Travel Behavior – Page 3 – ACCESS Magazine

Skeptical Optimism in Transportation and Planning Research

Brian D. Taylor

I suspect that every one of Professor Melvin Webber's colleagues experienced The Furrowed Brow at one time or another. Offer an assertion on almost any topic, and Mel would employ The Furrowed Brow—an exceedingly earnest and quizzical expression he wore while peppering you with questions challenging your proposition in a methodical point-by-point fashion. Conventional wisdom of any sort was especially likely to elicit The Furrowed Brow—“good planning requires public participation,” “we can’t build our way out of congestion,” “urban travel is underpriced” or any similar statement was vulnerable. “Why?” Mel would ask. “How do we know?” “Are you sure?” On a few occasions he asked me “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” so many times in a row that I thought that he was pulling my leg. But he wasn’t.

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2017-05-30T22:06:18+00:00Categories: ACCESS Special Issue, Winter 2006-2007|Tags: Transportation Policy & Planning, Travel Behavior|

Introduction: We’re All Transportation Planners

Melanie Curry

For eighteen years, the University of California Transportation Center, with help from USDOT and Caltrans, has conducted and shared research on compelling transportation issues. During those years, the issues have grown in complexity right along with growth in population and sizes of cities.

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2017-05-30T22:17:48+00:00Categories: ACCESS 29, Fall 2006|Tags: Congestion, Environment, Travel Behavior|

Stuck at Home: When Driving Isn’t a Choice

Annie Decker

In 2004, I surveyed almost 800 disabled and elderly people and more than 500 caregivers in a California homecare program and asked about their transportation. The clients told story after story about feeling trapped in their homes and about being cut off from social networks, hospitals, and work. They provided a devastating snapshot of immobility shared throughout the country. The people I surveyed live in Contra Costa County, which lies across the bay from San Francisco and contains everything from small post-industrial cities and suburbs to agricultural areas. All the survey respondents receive care through California’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, the largest such program in the country. Overseen by the state government, administered in 58 counties, and funded in part by federal block grants, IHSS spends close to $4 billion a year on more than 360,000 clients who are elderly and frail or who live with disabilities.

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2017-05-30T22:18:29+00:00Categories: ACCESS 29, Fall 2006|Tags: Equity in Transportation, Transportation Policy & Planning, Travel Behavior|

Unnoticed Lessons From London: Road Pricing and Public Transit

Kenneth A. Small

Observers of city life have long looked to mass transit to create urban vitality. Transit is supposed to promote a healthy high-density street life within economically vital business and retail districts, and to concentrate new developments into attractive patterns. Above all, it’s supposed to limit road congestion without resorting to ugly high-volume roads everywhere. These goals have been frustrated by the limited ability of mass transit to attract travelers out of automobiles and by the enormous expense of building and operating mass transit. While many recently built transit systems have achieved some desirable effects, none have seriously lessened traffic congestion. Furthermore, few cities have been able to afford a system extensive enough to make more than a small change in urban form; and the share of trips by mass transit continues to fall virtually everywhere.

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2017-05-30T22:30:03+00:00Categories: ACCESS 26, Spring 2005|Tags: Regional & International Development, Transportation Finance & Pricing, Travel Behavior|

Scrapping Old Cars

Jennifer Dill

Starting in 1968, rising federal standards have been reducing emissions from new automobiles. But all vehicles deteriorate over time; their pollution-control equipment breaks down and emissions rise as they age. So fleet turnover is crucial to reducing total vehicle emissions. However, over the past thirty years turnover has slowed, and the personal vehicle fleet has been aging, in part because cars just last longer. Also, households today own more cars than they did thirty years ago. Instead of trading in an old car for a new one, they are now more likely to just add another, letting a teenager drive the older one or perhaps keeping it as a back-up. In 1970 only three percent of the automobiles on the road were fifteen years old or older; in 2001 sixteen percent were fifteen or older.

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2017-05-30T22:44:38+00:00Categories: ACCESS 24, Spring 2004|Tags: Environment, Transportation Safety, Travel Behavior|

Older Drivers: Should We Test Them Off The Road?

Sandi Rosenbloom

On July 16, 2003, a disoriented older person drove at high speed down a Santa Monica street closed for a farmer’s market. His car traveled almost three blocks, killing ten people and seriously injuring scores of others before coming to a stop. Editorials throughout the nation immediately demanded that all older drivers be subject to regular and rigorous retesting.

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2017-05-30T22:45:21+00:00Categories: ACCESS 23, Fall 2003|Tags: Transportation Safety, Travel Behavior|

As Jobs Sprawl, Whither The Commute?

Randall Crane and Daniel G. Chatman

The most transparent trend in metropolitan areas is the decentralization of jobs and housing into the suburbs and beyond. Scholars blame sprawl for many things, ranging from car-generated air pollution to commute-induced social alienation. But what do we know about its effects on travel behavior? According to conventional wisdom, people are driving farther to work these days—but supporting evidence is thin. It’s not clear whether homes and jobs are growing farther apart or closer, nor which industries and occupations are dispersing most or least. Here we tackle one key unanswered question: How does job sprawl affect average commute length?

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2017-05-30T22:45:32+00:00Categories: ACCESS 23, Fall 2003|Tags: Jobs‚ Economy‚ and Transportation, Regional & International Development, Travel Behavior|

Driving Less

Susan Handy

Besides having to use our air conditioner only occasionally now, one of the nicest things about moving to Davis, California, last year after nine years in Austin, Texas, has been the biking. Before the end of our second week here, we had bought a bike trailer so we could commute by bike to campus with our two pre-schoolers in tow. The purchase was a sort of initiation rite: the city of Davis estimates there are more bikes in Davis than people, and I suspect that family-oriented Davis accounts for a significant share of all bike trailers sold in the US. I confess that over the past year we didn’t always bike to campus. But in that time we put less than five thousand miles on our primary car, and got some exercise along the way.

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2022-09-28T23:11:03+00:00Categories: ACCESS 23, Fall 2003|Tags: Travel Behavior|

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Travel Patterns Among Welfare Recipients

Paul Ong and Douglas Houston

Welfare reform ended America’s public assistance program as we knew it, transforming it from an income-entitlement program to an employment-assistance program. Following its enactment, welfare rolls dropped by more than half, from about 12 million in 1994 to just over 5 million in late 2001. Fortunately, the majority of those who left public assistance found work. Nevertheless, welfare reform still faces a large, and largely unrecognized, problem.

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2017-05-30T23:09:03+00:00Categories: ACCESS 21, Fall 2002|Tags: Equity in Transportation, Travel Behavior|

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Unlimited Access, Prepaid Transit at Universities

Jeffrey R. Brown, Daniel Baldwin Hess, and Donald Shoup

Imagine a transportation program that increases transit ridership, reduces traffic congestion, saves energy, cleans the air, and costs very little. Many American colleges offer such a program, and they have given it a variety of names—such as BruinGO, UPass, ClassPass, and SuperTicket. We refer collectively to these programs as Unlimited Access. Unlimited Access turns student identification cards into public transit passes. The university pays the transit agency an annual lump sum based on expected student ridership, and the transit agency accepts student identification cards as transit passes. For every student on any day, a bus ride to campus (or anywhere else) is free. Unlimited Access is not free transit, but is instead a new way to pay for transit.

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2017-05-30T23:05:52+00:00Categories: ACCESS 19, Fall 2001|Tags: Transportation Finance & Pricing, Transportation Policy & Planning, Travel Behavior|