Recently in David Levinson Category

Nexus group members (myself included) and affiliated researchers will again be presenting papers at next week's Transportation Research Board Conference in Washington DC. Our papers are listed below. (I will be at many, but not all of these places). We hope to see you there.

I will be your congenial (not congenital) host of WTS MN/YPT Transportation Team Trivia Night :

"Join WTS Minnesota and YPT for our first-ever Transportation Team Trivia night, hosted by David Levinson.

Are you a master of obscure transportation knowledge?

WTS Minnesota and YPT Minneapolis (Young Professionals in Transportation) are joining forces to bring you a night of transportation team trivia fun!

Using the classic pub trivia format, U of M professor David Levinson (the Transportationist himself) will host a five-round multimodal trivia bonanza on September 11 at Republic, home to one of the best craft beer lists in Minneapolis.

There is no cost to attend, and all are welcome, so bring your friends and colleagues! The winning team will receive bragging rights and a prize to be announced.

Get there early to take advantage of Republic's excellent happy hour specials. No need to form a team in advance--just show up ready to test your knowledge and have fun with colleagues!

The details

When: Tuesday, September 11, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

5:30 p.m. Happy Hour (food and drink specials available until 6:00 p.m.)
Trivia begins promptly at 6:00 p.m. and will go until approximately 8:30 p.m.

Where: Republic, Aux 1 room

Who: Transportation students and professionals of all ages

Cost: Free (food and beverages will not be provided)

RSVP: Appreciated, but not required. RSVP to Katie Roth by 4:00 p.m. on September 11."

I get to talk about Flying Cars and Transportation Technology for about 8 seconds in this 3:40 Greater MSP video: The Future of Greater MSP’s Cultural and Physical Environment

(Just don't call it the Twin Cities anymore)
((The interview was ~ 30 minutes, I talked about lots of other cool things as well, they just survive on the cutting room floor))

From February: GTI/UTC Lunchtime Lecture Series - Dr. David Levinson - YouTube: "Network Structure and Travel Behavior"

Abstract: Transportation networks have an underlying structure, defined by the layout, arrangement and the connectivity of the individual network elements, namely the road segments and their intersections. The differences in network structure exist among and between networks. This presentation argues that travellers perceive and respond to these differences in underlying network structure and complexity, resulting in differences in observed travel patterns. This hypothesized relationship between network structure and travel is analyzed using individual and aggregate level travel and network data from metropolitan regions across the U.S. Various measures of network structure, compiled from existing sources, are used to quantify the structure of street networks. The relation between these quantitative measures and travel is then identified using econometric models.

I was interviewed by Dan Haugen of Midwest Energy News:

Who should pay for roads, transit projects? :

"It’s true that local property taxes, not gas taxes, pay for building and maintaining most roads, says David Levinson, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Minnesota, but whether or not that’s a subsidy for drivers is debatable.

“There isn’t a person in the United States who doesn’t get some use out of the roads,” says Levinson, who also writes the Transportationist blog. Even people who don’t drive still benefit from things like fire protection, ambulance services, and mail delivery — all of which depend on roads. “I suppose you could be Ted Kaczynski, but even he had to use the U.S. Postal Service to mail his bombs.”"

357 Transportation Infographics and Data Visualizations @ Visual.ly

Bloomberg: U.S. Postal Service to Cut 35,000 Jobs as Plants Are Shut:

"The service plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a telephone interview today. The closings will cut about 35,000 jobs, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman."

Blair Barnhardt at Kansas University discusses The Three Legged Stool | Saving America's Infrastructure [YouTube], which makes use of our Brookings Report: Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third: A New Strategy for America’s Highways (starting at the 23:47 mark running to about 36:00)

Yglesias: Developers Should Be Able To Bribe Homeowners [Yes and Yes]

Liz Hoffman @ Law360 (behind a firewall) Obama Budget Would Double Infrastructure Spending:

"“Most of what's being proposed are nonstarters,” said David Levinson, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. “Infrastructure is a big part of what [Obama] is trying to do on the economy, but he's unlikely to get most of what he's asking for.” " [The interview was much longer, but I guess this was the money quote].

A nice write up of the BitCity Conference: Transportation, Data and Technology in Cities conference at UntappedCities.com, including a link to the video..

(Via conference co-organizer David King.)

I will be at BitCity 2011 in New York, November 4th.

David King is one of the organizers, and discusses it here:

Getting from here to there: Announcing Bit City: 2011: Transportation, Data and Technology in Cities.

I have a couple of chapters (mine are under a Creative Commons license!) in the Recently published: Button, Kenneth, Henry Vega, Peter Nijkamp (2011) A Dictionary Of Transport Analysis Edward Elgar Publishing:

"This concise and clearly focused Dictionary, with contributions by the leading authorities in their fields, brings order and clarity to a topic that can suffer from confusion over terminology and concepts.

It provides a bridge between the academic disciplines involved and illustrates the application of transportation policy that crosses a variety of administrative divisions. Cutting through jargon, the entries concentrate on the social science aspects of transportation analysis, defining many of the terms used in transportation, and providing valuable information on some of the major institutions and technologies affecting this sector

This concise and comprehensive Dictionary will be an invaluable addition to libraries and research institutes and a helpful resource for anyone with an interest in the analysis of transport."

I was in DC on today for a workshop on equity and road pricing.

I am giving my talk on Transport, Land Use, and Value this Friday, 9:30 am at USDOT: 1200 New Jersey Ave SE room W83-302. Since this is DC, this is a secure building, they will not appreciate public walk-ins, but if you are at USDOT, this is probably doable.

I will be presenting at CUPPA's Friday Forum:

" Network Structure and Travel Behavior"

Guest Speaker: Dr. David Levinson

Friday, September 30, 2011, 12:00pm
Room 110
CUPPA Hall
412 S. Peoria Street
Chicago, IL 60607

Abstract:

Transportation networks have an underlying structure, defined by the layout, arrangement and the connectivity of the individual network elements, namely the road segments and their intersections. The differences in network structure exist among and between networks. This presentation argues that travellers perceive and respond to these differences in underlying network structure and complexity, resulting in differences in observed travel patterns. This hypothesized relationship between network structure and travel is analyzed using individual and aggregate level travel and network data from metropolitan regions across the U.S. Various measures of network structure, compiled from existing sources, are used to quantify the structure of street networks. The relation between these quantitative measures and travel is then identified using econometric models.

I will be talking at the Geography Dept at the University of Minnesota tomorrow:

Geography Coffee Hour:

Date: 09/09/2011

Time: 3:15 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: 445 Blegen Hall

Cost: Free

Description:
We are looking forward to seeing you in the JSA room this Friday to hear about all things transport from David Levinson. He will be discussing: Network Structure and Travel Behaviour

Bring your own mugs if you can!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

To request disability accommodations, please contact Glen Powell, Geography, powel160@umn.edu, 612-625-6080.

TPM Idea Lab: The World's Smallest Electric Motor Is Made From a Single Molecule "As for uses--oh, yeah, there are actual uses for this thing!--scientists believe that this molecule could further be developed into a motor to power nano-sized devices in fields such as medicine." [Very very small cars]

TPM Muckraker: Wis. Official To DMV Employees: Don't Offer People Free Voter-ID Cards Unless They Ask [An unrecognized role of DMV, and transportation agencies, is establishing identity, and who gets to vote]

KurzweilAI: NASA needs strategic plan to manage orbital debris efforts [See Quark (TV series)]

Mail Online: Phase one of world's first commercial spaceport is now 90 per cent completed - in time for first flights in 2013 [Space will soon be a regular mode, just like maritime and biking (should NASA be part of USDOT?), but I would hate to see space commercialization derailed by orbital debris.]

Layer 8: Air Force awards $25K to inventor of insanely fast device that stops fleeing cars [It goes 130 MPH]

Lisa reviews our paper at Sustainable Cities and Transport: Levinson and Xie on First Mover Advantages in Networks

New GIS toolbox for network analysis: Urban Network Analysis

The Economist: Infrastructure projects: The great train robbery : "High-speed rail lines rarely pay their way. Britain’s government should ditch its plan to build one"

Research America: Research and the AP Top 25 gives research highlights of the NCAA Top 25 football schools. "20. Mississippi State. Higher gas prices mean fewer accidents – one of the few positive byproducts of paying more at the pump. Researchers, led by Guangqing Chi, PhD, analyzed factors leading to auto accidents between April 2004 and December 2008, tracking those numbers with gas prices. Chi and the other researchers noted an overall decline in drunk driving accidents, as well as lower short-term accident rates for younger drives and lower intermediate-term accident rates for older drivers and men."

CNN: Insomnia costs U.S. $63 billion annually in lost productivity "Researchers surveyed 7,428 employed people across the U.S. and found that 23% experienced some form of insomnia -- such as difficulty falling asleep or nighttime waking -- at least three times a week during the previous month, for at least 30 minutes at a stretch. Not surprisingly, these sleep problems carried over into the workplace. Insomniacs were no more likely than their well-rested peers to miss work, but they were so consistently tired on the job that they cost their employers the equivalent of 7.8 days of work in lost productivity each year -- an amount equal to an average of about $2,280 in salary per person."

Some of our research will be presented live on the Internet at the Techplan Roundtable on August 19 (tomorrow) starting at 8:45 CDT

We are on about 11:30 with "CONSUMER TRAVEL BEHAVIOR AND RETAIL GEOGRAPHY: A MICROSCOPIC INVESTIGATION USING GPS DATA AND PARCEL-LEVEL LAND USE." Arthur will do most of the talking.

Updated June 3, changed Twitter ID.

In case you did not know, The Transportationist has been on Twitter for some time, basically auto-retweeting the blog via FriendFeed. But if you like your posts Twitterized, you can follow the Transportationist at @trnsprttnst . (The user name @transportationist was not allowed because it was too long!)

KSTP's angle: Washington Ave. Closure Prompts Increased Taxi Cab Fares

Washington Ave. Closure Prompts Increased Taxi Cab Fares The permanent closure of Washington Avenue near the University of Minnesota is prompting higher taxi cab fares. "Red & White Taxi" figures customers needing rides to University hospitals, hotels, or athletic events will likely pay several more dollars per cab ride. Drivers say Washington was the shortest route to campus and will now have to find longer alternatives. Analysts say ultimately if driving in the area becomes too cumbersome it may prompt more people to use light rail and rely less on vehicles.

Media barons willing, I will be on KSTP tonight (c. 10pm) talking about Washington Avenue, closed to traffic. I will be asleep, so tell me what I said.

I (and others) have been interviewed as part of the Minnesota GO project (sponsored by MnDOT and the Citizen's League) about the future of transportation. The selection of me talking about the rise of the robot car is below.

Our research is highlighted by the MSU New Service:

Gas prices rise = accidents drop: MSU research (Mississippi State University)

STARKVILLE, Miss.--As gasoline prices head toward $4 a gallon, pain at the pump seems to have at least one silver lining for state drivers.

A study by Mississippi State's Social Science Research Center indicates that rising gas prices create an accompanying decline in all traffic accidents, including drunk-driving crashes.

Researcher Guangqing Chi, an assistant professor of sociology at the university, recently published his findings in the Journal of Safety Research and Accident Analysis and Prevention.

An SSRC demographer, Chi examined a range of factors related to driving-related accidents in the state, including age, gender and race. The study analyzed total traffic crashes between April 2004 and December 2008, comparing gas prices to traffic safety statistics.

'The results suggest that prices have both short-term and intermediate-term effects on reducing traffic crashes,' he reports in the journal article.

Among other points, the research also shows gas prices having a short-term impact on crashes involving younger drivers and intermediate-term impact related to older drivers and men.

Chi said short-term impact refers to immediate effects, for example how a current month's average gasoline prices affect the same month's traffic crashes. Intermediate-term impact refers to effects over a one-year subsequent time period.

While previous research linked traffic-related fatalities to gas price fluctuations, limited research has shown the effects of prices on all traffic accidents. No research previously examined the link between drunk-driving crashes and gas prices, Chi observed.

His research also found significant connections between gas prices and a reduced frequency of alcohol-related crashes.

Other researchers contributing to the study include SSRC director Arthur Cosby; David Levinson, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Minnesota; and Mohammed Quddus, a senior lecturer in transportation studies at the University of Loughborough, United Kingdom.

• Chi, Guangqing, Xuan Zhou, Timothy E. McClure, Paul A. Gilbert, Arthur G. Cosby, Li Zhang, Angela A. Robertson, David Levinson (2011) Gasoline Prices and Their Relationship to Drunk-Driving Crashes. Accident Analysis and Prevention, [doi] 43(1) January 2011, Pages 194-203.


• Chi, Guangqing, Arthur Cosby, Mohammed A. Quddus, Paul Gilbert and David Levinson (2010) Gasoline Prices and Traffic Safety: Age and Gender Variations. Journal of Safety Research 41 493–500.

I was interviewed on radio by Access Minnesota talking about Fix It First – Changing the Way We Maintain & Pay For Highways

For the week of April 3rd, 2011

Guest: David Levinson, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota

Issues: How we pay for roads; What’s wrong with the way we build and maintain our infrastructure and why; Opportunities for reforming distribution in Congress; Funding options through tolls and user fees; Sacrifices of repair instead of adding capacity; Building better roads to save money in the long term

Download interview

Recently published:

Xie, Feng and David Levinson (2011) Evolving Transportation Networks, Springer.

Our book Evolving Transportation Networks has just come out

Over the last two centuries, the development of modern transportation has significantly transformed human life. The main theme of this book is to understand the complexity of transportation development and model the process of network growth including its determining factors, which may be topological, morphological, temporal, technological, economic, managerial, social or political. Using multidimensional concepts and methods, the authors develop a holistic framework to represent network growth as an open and complex process with models that demonstrate in a scientific way how numerous independent decisions made by entities such as travelers, property owners, developers, and public jurisdictions could result in a coherent network of facilities on the ground. Models are proposed from innovative perspectives including self-organization, degeneration, and sequential connection to interpret the evolutionary growth of transportation networks in explicit consideration of independent economic and regulatory initiatives. Employing these models, the authors survey a series of topics ranging from network hierarchy and topology to first mover advantage. The authors demonstrate, with a wide spectrum of empirical and theoretical evidence, that network growth follows a path that is not only logical in retrospect, but also predictable and manageable from a planning perspective. In the larger scheme of innovative transportation planning, this book provides a re-consideration of conventional planning practice and sets the stage for further development on the theory and practice of the next-generation, evolutionary planning approach in transportation, making it of interest to scholars and practitioners alike in the field of transportation.

Product Details:

Product Details

Hardcover: 294 pages

Publisher: Springer; 1st Edition. edition (April 18, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1441998039

ISBN-13: 978-1441998033

Available from Amazon and the publisher, Springer. Ask your library to order a copy.

Table of Contents

• Part 1 / ANTECEDENTS
• Introduction
• Background
• Framework
• Part 2 / NETWORK GROWTH IN THE PAST
• Skyways in Minneapolis
• Interurbans in Indiana
• Streetcars in the Twin Cities
• First Mover Advantages
• Part 3 / SPONTANEOUS ORGANIZATION
• Hierarchy
• Topology
• Sequence
• Part 4 / LAND USE
• Network Diffusion and Place Formation
• Coevolution of Network and Land Use
• Part 5 / GOVERNANCE AND PLANNING
• Governance Choice - A Theoretical Analysis
• Governance Choice - A Simulation Model
• Forecasting
• Part 6 / CONCLUSIONS
• Retrospect
• Prospect

Cancelled due to adverse weather ... Rescheduled for October 18, 2011

I will extend my world tour to Rochester, Minnesota, home to the world famous Mayo Clinic, where I will talk about "Bridge Collapses, Our Journey to Work, and other Transportation Challenges" for the Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society

April 19, 7:30 p.m. **Leighton Auditorium, 3rd floor of Siebens Building**

Bridge Collapses, Our Journey to Work, and other Transportation Challenges
(04/19/2011)
David Levinson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota
Director, Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems (NEXUS) Research Group

Note, this will also be on Second Life, on which the Mayo Clinic has an island.

I get quoted in the Strib ...

Budget deal hits Minnesota hard:

One of the biggest victims could be the proposed high-speed rail line from Chicago to St. Paul. Even before the historic budget impasse, the rail line to Minnesota was in jeopardy because Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker opted out.

The budget deal now kills high-speed rail funding for the rest of the fiscal year -- a cut of $2.9 billion. That throws further into doubt the money for which Minnesota was applying after Florida rejected a similar amount of high-speed funds.

"It makes it deader," said David Levinson, a professor with the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota.

When Jeremy Herb asked about the HSR line to Minnesota after the recent deal, I said "It's still dead". I am not sure he ever saw classic SNL: Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

I will be talking about Access to Destinations at the Minnesota Chapter American Planning AssociationBrown Bag Lunch on April 14

Brown Bag Lunch
Access to Destinations Study
Presented by Dr. David Levinson

When: April 14th 12:00 - 1:30
Where: University of Minnesota
http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/maps/MechE/
Room 1130 of the Mechanical Engineering Building

About the Access to Destinations Project:

Access to Destinations is an interdisciplinary research and outreach effort coordinated by the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota, with support from sponsors including the Minnesota Department of Transportation, Hennepin County, the Metropolitan Council, and the McKnight Foundation.

The Access to Destinations Study takes a new approach to understanding how people use the transportation system, and how transportation and land use interact. At the heart of this approach is the concept of accessibility: the ability of people to reach the destinations that they need to visit in order to meet their needs. By focusing on accessibility - rather than simple congestion measures - the Access to Destinations Study aims to produce a more complete and meaningful picture of transportation and its role in our lives.

This presentation will discuss the research and results of this five year study, along with a newly created online mapping tool to help those who make transportation and land-use decisions in the Twin Cities region capture variations in accessibility to different types of destinations for travelers who drive, bike, walk, or use transit.

To learn more about accessibility and its role in the Access to Destinations Study, visit www.cts.umn.edu/access-study.

Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch to this event. Please RSVP to Matthew Parent at matthew.parent@co.anoka.mn.us by Tuesday, April 12th ."

The Star Tribune reports on a recent local "scare forecast" (notice the "scare quotes") that local agencies have put out about how traffic will get remorselessly worse. Rush hour traffic: Get ready to crawl. I get quoted saying it won't be so bad.

Clearly MnDOT won't be spending as much on new construction, but there is no evidence individuals will travel as much, in the peak, in 20 years, as they do now, (peak travel , etc.) The claim is the region is growing, which might be true, but I suspect optimism here (as we approach a fifth full month with snow on the ground).

If congestion gets worse, you would expect people to adapt. Cars will be better (and hopefully autonomous), increasing capacity (both in terms of closer spacing and narrower lanes). Roads will be priced, decreasing peak demand. Telecommunications technology will get better, finally enabling travel-substitution for a large share of the population.

If we do nothing different, things will be worse. Knowing that, why would we do nothing different?

I get quoted on MPR: With less money for roads, experts say pothole season could be worst yet
by Dan Olson

... University of Minnesota civil engineering professor David Levinson has a long-term suggestion for addressing the pothole problem.

"We haven't invented anything that will eliminate potholes, but we can certainly reduce their number if we build roads better," Levinson said.

Levinson said, for example, it would cost nearly 25 percent more to build stronger county highways. But with money in short supply, it's an unlikely alternative.

One way to raise more money is to ask roadway users, especially owners of heavy trucks, to pay more. The big rigs already pay a lot of roadway use taxes and are only a small percent of overall traffic volume.

But Levinson and other road experts say research shows they do a disproportionate amount of damage to the roads.

"An eighteen wheeler can do 1,600 times as much damage to [the] road as a single passenger car would do over the same stretch," Levinson said.

Putting more axles and tires on the biggest trucks, Levinson said, would spread out their weight, but would be expensive and would use more energy because of increased friction.

Levinson said another partial fix for preventing pothole formation would have snow plows raise their blades an inch or so.

"When the plows touch the pavement and the pavement is cracked or uneven they often pull up chunks of pavement leading to an additional source of pothole," he said.

The problem with this idea, Levinson said, is Minnesota drivers like snow free roads so they can drive faster, rather than roads with an inch of snow on top forcing them to slow down.
...

On the point about good roads vs. poor roads, see our Cost/Benefit Study: Spring Load Restrictions

On the point about trucks doing more damage than cars see Pavement Interactive: Equivalent Single Axle Load

On the last point, see also Finland Special: Snow As Traffic Calming Device

Our new Brookings report (available tomorrow) makes the Economix blog of the New York Times:

Fix Old Roads, Instead of Constructing New Ones, Report Urges - NYTimes.com

February 24, 2011, 3:50 PM
Fix It and They Will Come
By DAVID LEONHARDT
On Friday morning, the Hamilton Project will release a few new proposals for helping fiscally struggling state and local governments keep their roads, bridges and other infrastructure in decent shape. One of the proposals fits a theme I've been writing about recently: making government programs less wasteful.

This proposal comes from Matthew Kahn of the University of California, Los Angeles, and David Levinson of the University of Minnesota. The title summarizes it: "Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third."

Mr. Kahn and Mr. Levinson call on the federal government to devote its current funding for highways to repair, rather than to the construction of new highways. As they note, the reverse happens all too often:

The way the federal government allocates money for transportation infrastructure investments is one reason why the United States is experiencing a maintenance shortfall and falling returns on new investment. Federal highway infrastructure spending is allocated based on a series of subjective criteria that typically do not require any stringent analysis of expected benefits versus costs. Because there is often public pressure to build new projects using scarce funds, adding capacity often comes at the expense of supporting and enhancing existing infrastructure.

We build roads we don't need instead of fixing aging roads that we do need. The Kahn-Levinson solution would force state and local governments to spend their federal dollars on repair and to raise money from investors for new construction.

New roads would have to be able to pay for themselves -- "through direct user charges and by capturing some of the increase in land values near transportation improvements" -- or investors wouldn't finance them. A newly created Federal Highway Bank would serve as an intermediary between the investors and the state and local governments.

Finally, roads that exceeded expectations -- were completed ahead of schedule, for instance, or reduced traffic more than expected -- would be eligible for a federal interest-rate subsidy, through the highway bank.

The idea strikes me as promising. The big question, it seems, is how Congress can be persuaded to get out of the business of shiny new roads and concentrate instead on the unglamorous repair work.

The Hamilton Project -- which is a branch of the Brookings Institution and tends to be filled with once and future Democratic policy makers -- will host an event on Friday to discuss its new proposals.