Browsing by Subject "travel behavior"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Mutually Reinforcing Relationships Between Bicycling and Infrastructure
    (2017-04) Schoner, Jessica
    Researchers have long sought evidence about whether dedicated bicycling infrastructure induces people to cycle, based on a supply-driven assumption that providing infrastructure causes the behavior change. However, supply inducing demand is only one of four theoretical relationships between bicycling and infrastructure. The aims of this research are twofold: 1. Develop a theoretical framework to identify and evaluate all of the possible relationships between bicycling and infrastructure and describe how these factors reinforce one another to shape diffusion of bicycling and infrastructure in cities; and 2. Develop and execute a research plan to empirically model selected hypotheses within the theoretical framework. The empirical portion of the dissertation tests the hypotheses that (1) bicycling infrastructure supply induces bicycling demand, and (2) bicycling demand induces additional demand. The research uses a series of cross-sectional tests at multiple points in time as well as lagged variable models to add a layer of temporal precedence to our otherwise cross-sectional understanding of associations between bicycling and infrastructure. The findings show persistent associations between infrastructure and bicycling over time, across geographies, and at both the individual and aggregate level. The association between bicycling and additional bicycling holds over time at the individual household level and for bike share membership. However, the tests failed to find evidence of bike share stations and activity affecting general population cycling rates. This dissertation provides a roadmap for future research into feedback loops between bicycling and infrastructure. It additionally provides practitioners with guidance on both the strengths and limitations of both infrastructure provision and socially-focused bicycling initiatives. Like most bicycling research, this dissertation is limited by the quality of data available for both bicycling behavior and infrastructure supply. Neither the data nor the tests performed are rigorous enough to infer causality; instead, the findings add strength and nuance to the existing body of literature.
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    Nice Ride Minnesota Program Evaluation Bemidji Bike Rental System
    (2015-03) Levinson, David M; Schoner, Jessica; Lindsey, Greg
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    Nice Ride Minnesota Program Evaluation: Minneapolis-St. Paul Bike Share System
    (2015-05) Schoner, Jessica; Lindsey, Greg; Levinson, David M
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    Space, money, Life-stage, and the allocation of time
    (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999) Levinson, David M
    Allocation of time to various activities is known to be a function of various demographic, socio-economic, seasonal, and scheduling factors. This paper examines those variables through exploration of the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, which has been inverted to track activity durations. The data are examined in single and multi-variate contexts. Two key issues are considered. First, to what extent does activity duration influence travel duration after controlling for activity frequency. This is tested with a set of models explaining travel duration. The data show activity duration does have positive and significant effects on travel duration, supporting recent arguments in favor of activity based models. Second, which is a more important effect in explaining the large changes in travel and activity patterns over the past thirty years accompanied by the increase in female labor force participation, the loss of discretionary time due to work, the change in metropolitan location, or the rise in per capita income. To examine this second question more rigorously, a choice model is constructed which examines both the decision to undertake an activity and the share of time within a 24 hour budget allocated to several primary activities: home, work, shop, and other activities. The utility functions for the activities are comprised of demographic, socio-economic, temporal, and spatial factors. The data also suggest that income and location have modest effects on time allocation compared with the loss of discretionary time due to working.