Browsing by Author "Levinson, David M"

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    1920-1995 Twin Cities State Highway Network
    (2014-03-21) Chen, Wei; Levinson, David M; dlevinson@umn.edu; Levinson, David M.
    Illustrates the development of the highway network in the Twin Cities metropolitan region. GIS maps of the state highway network were created for 1920-1995 (these were not previously digitized). These were used to build Markov Chain Cellular Automata models of land use change and network growth.
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    1958 Twin Cities Land Use Map from the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Commission, GIS Data Files
    (2013-11-22) Chen, Wei; Levinson, David M; dlevinson@umn.edu; Levinson, David M.
    High-quality GIS land use maps for the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area for 1958 that were developed from paper maps (no GIS version existed previously).
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    1968 Twin Cities Land Use Map from the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Commission, GIS Data Files
    (2014-03-03) Levinson, David M; Chen, Wei; dlevinson@umn.edu; Levinson, David M.
    High-quality GIS land use maps for the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area for 1968 that were developed from paper maps (no GIS version existed previously).
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    1978 Twin Cities Land Use Map from the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Commission, GIS Data Files
    (2014-03-03) Levinson, David M; Chen, Wei; dlevinson@umn.edu; Levinson, David M.
    High-quality GIS land use maps for the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area for 1978 that were developed from paper maps (no GIS version existed previously).
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    Access (Chapter 9 in The Oxford Handbook of Urban and Regional Planning )
    (Oxford University Press, 2012) Krizek, Kevin J; Levinson, David M
    ANNUALLY, traffic-weary residents across the United States eagerly wait for the arrival of their news source to learn about the latest congestion report card from the Texas Transportation Institute. This Urban Mobility Report makes headlines, especially in places with worsening congestion. Even smaller areas, possibly not yet victims what some might consider serious traffic, lament their annual increase in levels of congestion, yet secretly enjoy their emerging big-city status. Traffic engi- neers, planners, and politicians take more than feigned interest because, to date, such ratings are the only available measure to assess progress toward a concern central to livability that is front and center in the minds of many residents. Traffic congestion is a serious issue, undoubtedly, particularly in major met- ropolitan areas worldwide. But is congestion the problem or the solution? Taylor (2003) argues that traffic congestion is a solution to the problem ofhow to allocate scarce road space. (In contrast, economists argue for road pricing to allocate road space, but clearly there are factors limiting its widespread deployment.) Even if we agree that congestion wastes time, is minimizing congestion the most appropriate public policy goal (Taylor 2003)? Do measures of congestion provide the basis for policy prescriptions? We argue elsewhere (Levinson and Krizek 2008) that mobil- ity (or lack thereof because of inadequate networks or congestion) is an element of the larger goal-ensuring accessibility. Recent years have witnessed more than a handful of conferences or work- shops whose central themes focused on the concept of accessibility. For example, the University of Minnesota sponsored two conferences, prodUcing an array of recent scholarly publications on the topic in 2004 (Levinson and Krizek 2005) and 2007 (Axhausen 2008; Bruegmann 2008; Crane 2008; Lo, Tang, and Wang 2008; Ottensmann and Lindsey 2008; Scott and Horner 2008); in 2007, the European Science Foundation hosted a workshop, How to Define and Measure Access and Need Satisfaction in Transport (Becker, Bohmer, and Gerike 2008). The Network on European Communications and Transport Activities Research (NECTAR) con- tinues to sponsor activities focUSing on accessibility. Accessibility has even been touted as a civil rights issue (Sanchez 1999). As judged by the level of discussion, mention, and focus in specialized work- shops, interest in accessibility is high. Previous writings have focused on defining the concept of accessibility generally, starting from Hansen (1959), but also involv- ing other extensions (Dalvi 1979; Ingram 1971; Kau 1979; Rutherford 1979), measur- ing the concept using different approaches (Handy and Niemeier 1997), various data needs (Krizek 2008),8 or its use in explaining behavior (Levinson and Krizek 2005; Levinson 1998). This chapter recommends that policy decisions be based on important and reliable performance measures. Robust measures that simultaneously assess the performance of the transportation and land use dimensions of cities, however, are mostly missing from such discussions (Levinson 2003). At the heart of the pro- posed approach lies the concept of accessibility: the ability of people to reach the destinations that they need to visit in order to meet their needs. A focus on accessi- bility-rather than congestion or mobility- would produce a more complete and meaningful picture ofmetropolitan transport and land use. This chapter aims to articulate a clear role for measures of metropolitan acces- sibility and to demonstrate the utility of these measures in informing and influ- encing policy. It reviews necessary definitions, comments on the nature of past research, and suggests strategies to adapt such research into means. It endeavors to place accessibility in a position ofprominence as a performance measure; thus, this chapter has four parts and functions, as follows: • To describe the use and measurement of accessibility for metropolitan areas, • To appraise the current state ofknowledge and literature, • To identify issues about measurement, • To offer prescriptions for resolving those issues, given political contexts, and • To point to future directions.
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    Access Across America: Transit 2014 Data
    (2014-12-05) Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David M; aowen@umn.edu; Owen, Andrew; University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, Accessibility Observatory
    This data was created as part of a study that examined the accessibility to jobs by transit in 46 of the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States. It is the most detailed evaluation to date of access to jobs by transit, and it allows for a direct comparison of the transit accessibility performance of America's largest metropolitan areas.
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    Access Across America: Transit 2015 Data
    (2017-02-02) Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David M; Murphy, Brendan; aowen@umn.edu; Owen, Andrew
    These data were created as part of a study that examined the accessibility to jobs by transit in 49 of the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States. It is the most detailed evaluation to date of access to jobs by transit, and it allows for a direct comparison of the transit accessibility performance of America's largest metropolitan areas. These data are part of a longitudinal study; Access Across America: Transit 2014 data are available at http://hdl.handle.net/11299/168064.
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    Access Across America: Walk 2014 Data
    (2015-08-21) Owen, Andrew; Murphy, Brendan; Levinson, David M; aowen@umn.edu; Owen, Andrew; University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, Accessibility Observatory
    These data were created as part of a study that examined the accessibility to jobs by walking in the 53 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States. It is the most detailed evaluation to date of access to jobs by walking, and it allows for a direct comparison of the walking accessibility performance of America's largest metropolitan areas.
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    Access to Destinations: Development of Accessibility Measures
    (2006-05-01) El-Geneidy, Ahmed M; Levinson, David M
    Transportation systems are designed to help people participate in activities distributed over space and time. Accessibility indicates the collective performance of land use and transportation systems and determines how well that complex system serves its residents. This research project comprises three main tasks. The first task reviews the literature on accessibility and its performance measures with an emphasis on measures that planners and decision makers can understand and replicate. The second task identifies the appropriate measures of accessibility, where accessibility measures are evaluated in terms of ease of understanding, accuracy and complexity, while the third task illustrates these accessibility measures. During this process a new accessibility measure named 'Place Rank' is introduced as an accurate measure of accessibility. In addition, several previously-defined accessibility measures are reviewed and demonstrated in this report including cumulative opportunity and gravity-based measures. The gravity-based measure is widely used in the literature yet cumulative opportunity tends to be easier to understand and interpret by the public, planners, and administrators. A major contribution of this research is the comparison of accessibility measures over time and among various modes. Effects of accessibility on home sales are also tested. Homebuyers pay a premium to live near jobs and away from competing workers. Accessibility promises to be a useful tool for monitoring the land use and transportation system, and assessing and valuing the benefits of proposed changes to either land use or networks.
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    Accessibility and the choice of network investments in the London Underground
    (University of Minnesota, 2016) Levinson, David M; Giacomin, David J; Badsey-Ellis, Anthony
    In 1863, the Metropolitan Railway of what came to be known as the London Underground successfully opened as the world’s first subway. Its high ridership spawned interest in additional links. Entrepreneurs secured funding and then proposed new lines to Parliament for approval, though only a portion were actually approved. While putative rail barons may have conducted some economic analysis, the final decision lay with Parliament, which did not have available modern transportation economic or geographic analysis tools. How good were the decisions that Parliament made in approving Underground Lines? This paper explores the role accessibility played on the decision to approve or reject proposed early London Tube Schemes. It finds that maximizing accessibility to population (highly correlated with revenue and ridership) largely explains Parliamentary approvals and rejections.
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    Accessibility and the Evaluation of Investments on the Beijing Subway
    (University of Minnesota, 2016) Jiang, Haibing; Levinson, David M
    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.
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    Accessibility and the Journey to Work
    (Pergamon, 1998) Levinson, David M
    This study analyzes the effect of accessibility to jobs and houses at both the home and work ends of trips on commuting duration for respondents to a household travel survey in metropolitan Washington, DC. A model is constructed to estimate the effects of demographics and relative location on the journey to work. Analysis finds that residences in job-rich areas and workplaces in housing-rich areas are associated with shorter commutes. An implication of this study is that, by balancing accessibility, the suburbanization of jobs maintains stability in commuting durations despite rising congestion, increasing trip lengths, and increased work and non-work trip making.
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    Accessibility Dynamics and Location Premia: Do Land Values Follow Accessibility Changes?
    (2016) Iacono, Michael J; Levinson, David M
    The structure of transportation networks and the patterns of accessibility they give rise to are an important determinant of land prices, and hence urban spatial structure. While there is ample evi- dence on the cross-sectional relationship between location and land value (usually measured from the value of improved property), there is much less evidence available on the changes in this rela- tionship over time, especially where location is represented using a disaggregate measure of urban accessibility. This paper provides evidence of this dynamic relationship using data on home sales in the Minneapolis-St Paul, MN, USA metropolitan area, coupled with disaggregate measures of urban accessibility for multiple modes, for the period from 2000 to 2005. Our investigation tracks the effects of marginal changes in accessibility over time, as opposed to static, cross- sectional relationships, by using an approach in which the unit of observation is a ‘representative house’ for each transportation analysis zone in the region. This approach allows us to control for changes in structural attributes of houses over time, while also isolating the effect of changes in accessibility levels. Results of this approach are compared with a cross-sectional model using the same variables for a single year to illustrate important differences. Empirical estimates indicate that while most of the models estimated using a cross-sectional specification yield positive and significant effects of accessibility on sale prices, these effects disappear when the models are transformed into first-difference form. We explain these findings in light of the state of maturity of urban transportation networks.
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    Accessibility Evaluation of the Metro Transit A-Line
    (Accessibility Observatory, University of Minnesota, 2016-06-06) Palmateer, Chelsey; Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David M
    This report evaluates the Accessibility of the Metro Transit A-Line arterial bus rapid transit system serving St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is found that overall the A-Line increases accessibility compared to the previous service provided by the local bus, though some areas lose accessibility if they are not near a new A-Line stop.
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    Accessibility Futures
    (2013) Anderson, Paul; Levinson, David M; Parthasarathi, Pavithra
    This study uses accessibility as a performance measure to evaluate a matrix of future land use and network scenarios for planning purposes. Previous research has established the coevolution of transportation and land use, demonstrated the dependence of accessibility on both, and made the case for the use of accessibility measures as a planning tool. This study builds off of these findings by demonstrating the use of accessibility-based performance measures on the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. This choice of performance measure also allows for transit and highway networks to be compared side-by-side. A zone to zone travel time matrix was computed using SUE assignment with travel time feedback to trip distribution. A database of schedules was used on the transit networks to assign transit routes. This travel time data was joined with the land use data from each scenario to obtain the employment, population, and labor accessibility from each TAZ within specified time ranges. Tables of person- weighed accessibility were computed for 20 minutes with zone population as the weight for employment accessibility and zone employment as the weight for population and labor accessibility. The person-weighted accessibility results were then used to evaluate the planning scenarios. The results show that centralized population and employment produce the highest accessibility across all networks.
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    Accessibility Impacts of High Speed Rail
    (2012) Levinson, David M
    This paper reviews the state of high-speed rail (HSR) planning in the United States c. 2010. The plans generally call for a set of barely inter-connected hub-and-spoke networks. The evidence from US transit systems shows that lines have two major impacts. There are positive accessibility benefits near stations, but there are negative nuisance effects along the lines themselves. High speed lines are unlikely to have local accessibility benefits separate from connecting local transit lines because there is little advantage for most people or businesses to locate near a line used infrequently (unlike public transit). However they may have more widespread metropolitan level effects. They will retain, and perhaps worse, have much higher, nuisance effects. If high-speed rail lines can create larger effective regions, that might affect the distribution of who wins and loses from such infrastructure. The magnitude of agglomeration economies is uncertain (and certainly location-specific), but presents the best case that can be made in favor of HSR in the US.
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    Accessibility-based Evaluation of Transit Projects
    (2016-08-01) Palmateer, Chelsey; Owen, Andrew; Levinson, David M; Ermagun, Alireza
    This study uses the accessibility-based evaluation method to unpack the interaction effect of transit oriented development and a new transit hub, using the San Francisco Transbay Transit Center Development Plan project. We reveal both the transit oriented development and transit changes positively affect accessibility to jobs and accessibility to workers. However, the magnitude of effects for the transit changes alone are minimal in comparison to the effects of the anticipated transit oriented development changes. This indicates that in areas where there already is transit service, the development of land near the transit service can have a greater impact on accessibility levels than the improvement of connections between transit services. We also unravel the increase in accessibility at the project-level and determine that the increase is greater than the sum of the contributions of the individual portions of the project. This demonstrates that transit changes and transit oriented development have a superadditive effect, although it is negligible in our case.
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    Accessibility-oriented development
    (2017) Deboosere, Robbin; Levinson, David M; El-Geneidy, Ahmed
    Municipal governments worldwide have been pursuing transit-oriented development (TOD) strategies in order to increase transit ridership, curb traffic congestion, and rejuvenate urban neighborhoods. In many cities, however, development of planned sites around transit stations has been close to non-existent, due to, among other reasons, a lack of coordination between transit investments and land use at the regional scale. Furthermore, the ability to access transit differs from the ability to access destinations that people care about. Reframing transit-oriented development as accessibility-oriented development (AOD) can aid the process of creating functional connections between neighborhoods and the rest of the region, and maximize benefits from transport investments. AOD is a strategy that balances accessibility to employment and the labor force in order to foster an environment conducive to development. AOD areas are thus defined as having higher than average accessibility to employment opportunities and/or the labor force; such accessibility levels are expected to increase the quality of life of residents living in these areas by reducing their commute time and encouraging faster economic development. To quantify the benefits of AOD, accessibility to employment and the labor force are calculated in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Canada in 2001 and 2011. Cross-sectional and temporal regressions are then performed to predict average commute times and development occurring in AOD areas and across the region. Results show that AOD neighborhoods with high accessibility to jobs and low accessibility to the labor force have the lowest commute times in the region, while the relationship also holds for changes in average commute time between the studied time periods. In addition, both accessibility to jobs and accessibility to the labor force are associated with changes in development, as areas with high accessibility to jobs and the labor force attract more development. In order to realize the full benefits of planned transit investments, planning professionals and policy makers alike should therefore leverage accessibility as a tool to direct development in their cities, and concentrate on developing neighbourhoods with an AOD approach in mind.
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    Activity, Travel, and the Allocation of Time
    (American Planning Association, 1995) Levinson, David M
    This paper analyzes 1968 and 1987-88 metropolitan Washington, DC household travel surveys to understand the daily allocation of time among different activities of individuals classified by work status and gender. The increase in female labor force participation rates has produced an increase in overall time spent at work per person. The increase in work trips and the simultaneous increase in nonwork trips has resulted in less time spent at home. People are substituting money for time spent at home, buying household services outside the home. The group of individuals who work at home is analyzed separately to obtain an understanding of this growing segment.