Browsing by Subject "Access to Destinations"

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Access Across America
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2013-04) Levinson, David M.
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 non-home 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 automobile in the 51 largest metropolitan areas in the United States for 2010, and compares results with 2000 and 1990. 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. Based on this measure, the ten metro areas that provide the greatest average accessibility to jobs are Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Jose, Washington, Dallas, Boston, and Houston.
Access to Destinations Conference (August 2007)
(Center for Transportation Studies University of Minnesota, 2007-08) Center for Transportation Studies
Welcome and Opening Remarks International Perspectives on Accessibility Implications for Research and Practice Technical Session 1A - Relationships between housing and employment centers, particularly as they relate to commuting, were featured topics of discussion in this session. Jobs-housing balance, traffic congestion, and access to employment opportunities were among the issues discussed. Technical Session 1B - Presentations in this session took a variety of different approaches to understanding the influence of the built environment and transportation networks on travel patterns and accessibility levels. Among the key issues examined were the different ways people access needed services and make residential location decisions. Technical Session 2A - The presentations in Session 2A provided insight into some of the differences between European and American cities in research, transportation behavior and urban form. Researchers looked at the complex factors that influence travel behavior and residential choice and introduced the notion of stability into decision-making and the complexity of decision-making when it comes to home ownership Technical Session 2B - Modeling and data analysis were the overall themes of this session, with research presentations giving particular attention to public transit access and the development of new community areas. Technical Session 3A - All three presentations in this session addressed the aging population, which will significantly increase in the coming years. Two of the studies focused on accessibility issues facing older persons in London, and one of the studies focused on the location decisions being made by the group described as “pre-elderly” in metropolitan Ohio, US. There are some indications that baby boomers are going to become a different kind of elderly, noted both moderator Kazuya Kawamura in his comments about the presentations and Morrow-Jones in her presentation, Technical Session 3B – This session provided an opportunity to discuss the effects of planning documents and practices on the land-planning process; topics included regional planning documents, the potential use of accessibility models as planning tools, and measuring the impacts of different planning ideologies. Technical Session 4A - Age as a factor in accessibility was the dominant theme of this session, in which presentations dealt with the accessibility needs of both young and elderly populations. Transit accessibility, transit service characteristics, and safety issues were among the topics discussed. Technical Session 4B - In this session, researchers provided insight into the complex relationship between expanding transportation networks and changing land use practices. The research, focused on Madrid and London, also introduced a European perspective on network growth. Technical Session 5A - All three presentations in this session evaluated transportation networks, and two of the presentations described specific tools to do so. Researchers presented their recent findings on the role of the development of transportation compared to land use concentration, the use of GIS tools to measure accessibility through a multi-modal transportation system, and methods for analyzing the efficiency of road networks. Technical Session 5B - Presentations in this session covered accessibility analysis related to a range of travel behavior, emphasizing nonmotorized travel modes and trip chaining. Researchers analyzed the use of urban trail networks, methods for measuring accessibility for bicyclists and pedestrians, and factors influencing commuters’ likelihood to carry out multiple travel tasks during their commute trips. Technical Session 6 - Presentations in this final session dealt with issues of accessibility measurement in the context of analyzing and comparing metropolitan areas. Researchers explored the spatial awareness of urban residents and the possible effects of social networks on residential and employment patterns, and also looked at the difficulties inherent in comparing accessibility across different metropolitan areas. Closing Panel
Access to Destinations Conference (November 2004)
(Center for Transportation Studies University of Minnesota, 2004-11) Center for Transportation Studies
Welcome and Opening Remarks; Defining the Issues; Policy Alternatives and Their Effectiveness; Implications for Practice; Frameworks - The Frameworks session provided an opportunity to compare and contrast different theoretical approaches to the study of accessibility. This discussion highlighted several challenges facing accessibility researchers and suggested possible applications of accessibility analysis to current debates on land use and transportation funding debates.; Finance - The Finance session featured a discussion of several alternative approaches to financing transportation improvements, with a focus on increasing accessibility and equitably allocating the costs of transportation systems.; Measurement - The Measurements session highlighted the diversity of quantitative and qualitative measurement techniques currently being applied to accessibility. Issues explored in this session included the influence of measurement technique on the picture of accessibility that emerges, and the policy implications of different measurement methodologies.; Behavior - Human decision making and the psychology of personal preference were the subjects of the Behavior session. Researchers from the Twin Cities and Bangkok shared their understanding of how people value accessibility in different spatial and economic contexts.; Models - In the final technical session, researchers and attendees examined the place of accessibility in developing transportation systems that meet human needs in the long term. Issues including natural resource use, environmental protection, and social justice were presented and discussed.; Sustainability - In the final technical session, researchers and attendees examined the place of accessibility in developing transportation systems that meet human needs in the long term. Issues including natural resource use, environmental protection, and social justice were presented and discussed. Closing comments
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: Application of Accessibility Measures for Non-Auto Travel Modes
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, Research Services Section, 2009-07) Krizek, Kevin J.; Iacono, Michael; El-Geneidy, Ahmed; Liao, Chen Fu; Johns, Robert
Conventional transportation planning is often focused on improving movement (or mobility)—most often by the automobile. To the extent that accessibility, a well-known concept in the transportation planning field since the 1950s, has been measured or used in transportation planning, such measures have also been auto-based. Broadening the scope of accessibility to include a wide array of destinations and non-auto modes such as walking, cycling, and transit has been previously proposed as a much needed aim among planning initiatives. A central issue is that to date, however, there have been few examples of measures draw from. When it comes to bicycling, walking, and transit measures of accessibility are an endeavor long on rhetoric but short on execution. This report discusses such hurdles, presents alternatives for overcoming them, and demonstrates how accessibility for walking, cycling, and transit—and for different types of destinations—can be reliably measured. We focus on explaining specific features of non-motorized transportation that complicate the development of accessibility measures, and offer solutions that conform to conventional transportation planning practice. In this research project, non-motorized measures of accessibility were developed for the entire seven counties of the Twin Cities (Minnesota, USA) metropolitan area. For purposes of this exposition in this report, we discuss the details of creating such measures using a sample application from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA to demonstrate proof of concept for the endeavor.
Access to Destinations: Arterial Data Acquisition and Network-Wide Travel Time Estimation (Phase II)
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2010-03) Davis, Gary A.; Hourdos, John; Xiong, Hui; Morris, Ted
The objectives of this project were to (a) produce historic estimates of travel times on Twin-Cities arterials for 1995 and 2005, and (b) develop an initial architecture and database that could, in the future, produce timely estimates of arterial traffic volumes and travel times. Our Phase I field study indicated that on arterial links where both the demand traffic volume and the signal timing are known, model-based estimates of travel time that are on average within 10% of measured values can be obtained. Phase II of this project then focused on applying this approach to the entire Twin Cities arterial system. The Phase II effort divided into three main subtasks: (1) updating estimates of demand traffic volume obtained from a transportation planning model to make them consistent with available volume measurements, (2) collecting information on traffic signal locations in the Twin Cities and compiling this into a geographic database, and (3) combining the updated traffic volumes and signal information to produce link-by-link peak-period travel time estimates. The traffic volume update took as inputs the predicted volumes generated by a traffic assignment model and measured average annual daily traffic from automatic traffic recorders, and gave as output updated estimates of the traffic volumes for links lacking automatic traffic recorders. A request to state, county and municipal agencies in the seven-county metro area produced Information on approximately 2,900 traffic signals. Estimated arterial travel times for the morning and afternoon peak periods for 1995 and 2005 were then computed and sent to other components of the Access to Destinations effort.
Access to Destinations: Computation of Travel Time Data for Access to Destinations Study
(Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2008-11) Kwon, Taek Mu; Klar, Scott
Freeway travel time data is used as an important input for measuring travel reliability and accessibility. The goal of this project was to generate reliable travel time data using loop detector data from the Twin Cities’ freeway network collected over the past 14 years for the Access to Destinations projects. Several difficulties exist: one year of loop data can be missing up to 31.7%, loop data does not include vehicle lengths or classification to use in speed calculations, and link travel time must be computed without knowing speed variability within the link. The three basic approaches used in this project for imputing speed data are linear regression, spatial imputation, and week-toweek temporal imputation. A new method was developed to estimate average vehicle length using volume, occupancy, free-flow speed, and speed limit data. Link travel times were calculated by dividing the distance between stations into thirds and using speed data from both stations. Overall (for the last fourteen years), the imputation increased the average amount of valid data from 81.7% to 98.6%. Travel time for a selected route was verified by comparing the resulting calculated travel times to manual travel times measurement information.
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.
Access to Destinations: How Close is Close Enough? Estimating Accurate Distance Decay Functions for Multiple Modes and Different Purposes
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2008-05) Iacono, Michael; Krizek, Kevin; El-Geneidy, Ahmed M.
Existing urban and suburban development patterns and the subsequent automobile dependence are leading to increased traffic congestion and air pollution. In response to the growing ills caused by urban sprawl, there has been an increased interest in creating more “livable” communities in which destinations are brought closer to ones home or workplace (that is, achieving travel needs through land use planning). While several reports suggest best practices for integrated land use-planning, little research has focused on examining detailed relationships between actual travel behavior and mean distance to various services. For example, how far will pedestrians travel to access different types of destinations? How to know if the “one quarter mile assumption” that is often bantered about is reliable? How far will bicyclists travel to cycle on a bicycle only facility? How far do people drive for their common retail needs? To examine these questions, this research makes use of available travel survey data for the Twin Cities region. A primary outcome of this research is to examine different types of destinations and accurately and robustly estimate distance decay models for auto and non-auto travel modes, and also to comment on its applicability for: (a) different types of travel, and (b) development of accessibility measures that incorporate this information.
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.
Access to Destinations: Parcel Level Land Use Data Acquisition and Analysis for Measuring Non-Auto Accessibility
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2008-07) Horning, Jessica; El-Geneidy, Ahmed M.; Krizek, Kevin
This research aids in tackling one important part of accessibility metrics—measuring land use. It introduces complementary strategies to effectively measure a variety of different destination types at a highly detailed scale of resolution using secondary data. The research describes ways to overcome common data hurdles and demonstrates how existing data in one metropolitan area in the U.S. –the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul –can be exploited to aid in measuring accessibility at an extremely fine unit of analysis (i.e., the parcel). Establishment-level data containing attribute information on location, sales, employees, and industry classification was purchased from Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. The research process involved cleaning and tailoring the parcel dataset for the 7-county metro area and integrating various GIS datasets with other secondary data sources. These data were merged with parcel-level land use data from the Metropolitan Council. The establishment-level data were then recoded into destination categories using the 2 to 6-digit classifications of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The development of important components of this research is illustrated with a sample application. The report concludes by describing how such data could be used in calculating more robust measures of accessibility.
Access to Destinations: Refining Methods for Calculating Non-Auto Travel Times
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2007-06) Krizek, Kevin; El-Geneidy, Ahmed; Iacono, Michael; Horning, Jessica
The functioning of the system of land use and travel networks in a region can be encapsulated into measures of the ease of reaching destinations from various locations, often referred to as accessibility measures. Regardless of the form used to specify accessibility, all measures require as inputs travel times between the zones of a region. For most transportation planning purposes, these travel time calculations are limited to motorized modes (auto and public transit), since these modes carry the bulk of all urban travel. In this research study, attention is focused on developing methods for calculating travel times by non-auto modes, including walking, bicycling and public transit. Unique networks for each mode are developed, accounting for the presence of special facilities such as pedestrian or bicycle trails and on-street bike lanes. A statistical model is estimated to identify the influence of special bicycle facilities on travel speeds, using GPS data collected from bicyclists in a real-world setting. These methods are demonstrated with an application to a section of the Twin Cities metropolitan region encompassing parts of the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Bloomington. The output of the application of these methods are a set of maps depicting travel sheds from various locations within the study area. The data are displayed for three points in time: 1995, 2000 and 2005. Changes to these travel sheds over time are demonstrated with maps that show the difference in travel time between each set of origins and destinations for each pair of years. The research concludes with some suggestions about the uses of the travel time data, such as the calculation of multimodal, multipurpose measures of accessibility.
Access to Destinations: Travel Time Estimation on Arterials
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2007-08) Davis, Gary A.; Xiong, Hui
The primary objective of this project was to identify and evaluate parametric models for making default estimates of travel times on arterial links. A review of the literature revealed several candidate models, including the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) function, Spiess's conical volume delay function, the Singapore model, the Skabardonis-Dowling model, and the Highway Capacity Manual's model. A license plate method was applied to a sample of 50 arterial links located in the Twin Cities seven county metropolitan area, to obtain measurements of average travel time. Also obtained were the lengths of each link, measurements of traffic volume, and signal timing information. Default values for model parameters were obtained from the Twin Cities planning model's database. Using network default parameters, we found that the BPR and conical volume-delay models produced mean average percent errors (MAPE) of about 25%, while the Singapore and Skabardonis-Dowling models, using maximal site-specific information, produced MAPE values of around 6.5%. As site-specific information was replaced by default information the performance of the latter two models deteriorated, but even under conditions of minimal information the models produced MAPE values of around 20%. A cross-validation study of the Skabardonis-Dowling model showed essentially similar performance when predicting travel times on links not used to estimate default parameter values.
Access to Destinations: Twin Cities Metro-wide Traffic Micro-simulation Feasibility Investigation
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2008-05) Hourdos, John; Michalopoulos, Panos
The economic importance of effective traffic management becomes more and more evident as traffic demands increase. Faced with the negative effects of traffic congestion including higher transport costs, greater energy consumption, and increased driver delays, transportation agencies around the world areas have responded by building new roads and enhancing their traffic management systems. However, the high costs associated with these projects, and the possibility that improvements in different parts of a complex traffic management system may give rise to unforeseen interactions, have prompted many metropolitan areas to invest in the creation of metro-wide simulation systems that support the evaluation of alternative traffic management scenarios across an entire traffic network. Such undertakings are far from simple; even small-scale microscopic simulations require large amounts of high-quality data. The objectives of this project were to evaluate the feasibility of developing a traffic simulation system for the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, and to propose the most appropriate methodology for the design and implementation of such a system, taking into account local needs and capabilities.
Asking the Right Questions About Transportation and Land Use: Access to Destinations Research Summary No. 1
(University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, 2007-03-15) Center for Transportation Studies
This research summary serves as both an introduction to the Access to Destinations Study and a summary of the study's initial findings. It is the first in a planned series of research summaries that will present findings and policy implications to a broad audience of transportation stakeholders, policymakers, and others interested in the future of the transportation system. At the heart of the summary are the findings of the first Access to Destinations research report, published in November 2006. Report authors David Levinson and Ahmed El-Geneidy explored techniques for measuring accessibility (particularly the access of workers to jobs and of employers to labor) using automobiles as the primary mode of transportation. In addition to employment access, the researchers also looked at how accessibility can affect home prices and patterns of land use. Linking transportation to land use is one of the main goals of the Access to Destinations Study.
Measuring What Matters: Access to Destinations
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2010-08) Center for Transportation Studies
In what is likely to be an enduring period of constrained public resources, lawmakers and government executives will seek the best information possible for making policy choices and deciding where to make public investments. In a landmark series of studies known as Access to Destinations, the Center for Transportation Studies (CTS) at the University of Minnesota has opened up new frontiers of information for better policy and investment decisions.
A New Approach to Understanding and Measuring Transportation and Land Use: An Access to Destinations Study Research Brief
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2011-05) Center for Transportation Studies
This research brief explains the Access to Destinations study.
Using Twin Cities Destinations and Their Accessibility as a Multimodal Planning Tool Report
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2012-03) Anderson, Paul; Levinson, David; 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 Stochastic User Equilibrium (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 traffic analysis zone (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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