modes due to the fact that the system is a time and cost-saving transportation tool for people. Joining other factors, rapid rail transit could shape land-use pattern, reduce decline of old downtown, and induce development. It influences society and economy positively in that region. Although there is no direct relation between the improvement and regional population growth, it influences the population re-distribution because it attracts new employment to its envelope and influence areas from other parts of the metropol is. A good transportation system in a metropolis should satisfy the variety of needs for mobility engendered by a very heterogeneous population. A system which mainly depends on automobiles cannot meet the needs. An rapid rail transit system could compensate for the insufficiency of automobile. As a critical and irreplaceable part of an urban transportation system, rapid rail transit plays an increasingly important role. / Master of Science

As regiões metropolitanas são o local onde se pode observar com mais clareza as grandes dicotomias presentes na sociedade brasileira. Riqueza e pobreza, qualidade de vida e falta de oportunidades. Nesse sentido, alguns dos maus resultados em matéria de políticas públicas podem ser associados a problemas em sua implementação. Diante deste contexto, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a forma com a qual a legislação relativa à implementação de políticas públicas de transporte coletivo na Região Metropolitana de Curitiba lida com os dilemas de ação coletiva. Essa análise perpassa as relações intergovernamentais entre os municípios componentes da Região Metropolitana de Curitiba e o Estado do Paraná, responsáveis pela implementação de políticas de transporte público coletivo. A dificuldade em lidar com os dilemas de ação coletiva, intrínseca à implementação de políticas, ao federalismo, à conformação das regiões metropolitanas e até mesmo ao fornecimento de sistemas de transporte público coletivo é o pressuposto que fundamenta a presente pesquisa. Para proceder àquela análise, a abordagem utilizada foi a qualitativa, de objetivos exploratórios e descritivos. Os meios pelos quais se busca respostas a tais objetivos foram as pesquisas de tipo bibliográfico e documental. Neste último aspecto, procedeu-se à análise de conteúdo dos documentos coletados, consubstanciados na legislação que normatiza a implementação de políticas públicas de transporte coletivo na Região Metropolitana de Curitiba. Essa análise buscou identificar a presença ou ausência de determinados conceitos relativos à coordenação e cooperação para a implementação de políticas públicas em contextos interativos. Como resultados, tem-se que: a) apesar de o legislador reconhecer a necessidade de que haja cooperação em matéria de políticas públicas, inexiste modelo para tanto; b) houve três distintas fases em matéria de cooperação: imposição de normas por parte da União, extrema descentralização e, a atual, com o aparecimento de modelos para a ação coletiva; c) os modelos atuais passam pela possibilidade de estabelecimento de consórcios públicos e pela governança interfederativa nas áreas metropolitanas. Enfim, concluiu-se que as normas que regem o cenário da implementação de políticas públicas de transporte na RMC são, ao mesmo tempo, problemas e obstáculos às esperadas condutas cooperativas, pois, por um lado, estimulam a competição entre os entes e a superioridade hierárquica de uns sobre outros, e, por outro, reconhecem a necessidade da ação coletiva. Ainda assim, por mais de 20 anos a RMC logrou manter uma rede integrada de transportes ativa, o que sugere a participação ativa dos atores sociais responsáveis por essa política pública. / Metropolitan areas present clearly the greatest dichotomies in Brazilian society. Wealth and poverty, quality of life and lack of opportunities. In this sense, some of the bad results in terms of public policies can be associated with problems in its implementation. In this study, the analysis relies in the intergovernmental relations between the municipalities that composes the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba (RMC) and the state of Paraná, all of them responsible for the implementation of public transportation policies. The difficulty in dealing with the dilemmas of collective action, intrinsic to the implementation of policies, federalism, the conformation of metropolitan region itself and even the provision of public transportation systems is the assumption underlying this research. To carry out the analysis, it was used a qualitative approach, with exploratory and descriptive objectives. This research used bibliographic and documentary approach to accomplish its objectives. Regarding to the later approach, the procedure was to analyze the collected documents that included the whole legislation that regulates the implementation of public transport policies in the metropolitan region of Curitiba. The document analysis sought to identify the presence or absence of certain concepts related to coordination and cooperation for the implementation of public policies in interactive contexts. The results led to the following conclusions: a) although the legislators recognize the necessity for cooperation in public policy there are no pattern to follow; b) there have been three distinct phases for cooperation, starting with the imposition of norms by the Union, going through a phase of extreme decentralization and the current one, where seem to appear the first patterns for collective action; c) current pattern seems to be the establishment of public consortia and interfederative governance in metropolitan areas. Conclusions lead to the understanding that the rules governing the implementation of public transport policies in the RMC are at the same time, problems and obstacles to the expected cooperative behavior, because on the one hand, they stimulate competition between the entities and the hierarchical superiority of some over others. On the other hand it recognizes the need for collective action. Even so, for more than 20 years the RMC managed to maintain an integrated network of active transport, which suggests the active participation of the individuals responsible for this policy.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

New York’s transit system serves millions of riders each day; the local newspapers complain about the lack of funding for infrastructure projects; and the City Council regularly hosts hearings about Bus Rapid Transit, bike-share, road safety, e-hail taxis, and gondolas. Transportation issues matter to New Yorkers, but these debates, at the policy level, often focus on technology, budgets, and regulations rather than the needs and experiences of passengers. This focus on “technical” matters allows planners and politicians to confine transportation debates to the realm of experts rather than engage the broader public in them. The failure to address the needs of passengers in Brooklyn and Queens has led to the development of dollar vans. Dollar vans are hybrid bus-taxis, also known as jitneys, that provide vital transportation links to more than 120,000 riders per day and operate beyond the control of the formal transit system governed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). While this ridership pales in comparison to the daily ridership on the subway or bus, it does rival bus ridership in cities like Dallas and Milwaukee and dwarfs the 50,000 peak ridership achieved by Citi Bike, New York’s celebrated bike-share system. More important, the durability of the vans reveals the failures of the existing formal system to serve all New Yorkers. I argue that this failure is important for three reasons. First, the vans respond to a geographically specific problem: adequate access to inadequate service. The vans thrive in busy transit corridors where MTA-owned buses come too infrequently, are overcrowded, or are regularly stuck in traffic. On these busy routes, the vans provide a more reliable ride and alternative for transit-dependent populations looking to bypass the faltering bus system. Second, regulations fail to reflect daily practice. This gap between practice and policy leaves van operators and passengers in an awkward limbo that criminalizes an industry and jeopardizes the mobility of entire neighborhoods. Third, since the vans operate outside of the formal system, traditional metrics, such as ridership, travel time, vehicle revenue miles, etc., are not collected and compared against the metrics of other modes operated by the MTA. As long as the vans remain an unknown quantity, it is impossible for the City and State to serve transit-dependent populations in Brooklyn and Queens. In this dissertation, I use a mixed-methods research design to probe the world of the vans and argue that continued regulatory uncertainty, long the friend of the vans, has the potential to upend them as development pressures and capital investment in Central Brooklyn intensifies.

The objective of this thesis is to outline steps that the Obama Administration could take to help pass legislation for an innovative funding mechanism known as a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). The recommended steps are based on a historical analysis of the leadership provided by Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower when passing the original bills that authorized the Interstate system. Key policy recommendations include: framing the need for an NIB as a means of economic growth and natural disaster resilience, building strategic stakeholder support through education, and engaging and compromising with Congress while developing the NIB proposal. If successfully applied, these lessons can contribute to enabling the creation of an NIB that would increase infrastructure investment by billions of dollars while rehabilitating the struggling economy and transportation network.

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The passenger transportation sector is notoriously difficult to decarbonize. In this thesis, two distinct and novel methodologies to estimate the environmental impact of alternative and conventional transportation technologies are developed. In Chapter 2, a provincial fleet policy-driven linear programming model is developed to minimize the cost of three passenger vehicle electrification policies in Ontario under a 30% GHG reduction target by 2030. Provincial life-cycle emissions and total-cost-of-ownership associated with policy allocation is estimated. The results highlight that electrification of on-road passenger transportation will not be sufficient to meet the 30% reduction target despite Ontario's low-carbon electricity grid. Instead, reductions of between 24% to 26% are forecasted at an annual cost (for ten years) of between CAD 0.29 to 0.3 billion annually indicating that additional policies are necessary to realize a 30% reduction target. In Chapter 3, a trip-level vehicle framework is developed to determine under what operating conditions transit buses and passenger cars will be environmentally beneficial across the dimensions of technology, service mode, and power source pathway. The well-to-wheel energy consumption and GHG emissions are simulated for over 450 operating scenarios. Emissions are then normalized through passenger-trip emission thresholds to facilitate equivalent comparison across all dimensions. The results indicate that the most beneficial solution are fuel-cell electric car-share, battery electric car-share, and battery electric bus all powered by low-carbon intensity power sources at average occupancy (7.9-19.7 gCO2e passenger-service-mode-trip-km-travelled-1). Furthermore, transit bus technologies have the potential to reduce up to 2.3 times more GHG per passenger-trip than comparable ride-share passenger cars at average occupancies. The results of Chapter 2 and 3 highlight that technology alone may not be sufficient to achieve significant GHG reductions; policy which leverage local operating data and target GHG reduction associated with passenger-trips are critical to informing under what conditions a mobility solution is environmentally beneficial. / Thesis / Master of Civil Engineering (MCE) / There is a dire need to evaluate the effectiveness of transportation GHG mitigation policies as alternative mobility solutions are being adopted and the pressure to respond to climate change intensifies. This work evaluates the effectiveness of policy optimization and vehicle-level simulation techniques to inform GHG mitigation decision-making. A two-step approach is adopted herein. At the strategic level, a cost optimization model for passenger vehicle electrification policies in Ontario is calibrated to identify the optimal allocation of provincial policy to achieve a 30% GHG reduction by 2030. Next, a micro level focuses on the energy consumption of eight vehicle technologies over 450 operational scenarios is simulated and trip-level passenger emissions are estimated to reveal the environmentally beneficial mobility option, corresponding passenger thresholds, and extent of variability associated with local operating conditions. Overall, optimization and trip-level vehicle simulation can be used to demystify optimal decision-making related to mobility solutions.

The current condition of the nation’s transportation system is of great concern to State Departments of Transportation. Currently, funds in many state transportation budgets are depleting. Nowadays, State DOT officials together with researchers are exploring various transportation financing approaches and they are considering the utility, merits, challenges, and impacts of these approaches. A major financing approach being considered relies on the collection of tolls on existing toll roads and on roads on which tolls are not presently collected. Recent technology advancements in Open Road Tolling and All-Electronic Tolling have provided State DOTs with the opportunity to consider expanding the use of toll revenue to finance transportation investments. These two types of tolling technologies appeal to motorists by allowing them to maintain their current highway speed while going through a toll plaza. In addition, many State DOT officials now view toll based approaches as viable “user fee” based strategies together with other alternative approaches such as the fuel tax and sales tax. Central to this research is a case study of the Boston Metropolitan area. The case study includes the formulation and preliminary evaluation of toll based financing approaches potentially suitable for consideration in Massachusetts. The approaches include increases to existing tolls and placing tolls on selected roadways not currently tolled. The evaluation includes estimates of changes in demand and anticipated revenues associated with these toll based approaches. It is expected that the results of this research will be of interest to State DOT officials in Massachusetts and other states.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Suburbanisation is a world-wide phenomenon and is characterised by the decline of central business districts and accelerated growth of commercial activities in the suburbs. The impact of suburbanisation is wide-spread and multi-dimensional, affecting the whole urban system in terms of its structure, activity and transport patterns. In South Africa, suburbanisation, together with the impact of the former group areas policy, has made suburban developments less accessible to the low-income groups living on the edges of the metropolitan area. Planners have proposed various urban densification strategies for the rather unique problems of the spatially inefficient South African cities, including corridor development along main public transport routes and the development of activity nodes. In order to implement these urban densification strategies successfully, it is important to understand the locational choice behaviour of business managers, and the factors that will attract them to locate in a certain area. This will enable metropolitan authorities to evaluate and implement the best policies to promote development of priority corridors and nodes The research for this dissertation was motivated by the extensive problems of suburbanisation, the lack of knowledge on the relative impact of land-use transport factors on the locational choices of businesses, and the apparent limited application of stated preference (SP) survey techniques and discrete choice models to spatial choices of businesses for urban planning purposes. The main objectives of the research were to determine the locational choice behaviour of retail businesses in strategic spatial terms, and how this knowledge can best be used to manage suburbanisation. The dissertation reviews intemational and South African studies on the planning and policies of the main role players in the urban system relating to retail suburbanisation, i.e. the planning authority, retail firms and consumers. The dissertation discusses the results of the market research that was done among Cape Town retailers located in the CSO, and in low- and high-income suburbs. The survey collected quantitative information regarding the locational choice factors of retail managers, importance ratings of choice factors as well as stated preferences for CSO and suburban locations. The calibration results of various discrete locational choice models are discussed, including elasticities of choice factors obtained from model applications to the SP data. The development of a spreadsheet locational choice model based on typical characteristics of CSO and suburban locations is subsequently discussed. Elasticities of choice factors from the application of the spreadsheet model were determined and the model was also used to test a decentralisation trend scenario and a managed suburbanisation scenario. The dissertation makes conclusions and recommendations regarding the most important locational choice factors of retail managers, and the most effective policies and strategies for metropolitan authorities to manage suburbanisation and promote urban densification. The performance of SP models applied to spatial choices are also evaluated and recommendations are made regarding their application and further research needs. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Stedelike desentralisasie is 'n wêreldwye verskynsel wat gekenmerk word deur die verval van sentrale sakegebiede (SSG) en die snelle groei van handelsbedrywighede in voorstede. Die impak van desentralisasie is verreikend en multi-dimensioneel en beïnvloed die hele stadstelsel in terme van sy struktuur, aktiwiteite and reispatrone. In Suid Afrika het desentralisasie saam met die impak van die voormalige groepsgebiedebeleid voorstedelike ontwikkelings minder toeganklik gemaak vir die lae-inkomstegroepe wat op die rand van die metropolitaanse gebiede woon. Beplanners het verskeie stadsverdigtingstrategieë, insluitende korridorontwikkeling langs hoofvervoerroetes en die ontwikkeling van aktiwiteitsnodusse voorgestelom die unieke probleme van die ruimtelik ondoeltreffende Suid-Afrikaanse stede die hoof te bied. Om hierdie stadsverdigtingstrategieë suksesvol te implementeer, is dit egter belangrik om die liggingskeusegedrag van besigheidsbestuurders, sowel as die faktore wat hulle beweeg om hulle in 'n spesifieke gebied te vestig, te verstaan. Hierdie kennnis sal metropolitaanse owerhede in staat stelom beleid te evalueer en die beste beleidsopsies te implementeer om die ontwikkeling van voorkeurkorridors en nodusse te bevorder. Die navorsing vir hierdie verhandeling is gemotiveer deur die omvattende probleme wat deur stedelike desentralisasie veroorsaak word, die gebrek aan kennis oor die relatiewe impak van grondgebruik-vervoerfaktore op die liggingskeuse van besighede, en die klaarblyklik beperkte toepassing van verklaardevoorkeuropnametegnieke (V V) en diskrete-keusemodelle op die liggingskeuses van besighede vir stadsbeplanningsdoeleindes. Die hoofdoelstellings van die navorsing was om die liggingskeusegedrag van kleinhandelbesighede in strategiese ruimtelike terme te bepaal en vas te stel hoe hierdie kennis gebruik kan word om stedelike desentralisasie te bestuur. In hierdie verhandeling word 'n oorsig gegee van die internasionale en Suid- Afrikaanse studies oor die beplanning en beleid van die belangrikste rolspelers in the stadstelsel wat desentralisasie van kleinhandel betref, naamlik die beplanningsowerheid, kleinhandelfirmas en verbruikers. Die resultate van marknavorsing onder kleinhandelaars vanuit Kaapstad se SSG en lae- en hoë-inkomstevoorstede, word bespreek. Die opname het kwantitatiewe inligting oor die liggingskeusefaktore van kleinhandelaars, die belangrikheid wat hulle aan keusefaktore heg, en hulle verklaarde voorkeure ten opsigte van vestiging in die SSG of die voorstede, ingesamel. Die kalibrasieresultate van verskeie diskretekeusemodelle word bespreek, insluitende die elastisiteite van keusefaktore wat deur die toepassing van die modelop V V-data verkry is. Vervolgens word die ontwikkeling van 'n liggingskeusemodel in 'n spreitabel wat op tipiese kenmerke van SSG- en voorstedelike liggings gebaseer is, bespreek. Elastisteite van die liggingsfaktore is bepaal deur die toepassing van die spreitabelmodel, en die model is ook gebruik om 'n desentraliasietendensscenario en 'n bestuurdedesentralisasiescenario te toets. Ten slotte word daar gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings gemaak oor die belangrikste liggingskeusefaktore van kleinhandelaars, en die mees effektiewe beleidsopsies en strategieë wat metropolitaanse owerhede kan volg om stedelike desentralisasie te bestuur en stadsverdigting te bevorder. Die werkverrigting van V V-modelle wanneer dit op die liggingskeuse van besighede toegepas word, word ook geëvalueer en aanbevelings word gemaak oor die toepassing daarvan en verdere navorsing wat nodig is

M.Phil. (Engineering Management) / The daunting peak-hour traffic periods have affected Gauteng road users and the economy due to traffic congestion in the recent years. A total of 157 000 vehicles used the Gauteng freeway network each day in 2006, which went up to approximately 200 000 in 2011. This means that the average growth in traffic volumes had grown on average by 7% between 2006 and 2011. As a management strategy, The South African National Road Agency (SANRAL) launched the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) in 2007 to improve the infrastructural network. The introduction of the GFIP road-user charging scheme in Gauteng has been followed by a renewed interest in the subject of urban road tolling both by practitioners and academics ...