Browsing by Author "Wolfson, Julian"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    COVID-19 Implications on Public Transportation: Understanding Post-Pandemic Transportation Needs, Behaviors, and Experiences
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2022-11) Fan, Yingling; Becker, Andrew; Ryan, Galen; Wolfson, Julian
    The COVID-19 pandemic and widespread social distancing measures have dramatically reduced public transit ridership, leaving transit agencies with massive revenue shortfalls, and it is still unclear how long it will take for transit to recover and whether transit will emerge fundamentally transformed for better or worse after the pandemic. This research collected first-hand data on people's post-pandemic travel behavior decision-making process in the Twin Cities metropolitan region between March and June 2021. Participants were recruited through various forms of digital marketing tools such as a website, social media, emails, and online videos. Of the 339 participants who were enrolled in the study, 154 (45%) used a smartphone app to capture daily transportation needs, behaviors, and experiences for two consecutive weeks. The data provided insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped people?s attitudes, perceptions, and decisions toward various transportation services, including public transportation, and how the mobility impacts of COVID-19 differ by individual socio-demographics and trip environments. Results from this research will help transportation planners identify innovative and sensible ways to effectively promote the use of public transportation in the post-pandemic era.
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    Manual of Procedures for the Fruit and Vegetable Procurement Tool
    (2025-02-06) Horning, Melissa L.; Gorman, Kristen S.; Steiner, Julia; Wolfson, Julian; Laska, Melissa N.; Fulkerson, Jayne A.; Harnack, Lisa
    The Fruit and Vegetable Procurement Tool was designed to capture usual household procurement of fruits and vegetables over a 4 week period. This tool is comprised of 4 weekly paper-pen booklets containing instructions and procurement forms to record fruit and vegetable items. Participants are instructed during an in-person appointment on how to use the tool and provided materials to track their procurement of fruits and vegetables. After data are received from participants, research staff check for completion in multiple passes and enter data provided by participants into the Nutritional Data System for Research (NDSR) to calculate the total edible (1 cup equivalent) servings of fruits and vegetables procured per week. This manual describes the procedures for using and entering data collected using the Fruit and Vegetable Procurement Tool. This manual also provides the materials needed to use the Tool in the field, including the Tool itself.
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    Smartphone-Based Interventions for Sustainable Travel Behavior: The University of Minnesota Parking Contract Holder Study
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2020-10) Fan, Yingling; Becker, Andy; Ryan, Galen; Wolfson, Julian; Guthrie, Andrew; Liao, Chen-Fu
    Innovative mobility apps have the power to transform the relationship between transportation networks and travelers. Capitalizing on the recent advancement in smartphone technology, this project develops a smartphone-based behavior intervention tool—named Daynamica—to provide customized, user-centered messages and graphics for promoting travel mode shifts from driving to more sustainable modes. The project tests the effectiveness of the intervention tool among University of Minnesota (UMN) parking contract holders. For each car trip made by a participant, the tool provides a mode shift plan based on the exact trip origin and destination. The tool also provides information describing the environmental impacts of the specific car trip and the personal benefits of switching to the alternative mode. The findings show that although 92 percent of participants are interested in trying alternative modes, in general, when it comes to specific trip considerations, only 36 percent of the car trips are considered reasonable alternative modes. There is ample interest among the most car-dependent population—parking contract holders—to explore alternative mode options; however, their interest is tempered by the limited alternative mode offerings in the region. Thus, it is recommended that transportation practitioners and policy makers improve these offerings. Furthermore, this research generates useful data to identify factors influencing mode shifting. Housing ownership, being male, making stops during the trip, and a late departure time for the morning commute are negatively associated with participants' receptiveness toward mode shifting. Finally, the report includes a novel analysis exploring the activity/trip chaining behaviors of the study participants.
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    SmarTrAC: A Smartphone Solution for Context-Aware Travel and Activity Capturing
    (2015-02) Fan, Yingling; Wolfson, Julian; Adomavicius, Gediminas; Vardhan Das, Kirti; Khandelwal, Yash; Kang, Jie
    The use of mobile phones in collecting travel behavior data has rapidly increased, especially after GPS tracking technology became widely available in commercial smartphones. Existing smartphone-based tools in the field have generally focused on capturing the “when”, “where”, and “how” of travel, i.e., using the smartphone’s automatic sensing functionality to detect travel mode and to collect position and route data. Although locations and modes of transportation derived from sensing data represent important travel behavior information, travel behavior has many other important dimensions—such as trip purpose, travel experience, and travel companionship (i.e., the “why”, “how”, and “who” of travel)—all of which are critical for understanding people’s travel choices. Some of these dimensions may be inferable from pure sensory data, but reliable inference will generally require long-term use data from a very large number of subjects. Other dimensions are simply inaccessible to passive sensing tools. In contrast, traditional travel diary methods and some first-generation smartphone-based travel survey tools enable the collection of multi-dimensional data through high-intensity sampling and qualitative survey techniques. However, these methods are often burdensome to study subjects and impractical for use in a diverse, mobile, and increasingly time-stressed population.
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    Visualizing Transportation Happiness in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Region
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2020-03) Fan, Yingling; Ormsby, Travis; Wiringa, Peter; Liao, Chen-Fu; Wolfson, Julian
    This report describes the data and methods used to generate the interactive Minneapolis-St. Paul Transportation Happiness Map at https://maps.umn.edu/transportation-happiness. The map illustrates spatiotemporal differences in travelers' happiness ratings on the streets and roads in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region. Map users can interactively explore street and road segments that are associated with positive and/or negative emotional experiences based upon their interested travel modes and travel time periods. For policy makers who are interested in improving people's transportation happiness, the map provides important insights on road and street segments that are in need of closer investigations for future improvements.