Carole Turley Voulgaris

A Taste for Transit? Analyzing Public Transit Use Trends among Youth

A Taste for Transit? Analyzing Public Transit Use Trends among Youth Anne E. Brown, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Kelcie Ralph Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University Carole Turley Voulgaris UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Abstract In the past decade, there has been much talk about a decline in driving among youth. This study examined whether this decline is associated with an increased reliance on public transit. To address this issue, 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data were used to analyze the relationship between age and transit use. Findings indicate that although young adults are more likely to ride transit than older adults, transit use among youth can be explained largely by (1) life cycle factors common among young people but unlikely to persist as they age, (2) higher levels of transit use among non-whites, who are disproportionately young, and (3) locational factors such as living in densely-developed neighborhoods that may or may not continue as young people age. Therefore, whereas transit habits established early in life may persist as young adults age, the data examined here suggest that such an outcome is far from assured. Keywords: Millennials, transit use, travel behavior Introduction Over the past decade, there has been much talk about a decline in auto travel among youth. Per-capita driving in the U.S. has dipped, with higher than average declines among teens and young adults (or Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2004), prompting some observers to conclude that youth are “ditching” cars for a more multimodal lifestyle that includes a greater reliance on public transit among other non-auto modes (Ball 2014; Blumenberg et al. 2012; Davis, Dutzik, and Baxandall 2012; Malcolm 2014; McDonald 2015). For example, a recent report published by the TransitCenter (2014) concludes, “The Millennial generation seems to be defying its sheltered, suburban upbringing by delaying the acquisition of a driver’s license and choosing transit. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers, who grew up using transit and Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016 49

Travel and the Built Environment: Insights Using Activity Densities, the Sprawl Index, and Neighborhood Types

There are many ways to evaluate the built environment, including measures of observable individual characteristics (such as activity density), continuous composite measures (such as the sprawl index), and categorically measured variables (such as neighborhood types). However, a systematic comparison of how well each of these three measurement types captures the influence of the built environment on travel behavior has not yet been undertaken. This lack presents a quandary for both researchers and practitioners who seek to quantify and describe the effects of the built environment on travel behavior. This paper assesses whether continuous, composite, or categorical measures provide more information and better-fitting models compared with measures of observable individual characteristics across four travel behaviors: vehicle miles traveled, walk trips, transit trips, and trip length. For each travel variable, four multivariate regression models were estimated with various measures of the built environment: activity density, sprawl index, neighborhood type, and combined sprawl index and neighborhood type. Both the sprawl index and the neighborhood-type models outperformed the activity density model. Moreover, a combined model with both the sprawl index and neighborhood types provided the best fit for all four travel behavior variables. These results suggest that both continuous and categorical composite variables provide unique and complementary information about how the built environment influences travel behavior. These findings underscore the importance of researchers’ decisions on how to represent the built environment quantitatively in models, because measurement decisions influence the understanding of how the built environment affects travel behavior.

Tired of Commuting? Relationships among Journeys to School, Sleep, and Exercise among American Teenagers

Public education policies that aim to improve educational outcomes can have the effect of increasing the distance that many students must travel to attend school. In this article, we use American Time Use Survey data to examine whether longer school commutes influence time spent on important health-promoting activities. We find school commute time to be strongly inversely related to time spent sleeping, and negatively related to time spent exercising for those with long commutes. Thus, increasing journey to school distances may have troubling public health implications for teens.

A TUF Sell: Transportation Utility Fees as User Fees for Local Roads and Streets

Currently, more than 1.5 million people in the United States contribute to the maintenance of their local roads and streets through transportation utility fees charged on their monthly municipal utility bills. The fees are assessed for each property based on a particular land-use characteristic (the fee’s basis). Although their use continues to spread, transportation utility fees have faced legal challenges that generally relate to the basis a city uses to assess the fee and have limited their widespread application. This article examines the bases used by 34 cities in the United States to implement transportation utility fees and discusses how each basis relates to the success of transportation utility fees in the cities that have implemented them and in other cities that may consider adopting them.

Planning for Pedestrian Flows in Rail Rapid Transit Stations: Lessons from the State of Current Knowledge and Practice

Decades of research have contributed to the development of standards and models to guide pedestrian-friendly transit station designs, although it is not at all clear from the literature how these tools are collectively used in practice. To address this, we interviewed 15 experts in transit station design. Based on the themes identified in these interviews, we conducted an online census of all 16 transit agencies in North America with rapid rail transit systems with below-grade stations. We found that although standards and codes are most likely to guide design decisions, the three types of tools (published standards, deterministic models, and microsimulation models) are as likely to complement as substitute for one another. We recommend that such analytical models of passenger flow should consider explicitly how practitioners employ them in practice to better link future refinements to the more “pedestrian” world of engineering and design practice.