Jonathan L. Gifford

Flexible Urban Transportation

This book provides a critique of transportation planning as it is practiced in the U.S. today, and also proposes a new, more flexible approach. The U.S. is now facing profound challenges to its economic competitiveness and social equity, to public safety and security, and to the integrity of its environment. The ability to create transportation systems that contribute to addressing these challenges effectively requires a planning process radically different from the process currently in place. The book takes the next logical step and examines the difficult question of what can and should be done to remedy the transportation planning crisis in the U.S., describing how the situation reached its present state, and offering a way forward.

Demand Elasticity Under Time-Varying Prices: Case Study of Day-of-Week Varying Tolls on Golden Gate Bridge

One of the key issues in ascertaining the efficacy of various pricing schemes for managing highway traffic levels is the sensitivity of highway users to prices. The development of automatic toll collection technology (automatic vehicle identification or electronic toll and traffic management) has now made congestion pricing schemes technically feasible. The literature is relatively quiet on the specific question of the elasticity of demand with respect to changes in highway tolls, especially when tolls are time varying. Data from the Golden Gate Bridge from 1979 to 1984 are used to examine travel demand under time-varying prices. If traffic is price sensitive (elastic), then it might be possible to realize some of the potential for road pricing that has been identified in the literature. A brief overview of the literature on road pricing is provided, followed by a description of the data, model development, empirical results, and conclusions. The results include the finding that day-of-week cross elasticities are complementary; that is, increases in tolls on 1 day of the week tend to dampen traffic on other days of the week. This finding lends empirical support to claims that time-varying prices may be a viable strategy for managing traffic demand.

THE INNOVATION OF THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM

Abstract Strategies used to deploy technological innovations are central determinants of the degree to which those innovations realize their potential effect on social and economic productivity. The U.S. Interstate highway system was a deployment mechanism for the design innovations of high-speed geometric design and the control of highway access. This strategy was defined by rigid uniform minimum standards of facility design, severely constrained alternatives for configuring the network of facilities, and an inflexible and, in some cases, inappropriate institutional structure for constructing facilities. This strategy compromised the realization of productivity improvements available through the deployment of these innovations. This paper explores the origins of this deployment strategy and generalizes to a discussion of deployment strategies for large engineered systems. It shows that each of the Interstate programs provisions derived from traditions of the agency charged with implementing it and from political expedients embraced to enact the program.

Remaking transportation organizations for the 21st century: consortia and the value of organizational learning

The US faces a number of important issues in the way it organizes and manages transportation facilities and services. A key issue is how to create organizations that pay attention to customers and focus on results and performance. However, these two organizational characteristics are often difficult to achieve in formal organizations like governments, which are bound by requirements for procedural integrity. This paper examines a way out of this dilemma: transportation organizations can participate in voluntary consortia, which may offer more flexibility and adaptability and facilitate organizational learning. To gain new insights into the potential benefits of voluntary consortia this paper examines two case studies of transportation-related voluntary consortia, taking an organizational learning perspective. It concludes that although further research is needed, consortia may offer many benefits, including their ability to provide a quick, low-threat response to changing conditions.

E-ZPass: Case Study of Institutional and Organizational Issues in Technology Standards Development

During the past 5 years seven toll agencies operating in the greater New York metropolitan area have combined to develop a regionally compatible electronic toll collection system, called E-ZPass. The members of the E-ZPass Interagency Group (IAG) collectively process more than 1 billion toll transactions per year, two-thirds of all toll revenue collected in the United States. E-ZPass illustrates the degree of interagency cooperation necessary for interoperability, as well as some of the challenges to achieving consensus on technical and institutional issues. The IAG faced numerous institutional and organizational issues during the development of the E-ZPass specification. These included separate procurement procedures and requirements of the participating agencies, differences in agency missions, the pace of technological change, and parallel standard-setting efforts at the national level. In the large-scale procurement of cutting-edge technology, the IAGs regionally cooperative effort is unprecedented a...

Complexity, Adaptability and Flexibility in Infrastructure and Regional Development: Insights and Implications for Policy Analysis and Planning

The concept of order is a powerful and appealing inspiration for the planning and development of urban infrastructure. Those engaged in the planning process derive professional identity and satisfaction from the notion that they are somehow working out or contributing to the realization of order.

Adaptability and flexibility in urban transportation policy and planning

Abstract The poor representation of uncertainty in the urban transportation planning process can lead to excessively large and permanent facilities. Such inflexible facilities and systems may condition and severely constrain options available to future generations for organizing the production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services. The relationship between facility size and permanence and flexibility has received too little recognition in practice and too little attention in research. This paper calls for increased to provide policy makers and practitioners with a greater understanding of the consequences of the present approach and the advantages and disadvantages of more flexible approaches.

U.S. highway public private partnerships

Purpose - – The use of public-private partnerships (P3s) for infrastructure delivery, particularly for highway projects, has been increasing in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate the difference of P3s and non-P3 highway projects, in terms of their costs and efficiency. Design/methodology/approach - – An empirical model of highway construction costs was estimated using a linear regression model that explicitly accounts for the cost differential between the contracts. The differences between efficiencies was also evaluated through a two-stage analysis, where projects’-specific technical efficiencies were first estimated using stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis, and then the difference in technical efficiencies between the two groups were evaluated through non-parametric tests of means. Findings - – Controlling for various project characteristics, the P3 highway projects in the USA showed higher initial costs than non-P3 projects. However, the efficiency scores showed no significant difference between the two groups. This inconsistency between initial costs and technical efficiency scores suggests the complexity involved in P3 projects, which are not captured in the efficiency analysis. Research limitations/implications - – Limited availability of P3 project data due to their immaturity (in cases of P3 projects that include operation and management) and their complex engineering specifications may have caused biased results. Importantly, the study analyzed project costs as of financial close; post-financial close variations, such as change orders during construction, cost/schedule overruns, and renegotiation of contract terms, are beyond the scope of the analysis in this study. Originality/value - – The present study contributes to the literature as one of the earliest empirical analyses of the performance of highway P3s in the USA. Also, this is one of the first studies to employ frontier analysis methods that focus on the efficiency of highway project delivery.

Congestion and its Discontents

The title of this paper is taken from Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents,” (1930) and it is considered to be one of his famous works. Freud’s book central theme was that “the conflict between sexual needs and societal mores is the source of mankind’s propensity for dissatisfaction, aggression, hostility and ultimately, violence.” What can Freud’s view on the conflict between sexual needs and societal mores contribute to the understanding of congestion? The author of this paper believes that congestion has a tendency to bring out powerful instincts in people full of satisfaction of which is incompatible with social life. Congestion is an endemic problem in American cities. Yet the remedies to congestion are not obvious. Should cities do nothing, build more roads and highways, institute pricing, reorganize the layout of communities so that we are less dependent on automobiles, induce a shift from single-occupant automobile to carpooling and public transit, encourage telecommuting, revise the green-field development and redevelopment processes to encourage and/or enable carpooling and public transit? This paper examines how capacity, operations and demand strategies have been used to address congestion. It begins with a discussion of various perspectives to congestion and then describes some historical background on urban congestion. The next section discusses alternatives to highway capacity expansion and the paper concludes with a discussion of the prospects for the application of these strategies for addressing future congestion.

STAKEHOLDER REQUIREMENTS FOR TRAFFIC SIGNAL PREEMPTION AND PRIORITY IN WASHINGTON, D.C., REGION

The needs, issues, and concerns are identified of local elected officials and transportation and emergency personnel from the Washington, D.C., area about signal priority and preemption systems. These needs, issues, and concerns are used to generate a set of system objectives and general requirements that state and local decision makers might use in evaluating these systems in the future. As reported, although emergency and transit agency personnel are actively interested in this technology, they and the other stakeholders have significant questions and reservations to be considered in the adoption and deployment of preemption and priority systems.