Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Pedestrian crashes represent about 40% of total fatal crashes in low-income developing countries. Although many pedestrian crashes in these countries occur at unsignalized intersections such as roundabouts, studies focusing on this issue are limited. The objective of this study was to develop safety performance functions for pedestrian crashes at modern roundabouts to identify significant roadway geometric, traffic, and land use characteristics related to pedestrian safety. Detailed data, including various forms of exposure, geometric and traffic characteristics, and spatial factors such as proximity to schools and to drinking establishments were collected from a sample of 22 modern roundabouts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, representing about 56% of such roundabouts in Addis Ababa. To account for spatial correlation resulting from multiple observations at a roundabout, both the random effect Poisson (REP) and random effect negative binomial (RENB) regression models were estimated. Model goodness-of-fit statistics revealed a marginally superior fit of the REP model to the data compared with the RENB model. Pedestrian crossing volume and the product of traffic volumes along major and minor roads had significant and positive associations with pedestrian crashes at roundabouts. The presence of a public transport (bus or taxi) terminal beside a roundabout was associated with increased pedestrian crashes. Although the maximum gradient of an approach road was negatively associated with pedestrian safety, the provision of a raised median along an approach appeared to increase pedestrian safety at roundabouts. Remedial measures were identified for combating pedestrian safety problems at roundabouts in the context of a developing country.

Big cities in China are reforming their old downtown areas and demolishing substandard housing. The government relocates residents to large-scale residential areas on the city periphery, where the residents often find transport service unsatisfactory. However, in the search for policies that could be applied to ease this problem, there were no studies supplying effective quantitative forecasts that assessed improvements in travel quality in such areas. To provide a policy scenario forecast that could measure travel quality, one that is also subject to the so-called transit priority strategy, this study takes the case of Jinhexincheng, Shanghai, China, analyzes its residents’ characteristics, estimates a mode choice mixed logit model, and applies the model to six policy scenario forecasts. Consumer surplus is calculated as the travel quality metric; mode shares are calculated as the transit priority metric. Results show that central city migrants and the others are similar in gender, education, years living locally, and transportation-related decisions, despite their different motives for moving to the area. People are different in age, in whether they have Shanghai permanent residency, in apartment ownership, and in years living in Shanghai. In all possible mode choice logit models, there is no sign of different mode preferences; so in the policy scenario forecasts, they are considered the same. Of all six sets of possible policy scenarios, building retail closer has the highest consumer surplus increase—thus, it improves travel quality the most. Meanwhile, it also has an acceptable transit share. This means the scenario is not against transit priority. In future planning, this policy should be the first considered.

As mobility has increasingly become a vehicle for producing meaning and culture, and public transport has traditionally formed a dense and diverse social climate in which social interactions habitually occur, assessing the relationship between social climate and transit use is extremely important, especially in the younger populations that will shape the future of transport systems. This study proposes a behavioral framework founded on the theory of planned behavior and the social climate model. The study presents a tailor-made, web-based survey and a structural equation model for analyzing transit use as a function of attitudes toward public transport, subjective norms, social ambience in public transport, travel independence and autonomy, family (house) rules, and perceived quality of service. This study focuses on transit systems in cities in North and South America that have a much higher public transport ridership, tighter design standards in terms of personal space, and a higher degree of informal social interaction than transit systems in Europe, where previous studies have been conducted. Estimation results from a structural equations model show that (a) transit use frequency is significantly related to the perceived behavioral control of using transit and the social climate; (b) attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control are associated with perceived service quality; (c) gender differences exist in the user experience and appreciation of the social climate in transit; and (d) the residential social climate is linked to the transit social climate.

Over the past decades, many urban public transport modernization programs have been implemented in numerous cities in developing countries. One of the programs' main challenges has been to manage social aspects of a workforce that is characterized by high informality and vulnerability. Despite the importance of the challenge, there is little documented knowledge about these labor transformation processes; the literature has focused mainly on technical, institutional, organizational, and regulatory changes. This research contributes to closing the knowledge gap on this key aspect of the modernization of urban public transport. International experiences of labor transformation, within the urban public transport sector as well as in other sectors of activity, were analyzed. By identifying successful policies, lessons learned, and best practices transferable to urban public transport programs, one can provide decision makers with better tools to inform and improve the design and implementation of labor insertion and training components. These tools can reduce both the costs and social risks of projects. The results of this work suggest adoption of an integral approach that considers both active and passive labor market policies. Programs should include training for new skills, both to reinsert workers in the new modernized system and to send workers to available jobs in other sectors. This process requires in-depth information on the current and desired skills of the workers involved to define the training requirements needed to cover the capacity gap. Projects should also be linked to existing training institutions in order to increase efficiency through access to complementary technical and financial resources.

This research sought to model traffic accidents in the bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Bogotá, Colombia. For each BRT station, 35 variables related to system flows, infrastructure, service, surroundings, and socio-economic context were tested. After a selection process, a set of 11 explanatory variables was obtained and used in the development of generalized linear models (Poisson and negative binomial models) and a neural network model. The results showed that the neural network model had better predictability indicators than did those obtained by the Poisson and negative binomial models. Additionally, the negative binomial regression model did not produce better predictions than did the Poisson regression model. Finally, a scenario analysis was developed from the most relevant variables: bus flow, number of accesses, and proximity to at-grade vehicular intersections.

The objectives of this study were to identify the factors affecting the pedestrian level of service (LOS) at signalized intersection crosswalks under mixed traffic conditions and to develop a suitable method for estimating pedestrian LOS. The important factors influencing pedestrian LOS at crosswalks were summarized: turning traffic, through traffic, number of pedestrians, and pedestrian delay. In the Highway Capacity Manual method, pedestrian delay can be calculated by Webster's delay model, which assumes that pedestrians arrive at a uniform rate and comply with the signal at an intersection. However, that assumption is not suitable for the Chinese scenario. A pedestrian delay model was developed by considering nonuniform arrival rates and noncompliant behavior under mixed traffic conditions. The data collected by video and a questionnaire survey include information on 1,257 participants' real-time sense of comfort and safety when crossing five selected intersections and on the operational characteristics of the intersections. With perceived LOS as a dependent variable, Pearson correlation analysis and linear regression techniques were explored to determine the significant factors affecting LOS. To overcome the limitations of linear regression techniques, cumulative logistic regression was done to develop a model that fits mixed traffic conditions in China—a model that can predict the probability of responses within each LOS on the basis of a combination of explanatory variables. The results showed that the cumulative logistic model fit the survey data better than the linear regression model and produces LOS A for the crosswalks.

This research examined the evaluation of service quality in the public bicycle system (PBS) in Hangzhou, China, along with a measurement of user satisfaction, and of how an individual's perceived satisfaction influenced his or her PBS use. A 30-item PBS service quality scale was first developed and then applied to the empirical study of PBS service in Hangzhou. On the basis of a finally validated sample of 231 responses, an item-based PBS service quality assessment and an individual-based satisfaction assessment were obtained with a Rasch model. Thereafter, individual satisfaction was introduced as one of the explanatory variables in modeling PBS customers' frequency of use in a logistic regression approach. According to the analysis, environmental factors, such as nighttime illumination and shade along the bicycle way, and service factors, such as convenient withdrawal of the deposit, proper handling of customer complaints, and an increase in station density, were thought to be in most urgent need of improvement by the interviewed Hangzhou PBS users. The respondents tended to give positive marks to the PBS service in Hangzhou, with a quantitative measure of 1.49 ± 0.31, in a range of [-7.74, 7.89] [all in the log-odds unit (logit)]. The present work also proved that a one-unit increase in user-perceived satisfaction would increase the likelihood of a user's moving into a higher use-frequency level, as defined in the study, by almost 35%.

This paper examines the market for motorcycle taxi services in Bangkok, Thailand, in terms of economic rent and the effects of such rent on fares. Three sources of monopoly rent in motorcycle taxi services are identified. Locational rent is attributed to the level of accessibility that is specific to the location of a motorcycle taxi stand. Such locations are limited in terms of accessibility, with few locations that can be substituted with another. The quota rent is arbitrarily created by rent-seeking activities, that is, by setting a quota on the number of operators in each location. Territorial rent is created by restricting the service area for each operator group. Depending on the behavior of the so-called influential people, the monopoly can be either enforced or eroded. A regression analysis of fare data provides evidence that supports the hypothesis of locational and territorial rents. Locational rent decreases as a motorcycle taxi stand is located farther away from a rail transit station. Motorcycle taxi groups with demarcated territories command a fare premium, which may indicate territorial rent. Some stands enjoy a degree of monopoly where there are limited substitute feeder transport modes; stands located near bus stops also command a fare premium because of accessibility. This situation implies that bus services do not compete with motorcycle taxis but provide complementary services. The additional economic rent created by new transit systems is unfairly captured by operator groups and influential people. It is suggested that a competitive market be created for motorcycle taxi services, with value-capture measures that are intended to create a more efficient and fairer feeder transport system.

As a response to the emergence of multicity urban areas, Chinese governments began to adopt the American concept of a metropolitan area to frame strategies for spatial development and planning. Chinese metropolitan areas, however, lack U.S.-style metropolitan planning organizations that can engage multiple municipal governments in metropoliswide policy making, planning, and investment. With the Pearl River Delta's Guangzhou–Foshan metropolitan area in China as the example, this paper examines how a governing arrangement has emerged in the process of transportation planning and assesses its effectiveness in addressing the metropolitanwide need for transportation accessibility. The successes of metro transit and an annual toll pass are in contrast with limited progress in taxi management and arterial road projects, which points to the need for fine-tuning the governing arrangement.

In the developing world, with increases in population, the number of vehicles is increasing tremendously. Traffic safety on roads has become a major concern even with advancements in technology and infrastructure. Traffic safety assessments and accident prediction based on accident data is a reactive approach. There are known drawbacks related to the reliability of accident data, especially in developing countries with large populations, such as India. It is, however, unethical to wait for accidents to occur before drawing statistically accurate conclusions regarding safety impacts. To overcome this impediment, one needs to develop accurate models that rely on surrogate safety measures (SSMs) for effective safety evaluations. The main advantage associated with the use of these models is that they can model crashes more frequently than in the real world and thereby imply an efficient and more statistically reliable proximal measure of traffic safety. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of management measures on traffic safety at a three-arm uncontrolled intersection with the use of microsimulation modeling under mixed traffic conditions. This examination was done by developing a unique methodology of measuring one SSM, postencroachment time (PET). This paper describes improvement in the accuracy of crash predictions by proposing a methodology to calculate PET.

In recent years, bicycle-sharing systems (BSSs) have been getting more and more popular in many cities all over the world, particularly in developing countries. However, a significant operating problem was the imbalance that occurred in the distribution of bicycles, especially in large-scale BSSs during peak hours. This problem could significantly reduce the level of service and number of potential users. To improve the level of service of BSSs, the necessity of redistribution was analyzed, and an operational redistribution model (ORM) that could deal with large-scale redistribution was developed. The objective of the ORM was to minimize the generalized operation costs of BSSs, which were the penalty cost of unserved user demand and the cost of redistribution of bicycles. The overall system performance was analyzed under several scenarios. The results demonstrated that an ORM could effectively improve the level of service of a BSS and could provide a detailed work plan for each redistribution truck to implement. For redistribution in a large-scale BSS, the partition of subzones was important to achieve a high level of service with relatively low generalized costs. In addition, an optimal number of subzones could be found through the scenario-based optimization process.

This study used a lens of accessibility to examine trends in spatial development in the greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, area over the past two decades. The analysis utilized remote sensing data collected over three time periods in Buenos Aires and automobile and transit employment accessibility measures that were calculated with the use of an open-source accessibility tool to analyze the area's spatial growth patterns. The employment accessibility of different modes of travel in Buenos Aires was calculated. It was noted that, although the transit system provided high employment accessibility to the center city, as well as to the southwest and south of the city, few developments were built in these areas. Most of the developments were built on the periphery of the city, which offered poor transit employment accessibility. The research focused on the development of different development types, such as gated communities, social housing, and informal settlements, and the employment accessibility of the development locations. This information was used to assess the accessibility efficiency of growth in greater Buenos Aires, as well as the effective size and distribution of the area's labor market. How spatial growth affected accessibility for different segments of the population was examined. Policy implications are drawn and possible elements of an integrated regional-use transport strategy are described.

User perception strongly influences transportation mode choice. Two case study cities, Kharagpur and Asansol, India, with different urban characteristics and bicycle patronage, were selected for analysis to capture the effects of urban characteristics such as city size, structure, economy, and demographic patterns on users' perception of bicycle mode choice. Eighteen factors influencing the choice of bicycling, either as motivators or as deterrents, were identified. Selected attributes were analyzed on the basis of user perception across different population subgroups to investigate their effect on the choice of bicycling as a travel mode. The Kruskal–Wallis H-test and the Mann–Whitney U-test were used to test for heterogeneity in user response across various population subgroups. The results of these tests indicated that perceptions of almost all attributes differed significantly across the two cities in this study. Hence, two models were developed with the use of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to extract the underlying structure of user perception. Two five-factor models were derived from the analyses, with one factor, perceived benefits, being common to both cities, reflecting a similarity in users' attitudes toward benefits associated with bicycling. On the basis of the EFA results and user ranking, most significant variables were identified. Among them, physical fitness was identified as a motivator common to both cities. Route visibility, road width, and on-street parking were identified as deterrents common to both cities, indicating common concerns about road infrastructure among users. These key attributes could be used to formulate bicycle-related policies and could be included in stated-choice experiments for the purpose of valuation.