Transportist: August 2020

Welcome to the latest issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the  transportist.org or on Twitter.

Transfers magazine from UCLA published an article from me on The 30-Minute City, which is a gussied up extract from the book, which you should have read already, but if not, read this piece.

Research 

• Levinson, David and Wu, Hao (2020) Towards a general theory of access. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 13(1) 129-158. [doi]

Abstract: This paper integrates and extends many of the concepts of accessibility deriving from Hansen’s (1959) seminal paper, and develops a theory of access that generalizes from the particular measures of access that have become increasingly common. Access is now measured for a particular place by a particular mode for a particular purpose at a particular time in a particular year. General access is derived as a theoretical ideal that would be measured for all places, all modes, all purposes, at all times, over the lifecycle of a project. It is posited that more general access measures better explain spatial location phenomena.

• Levinson, D. (2020) Logistic Curve Models of CO2 Accumulation. Transport Findings. [doi]

This article explores the use of logistic-shaped diffusion curves (S-Curves) to predict the accumulation of atmospheric CO2. The research question here is whether forecasts using logistic curves are stable, that is, do they predict consistently over time with different amounts of data? Using data from the Keeling Curve, we find that the best-fit maximum atmospheric CO2 predicted varies significantly by model year when estimating models limited to data available until that point in time. More recently estimated models are more consistent, all indicate that CO2 accumulation will continue in the absence of an external shock to the system.

• Cui, Mengying, and Levinson, D. (2020) Multi-Activity Access: How Activity Choice Affects Opportunity. Transportation Research part D. 85 – 102364 [doi]

It is commonly seen that accessibility is measured considering only one opportunity or activity type or purpose of interest, e.g., jobs. The value of a location, and thus the overall access, however, depends on the ability to reach many different types of opportunities. This paper clarifies the concept of multi-activity accessibility, which combines multiple types of opportunities into a single aggregated access measure, and aims to find more comprehensive answers for the questions: what is being accessed, by what extent, and how it varies by employment status and by gender. The Minneapolis – St. Paul metropolitan region is selected for the measurement of multi-activity accessibility, using both primal and dual measures of cumulative access, for auto and transit. It is hypothesized that workers and non-workers, and males and females have different accessibility profiles. This research demonstrates its practicality at the scale of a metropolitan area, and highlights the differences in access for workers and non-workers, and men and women, because of differences in their activity participation.

Research by Others

• Researchers rate job accessibility for five Twin Cities transitway scenarios

• Taylor and Hwang (2020) Eighty-Five Percent Solution: Historical Look at Crowdsourcing Speed Limits and the Question of Safety

Transportist Blog

• On the word “Access”

• Outer Sydney Orbital: M9 to be Built Next to Airport Metro, Freight Line| Daily Telegraph

• Transport Findings Turns 50 (and 54)

• On the Duration of COVID-19, Lockdowns, and Time til Vaccine

• Accessibility and the Pursuit of Happiness

• The End Game: International Travel in a Post-COVID-19 World.

• A Revived Debate: What Role Should Police Play in Traffic Safety | Minnpost

• David Levinson: Transplanted Transportist

• Sydney Trains, Buses: Transport Use Spikes After Lockdown Amid Social Distancing Fears. | Daily Tele

• Letter to Minneapolis

Transport Findings

1. Fearnley, Nils, Espen Johnsson, and Siri Hegna Berge. 2020. “Patterns of E-Scooter Use in Combination with Public Transport.” Transport Findings, July. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13707.

2. Du, Jianhe, and Hesham Rakha. 2020. “Preliminary Investigation of COVID-19 Impact on Transportation System Delay, Energy Consumption and Emission Levels.” Transport Findings, July. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.14103.

3. Levinson, David. 2020. “Logistic Curve Models of CO2 Accumulation.” Transport Findings, July. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13709.

4. Chen, Peng, and Haoyun Wang. 2020. “Millennials and Reduced Car Ownership: Evidence from Recent Transport Surveys.” Transport Findings, July. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13886.

5. Astroza, Sebastian, Alejandro Tirachini, Ricardo Hurtubia, Juan Antonio Carrasco, Angelo Guevara, Marcela Munizaga, Macarena Figueroa, and Valentina Torres. 2020. “Mobility Changes, Teleworking, and Remote Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile.” Transport Findings, July. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13489.

6. Lovelace, Robin, Joseph Talbot, Malcolm Morgan, and Martin Lucas-Smith. 2020. “Methods to Prioritise Pop-up Active Transport Infrastructure.” Transport Findings, July. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13421.

7. Lock, Oliver. 2020. “Cycling Behaviour Changes as a Result of COVID-19: A Survey of Users in Sydney, Australia.” Transport Findings, June. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13405.

8. DeWeese, James, Leila Hawa, Hanna Demyk, Zane Davey, Anastasia Belikow, and Ahmed El-geneidy. 2020. “A Tale of 40 Cities:  A Preliminary Analysis of Equity Impacts of COVID-19 Service Adjustments across North America.” Transport Findings, June. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13395.

9. Wu, Hao. 2020. “Effects of Timetable Change on Job Accessibility.” Transport Findings, June. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13184.

10. Natera Orozco, Luis Guillermo, Federico Battiston, Gerardo Iñiguez, and Michael Szell. 2020. “Extracting the Multimodal Fingerprint of Urban Transportation Networks.” Transport Findings, June. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13171.

11. Hosford, Kate, Sarah Tremblay, and Meghan Winters. 2020. “Identifying Unmarked Crosswalks at Bus Stops in Vancouver, Canada.” Transport Findings, June. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13207.

12. Lee, Jinhyung, Adam Porr, and Harvey Miller. 2020. “Evidence of Increased Vehicle Speeding in Ohio’s Major Cities during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Transport Findings, June. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.12988.

News & Opinion

• Coronavirus 

  • 'It could take years': Slow recovery predicted for public transport

• Rail

  • China's 600 km/h high-speed maglev prototype completes successful trial run

• Transit and Microtransit

  • School Transit-Oriented Development

  • Why is rail patronage 50% higher in Sydney than Melbourne?

  • Managerialism and Civil Service

  • NSW Government slashes public transport prices on off-peak services by half, but there's a catch

• Roads

  • How One Man Turned The Busiest International Border Crossing In North America Into The Centerpiece Of His Empire

  • Sydney Harbour Bridge's last toll booths to be removed

  • U.S. traffic has rebounded to about 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, analysts say

• EVs

  • Tesla’s sale of environmental credits help drive to profitability

  • Decarbonizing Transport - A new newsletter from Andrew Salzberg

  • Washington e-buses get 300kw wireless charging system

• Micromobility

  • With fewer cars on US streets, now is the time to reinvent roadways and how we use them

  • Segway, the most hyped invention since the Macintosh, ends production

• Shared Vehicles

  • Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65 Billion All-Stock Deal

  • 'The Netflix of bikes': will a bicycle rental scheme catch on?

• Aviation

  • Uber’s plans for Australian ‘flying taxis’ fail to take off

• Retail

  • Used Cars: Shift Plans to Go Public This Year as Covid-19 Boosts Online Car Sales

• Land use

  • The World’s 20 Most Expensive Cities

  • NSW Treasurer plans to end stamp duty

  • NSW missing out on $8 billion a year from failure to tax land-rezoning, inquiry told

• Cartography

  • Why on Earth did Facebook Just Acquire Mapillary?

• Justice

  • Campaign To Remove NYPD From Traffic Enforcement Gains Steam

Books by Others 

• Hensher, D.A. and Co-authors (2020) Bus Transport Demand, Economics, Contracting and Policy. 34 chapters drawn from published papers since the last book in 2008 and edited (see A310 above), Elsevier, UK, published 17 April, 526 pp. (softcover and e-book). ISBN: 978-0-12-820132-9; eBook ISBN: 9780128203934

• Hensher, D.A., Mulley, C., Ho, C., Nelson, J., Smith, G. and Wong, Y. (2020) Understanding Mobility as a Service (MaaS) - Past, Present and Future. Elsevier, published May 18 2020, 204 pp. (softcover and e-book). ISBN 9780128200445.

Books

• The 30-Minute City: Designing for Access. (2019) By David M. Levinson (Book 5 in the Access Quintet)

• A Political Economy of Access. (2019) By David M. Levinson and David A. King (Book 4 in the Access Quintet)

• Elements of Access: Transport Planning for Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners. (2018) By David M. Levinson, Wes Marshall, Kay Axhausen. (Book 3 in the Access Quintet)

• Spontaneous Access: Reflexions on Designing Cities and Transport (2016) by David Levinson. (Book 2 in the Access Quintet)

• The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape (3rd edition). (2017) By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek. (Book 1 in the Access Quintet)

• Metropolitan Transport and Land Use: Planning for Place and Plexus (2018) by David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.

• The Transportation Experience: Second Edition Garrison, William and Levinson, David (2014)