Ilir Bejleri

Understanding and Mapping Elements of Urban Form That Affect Children's Ability to Walk and Bicycle to School: Case Study of Two Tampa Bay, Florida, Counties

In 1969, 48% of students walked or biked to school. By 2001, that proportion had fallen to 15%. Increasing childrens active travel to school is important for a variety of reasons, including the rising rates of childhood obesity and increasing fuel costs. Recent studies indicate that elements of the built environment affect the amount of time people engage in physical activity. This study evaluates two indicators of the urban form as measures of walkability potential: street connectivity and residential density around elementary schools in Pasco and Hillsborough counties in Florida. By means of controlling for school age on the basis of the growth management legislation history in Florida, four growth eras are compared. Pedestrian sheds of ½- and 1-mi radii around school points are used as study areas. These indicators offer insight into the evolution of the urban form around elementary schools and its implications for students’ ability to walk to school. Preliminary findings suggest that walkability indicators in the vicinity of elementary schools built before 1950 exhibited high levels of street connectivity and residential density. These values declined consistently until stricter school planning legislation was enacted, when values started to increase and sometimes approached pre-1950 levels. This pattern is stronger, however, in Hillsborough County.

Integrating Information Technology in Efficient Transportation Decision Making: Florida's Environmental Screening Tool

Floridas Efficient Transportation Decision Making (ETDM) process, developed in response to the U.S. Congress Environmental Streamlining initiative, is a new way of accomplishing transportation planning to achieve early agency participation, efficient environmental review, and meaningful dispute resolution. ETDM is accomplished through the environmental screening tool (EST), a technological solution to integrate resource and project information from multiple sources, to provide quick and standardized analysis of environmental and sociocultural effects of proposed projects, and to support effective communication of results to all stakeholders, including the public. EST was developed through a methodology of rapid software prototyping, frequent user feedback, and flexible architecture designed to adapt to the ETDM evolution process. This development resulted in an Internet-accessible interactive database and mapping application that integrates a georelational database of ETDM projects, more than 200 environ...

Understanding and mapping institutional impediments to walking and bicycling to school: a case study of Hillsborough County, Florida

The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) legislation calls for the establishment of a Safe Routes to School program in each state that is funded for the five fiscal years from 2005 through 2009. States are required to spend between 70% and 90% for infrastructure and between 10% and 30% on noninfrastructure programs. For each of these components of the program to be successful, the built environment of the community surrounding the school needs to support all modes of travel. Much of the emphasis in Safe Routes to School programs has focused on increasing walking in neighborhoods with the characteristics that support walking, such as high-density residential areas close to schools and connected grid and pedestrian amenities. Using Hillsborough County, Florida, as a case study, this paper focuses on barriers to walking and bicycling to school by examining how decisions about school siting, school attendance boundaries, street network characteristics, and other factors controlled by local governments and school boards affect the potential for children to walk to school.

Florida's Efficient Transportation Decision-Making Process: Laying the Technology Foundation

In response to “environmental streamlining” legislation passed by the U.S. Congress as part of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, Florida has undertaken efforts to implement more efficient transportation planning and environmental review. These efforts have led to the development of the Efficient Transportation Decision-Making Process (ETDM Process), which redefines how Florida will accomplish planning and project development. A rather unique aspect of Florida’s streamlining approach is the integration of information technology as a vital foundation for the process. The development of Florida’s ETDM Process is described and evaluated, focusing on the information technology component. This component was developed as an interactive Internet-accessible geographic information system database. It integrates resource and project data from multiple sources into one standard format, provides quick and standardized analysis of the effects of the proposed projects on the human and natural environment, and supports the effective communication of results among all stakeholders, including the public. The use of technology is expected to reduce the cost of agency participation in the process and produce better, timely transportation decisions that reflect the proper balance among land use, mobility, and environment. Main topics include application design and development methodology, its integration in the ETDM Process, and how it has been received by the user community to date. Its benefits are evaluated, and recommendations for developing integrated technologies in support of streamlining efforts are provided.

Geographic Information System–Based Community-Level Method to Evaluate the Influence of Built Environment on Traffic Crashes

Most current research analyzing traffic crashes is done at either the spot level or the regional level. Less attention is placed at the community level. In addition, the effects of changes in land use, population growth, and transportation networks on community traffic safety have not been systematically studied. Although a number of studies have defined some variables to describe the influence of the built environment on traffic crashes, no research has looked at this problem through a comprehensive framework of relevant built-environment variables. This study explored a geographic information system–based community-level method to understand the effects of the built environment on traffic crashes. The census block group was selected as the analysis unit for the study. The framework of D transportation variables, including the dimensions of density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, and distance to transit, was used to characterize the built environment. The crash and built-environment data were processed in a geographic information system, and the negative binomial model was applied. The results showed that density had little influence on any type of crash; however, the mixed land use was positively associated with all crash categories. Furthermore, street length and number of segments under the design variables resulted in positive coefficients. However, the number of intersections was negative to all crash types. Moreover, whereas the number of bus stops showed a positive influence on crashes, the coefficient that designated the distance of crashes from bus stops and commercial sites was negative.

Methodological Approach to Spatiotemporal Optimization of Rural Freeway Enforcement in Florida

For years, scientists and safety advocates have used various statistical methods to understand when, where, and why traffic crashes happen. Improved traffic crash data systems, including the geographic information system (GIS), are helping to identify when, where, and why traffic crashes occur. Because the vast majority of motor vehicle traffic crashes are attributed to some type of driver error, the need for traffic law enforcement is evident. Traffic law enforcement holds the promise of being an effective part of regulating and modifying the behavior of drivers, and, therefore, it is part of an effective countermeasure strategy. GIS and other methods have been used to identify problem locations or hot spots, but networkwide crashes and enforcement have not traditionally been considered. If a general deterrent effect is derived from visible traffic law enforcement, then when and where the countermeasure is applied become prominent. This research used GIS to spatially relate nearly 10,000 crashes and more than 179,000 citations issued on approximately 800 mi of rural freeways in Florida. Traffic volume data were used to normalize the data set and were analyzed with descriptive statistics and enforcement-to-crashes ratios. When historical crash data and historical enforcement data were related, significant spatial and temporal misalignment was apparent. Opportunities to optimize the time and place of traffic enforcement were identified through this analysis.

Analytical Method to Determine Transportation Service Gaps for Transportation Disadvantaged Populations

Transportation disadvantaged (TD) populations, which include elderly people, people with disabilities, and people who do not own a vehicle, face mobility challenges because alternative transportation services are limited. To identify specific transportation service gaps for TD populations, an assessment of both transportation demand and transportation accessibility is necessary. Previous studies have focused on a single aspect of transportation accessibility or on studying geographic transportation gaps at the state or county level. This study develops a methodology aimed at identifying TD populations with major gaps in alternative transportation services. Using spatial overlays and network analysis, we develop a model for calculating transportation supply through a comprehensive transportation accessibility measure that considers relevant trip destinations and three alternative transportation services: public transportation, on-demand services, and taxi services. Gaps in service are identified by overlaying the TD population demand volume with transportation accessibility. The resulting supply–demand matrix highlights transportation deficient areas and populations, based on overlays of high demand and low supply. We apply this methodology to Alachua County, Florida. Results expose areas of deficiency, some in unexpected places. The findings highlight the need to assess alternative transportation for TD populations, to determine gaps to be addressed to improve TD populations’ mobility and reduce personal auto trips and related traffic injuries. This method can guide policy makers in fostering equitable transportation provision across users.

The impact of nurse practitioner regulations on population access to care

BACKGROUND By 2025, experts estimate a significant shortage of primary care providers in the United States, and expansion of the nurse practitioner (NP) workforce may reduce this burden. However, barriers imposed by state NP regulations could reduce access to primary care. PURPOSE The objectives of this study were to examine the association between three levels of NP state practice regulation (independent, minimum restrictive, and most restrictive) and the proportion of the population with a greater than 30-min travel time to a primary care provider using geocoding. METHODS Logistic regression models were conducted to calculate the adjusted odds of having a greater than 30-min drive time. FINDINGS Compared with the most restrictive NP states, states with independent practice had 19.2% lower odds (p = .001) of a greater than 30-min drive to the closest primary care provider. DISCUSSION Allowing NPs full autonomy to practice may be a relatively simple policy mechanism for states to improve access to primary care.

Rethinking Electronic Crash Data Collection Transmission Model: Conceptual Framework for Centralized Web-Based Crash Data Collection System

The traffic crash report completed at the roadside by a police officer is the staple for traffic safety analysis. Current systems that automate traffic crash reporting following the so-called transmission model do a good job of assisting officers and agencies with the task of documenting traffic crashes in the field. Typically, these systems use a computer application that is installed on the officers laptop and collects traffic crash information and stores it for later transmission to a server or other storage system. Although these reports are a significant improvement over the traditional handwritten report, they still fall short of the full promise of automation. This study establishes the method and benefits of moving to a web-based system for traffic crash reporting in the field. A migration to the web-based approach could reduce effort and costs of data collection, improve timeliness and accuracy of crash data, bolster data integration, and improve training and the quality of the crash-reporting software.

INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES OF PROPOSED TRANSPORTATION CORRIDORS

Transportation projects often have delays, unnecessary duplication of efforts, and especially a lack of coordination among the involved agencies, leading to extra costs associated with the environmental review and approval process. The Florida Department of Transportation and University of Florida researchers are exploring several strategies for developing software tools to address such concerns. The goal is to identify major issues of the proposed transportation projects early in the planning phase so appropriate stakeholders can consult and resolve those issues before additional resources are invested in the project. Proposed is a methodological framework and a conceptual system design for building these software tools. The methodology for analyzing the impact is conceptualized as object-oriented, modular, and highly customizable. This approach offers analysis consistency and great flexibility for applications anywhere in the United States, provided that spatial databases are available. The system design strategy proposed for implementing the methodology takes an integrated approach between geographic information systems and relational database management systems. A prototype application developed based on the proposed framework proved effective in confirming the primary impact issues in a road extension pilot study in Florida. The tool quickly analyzed each of the proposed alignments and compared the levels of impact. Future directions will include expanding the focus from impact assessment to decision support with capabilities for selecting optimal road alignments.