Transportist: September 2020
Transportist: September 2020
Are you a plant or an animal?
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.
Plants vs. Animals
I posit, as a first order approximation, humans are going to bifurcate as a species into plants and animals. Plants work from home and have everything delivered. Animals have out of home jobs and travel.
A quick Twitter poll shows nearly 2/3 of my followers admit to being plants, disturbingly high.
Books
30-Minute City: Designing for Access is now Open Access
I am pleased to announce that you can now download a PDF version of The 30-Minute City: Designing for Access from the University of Sydney eScholarship Repository. (Free)
VIEW/OPEN
DATE
2019-12
AUTHOR
Levinson, David M.
METADATA
This book describes how to implement The 30-Minute City. The first part of the book explains accessibility. We next consider access through history (chapter 2). Access is the driving force behind how cities were built. Its use today is described when looking at access and the Greater Sydney Commission’s plan for Sydney. We then examine short-run fixes: things that can be done instantaneously, or nearly so, at low budget to restore access for people, which include retiming traffic signals (chapter 3) and deploying bike sharing (chapter 5) supported by protected bike lane networks (chapter 4), as well public transport timetables (chapter 6). We explore medium-run fixes that include implementing rapid bus networks (chapter 7) and configuring how people get to train stations by foot and on bus (chapter 8). We turn to longer-run fixes. These are as much policy changes as large investments, and include job/worker balance (chapter 10) and network restructuring (chapter 9) as well as urban restoration (chapter 11), suburban retrofit (chapter 12), and greenfield development (chapter 13). We conclude with thoughts about the ‘pointlessness’ of cities and how to restructure practice (chapter 14). The appendices provide detail on access measurement (Appendix A), the idea of accessibility loss (B), valuation (C), the rationale for the 30-minute threshold (D), and reliability (E). It concludes with what should we research (F).
URI
https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/21630
Research
Ji, Ang and Levinson, D. (2020) An energy loss-based vehicular injury severity model. Accident Analysis and Prevention. 146 October 2020, 105730. [doi]
How crashes translate into physical injuries remains controversial. Previous studies recommended a predictor, Delta-V, to describe the crash consequences in terms of mass and impact speed of vehicles in crashes. This study adopts a new factor, energy loss-based vehicular injury severity (ELVIS), to explain the effects of the energy absorption of two vehicles in a collision. This calibrated variable, which is fitted with regression-based and machine learning models, is compared with the widely-used Delta-V predictor. A multivariate ordered logistic regression with multiple classes is then estimated. The results align with the observation that heavy vehicles are more likely to have inherent protection and rigid structures, especially in the side direction, and so suffer less impact.
Cui, Mengying, and Levinson, D. (2020) Shortest paths, travel costs, and traffic. Environment and Planning B. [doi]
This study focuses on path flow for road network, as the sum of individual route choices from individual travelers, associated with specific path type for each cost factor of auto travel that finds the optimal route with the minimum cumulative cost from the perspective of the corresponding cost analyst interest. The considered cost factors include time, safety, emission, and monetary costs, as well as their composite, internal and full cost of travel. We further explore the extent to which each cost factor explains the observed link traffic flows given an estimated home-to-work demand pattern. The results of the Minneapolis – St. Paul metropolitan area indicate that flows from multiple path types, associated with internal cost components, additionally to the factor of distance, provides the best fit.
Transportist Blog
Traffic Safety
On August 6, I was on ABC Radio Hobart at 09:35 AEST talking traffic safety https://abc.net.au/radio/hobart/live/… with Leon Compton @abchobart. I was later interviewed for ABC-TV on the same subject. I was talking about my blog post: 21 Solutions to Road Deaths. Apparently there has been a recent spike in Tasmania. My key talking points:
We use the term “crash” not “accident” as “accident” implies no one was at fault and lack of intention and crash is more neutral. Crashes have causes.
The safety community likes to say “Safety is a shared responsibility”, and the responsibility lies with drivers, road engineers, vehicle designers, public policy, and others. [Though I think it is often about shirking responsibility and putting it back on the victim rather than taking it themselves].
Every crash has individual causes, but there are trends.
Australia-wide, there were 484 total fatal crashes (January through June) - down compared to the same period in 2019, which saw 572. https://roadsafety.transport.nsw.gov.au/downloads/dynamic/nsw-road-toll-monthly.pdf
The Lockdowns associated with COVID-19 are a factor. A study from Ohio State Univeresity found that COVID, which decreased the amount of automobile (and all) travel saw an increase in Speeding.
Speeding is a known cause of crashes. Higher speeds have two major effects:
1. Speeding reduces the available time for drivers to react to events, increasing the likelihood of a collision.
2. Higher speed increases the severity of impact, increasing the likelihood of fatality.
Solutions include better driver training and testing, more rigorous enforcement, keeping intoxicated drivers off the road, better engineering of roads, lower speed limits (which are both enforced, and designed into the road).
Walk Sydney
Transport Findings
Roy, Avipsa, Daniel Fuller, Kevin Stanley, and Trisalyn Nelson. 2020. “Classifying Transportation Mode from Global Positioning Systems and Accelerometer Data: A Machine Learning Approach.” Transport Findings, September. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.14520.
Young, Mischa, and Steven Farber. 2020. “Using Wait-Time Thresholds to Improve Mobility: The Case of UberWAV Services in Toronto.” Transport Findings, August. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.14547.
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.
Branion-Calles, Michael, Kate Hosford, Meghan Winters, Lise Gauvin, and Daniel Fuller. 2020. “The Impact of Implementing Public Bicycle Share Programs on Bicycle Crashes.” Transport Findings, September. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.16724.
News & Opinion
Transit
$129 Million Spent on Botched Blue Line Extension, Equivalent to Three Completed C Lines [Minneapolis should build-out its arterial BRT system before building LRT to corn fields].
Sydney Ferries: Andrew Constance defends new boats despite fears: Transport Minister Andrew Constance has insisted “no one is going to be decapitated” by a fleet of new Sydney ferries that are so tall they can’t safely fit under some bridges. [One of the best headlines since ‘Headless Body found in Topless Bar’]
Residents campaign for second entrance to stations to increase patronage
Monorails
Roads
AVs
How can a city plan for the future when we don't know when Robocars will come
Starting with Michigan, Sidewalk Infrastructure is looking to build roads specifically for autonomous cars [People learn nothing from history]
The Big Tesla Hack: A hacker gained control over the entire fleet, but fortunately he’s a good guy
EVs
Micromobility
Land use
Cartography
Planning, Modeling, and Justice
Books by Others
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)