Browsing by Author "Levinson, David"

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Access Across America: Auto 2015
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2016-09) Owen, Andrew; Murphy, Brendan; Levinson, David
Accessibility is the ease of reaching valued destinations. It can be measured across different times of day (accessibility in the morning rush might be lower than the less-congested midday period). It can be measured for each mode (accessibility by walking is usually lower than accessibility by transit, which is usually lower than accessibility by car). There are a variety of ways to measure accessibility, but the number of destinations reachable within a given travel time is the most comprehensible and transparent as well as the most directly comparable across cities. This report focuses on accessibility to jobs by car. Jobs are the most significant nonhome destination, but it is also possible to measure accessibility to other types of destinations. The automobile remains the most widely used mode for commuting trips in the United States. This study estimates the accessibility to jobs by auto for each of the 11 million U.S. census blocks and analyzes these data in the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas. Travel times are calculated using a detailed road network and speed data that reflect typical conditions for an 8 a.m. Wednesday morning departure. Additionally, the accessibility results for 8 a.m. are compared with accessibility results for 4 a.m. to estimate the impact of road and highway congestion on job accessibility. Rankings are determined by a weighted average of accessibility, with a higher weight given to closer, easier-to access jobs. Jobs reachable within 10 minutes are weighted most heavily, and jobs are given decreasing weights as travel time increases up to 60 minutes. The report presents detailed accessibility and congestion impact values for each metropolitan area as well as blocklevel maps that illustrate the spatial patterns of accessibility within each area. It also includes a census tract-level map that shows accessibility patterns at a national scale.
Access Across America: Transit 2014
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2014-09) Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David
Accessibility is the ease of reaching valued destinations. It can be measured for various transportation modes, to different types of destinations, and at different times of day. There are a variety of ways to define accessibility, but the number of destinations reachable within a given travel time is the most comprehensible and transparent, as well as the most directly comparable across cities. This report examines accessibility to jobs by transit in 46 of the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States. Transit is used for an estimated 5 percent of commuting trips in the United States, making it the second most widely used commute mode after driving. This report complements Access Across America: Auto 2013, a report of job accessibility by auto in 51 metropolitan areas. A separate publication, Access Across America: Transit 2014 Methodology, describes the data and methodology used in this evaluation. Rankings are determined by a weighted average of accessibility, giving a higher weight to closer jobs. Jobs reachable within ten minutes are weighted most heavily, and jobs are given decreasing weight as travel time increases up to 60 minutes.
Access Across America: Walking 2014
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2015-05) Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David; Murphy, Brendan
Accessibility is the ease of reaching valued destinations. It can be measured for various transportation modes, to different types of destinations, and at different times of day. There are a variety of ways to define accessibility, but the number of destinations reachable within a given travel time is the most comprehensible and transparent, as well as the most directly comparable across cities. This study estimates the accessibility to jobs by walking in the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States, and is a companion study to our Access Across America: Transit 2014 report. Rankings are determined by a weighted average of accessibility, giving a higher weight to closer jobs. Jobs reachable within ten minutes are weighted most heavily, and jobs are given decreasing weights as travel time increases up to 60 minutes. This report presents detailed accessibility values for each metropolitan area, as well as block-level maps which illustrate the spatial patterns of accessibility within each area. A separate publication, Access Across America: Walking 2014 Methodology, describes the data and methodology used in this evaluation: http://dx.doi.org/10.13020/D6D598
Access to Destinations: Annual Accessibility Measure for the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2012-11) Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David
This report summarizes previous phases of the Access to Destinations project and applies the techniques developed over the course of the project to conduct an evaluation of accessibility in the Twin Cities metropolitan region for 2010. It describes a methodology that can be used to implement future evaluations of accessibility, including a discussion of the development and use of software tools created for this evaluation. The goal of the 2010 accessibility evaluation is twofold: it seeks both to generate an accurate representation of accessibility in 2010, and to identify data sources, methods, and metrics that can be used in future evaluations. The current focus on establishing replicable data sources and methodology in some cases recommends or requires changes from those used in previous Access to Destinations research. In particular, it is important to standardize data sources and parameters to ensure comparability between multiple evaluations over time. This evaluation recommends data sources and methodology that provide a good representation of actual conditions, that are based on measurements rather than models that provide a reasonable expectation of continuity in the future and that are usable with a minimum of manual processing and technical expertise.
Access to Destinations: Measuring Accessibility by Automobile
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2010-03) Levinson, David; Marion, Bernadette; Iacono, Michael
This study describes the development and application of a set of accessibility measures for the Twin Cities region that measure accessibility by the automobile mode over the period from 1995 to 2005. In contrast to previous attempts to measure accessibility this study uses travel time estimates derived, to the extent possible, from actual observations of network performance by time of day. A set of cumulative opportunity measures are computed with transportation analysis zones (TAZs) as the unit of analysis for the years 1995, 2000 and 2005. Analysis of the changes in accessibility by location over the period of study reveals that, for the majority of locations in the region, accessibility increased between 1995 and 2005, though the increases were not uniform. A “flattening” or convergence of levels of accessibility across locations was observed over time, with faster-growing suburban locations gaining the most in terms of employment accessibility. An effort to decompose the causes of changes in accessibility into components related to transportation network structure and land use (opportunity location) reveal that both causes make a contribution to increasing accessibility, though the effects of changes to the transportation network tend to be more location-specific. Overall, the results of the study demonstrate the feasibility and relevance of using accessibility as a key performance measure to describe the regional transportation system.
Access to Destinations: Monitoring Land Use Activity Changes in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Region
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2008-07) Iacono, Michael; Levinson, David; El-Geneidy, Ahmed; Wasfi, Rania; Zhu, Shanjiang
This study presents an effort to track and model land use change in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Region. To that end, we make use of a unique, high-resolution, cell-level set of land use data for the Twin Cities. The data represent 75 meter by 75 meter land use cells, observed at several points in time during the period from 1958 to 2005. These data are used to validate three different types of land use models, which then are used to forecast land use several decades into the future. The models applied in this study include Markov Chain models, Markov Chain-Cellular Automata (MC-CA) models, and an empirical model based on a logistic regression specification. The models are intended to have a simple, transparent structure that allows the user to identify sources of forecast error. Forecasts of land use are made both for the entire study area and also for a specific corridor along State Highway 610 in the northwestern suburbs of the Twin Cities. The study concludes with a brief discussion of the limitations of the models, and how they might meaningfully be expanded and applied.
Accessibility and the evaluation of investments on the Beijing subway
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2017) Jiang, Haibing; Levinson, David
This study measures the job and population accessibility via transit for Beijing using the cumulative opportunity metric. It is shown that transit accessibility varies widely across Beijing, but is highly focused on subway stations. Early lines added far more accessibility than more recently planned lines.
Accessibility, Network Structure, and Consumers’ Destination Choice: A GIS Analysis of GPS Travel Data and the CLUSTER Simulation Module for Retail Location Choice
(Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2012-10) Huang, Arthur; Levinson, David
Anecdotal and empirical evidence has shown strong associations between the built environment and individuals’ travel decision. To date, data about individuals’ travel behavior and the nature of the retail environment have not been linked at the fine-grained level for verifying such relationships. GPS and GIS have revolutionized how we measure and monitor land use and individual travel behavior. Compared with traditional travel survey methods, GPS technologies provide more accurate and detailed information about individuals’ trips. Based the GPS travel data in the Twin Cities we analyze the impact of individuals’ interactions with road network structure and the destinations’ accessibility on individuals’ destination choice for home-based non-work retail trips. The results reveal that higher accessibility and diversity of services make the destination more attractive. Further, accessibility and diversity of establishments in a walking zone are often highly correlated. A destination reached via a more circuitous or discontinuous route dampens its appeal. In addition, we build an agent-based simulation tool to study retail location choice on a supply chain network consisting of suppliers, retailers, and consumers. The simulation software illustrates that the clustering of retailers can emerge from the balance of distance to suppliers and the distance to consumers. We further applied this tool in the Transportation Geography and Networks course (CE 5180) at the University of Minnesota. Student feedback reveals that it is a useful active learning tool for transportation and urban planning education. The software also has the potential of being extended for an integrated regional transportation-land use forecasting model.
An Agent-Based Model of Origin Destination Estimation (ABODE)
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2013) Tilahun, Nebiyou; Levinson, David
This paper proposes and tests an agent-based model of worker and job matching. The model takes residential locations of workers and the locations of employers as exogenous and deals specifically with the interactions between firms and workers in creating a job-worker match and the commute outcomes. It is meant to illustrate that by explicitly modeling the search and hiring process, origins and destinations (ODs) can be linked at a disaggregate level. The model is tested on a toy-city as well as using data from the Twin Cities area. The toy-city model illustrates that the model predicts reasonable commute outcomes, with agents selecting the closest work place when wage and skill differentiation is absent in the labor market. The introduction of wage dispersion and skill differentiation in the model increases the the average home to work distances considerably. Using data from Twin Cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, aggregate commute and wage outcomes from the model are shown to capture the trends in the observed data. Overall, the results suggest that the behavior rules as implemented lead to reasonable patterns. Future directions are also discussed.
Agglomeration Economies
(Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota, 2010-01) Cao, Jason; Iacono, Michael; Levinson, David; Cui, Mengying
Economists have long recognized the importance of urban areas as focal points of economic production and exchange. In recent decades, they have also come to better understand the productivity benefits of firms being located in large urban areas. A variety of advantages may accrue to firms that cluster together in large cities relating, for example, to access to specialized labor, information spillovers, and interactions with customers or suppliers. These types of advantages are often referred to as examples of agglomeration economies in urban areas. Empirically, these gains have been shown to be potentially quite large, with reviews of the literature suggesting that doubling the size of an urban area’s population may be associated with productivity gains on the order of several percentage points. While economic research on this topic has greatly advanced our understanding of the concepts, theory, and likely quantitative implications for urban economies, there has been comparatively little emphasis on the spatial nature of agglomeration economies within urban areas. This is an important distinction, as different sources of agglomeration economies may have different spatial characteristics, and some may be sensitive to transport costs in ways that can be affected by the performance of urban transportation networks. Our research was an effort to link these concepts by operationalizing two specific types of agglomeration economies, localization and urbanization economies, and to investigate their relationship to employment density across several economic sectors within the Twin Cities.
Benefit-Cost Analysis for Intersection Decision Support
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2007-10) Corbett, Michael; Levinson, David; Zou, Xi
The Intersection Decision Support (IDS) system is designed to assist drivers on stop-controlled low-volume rural roads choosing gaps when confronted with busy multiple lane divided-highways, without affecting traffic on the high-volume road. The hope is, that by providing better gap guidance, fewer crashes (and fatalities) will occur. This research develops a framework for analyzing such a new, and presently under-specified technology, and illustrates that framework by comparing that with more conventional engineering approaches, as well as a "do-nothing" base case. The results show that the IDS System may be an effective tool to reduce crash rates at various intersections. More research is needed to address reliability and stability issues, and in determining how cost- effective of a solution the IDS System is compared to other "traditional" alternatives.
Book Review: Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2011) Levinson, David
The author reviews the book Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It by Randal O'Toole (Cato Institute Press, 2010).
Case Studies of Transportation Investment to Identify the Impacts on the Local and State Economy
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2013-01) Iacono, Michael; Levinson, David
This project provides case studies of the impact of transportation investments on local economies. We use multiple approaches to measure impacts since the effects of transportation projects can vary according to the size of a project and the size of the area under study, as well as other exogenous factors such as existing economic and demographic conditions. We measure effects on economic output and employment to estimate impacts of specific investments, and address issues of generative versus redistributive effects of investments, as well as identify specific economic sectors that might be disproportionately affected by such investments.
Climbing Mount Next: The Effects of Autonomous Vehicles on Society
(Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, 2015) Levinson, David
The United States spent almost the entire twentieth century climbing Mount Auto. From the 1920s onward, the automobile was the dominant mode of travel for Americans, accumulating more miles per capita than other modes. While the Great Depression slowed the auto’s growth, it did not result in decline. There was a brief downturn during World War II, and a few hiccups in the steady rise of mileage. But the later 2000s and 2010s have seen a sharp downturn in motor vehicle use per capita. This drop is greater than the drop during World War II in absolute terms (though the War saw a drop of twenty-three percent off the pre-war peak, and the 2012 drop is seven percent below 2005). It is complemented by an apparent plateauing in total miles of paved roads since 2008. Within the transportation sector there have been small shifts over the past fifteen years, which cannot explain much of the decline of travel. There are active transportation modes, like walking and biking, which work well for short trips, and certainly have niches they can grow into if land development intensifies and people reorganize their lives to enable them. For instance, I am one of the seven percent of Minneapolitans who walk to work. The numbers are much lower outside core cities, and nationally, at three percent. Transit ridership per capita is up ever so slightly. There are a slew of “new mobility options” which use information technologies to allow travel without owning an automobile, but are not yet visible in the transportation statistics. These include peer-to-peer taxi and ridesharing services and dynamic real-time rental cars. While these are useful in their niches, they likely are not cost-effective enough to be the main transportation mode for the vast majority of the population with the given technology. Today these new mobility options are supplements when the main mode does not solve the job to be done. In the future, that might change. Technologies allow people to do more of the same, and they allow people to do new things. It is easier to predict more of the same than new things.
The coevolution of transport and land use: An introduction to the Special Issue and an outline of a research agenda
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2011) Levinson, David
This article introduces vol. 4, no. 2 issue of Journal of Transport and Land Use. This issue focuses on coevolution: how transport drives changes in land use, and vice versa. The issue contains four research articles, examining different geographies, eras, and technologies. These papers present new findings, but as good science should, raise new questions, and help us set a research agenda to better understand the coevolution of transport and land use.
Does first last? The existence and extent of first mover advantages on spatial networks
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2011) Levinson, David; Xie, Feng
This paper examines the nature of first-mover advantages in the deployment of spatially differentiated surface transport networks. A number of factors explaining the existence of first-mover advantages have been identified in the literature; however, the questions of whether these factors exist in spatial networks, and of how they play out with true capital immobility have remained unanswered. By examining empirical examples of commuter rail and the Underground in London, first-mover advantage is observed and its sources explored. A model of network diffusion is then constructed to replicate the growth of surface transport networks, making it possible to analyze first-mover advantage in a controlled environment. Simulation experiments are conducted, and Spearman rank correlation tests reveal that first-mover advantages can exist in a surface transport network and can become increasingly prominent as the network expands. In addition, the analysis discloses that the extent of first-mover advantages may relate to the initial land use distribution and network redundancy. The sensitivity of simulation results to model parameters are also examined.
The Economic Impact of Upgrading Roads
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2009-06) Iacono, Michael; Levinson, David
Improvements to transportation networks, especially those in growing areas, tend to have impacts on local land markets. In principle, an improvement to a link in the network will confer economic benefits to adjacent and nearby properties by increasing the utility that the network provides. Traditional methods of economic analysis for highway improvement projects have focused primarily on user benefits and sought to quantify them through the estimation of reductions in travel delay or user cost. However, urban economic theory suggests that many of these benefits are capitalized into local property values, yielding a localized spillover effect. Accordingly, it should be possible to develop rough estimates of the value of the benefits from a highway project by estimating the response of local land markets to the improvement. This report explores the nature and magnitude of benefits accruing to nearby properties that arise from major highway construction or reconstruction projects, more precisely those that add capacity to an existing highway. Highway projects in three Minnesota counties (Hennepin, Jackson, and Olmsted) form the basis for our analysis.
The Evolution of Transport Networks
(Elsevier, 2005) Levinson, David
Between 1900 and 2000, the length of paved roads in the United States increased from 240 km to 6,400,000 km (Peat 2002, BTS 2002) with virtually 100% of the U.S. population having almost immediate access to paved roadways. Similarly, in 1830 there were 37 km of railroad in the United States, but by 1920 total track mileage had increased more than ten-thousand times to 416,000 km miles, however since then, rail track mileage has shrunk to about 272,000 km (Garrison 1996, BTS 2002). The growth (and decline) of transport networks obviously affects the social and economic activities that a region can support; yet the dynamics of how such growth occurs is one of the least understood areas in transport, geography, and regional science. This is revealed time and again in the long-range planning efforts of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), where transport network changes are treated exclusively as the result of top-down decision-making. Changes to the transport network are rather the result of numerous small decisions (and some large ones) by property owners, firms, developers, towns, cities, counties, state department of transport districts, MPOs, and states in response to market conditions and policy initiatives. Understanding how markets and policies translate into facilities on the ground is essential for scientific understanding and improving forecasting, planning, policy-making, and evaluation.
Financing transportation with land value taxes: Effects on development intensity
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2012) Junge, Jason; Levinson, David
A significant portion of local transportation funding comes from the property tax. The tax is conventionally assessed on both land and buildings, but transportation increases only the value of the land. A more direct and efficient way to fund transportation projects is to tax land at a higher rate than buildings. The lower tax on buildings would allow owners to retain more of the profits of their investment in construction, and would be expected to lead to higher development intensity. A partial equilibrium simulation is created for Minneapolis, Richfield and Bloomington, Minnesota to determine the intensity effects of various levels of split-rate property taxes for both residential and nonresidential development. The results indicate that split-rate taxes would lead to higher densities for both types of development in all three cities.
Full cost accessibility
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) Cui, Mengying; Levinson, David
Traditional accessibility evaluation fails to fully capture the travel costs, especially the external costs, of travel. This study develops a full cost accessibility (FCA) framework by combining the internal and external cost components of travel time, safety, emissions, and money. The example illustrated compares FCA by automobile and bicycle on a toy network to demonstrate the potential and practicality of applying the FCA framework on real networks. This method provides an efficient evaluation tool for transport planning projects.

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