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Posts Tagged ‘San Jose State University’

Improving Pathways to Transit for Persons with Disabilities

Tuesday, September 6th, 2016
Figure 2. Sidewalk Zone Designations

Persons with disabilities can achieve greater freedom when they have full access to a variety of transit modes. Expanded access allows mobility and independence in their daily lives. But this can only be achieved when the pathways to transit – the infrastructure and conditions in the built environment – allow full access to transit stops, stations, and vehicles. Since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, many transit agencies and governmental jurisdictions have made significant progress in this area.

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Posted in Equity, Infra Views, Policy, Public Transportation, Transit

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Exploring Bicycle and Public Transit Use by Low-Income Latino Immigrants

Thursday, June 2nd, 2016
Figure 1. Mode Choice in the San Francisco Bay Area (weighted by population)

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
Immigration to the United States is growing. Over the next four decades, many immigrants will come from Latin America with few resources, relying on public transit, bicycling, and walking to meet their transportation needs. Previous research on low-income immigrant travel has relied on national surveys and qualitative analysis, which underrepresent disadvantaged population groups and slower modes of travel, or are unable to speak to broader patterns in the population. This study addresses additional research needs by exploring the travel behavior and experiences of low-income immigrants.

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Posted in Biking, Equity, Infra Views, Local, Public Opinion

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International Lessons for Promoting Transit Connections to High-Speed Rail Systems

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016
Figure 1. Number of Urban Bus Lines vs. Population ÷ Number of HSR Stations

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
The California High-Speed Rail (HSR) project has matured to the point that initial design of segments in the Central Valley was started in 2014, beginning the long process of completing the California HSR program. One significant concern that many communities involved in, or affected by, the California HSR project have is how to connect the new HSR passenger services to local urban transport, such as bus and light rail. The route and stations for the first segment of the HSR system are well known, but many questions remain about how HSR will be integrated into the existing (and future) California transportation system.

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Posted in Competitiveness, Global, High Speed Rail, Infra Views, Rail

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Funding Resilient Infrastructure in New Jersey: Attitudes Following a Natural Disaster

Thursday, March 3rd, 2016
Table 2. Attitude Toward Increasing Revenue for Protecting Vulnerable Areas

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
The objective of this research is to assess whether natural disasters and experience with damaged infrastructure affect views on whether public funding should be dedicated to protecting the vulnerability of communities. Survey data were collected via a random-digit dialing phone survey approximately four months after Superstorm Sandy with the explicit research purpose of gathering information on attitudes and opinions following a major disaster. This provides a unique opportunity to assess, under extreme events, whether the public supports increasing various tax revenues or floating a bond issue dedicated to reducing vulnerability.

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Posted in Aging Infrastructure, Climate Change, Funding, Infra Views, Local, Public Opinion

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Rod Diridon, Sr., Emeritus Executive Director, Mineta Transportation Institute

Tuesday, December 29th, 2015
Rod Diridon on The Infra Blog

Rod Diridon, Sr., served as executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute from 1995, four years after the Institute’s creation, until 2014 when he moved to Emeritus status. Mr. Diridon has chaired more than 100 international, national, state and local programs, most related to transit and the environment.

“The minimum gas prices around the world are more than double, sometimes triple, the United States…Now the public in America wants a gas tax increase: the polls show it. The polls show that if the gas tax increase will be used for transportation and infrastructure improvements, then the public supports it sometimes as high as 80%…But the U.S. can’t do it because Congress doesn’t have the courage.”

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Posted in Funding, Guests on The Infra Blog, National, Policy, Tax, The Infra Blog

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What Do Americans Think About Public Transit?

Thursday, August 6th, 2015

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
The analysis of the poll questions found that strong majorities of people believed that transit brings a number of specific benefits to their community, especially congestion relief and accessibility to vulnerable residents. Strong majorities also support improvements to transit as a general concept. However, fewer people support the general concept of increased spending on transit, and considerably fewer than half support raising any specific tax to increase transit funding, except for sales taxes, which usually enjoy majority support.

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Results of a Six-Year Transportation Funding Survey

Friday, July 3rd, 2015
Figure 1. Supporta Levels for the Tax Options Surveyed in 2015

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
This report contributes to the understanding of current public sentiment about increasing transportation taxes by presenting the results from the sixth year of an annual telephone survey investigating public opinion about a variety of transportation tax options at the federal level. The specific taxes tested were ten variations on raising the federal gas tax rate or creating a new mileage tax, as well as one option for creating a new federal sales tax.

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Posted in Infra Views, National, Public Opinion, Tax

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Passenger Flows in Underground Railway Stations and Platforms

Wednesday, June 24th, 2015
Figure 1. Conceptual Diagram of Rail Station Passenger Flow

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
Why people choose to travel by private car rather than by public transit is of major concern to transportation planners and transit operators. For some reluctant would-be riders, the answer might be summed up by the words of Yogi Berra when asked why he no longer patronized a popular St. Louis nightspot: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

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Posted in Infra Views, Public Transportation, Transit, Urban Planning

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Effects of Gas Prices on Transit Ridership

Monday, December 8th, 2014
Figure 3. Boston: Retail Gasoline Price and Unlinked Passenger Trips for Bus

MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE
Between 1999 and 2011 consumers in the U.S. experienced an unprecedented increase in and fluctuation of gasoline prices. In July 2008, gasoline prices exceeded $4 per gallon, marking the highest price in real value in U.S. history. In the same year, the nation’s transit ridership reached 10.7 billion trips, the highest level since the Federal- Aid Highway Act of 1956…The rising gasoline prices were considered to have resulted in substantial changes in travel behavior in terms of trip taking, choices of travel destinations, selection of vehicles for higher fuel efficiency, or travel mode. A change in travel mode from driving to transit results in a higher level of transit demand and ridership for transit agencies. With this background, gasoline price increases in the last decade have generated substantial interest in developing a better understanding of how people respond to fluctuations in gasoline prices—particularly with respect to switching modes from driving to public transit—so that transit agencies can better prepare for higher demand for their services during periods of increased gasoline prices.

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Fracking’s Water Footprint in West Virginia and Pennsylvania

Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
Figure 1: Horizontal Marcellus gas well permits in West Virginia and Pennsylvania

DOWNSTREAM STRATEGIES
SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
This report focuses on the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. While conventional gas production has been conducted here for decades, unconventional wells that utilize advances in horizontal drilling have grown considerably more common in the past decade. Nearly nine thousand horizontal Marcellus Shale natural gas wells have been permitted in these two states from 2005 to 2012, and more than eleven thousand such wells will likely be permitted by the end of 2013.

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Posted in Energy, Green, Infra Views, Inland Waterways, Local, Pollution, Sustainability

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