Papers by Gregory Newmark
Berkeley Planning Journal, Feb 2, 2012
Chicago’s Congestion Parking Tax: Early Evaluation
Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual MeetingTransportation Research Board, 2013
In recent years, congestion pricing has come to the forefront as a method of traffic mitigation. ... more In recent years, congestion pricing has come to the forefront as a method of traffic mitigation. Chicago implemented a congestion parking tax increase, effective January 2012, on commercial lots and garages above a certain threshold. This study aims to provide a model framework for early impact analyses of congestion charging and parking schemes. A cluster-based system of metrics, focusing on publicly available transportation, economic and public health data for the study area of downtown Chicago, is employed. The “control variables” of employment figures and gas prices show relatively small change, indicating reasonably stable macroeconomic conditions in the region. It is found that municipal parking tax revenues have increased over 20 percent versus a year ago, although consumers are bearing only a small proportion of the tax increase. Arterial speeds downtown have improved, but some expressways passing through downtown have seen decreases in speed, possibly due to higher levels of unaffected through traffic on these roads. The public health variables of pedestrian crash incidents and emission levels have fallen. Chicago’s congestion parking scheme therefore appears to have caused no net negative results and indeed some positive results. These indicate a need for further research to better understand the relationship between the program and component metrics.
Many transit agencies invest substantial resources in surveying their passengers to generate data... more Many transit agencies invest substantial resources in surveying their passengers to generate data used for planning, marketing, and equity analyses. Within the industry, there is considerable interest in replacing traditional paper-based self-complete surveys with new approaches that might lower costs or generate better quality data. However, very limited research has been done to identify the relative performance of different transit passenger survey modes. This paper begins to fill that gap. The research investigates the relative data quality for three different bus passenger survey methods distributed or administered on the transit vehicle: self-complete paper surveys, interviewer-assisted tabletbased surveys, and self-complete online surveys. The research used an experimental design, with the same survey questionnaire distributed via the three survey modes. All factors about the survey and distribution process were kept identical to the extent feasible, so that the only variation would be the survey mode itself. The findings by survey mode are compared in terms of the overall response and completion rates, the completion rate for individual questions, respondent demographics, and labor costs per complete. The study results suggest that many agencies may still find the old-fashioned, low-tech paper survey to be the best option for bus passenger surveys. The paper mode required less labor per complete, and for many of the metrics discussed it generated data that was as good as-or better than-the tablet survey. In addition, the findings suggest that online survey invitations distributed on the transit vehicle are not a good option because they were labor intensive and had very low response rates.
Commuter Rail Electrifications That Never Were and What They Teach Us
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
North American commuter railroads have experienced two waves of electrification: 1905–1931, and (... more North American commuter railroads have experienced two waves of electrification: 1905–1931, and (including renewal and expansion) since the 1980s. Electrification offers many benefits to railroads and society, but also entails considerable capital costs. Eleven proposed electrifications, both in the early 20th century, when private-sector railroads funded and operated services, and in the modern era with public-sector responsibility for financing infrastructure and operations, were never implemented. This research revisits these unrealized proposals to understand the factors that can derail electrification and, conversely, help planners identify promising projects. These examples are explored in their contemporaneous context and in relation to comparable situations where electrification did occur. Key findings include that necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for electrification, in both the private- and public-sector eras, include operating challenges best addressed through ele...
The Carsharing-Transit Card: Is It Good for Public Transportation?
The proliferation of new shared-ride transportation services provides a unique opportunity for tr... more The proliferation of new shared-ride transportation services provides a unique opportunity for transit agencies to reach new markets. Unfortunately, many transit agencies are wary of partnering with private companies. To address these concerns, this research analyzes the usage data from a unique joint carsharing\transit smartcard in Chicago. This work explores the general revenue and ridership impacts of this smartcard before examining the impact of a promotional incentive of a $50 transit credit. The research found that the joint smartcard steadily increased transit ridership and revenue. The research also found that the promotion attracted new cardholders who were more likely to reduce their public transportation use and spending than a non-incentivized group; however, the large numbers attracted by the promotion meant that on aggregate, a year later, the incentivized group still spent more than three times as much on transit as the non-incentivized control group. These findings s...
See Spot Taxed: The Global Experience with Parking Levies
A parking levy is a special property tax charged on non-residential off-street parking. In theory... more A parking levy is a special property tax charged on non-residential off-street parking. In theory, it can provide several benefits. By making parking less profitable for owners, it can encourage a reduction in parking supply, hence increasing land use efficiency and reducing environmental impacts caused by parking surfaces. By making parking more expensive, it can help deter people from driving, therefore aiding to reduce congestion and environmental impacts caused by driving. In addition, revenue collected from the tax can be used as a dedicated tool to fund transportation projects. Only a few cities in the world have implemented parking levies, therefore the tool’s potential is unexploited and its actual effects, understudied. This document is a comparative and comprehensive study of parking levies around the world. A count of thirteen cities and regions have implemented parking levies and four have major proposals that have not yet been implemented. These policies show ample vari...
Does the Vehicle-Miles Traveled Associated with Location Efficiency Vary by Income Group?
The effect of the built environment on automobile travel is a focus of political jurisdictions, s... more The effect of the built environment on automobile travel is a focus of political jurisdictions, such as California, whose climate change policies emphasize land use planning as a strategy for reducing vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). Such policies, combined with growing market demand, have led to increased development in location-efficient neighborhoods, where high accessibility to jobs and services enable residents to drive less. This development is typically focused on higher-income populations; however many of these neighborhoods are historically home to lower-income populations. This raises the questions about the best use of the scarce, location-efficient space for achieving VMT reduction targets. Specifically, does location-efficient living reduce VMT more for some income groups than others? This research addresses this question by estimating a statistical model of VMT for the entire state of California by combining travel-survey, transit-service, and land-use data to estimate an...
Untangling Housing Cost and Transportation Interactions: The Location Affordability Index Model—Version 2 (LAIM2)
Housing Policy Debate, 2016
Abstract It is now accepted that to have an understanding of housing affordability one must consi... more Abstract It is now accepted that to have an understanding of housing affordability one must consider not only housing costs, but also the transportation costs associated with that household location. To make this information readily accessible to the public, the United States government created an Internet resource, the Location Affordability Portal – Version 2 (www.locationaffordability.info), to provide housing and transportation costs for every neighborhood in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Although the statistical model at the heart of this resource was designed for predictive accuracy, its design and parameter estimates can provide additional insights into the interaction of housing cost and transportation choices (and thus its cost). This study describes the development and explores the policy implications (and limitations) of this structural equations model, the Location Affordability Index Model – Version 2 (LAIM2).
Transit agencies invest tremendous financial and time resources into surveying their customers. T... more Transit agencies invest tremendous financial and time resources into surveying their customers. These efforts are justified as the data collected are fundamental inputs for a range of purposes including “travel modeling, long-range and areawide planning, route planning and scheduling, service design, marketing, and customer communications”. In addition, these surveys are, as of Fall 2012, required by a new Federal Transit Agency circular to ensure participation from minority and low-income populations who have historically under-participated in such efforts.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2020
This research provides a framework for addressing inequities through municipalities’ transportati... more This research provides a framework for addressing inequities through municipalities’ transportation plans, which have no federal equity requirements and have been given little guidance for incorporating equity. Fifteen pedestrian master plans are reviewed for their equity considerations to derive a tripartite framework for systematically incorporating equity into transportation plans, known as The Three A’s of Equity. Acknowledgment recognizes equity as a value of the plan and that there are transportation inequities to be eliminated; Accountability establishes equity measures to be achieved by the transportation plan; and Application identifies the interventions that will be implemented to help achieve equity. Using the proposed framework, the 15 plans are evaluated for their equity considerations. The analysis finds that cities are increasingly including equity into their pedestrian master plans, but do so inconsistently, seldom include the Accountability element, and rarely inclu...
Comparing Data Quality from Three Modes of On-board Transit Surveys
Berkeley Planning Journal, Nov 11, 2014
This research makes the radical claim that there is a social equity to travel behavior. Such equi... more This research makes the radical claim that there is a social equity to travel behavior. Such equity is defined as a lack of systematic differences between the travel patterns of disadvantaged and nondisadvantaged groups. This research then proposes and applies an innovative methodology to help planners assess the social equity of policy interventions that result in changing travel behaviors. This methodology distinguishes between outcome equity and impact equity, proffers non-parametric and parametric statistical tests for identifying the existence (or absence) of both types of equity, and presents a theoretical framework of ranked scenarios, which integrate the findings from the statistical tests. This research applies this methodology to survey data collected after a disruption in retail land use patterns in post-soviet Prague to both identify specific findings and explore the general utility of the proposed equity model.
Urban motor coach companies of the 1920s and their legacy for transit
Journal of Public Transportation
Defining TOD: learning from California law
Transportation, Land Use, and Environmental Planning, 2020
Abstract Over the last two decades, transit-oriented development (TOD), the intensification and m... more Abstract Over the last two decades, transit-oriented development (TOD), the intensification and mixing of land uses near public transportation, has emerged as a dominant planning paradigm. The desire to actualize this paradigm has led many cities and counties as well as developers to try out TOD. It has also led several countries and, in the United States, several states to enact legislation and adopt policies and programs incentivizing TOD. These laws and programs usually provide a set of formal definitions for TOD–definitions that vary substantially. To date, there has been no systematic study of TOD definitions leaving policymakers without researched guidance for structuring legislation. This work fills that knowledge gap. Specifically, this study examines eight statewide programs from California to identify their legal or regulatory definitions of TOD, identify the key components of such definitions, illustrate the range of variation, and discuss the attendant implications. While the case examples are from California, the goal of this research is to inform TOD policy in general, and the analysis yields many specific lessons for advancing (and aligning) TOD policy anywhere. The conclusion discusses ways to reduce ambiguities and potential conflicts and argues that planners play a crucial role in translating the TOD concept to policy.
Comparing Socially Distinct Travel Adaptations to Land Use Change
This paper offers a straightforward and intuitive methodology using statistical and graphical too... more This paper offers a straightforward and intuitive methodology using statistical and graphical tools to compare the relative difference in the travel adaptations of two distinct social groups to land use change. This approach seeks to enrich the study of land use and transportation to more explicitly consider the disparate social impacts of various public policies. To facilitate the incorporation of these ideas by planners and advocates, this method relies on the generation of basic descriptive statistics and a simple means comparison test. These measures are easily calculated without the need for specialized, and possibly intimidating, statistical software. The innovative graphical presentation makes the information on difference very easy to grasp and is particularly well suited for jointly representing distinct, yet related adaptations, such as trip frequency and activity duration. This approach is illustrated through application to the shopping trip frequency, activity duration, ...
Journal of Environmental Protection, 2020
Ground-level ozone is a harmful air pollutant associated with several health issues. Ozone concen... more Ground-level ozone is a harmful air pollutant associated with several health issues. Ozone concentrations have exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) in the Chicago metropolitan area on hot summer days for many years because of nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compound emissions. Annual fourth highest 8-hour ozone concentrations have been between 0.070 and 0.084 ppm at several monitoring sites in Cook county, during the 2016-2018 time period. The continuous measurement of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2) and ozone (O 3) was conducted in several communities in Chicago in 2017. The air pollution impacts the health of all who live in the area. The data were used to analyze correlations between the O 3 distribution and its association with ambient concentrations of NO 2 from transportation emissions. Higher concentrations in NO 2 and O 3 occurred in succession in the daytime. The diurnal variation of O 3 concentration was analyzed. The daily cycle of NO 2 concentration reaches a maximum in the late morning and has smaller nighttime concentrations. The daily cycle of ozone concentration reaches the maximum in the afternoon and also becomes smaller for nighttime concentrations. In addition, relationships were found between O 3 and NO 2. Monthly variations of ozone and NO 2 are presented. Some options to reduce ozone pollution are presented.
M I N E T A T R A N S P O R T A T I O N I N S T I T U T E This report describes the development o... more M I N E T A T R A N S P O R T A T I O N I N S T I T U T E This report describes the development of CATPAD, the Central Archive for Transit Passenger Data. CATPAD is a repository that collects, indexes, archives, and makes available online the transit survey instruments, data, and reports collected across the country. CATPAD seeks to overcome the current impediments to accessing disaggregated transit survey data by providing a single, searchable, internet archive to store and disseminate this valuable information. The goal of CATPAD is to make useful data available to inform transit decision making at all levels and to foster ongoing refinement of the nation’s transit network.
Senior and Disabled Reduced Fare Cards: A Peer Review of Policies
The federal regulations that establish senior citizen and disabled reduced fare programs do not s... more The federal regulations that establish senior citizen and disabled reduced fare programs do not specify how those programs are to be structured. As a result, transit agencies across the nation vary widely in their reduced fare policies. This variation offers an excellent opportunity for transit systems to learn from each other’s experience and to mix and match approaches to best meet their needs. This paper, for the first time, provides a systematic consideration of reduced fare policies at major transit agencies. This research combines the findings of a structured, open-ended survey with information gleaned from transit agency websites to present a framework for understanding the key components of a reduced fare card program. These components are then illustrated by the breadth of approaches taken by the largest transit systems in the ten most populous metropolitan areas in the United States.
Access protocols for railroads: Reframing the infrastructure separation debate
Research in Transportation Economics, 2021
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2004
The rapid transformation in both the location and type of retail provision in the Prague metropol... more The rapid transformation in both the location and type of retail provision in the Prague metropolitan area, Czech Republic, between 1997 and 2001 offers a unique opportunity for examining the relationship between land use and shopping travel behavior. The case of Prague is unique. Although the Czech capital has the compact form and transit-rich environment sought by many planners, after rates of motorization rose steadily in the early 1990s foreign developers began constructing shopping malls on the city's fringe in 1997. Although retail provision was being remade on highway-adjacent locations outside the traditional central business district, there were few changes in Prague residential and employment locations. Thus, the shift in shopping land use occurred in relative isolation. Shopping travel behavior before and after the introduction of the fringe shopping malls is examined by using research based on 1,649 surveys collected in four new malls in 2001. Mall visitors reported ...
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Papers by Gregory Newmark