2021

Shanna Trichês Lucchesi (slucchesi@gmail.com), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
João de Abreu e Silva, Instituto Superior Técnico Universidade de Lisboa

The increase of peer-to-peer short therm rents for tourists, like Airbnb, have been conveyed as responsible for real estate prices inflation in touristic cities. However, urban environment characteristics can contribute to price appreciation. In this study, we aim to test if tourists and dwellers are willing to pay to stay or live in places with high walkability and how the walkability indicator affects real estate sales price and Airbnb daily rates. We also tested how the presence of Airbnb listings affects real estate prices in Lisbon city and how to be located in the more valued zones of the cities increase Airbnb rates. After a test for spatial dependence, GWR models present the best formulation to account for the local and continuous spatial variability. The results show a positive effect in both relations tested: Airbnb affecting real estate price and vice-versa.  The proximity the public transportation systems are also valued for tourist and residents, although the population density presented a negative effect on the price, showing that Libon city has areas for tourist and areas for dwellers.

Gabriella Abou-Zeid, Portland State University
Kristina Currans (curransk@email.arizona.edu), University of Arizona
Chris McCahill, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Nicole Iroz-Elardo, University of Arizona
Kelly Clifton, Portland State University
Susan Handy, University of California, Davis
Irene Pineda, University of Arizona

Parking supply is one of the most neglected elements of the built environment in travel behavior research, despite evidence linking parking with vehicle use. As transportation impacts of new development are increasingly measured by vehicle miles traveled (VMT), explicitly connecting parking characteristics with vehicle travel is necessary to better inform transportation and land use policy. In this paper, we begin to address this research gap and explore the relationship between constrained parking and household VMT. Utilizing the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) California add-on sample, we estimate residential parking constraint for households in Los Angeles County. Then, we develop a two-level model framework. Level 1 (Cost) models estimate travel costs, represented by vehicle ownership and commute distance, as a function of parking constraint, the built environment, and demographics. Level 2 (Demand) models regress household’s total and homebased-work VMT on predicted travel costs, controlling for temporal and environmental characteristics. To further explore the relationship between parking and VMT by place type, we applied Level 1 and Level 2 models to develop a suite of scenarios for typical households in Los Angeles County. Our findings support the hypothesis that the built environment (including parking) influences VMT through travel costs (vehicle ownership). Results from scenarios analysis reveal the constraint of parking accounts for an approximate 10-23 percentage-point decrease in VMT within each place type. Finally, implications for practice and future research are presented.

Richard Boateng, Virginia Department of Transportation
John Miller (john.miller@vdot.virginia.gov), Virginia Department of Transportation

Accessibility, the number of time-decayed jobs available to each zone within a region, is often considered when prioritizing candidate transportation investments.  This paper demonstrates how to compute accessibility using commonly available resources and identifies strategies needed to render calculations feasible and transparent.           For the first goal, computational solutions include developing a semi-automated method to import legacy transportation networks; automating turn prohibitions; using an algorithm to check for incorrectly formed service areas that sometimes occur in a random fashion with GIS software; and creating, on a large scale, realistic centroid connectors.  Failure to use these approaches gives erroneous results:  not solving the problem of incorrectly formed service areas led to the region within 50 miles of a one-mile corridor (where improvements are proposed) having an accessibility almost 40 times higher than the correct value.           For the second goal, the influence area (i.e., catchment radius) matters most:  for one project, the forecast accessibility improvement drops by 80% if the area within 45 miles of the project, rather than the area within 15 miles, is the basis of the analysis.  Other decisions affect the forecast accessibility improvement by less:  the choice of the number of centroid connectors affects forecasts by an average of 23% (with a 10-mile influence area).  Choosing to eliminate negative net accessibility contributions, attributed to geometric approximations in the software, affects forecasts by less 21% (35 mile influence area or smaller).  Ranking five proposed investments, in terms of their forecast accessibility benefit, demonstrates the importance of documenting users’ computational choices.

Kristel Alons-Hoen, Fontys University of Applied Sciences
Guy Somers, Fontys University of Applied Sciences
Ron Van Duin, Technische Universiteit Delft
Rick Van Well, Fontys Hogescholen

This article describes the current status of synchromodal transport with an application of the synchromodal maturity model to several companies in different regions. The companies operate in The Netherlands and Belgium and in different roles: logistics service provider, shipper, forwarder, and inland operator. Accordingly, the maturity of data exchange, planning, and execution of transport are investigated, as well as, pricing process, decision-making power, relationship with partners, and relevant KPIs. It has been observed that companies are more mature with regards to synchromodality in the fields of KPI, data exchange, and collaboration. Furthermore, the (un)availability of intermodal transport might restrict companies from becoming more mature. In the Netherlands and Belgium, the maturity level in terms of synchromodality seems to be equal, where Belgium has a higher share of rail intermodal transport, and the Netherlands barge intermodal transport. Our future research will focus on further benchmarking the maturity levels of synchromodality in Europe as part of the Green Deal Europe. Keywords: Synchromodal transport, Netherlands, Belgium, Sustainable transport.

Binyam Reja, The World Bank
Marlon Boarnet, University of Southern California
Jifu Guo, Beijing Transport Institute
Hui Zhao, Beijing Transport Institute

Beijing’s subway system is one of the newest and most rapidly constructed transit systems in the world. As such, it provides an excellent opportunity to examine how mass transit systems can facilitate greater access to jobs, particularly in rapidly developing cities in middle-income countries. We measure the effect of the Metro expansion three ways: (i) changes in the fraction of the city’s residents and jobs that are near (500m and 1000m) a Metro station, (ii) changes in travel mode share, and (iii) changes in job access measures. Each class of measure shows that the Beijing Metro expansion increased access, and some measures (e.g. the fraction of persons and jobs near a Metro station) show large increases in access. Overall, the evidence shows that the expansion of Beijing’s Metro resulted in a marked increase in transit access, particularly into suburban areas situated well beyond Beijing’s 4th Ring Road. The infrastructure investment, coordinated with the rapid growth of the city, enabled the city to grow and decentralize in ways that maintained and improved transit job access. The expansion illustrates the potential for and importance of continued transit access beyond the central core of Chinese cities.