In collaboration with the Advocacy Council for Tribal Transportation and other tribal members, University of Minnesota researchers monitored 10 roadway sites specified as safety risks for pedestrians on four rural Minnesota reservations. Analysis of videos and group brainstorming produced a shortlist of potential countermeasures that could be incorporated into future highway projects.
Continue reading Understanding Rural Pedestrian Travel Behavior and Safety IssuesTag Archives: travel behavior
Census report looks at U.S. commuting patterns; U of M report analyzes Twin Cities’ patterns
A recent report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau looks at commuting patterns by U.S. workers in 2013 using data from the American Community Survey. It highlights differences in rates of automobile commuting by key population characteristics such as age, race, ethnicity, and the types of communities in which workers live.
One finding of note: young people in big cities were much less likely to drive to work in 2013 than they were several years earlier. For instance, urban workers aged 25 to 29 showed about a 4-percentage-point decline in automobile commuting between 2006 and 2013.
You can also find an extensive analysis of commuting behavior that was produced locally. In a recent multifaceted study sponsored by the Metropolitan Council and MnDOT, U of M researchers analyzed travel behavior over time in the Twin Cities.
The extensive five-part study report is based on the rich set of data produced by the Met Council’s Travel Behavior Inventory household travel survey. David Levinson, RP Braun/CTS Chair in the U’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering, was the study’s principal investigator.
The five components of the report examine:
- Changes in travel duration, time use, and accessibility
- Changes in walking and biking
- The effect of transit quality of service on people’s activity choices and time allocation
- Changes in travel behavior by age cohort
- Telecommuting and its relationship with travel and residential choices
For more information:
- Download the Twin Cities’ Travel Behavior Over Time report
- Download the U.S. Census Bureau report: Who Drives to Work? Commuting by Automobile in the United States: 2013
- Read more about the Travel Behavior Over Time study in CTS Catalyst:
New video highlights how U of M transportation research makes a difference
CTS aired a new video—”How does University of Minnesota research make a difference?”—at its Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon on April 6.
The video highlights a variety of U of M research initiatives from 2014-2015. Projects featured focus on hardier roadside grasses, tribal transportation safety, left-turn safety, maximizing system performance, clear roads in winter, well-rested truckers, increased transit ridership, more efficient buses, safer teen drivers, understanding travel behavior, better asphalt pavements, and healthy lakes and rivers.
Travel behavior study shows drivers are spending less time traveling
Something unprecedented has happened to Americans’ travel patterns. Even before the recent recession, total distance traveled per person had started to decline, and the rate of total vehicle travel had begun to steadily decrease as well.
In a new five-part series of research reports sponsored by MnDOT and the Metropolitan Council, University of Minnesota researchers are delving into a set of rich data encompassing more than four decades of travel behavior surveys to enable the region’s transportation planners to better understand how its residents make decisions about whether, when, where, and why to travel.
In the first study, researchers examined how changes in the accessibility of destinations—such as jobs, shopping, and leisure activities—have changed travel behavior in the past 20 years.
“We started with a detailed analysis of travel surveys conducted by the Metropolitan Council in 1990, 2000, and 2010,” says David Levinson, the study’s principal investigator and RP Braun/CTS Chair in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering. “We found that people are spending slightly less time in motion and more time at home. We also found that accessibility is a significant factor in determining not only travel behavior but overall time budgeting in general. In short, each person has to decide how they will use the time allotted to them each day, and many of those decisions are directly related to the transportation and land-use systems in place.”
A deeper look into the data sheds additional light on the relationship between accessibility and travel behavior. For example, trip durations for workers have gone up for all activities between 1990 and 2010. More noticeably, distances for trips have increased markedly: workers take jobs farther from their homes and shop farther from their homes. Travel speeds also increased for the average worker, due to more travel on faster suburban roadways that carry a larger share of all travel. In contrast, for non-workers, trip durations and overall travel time have gone down.
“Interestingly, although time, distance, and speed per trip has generally risen for workers, the number of those trips is declining,” Levinson says. “As a result, overall, fewer miles are being traveled and less time is being allocated to travel.”
Total time spent shopping also decreased for workers and for males, likely caused in part by an increase in online commerce. “The Internet has provided electronic accessibility, much as the transportation network has in the material world,” Levinson explains. “It helps to facilitate commerce, communication, education, and leisure. This may lead to a decreased need for people to travel, and account for more time spent at home.”
Jonathan Ehrlich, planning analyst with the Metropolitan Council, says the research “helps us get more value from our travel surveys and will aid in understanding how travel is changing, and what the risks are in the assumptions and models we use for planning and forecasting.”
The findings will prove useful not just for Twin Cities transportation planners but for planners and engineers worldwide. “Our models can be easily adapted to data from other cities or for other activities besides work,” Levinson says. “This creates an approach that can be used to gauge the impact of a transportation project from an accessibility standpoint and determine how that project will translate into time allocation.”
Other parts of the study will look at changes in telecommuting behavior over time, the effect of transit quality of service on people’s activity choices and time allocation, changes in travel behavior by age cohort, and analysis of bicycling and walking in light of land-use and transportation system changes.
Crossroads will feature coverage of these projects as they are completed.
Changing demographics and travel choices may shape a very different future
Though no one can predict the future, thinking about how today’s changes may shape the future of transportation in our country is more important now than ever before.
“It’s critical that we understand the significance of things that are taking place and prepare for what may come,” said former Utah Department of Transportation CEO John Njord in the opening session of the 25th Annual CTS Transportation Research Conference. “For us to be relevant in the transportation business, at a minimum we have to be adaptable to change, and ideally we want to be leading change in the transportation industry.”
In his current position at Tom Warne and Associates, Njord has gained an in-depth understanding of the trends affecting the future of transportation in the United States while spearheading the Transportation Research Board’s “Foresight” project—part of the organization’s forward-looking NCHRP Report 750 Series. The project addresses a wide range of topics, including: What if the oil-fueled auto era ends and revenue from gas taxes dries up? What if engineering practices must be upgraded to ensure resiliency to natural disasters as global warming continues? What if technology such as self-driving cars eliminates or reduces the need for human drivers? What if tomorrow’s economy requires radically different freight patterns?
Perhaps most significantly, the project explores the possibility that Americans are losing their appetite for driving. Vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) per capita been dropping since 2004, without any signs of recovery. “It’s impossible to know whether that number will start growing again, stay flat, or continue to drop,” Njord said.
Other trends make the future outlook equally complex. In 50 years the United States will likely be home to 100 million more people, so even if VMT per person stays flat or declines, it’s likely total VMT will be larger than it is today. The population is also aging: by 2030, 20 percent of the population will be over 65 and will likely drive less. In addition, Millenials are staying home longer and waiting until later in life to get married and have children—all of which affects their travel behavior.
To help transportation planners consider all possible futures, the Foresight project encourages the use of multiple-scenario planning. “We need to begin considering all the possible scenarios and generating plans that are independent and distinct from one another,” Njord advised. “The act of thinking about these things is fundamentally important, because the shift that is now taking place means we’re going to have to do things much differently in the next 50 years than what we’ve done in the past 50 years.”
Following Njord’s presentation, a panel of experts discussed how the the Foresight project could relate to what’s happening in the Twin Cities region. An article summarizing their comments is available in the July issue of Catalyst.
Crossroads 