Eric A. Morris

Walking the Walk: The Association Between Community Environmentalism and Green Travel Behavior

Problem: Reducing gasoline consumption could sharply curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Ongoing research seeks to document factors associated with green travel behavior, like walking and transit use. Purpose: We seek to determine whether green beliefs and values are associated with green travel behavior. We measure whether residents of communities with environmentalist attributes drive less, consume less gasoline, and are more likely to commute by private vehicle. We explore several channels through which green beliefs and values may affect travel behavior and vice versa. Methods: We drew our demographic, transportation, and built environment data from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing including the Public Use Microdata Sample and the 2001 National Household Travel Survey, and constructed our indicators of green ideology using voting records, political party membership, and data on hybrid auto ownership. We estimated ordinary least squares regression and linear probability models using both individual households and small areas as units of analysis. Results and conclusions: We find green ideology is associated with green travel behavior. People with green values are more likely than others to be located in communities with high population densities and proximity to city centers and rail transit stations, which are attributes conducive to environmentally friendly travel. We also find that residents of green communities engage in more sustainable travel than residents of other communities, even controlling for demographics and the effects of the built environment. Green ideology may cause green travel behavior because greens derive utility from conservation or because greens locate in, or create, areas with characteristics that promote sustainable travel. We also discuss the possibility that green travel behavior may cause green beliefs. Takeaway for practice: If greens self-select into dense, central, and transit-friendly areas, the demand for these characteristics may rise if green consciousness does. Alternatively, if these characteristics cause green consciousness, their promotion promises to increase green behavior. The implications of our finding that residents of green communities engage in more sustainable travel patterns than others depends on the causal mechanism at work. If greens conserve because they derive utility from it, then environmental education and persuasion may bring about more sustainable travel. Alternatively, if green travel behavior causes green beliefs, it is possible that attracting more travelers to alternate modes and reducing vehicle miles traveled may increase environmental consciousness, which may in turn promote other types of pro-environment behavior. Research support: None.

Activity patterns, time use, and travel of millennials: a generation in transition?

ABSTRACT Millennials, defined in this study as those born between 1979 and 2000, became the largest population segment in the United States in 2015. Compared to recent previous generations, they have been found to travel less, own fewer cars, have lower driver’s licensure rates, and use alternative modes more. But to what extent will these differences in behaviour persist as millennials move through various phases of the lifecycle? To address this question, this paper presents the results of a longitudinal analysis of the 2003–2013 American Time Use Survey data series. In early adulthood, younger millennials (born 1988–1994) are found to spend significantly more time in-home than older millennials (born 1979–1985), which indicates that there are substantial differences in activity-time use patterns across generations in early adulthood. Older millennials are, however, showing activity-time use patterns similar to their prior generation counterparts as they age, although some differences – particularly in time spent as a car driver – persist. Millennials appear to exhibit a lag in adopting the activity patterns of predecessor generations due to delayed lifecycle milestones (e.g. completing their education, getting jobs, marrying, and having children) and lingering effects of the economic recession, suggesting that travel demand will resume growth in the future.

Politics, Public Opinion, and Project Design in California Road Pricing

Growing numbers of decision makers are becoming more open to charging users of roads to fund transportation improvements, including transit alternatives. Despite significant progress, planners and policy makers still face many obstacles when considering road-pricing projects. This suggests that many of the factors that determine the success or failure of such proposed projects are not well understood and that proposed projects may include one or more aspects that prove to be deal breakers for key supporters. Four geographically diverse California road-pricing projects were selected for detailed case studies. Two projects that succeeded to implementation allow for an analysis of the critical political maneuvers made throughout the life of these priced facilities. One project that was ultimately halted in the later stages of planning and one planned but not yet implemented project are useful in evaluating what went wrong and what lessons can be drawn from these attempts to implement road pricing. The findings suggest that there are numerous ways to adjust pricing projects to gain public and political support. Generally, projects should try to provide more capacity, travel-time savings, and travel options, and avoid pricing facilities that have no free alternatives. Nevertheless, the manner in which projects are designated and revenues are used is highly context-specific, and some concessions in one area can improve acceptability in another. The future of road pricing is uncertain, and pricing projects should be considered only on a case-by-case basis, depending on local attitudes, the use of the revenue generated, and the specific facility in question.

Negotiating a Financial Package for Freeways How California's Collier-Burns Highway Act Helped Pave the Way for the Era of the American Interstate Highway

With the Collier–Burns Highway Act of 1947, California pioneered a new system of highway finance. In response to estimates of enormous highway needs in the postwar period, the state planned substantial increases in funding. The key debate was about who would pay what share. Legislators planned a significant increase in the motor fuel tax and a shift of more of the tax burden onto heavy vehicles, which inflicted most damage to roads. However, the proposal met with intense opposition from motorist groups, oil companies, and truckers. California eventually passed legislation that established the first-ever trust fund dedicating highway user tax revenue to roads, a law that was later copied widely, including by Congress in 1956, when the Interstate system was funded. The trucking industry in California defeated proposals to require it to shoulder more of the financial burden; this outcome too would be repeated elsewhere, including at the federal level. Finally, the inclusion of urban freeways eased the California legislation’s passage, and this provision also became a key element of the federal Interstate legislation. Thus, the legacy of Collier–Burns reaches well beyond California to influence transportation and public finance across the United States to the present day.

Who Really Bowls Alone? Cities, Suburbs, and Social Time in the United States

One potential consequence of suburbanization is weaker social connectedness. Based on data from the 2003 to 2013 American Time Use Surveys, this research uses difference of means t-tests, propensity score matching, and Tobit regression to assess whether suburban living is associated with less socializing than city living in mid-to-large American metropolitan areas. After controlling for personal characteristics, we find no meaningful difference in suburbanites’ and city dwellers’ time spent socializing across a wide range of social activities. Further, suburbanites and city dwellers spend a very similar amount of time traveling, and more time spent traveling is associated with more socializing, not less.

Cities, Automation, and the Self-parking Elephant in the Room

Over the next 25 years, automated vehicles could fundamentally alter not just how people travel, but where they choose to live and how cities form and grow. These changes and uncertainty about their timing, scale, and nature present substantial challenges for the city planners, traffic engineers, and other public officials who need to make regulatory and investment decisions that will coincide with the shift from humanto computer-driven vehicles. For example, today’s decision to invest in a new rail line will likely require five-to-ten years of planning and construction and have a service life of another 30-to-50 years. Over this same period, self-driving buses and cars may have substantially changed the underlying nature of the demand for, and provision of, public transportation. Similarly, today’s justification for a highway investment or road widening may look out of touch, given expectations about how vehicle automation could increase the number and speed of vehicles that can move on each highway lane. In this essay, we summarize some of the technological and behavioral uncertainties that limit our ability to predict when and how vehicle automation will affect cities. We then present a simple framework for planning under the uncertain conditions presented by autonomous vehicles, and conclude with a discussion of parking policy. Whether automated vehicles lead to revolution in shared mobility, or a substantial increase in singleor even zero-occupancy car travel, the relationship between parking and shops, housing, and offices will change. Parking policy is also one of the few areas of the transportation system where local municipalities have much direct control. Most importantly, there is already a strong case for parking reform in the absence of automated vehicles.

Is a Fixer-Upper Actually a Downer? Homeownership, Gender, Work on the Home, and Subjective Well-being

Abstract This article investigates whether homeownership provides psychological benefits, particularly as mediated through the act of working on the dwelling. It examines whether work on the home potentially increases subjective well-being (SWB) for home occupants because such work improves the dwelling or because the work is fulfilling and promotes feelings of mastery and control. It also investigates whether homeowners are more likely to perform such work compared with renters. The article finds that homeownership is associated with somewhat elevated life satisfaction, but that homeowners tend to experience less intense positive affect than renters. Homeowners spend much more time working on the home than renters. Strong links between work on the home and life satisfaction are not found, but certain types of home work activities—such as interior or exterior decoration and repairs and yard work—tend to be experienced as psychologically meaningful. Gender also plays a role in the division of home labor and the psychological costs and benefits of homeownership and work on the home. Women are much more likely than men to clean the interiors of dwellings, an activity associated with poor affect. Men perform more of most of the other types of work on the home; in homeowning households these burdens tend to balance each other out, but in renting households there tends to be a dramatic disparity in terms of work on the home, raising concerns about gender inequity.

Social Media Data in Transportation

The Internet and the mobile phone continue to proliferate worldwide. As they become indispensable communication tools for people around the world, the usage of social media applications, like Twitter, INSTAGRAM, and Facebook, is becoming more popular every day. As social media includes postings about people’s daily activities, including travel, it can potentially be a rich source of data for supporting transportation planning and operations. Looking forward into the future, an abundance of new sensor devices such as in-vehicle sensors or handheld mobile devices will provide new sets of real-time data (e.g., on traveler locations, speeds, and routes), which could be integrated with social media data to further improve understanding of users’ behaviors and traffic conditions in real time. However, to take advantage of these data for transportation applications, we need to understand the characteristics of the data generated by a wide range of social media platforms and the methods that can be used to mine, organize, store, process, interpret, and communicate these data. Moreover, we must do so while ensuring the social media user privacy and the data security. This chapter discusses social media data characteristics that are relevant to transportation-related applications, and issues involving their use and analysis.

Where to Put the Port? The Free Harbor Fight and the Historical Development of Los Angeles

Los Angeles lacks a natural harbor. Moreover, in the 1880s, the rail line to its inadequate port at San Pedro was controlled by railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington. When his monopoly was threatened, Huntington planned a new port at Santa Monica built with federal money wrested from San Pedro. Huntington chose a site that guaranteed he would dominate the Santa Monica port. Congress ultimately chose to fund San Pedro instead. Hence, San Pedro Bay grew into one of the world’s great ports and Santa Monica was transformed into a glamorous beach resort, with powerful impacts on the region’s urban geography.