Browsing by Author "Wu, Xinyi"
Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item After Study of The Bus Rapid Transit A Line Impacts(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2018-12) Tomhave, Benjamin; Zhang, Yufeng; Khani, Alireza; Hourdos, John; Dirks, Peter; Olsson, Jack; Tao, Tao; Wu, Xinyi; Cao, JasonIn response to the limited awareness surrounding Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and the A Line, this study provides answers to questions regarding the operation and public perception of the A Line in the Twin Cities region, Minnesota. Two traffic scenarios were studied, one for high-volume oversaturated traffic during the Minnesota State Fair, and a second for normal operating conditions. For both scenarios, intersection queue length and traffic flow rate were compared before and after an A Line bus. It was found that in both time periods (Fair and non- Fair), the dwelling of an A Line bus during a green traffic signal did not have a statistically significant impact on intersection queue length or traffic-flow rate at either of the two researched stations. From an analysis of the 2016 On-Board Survey, it was determined that passengers are more satisfied by the overall service of the A Line than local buses while there is not a significant difference in overall satisfaction compared to express buses, light rail and commuter rail. The top three important service attributes to overall satisfaction are “paying my fare is easy,” “hours of operation,” and “handling of concerns/complaints.” It is recommended that the transit agency improve the attributes that have higher relative influences and lower mean performances. Based on this criterion, the attributes that should be given priority are “shelter/station conditions and cleanliness” and “behaviors of other passengers and atmosphere on board.”Item Challenges and opportunities of autonomous vehicles to urban planning: Investigation into transit and parking(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2019-10) Wu, Xinyi; Douma, Frank; Cao, JasonUsing a series of qualitative approaches, this report examines the potential impacts of autonomous vehicles (AV) on transit and parking systems. A literature review helped us identify three orders of general impacts caused by the development of AV, as well as their specific effects on transit and parking. Based on the results of the literature review, we organized two focus groups and held in-depth discussions regarding the impacts of AV with planning practitioners from the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area. The analytical results showed that opinions differ regarding what AV's specific effects might look like. Nevertheless, all of the literature as well as participants of the focus groups agreed that AV will have significant impacts and corresponding planning policies need to be developed.Item Ethnicity, poverty, and secular schooling: Muslim Hui students' identity negotiations in rural China(2014-08) Wu, XinyiIntrigued by the heterogeneous development of rural and urban China, persistent poverty in rural ethnic minority regions, and dilemmatic quality compulsory education provided for ethnic regions as a key to poverty alleviation, this dissertation sets out to examine the rural appropriation and implementation of compulsory education and its impacts on the lives of students from one particular ethnic group, Muslim Hui in Xihaigu, Southern part of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwestern China, as they respond to changing rural dynamics, fighting against poverty, and trying to maintain ethnoreligious identity.Informed by critical theory and constructivism paradigms as well as studies of ethnicity and ethnic identity, cultural reproduction theory, and cultural production theory, this study use critical ethnography as a method of research to particularly examine how secular schooling is practiced in this rural and Muslim Hui concentrated region and is lived everyday through routinized pedagogical practices and administrative maneuvers. Most importantly, through the voices of local Muslim Hui, it explores parents' changing views of secular schooling and how the changed views affect Muslim Hui students' exercise their power to participate in school activities, whether they resist against and struggle with secular schooling or straddle across secularity and ethnoreligiosity. In the end, this study attempts to make a theoretical contribution by challenging the binary relationship between the dominating and the dominated that guided majority of studies of ethnic groups in China. Muslim Hui students in my study exhibit diverse reactions and responses to the dominant Han culture and constantly negotiate a life of their own.Item Examining contextual and nonlinear associations between the living environment and life satisfaction(2021-05) Wu, XinyiPlanners have long sought to reveal how the living environment, including housing and neighborhood, influences individuals’ satisfaction with life and other domains. Despite the great contribution made by planning scholars, the literature falls short in several major topics. This dissertation addresses these issues with three empirical studies. The literature implies that the same living environment elements could have distinctive associations with different types of satisfaction outcomes (e.g., life satisfaction vs. neighborhood satisfaction). However, most studies examine the correlates of only one type of satisfaction and do not compare those of multiple types of satisfaction. Chapter 2 fills this gap and compares neighborhood associates of neighborhood satisfaction and life satisfaction. Many features show different relationships with the two types of satisfaction. Specifically, neighborhood satisfaction reacts more strongly to physical features and appearances of the neighborhood, whereas life satisfaction has stronger associations with social cohesions and leisure amenities. Moreover, the correlates of life satisfaction tend to differ across contexts, but the discussion on contexts is severely lacking in related research. Chapters 3 and 4 add to the understanding of the role contexts play. Chapter 3 compares neighborhood correlates of life satisfaction in higher-income and lower-income neighborhoods. In general, residents of lower-income neighborhoods value attributes related to basic needs (such as safety and air quality) more, whereas access to leisure and educational facilities carries more weight in higher-income neighborhoods. Chapter 4 compares the relationships of a set of living environment variables with life satisfaction in the Twin Cities, U.S. and Guangzhou, China. The findings show that the living environment has a substantially larger association with life satisfaction in Guangzhou than in the Twin Cities. Compared with Guangzhou residents, residents living in the Twin Cities associate life satisfaction more with socioeconomic status and their defining characteristics. Finally, many studies are built on the assumption that living environment attributes are linearly correlated with life satisfaction. An increasing number of empirical findings have implied that satisfaction may react to its correlates in a nonlinear manner. This nonlinearity is still in need of discussion. This dissertation tests the presence of nonlinearity and all three empirical studies show prevalent nonlinear relationships between living environment attributes and satisfaction. Based on the empirical results, this dissertation highly recommends that researchers establish a holistic conceptual framework to connect the living environment, life satisfaction, and relevant domain satisfaction, conduct mixed-method studies, and test the generalizability of specific findings in future studies. It also encourages planners to consider nonlinearity in practice and make policy decisions based on localized evidence instead of predetermined standards.Item Impact of Transitways on Travel on Parallel and Adjacent Roads and Park-and-ride Facilities(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2021-01) Webb, Alex; Tao, Tao; Khani, Alireza; Cao, Jason; Wu, XinyiTransitways such as light rail transit (LRT) and bus rapid transit (BRT) provide fast, reliable, and high-capacity transit service. Transitways have the potential to attract more riders and take a portion of the auto mode share, reducing the growth of auto traffic. Park-and-ride (PNR) facilities can complement transit service by providing a viable choice for residents who are without walking access to transit or those who prefer better transit service such as LRT or BRT. In this study, we conducted two research tasks on Transitways services in the Twin Cities region in Minnesota; 1) to examine the impact of the operation of the Green Line LRT on the annual average daily traffic (AADT) of its adjacent roads, and 2) to estimate a PNR location choice model in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.Item Monitoring Use of Minnesota State Trails Considerations and Recommendations for Implementation(Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 2016-05-20) Holmes, Tom; Knight, Jake; Newman, Darin; Wu, XinyiItem Photos, tweets, and trails: Are social media proxies for urban trail use?(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2017) Wu, Xinyi; Wood, Spencer A.; Fisher, David; Lindsey, GregDecision makers need information on the use of, and demand for, public recreation and transportation facilities. Innovations in monitoring technologies and diffusion of social media enable new approaches to estimation of demand. We assess the feasibility of using geo-tagged photographs uploaded to the image-sharing website Flickr and tweets from Twitter as proxy measures for urban trail use. We summarize geo-tagged Flickr uploads and tweets along 80 one-mile segments of the multiuse trail network in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and correlate results with previously published estimates of annual average daily trail traffic derived from infrared trail monitors. Although heat maps of Flickr images and tweets show some similarities with maps of variation in trail traffic, the correlation between photographs and trail traffic is moderately weak (0.43), and there is no meaningful statistical correlation between tweets and trail traffic. Use of a simple log-log bivariate regression to estimate trail traffic from photographs results in relatively high error. The predictor variables included in published demand models for the same trails explain roughly the same amount of variation in photo-derived use, but some of the neighborhood socio-demographic and built-environment independent variables have different effects. Taken together, these findings show that both Flickr images and tweets have limitations as proxies for demand for urban trails, and that neither can be used to develop valid, reliable estimates of trail use. These results differ from previously published results that indicate social media may be useful in assessing relative demand for recreational destinations. This difference may be because urban trails are used for multiple purposes, including routine commuting and shopping, and that trail users are less inclined to use social media on trips for these purposes.