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This report contains a summary of the information detailed in four separate reports covering one project. The project examines the variation in people's need for and use of transport services by posing four research questions and answering them with transportation related data from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing. Questions posed are: 1) What is the socioeconomic profile of Minnesota's long-distance commuters? 2) How do Minnesota's counties and urban neighborhoods vary according to transport needs and use? 3) How can census data be used together with travel surveys to study the socioeconomic characteristics of travelers? and 4) How has interaction among the state's local labor markets changed in the last twenty years? The main findings are summarized in this report both verbally and graphically. References to the other four reports are given.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) Office of Livability established the Livability Framework to guide transportation policies, programs, and/or projects toward improved, people-focused outcomes. The Livability Framework proposes seven (7) Livability Pillars to be considered as part of the planning and implementation of these activities. These Livability Pillars include Health and Environment, Economic Vitality, Sense of Place, Safety, Connectivity, Equity, and Trust. To support this effort, a Livability Measurement Tool (or tools) will be developed to help planning agencies measure, represent, interpret, evaluate, and track livability considerations, and, thereafter, determine appropriate action to address identified needs. An initial step for this work is a summary identification of current best practices for measuring livability. This report provides a literature analysis of research conducted on measuring livability and identifies points of consensus, debates, and gaps in the research on the measurement of livability as the MnDOT Office of Livability defines the concept. Within the body of research analyzed, there was consensus regarding the effect of the built environment on human health and subjective well-being, and measurements for its assessment. However, there are notable gaps in existing literature for measuring feelings of belonging, the inequitable burden of transportation systems on vulnerable populations, and distrust in government by residents, among other issues.

This Appendix relates to Transportation Synthesis Report 2401, Measuring the Livability Framework, published February 2024.

Previous research conducted by the Design Center for American Urban Landscape at the University of Minnesota suggests a need to develop a hierarchical network of arterials that would accommodate contemporary and future activity and movement patterns in suburban areas. This research project investigated the interaction between road section design and adjacent site design by applying livable community principles and developing a set of design criteria that would guide coordination of land use and transportation planning. The research hypothesized a need for a minimum of three roadway prototypes, district planning capabilities, and an integrated land use and transportation planning approach. Research findings indicate that a hierarchical network is feasible under the following circumstances: The district network assumes arterial segments designed at different speeds; Urban design performance criteria are used at the beginning of the planning process to establish quantitative measures; Spacing of controlled intersections corresponds to road speed design; Urban design templates, keyed to road design speed, are used to guide design of areas adjacent to the intersections; The existing development context becomes the basis for balancing activity and moment and for phasing change in the built environment.

What would it take to build our way out of congestion in the Twin Cities? As part of this research project, researchers identified a method to answer that question and found a minimal set of highway capacity expansions that would accommodate future travel demand and guarantee mobility. The problem of identifying a set of capacity expansions that are in some sense optimal, while accounting for traveler reaction, is known as a network design problem. A literature review reveals numerous formulations and solution algorithms over the last three decades, but the problem of implementing these for large-scale networks has remained a challenge. This project presents a solution procedure that incorporates the capacity expansion as a modified step in the Method Successive Averages, providing an efficient algorithm capable of solving realistic problems of real-world complexity. Application of this method addresses the network design problem for the freeway system of the Twin Cities by providing a lower bound on the extent to which physical expansion of highway capacity can be used to accommodate future growth. The solution estimates that adding 1,844 lane-kilometers, or 1,146 lane-miles, would be needed to accommodate the demand predicted for the year 2020.

This report develops several models of historical roadway improvements in the Twin Cities metro area. Planners respond to, and try to shape, demand by recommending investments in new infrastructure and changes in public policy. Sometimes capacity is added to existing facilities. Other times, building new roads is the response. As a result of this research, the ways in which current network expansion or contraction decisions alter the choices of future decisionmakers has become clearer. This research develops a theoretical framework, constructs a comprehensive time series database describing network investment, utilization and capacity, estimates several statistical models, and interprets the results to guide planning.

Transportation systems are designed to help people participate in activities distributed over space and time. Accessibility indicates the collective performance of land use and transportation systems and determines how well that complex system serves its residents. This research project comprises three main tasks. The first task reviews the literature on accessibility and its performance measures with an emphasis on measures that planners and decision makers can understand and replicate. The second task identifies the appropriate measures of accessibility, where accessibility measures are evaluated in terms of ease of understanding, accuracy and complexity, while the third task illustrates these accessibility measures. During this process a new accessibility measure named "Place Rank" is introduced as an accurate measure of accessibility. In addition, several previously-defined accessibility measures are reviewed and demonstrated in this report including Cumulative opportunity and gravity-based measures. The gravity-based measure is widely used in the literature yet cumulative opportunity tends to be easier to understand and interpret by the public, planners, and administrators. A major contribution of this research is the comparison of accessibility measures over time and among various modes. Effects of accessibility on home sales are also tested. Homebuyers pay a premium to live near jobs and away from competing workers. Accessibility promises to be a useful tool for monitoring the land use and transportation system, and assessing and valuing the benefits of proposed changes to either land use or networks.

Report #1 in the Series: Local and Regional Planning, Management, Design and Evaluation of Advanced Transportation Technologies.

Report #2 in the Series: Local and Regional Planning, Management, Design and Evaluation of Advanced Transportation Technologies.

The purpose of this project was to understand why public involvement in transportation project planning goes badly, and to determine how the process could be modified to reduce negative outcomes. The project examines these issues by studying public involvement efforts. The project examines how the potential for conflict can be anticipated. A local project had characteristics of having been well run with good intentions, of having been plagued by conflict, and of being documented in a neighborhood newspaper. It was the primary source of reasons why public involvement can turn out badly and was contrasted with three other projects that were more successful with their public involvement. A new model is proposed in this report. The model proposes that conflict can derive from any or all of five independent dimensions, each with its own level of intensity or intractability: size and distribution of local benefits or costs; disagreement about the nature and importance of local impacts; ability to accurately define and engage relevant stakeholders; perceived legitimacy of the project; and degree of ideological issues. There are two key conclusions. First, situations with serious conflict are different from the typical public involvement effort; they require different tools and tactics built around the specific nature of the conflict. The second major finding is that "conflict" is not a standard problem to answer with a single solution, but each conflict does not have to be approached individually.

This research, extending the Mn/DOT-funded project If They Come, Will You Build It, assesses the implications of existing trends on future network construction. It compares forecast networks (using models estimated on historical decisions developed with previous research) under alternative budget scenarios (trend, above trend, below trend), with networks constructed according to alternative sets of decision rules developed with Mn/DOT and Metropolitan Council staff. The comparison evaluates alternative futures using a set of performance measures to determine whether the network we would get in the absence of a change in policies (allowing historical policies to go forward) outperforms or underperforms the networks developed by applying suggested decision rules. This evaluation methodology enables new decision rules for network construction (building new links or widening existing links) to be tested. The research suggests a path beyond "business as usual."

This project seeks to advance the state of knowledge of the relationship between transportation and economic development by investigating how firms in competitive industry clusters use transportation networks and what role the networks play in the formation and growth of these clusters. The approach combines quantitative and qualitative techniques to geographically identify competitive industry clusters and to investigate the role of transportation. The U.S. Cluster Mapping tool is used to identify competitive clusters by employment location quotients in 25 Minnesota metropolitan and micropolitan regions. Twelve competitive clusters were selected for further study, and in-depth interviews and site visits were conducted with businesses in each cluster to explore the competitive importance of different modes of transportation. These methods can yield valuable insights into how transportation functions as an input within competitive industry clusters and how it can inform economic development strategies tailored to certain locations and industries.

This report documents the efforts of engaging the public in decision making regarding local road policy issues in Minnesota, specifically in Beltrami, Dakota, and Jackson counties, and make recommendations based on the findings.

Complete streets is emerging as an influential movement in transportation planning, design, and engineering. This guidebook, with accompanying case studies, explores the variety of ways in which complete streets is conceptualized and institutionalized by various jurisdictions. It offers practical and applicable insights for jurisdictions in Minnesota and elsewhere. The research focused on best practices in 11 locations across the nation: Albert Lea, Minnesota; Arlington County, Virginia; Boulder, Colorado; Charlotte, North Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; Dubuque, Iowa; Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota/Minnesota; Hennepin County, Minnesota; Madison, Wisconsin; New Haven, Connecticut; and Rochester, Minnesota. The guidebook is informed by an analysis of multiple data sources from each jurisdiction. The authors conducted a review of key documents (e.g., plans, policies, design guidelines), site visits, photo documentation, and in-depth interviews with more than 100 key informants. Six best practice areas emerged through the analysis: (1) framing and positioning, (2) institutionalizing complete streets, (3) analysis and evaluation, (4) project delivery and construction, (5) promotion and education, and (6) funding. The six best practice areas are described in detail and illustrated by examples from the case locations. The guidebook concludes with an appendix of complete streets case reports that offer additional details about each of the 11 case jurisdictions.

This study uses accessibility as a performance measure to evaluate a matrix of future land use and network scenarios for planning purposes. Previous research has established the coevolution of transportation and land use, demonstrated the dependence of accessibility on both, and made the case for the use of accessibility measures as a planning tool. This study builds off of these findings by demonstrating the use of accessibility-based performance measures on the Twin Cities metropolitan area. This choice of performance measure also allows for transit and highway networks to be compared side-by-side. A zone-to-zone travel time matrix was computed using Stochastic User Equilibrium (SUE) assignment with travel time feedback to trip distribution. A database of schedules was used on the transit networks to assign transit routes. This travel time data was joined with the land use data from each scenario to obtain the employment, population, and labor accessibility from each traffic analysis zone (TAZ) within specified time ranges. Tables of person-weighed accessibility were computed for 20 minutes with zone population as the weight for employment accessibility and zone employment as the weight for population and labor accessibility. The person-weighted accessibility results were then used to evaluate the planning scenarios. The results show that centralized population and employment produce the highest accessibility across all networks.

Political and policy dynamics associated with local road systems planning; management; and financing merit special attention. This study: 1) analyzes stakeholder attitudes; knowledge; and engagement about financing for local road system management; to identify key gaps and conflicts; and 2) evaluates public communication and engagement methods; to provide practical guidance for improving stakeholder engagement methods. Qualitative research methods were used because they are particularly apt for studying stakeholder attitudes towards policies and outreach methods. Data sources included a survey of 128 local public works leaders; content analysis of tickles from local to national media; 30 hours of observation of deliberations in the state and local legislatures; 22 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders; and 4 case studies of local public communication and engagement processes. Analysis of these data support the following recommendations for local policy makers: a)Support rising public attention to local transportation issues with high-quality; accessible information; b) Invest in the high short-term costs of proactive; good quality engagement; to gain substantial benefits over the longer term; c) Use multiple communication channels; including new technologies for targeted outreach; d) Employ a consultative process and thoughtful; timely explanations from local public works leaders; to improve stakeholder satisfaction with project outcomes and the engagement process; and e) Include stakeholders in defining the policy problem and developing options as well as the preferred policy options.

At almost 80 million people, the Millennial generation will have a growing impact on many aspects of society, including transportation needs. Research (conducted largely in urban areas) suggests that this generation has different lifestyle trends than previous generations, which has created a need to re-evaluate transportation policy and planning. The objective of this project is to understand whether Millennials in small urban and rural communities have the same mobility mindset as those in large cities. Data was collected from survey respondents living in both urban and rural areas from multiple generations in Minnesota, Montana, Washington and Wisconsin. The results indicate that there were clear differences between urban and rural Millennials with respect to educational attainment, student loans, income, use of technology and their expectation for moving. These differences imply that alternative options for transportation may not be as viable in rural areas as compared with urban areas. However, the fact that rural Millennial survey respondents reported households with zero vehicles across all area types and that rural Generation X survey respondents had a higher percentage reporting that they preferred a bicycle to travel to school than their urban counterparts suggests that there are opportunities to provide alternatives that people will make use of in rural environments. Furthermore, with a higher number of households in rural areas reporting an annual income of less than $20,000, which likely limits their transportation options, there is clearly a need to consider how to allow these households to access healthcare, education and employment.

This report discusses the potential benefits and perceived impediments to implementing an automated rapid transit (ART) system in the Twin Cities and Minnesota. The report also briefly reviews the status of ART applications, also referred to as personal rapid transit (PRT), in the United States and abroad. Finally, the report evaluates the potential ability of ART to promote the policy goal of creating efficient development, livable communities, and work opportunities through a variety of relevant strategies. The report concludes that an ART feasibility study is needed to provide more definitive answers to issues and questions raised about ART, and it provides the rationale for funding such a study, as well as an outline of the elements of the feasibility analysis.

Report #9 in the series: Access to Destinations Study. Conventional transportation planning is often focused on improving movement (or mobility) - most often by the automobile. To the extent that accessibility, a well-known concept in the transportation planning field since the 1950s, has been measured or used in transportation planning, such measures have also been auto-based. Broadening the scope of accessibility to include a wide array of destinations and non-auto modes such as walking, cycling, and transit has been previously proposed as a much needed aim among planning initiatives. A central issue is that to date, however, there have been few examples of measures draw from. When it comes to bicycling, walking, and transit measures of accessibility are an endeavor long on rhetoric but short on execution. This report discusses such hurdles, presents alternatives for overcoming them, and demonstrates how accessibility for walking, cycling, and transit - and for different types of destinations - can be reliably measured. We focus on explaining specific features of non-motorized transportation that complicate the development of accessibility measures, and offer solutions that conform to conventional transportation planning practice. In this research project, non-motorized measures of accessibility were developed for the entire seven counties of the Twin Cities (Minnesota, USA) metropolitan area. For purposes of this exposition in this report, we discuss the details of creating such measures using a sample application from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA to demonstrate proof of concept for the endeavor.

This report presents the results of a study conducted by the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies on Minnesota's district/area transportation process (ATP). Building upon existing planning processes, the ATPs involve a broad range of transportation professionals, elected officials, special interest groups, and the public in developing the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). Through eight case studies, one for each district/ATP, and a cross-case analysis, the study documents information gathered from ATP members and representatives from the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) on the key features of the ATP process. A summary of the perceived strengths and challenges for the three themes of partnership, prioritization, and planning shows that several of the strengths and challenges appear more than once across the three themes. Volume I of the report includes the cross-comparison of ATP processes and practices, findings from the common characteristics of the research data, and issues and challenges identified by ATP members in the interviews. As the ATPs and Mn/DOT explore the possibility of future changes, the cross-cutting issues in the ATP process are: the composition of ATP membership; the nature of public involvement; decentralized decision making; enhancement projects; ranking regional significance; intermodalism; urban and rural tension; fiscal constraint; and the role of planning in the ATP process. Volume II includes eight case studies that report the data heard from the members of the eight A TPs. It also contains other perspectives from the point of view ofMn/DOT's Central Office, federal agencies, non-ATP members and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) directors.

The University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies conducted a study on Minnesota's district/area transportation process (ATP). Building upon existing planning processes, the ATPs involve a broad range of transportation professionals, elected officials, special interest groups, and the public in developing the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). Volume II of this study includes eight case studies that report the data heard from the members of the eight ATPs. It also contains other perspectives from the point of view of the Minnesota Department of Transportation's (Mn/DOTs) Central Office, non-ATP members and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) directors. The case study information is organized around these key features: project selection and ranking process, ATP membership make-up, boundary issues, financial data, goals, relationships with regional entities and local units of government, the role of elected officials, and the public involvement process. Through eight case studies, one for each district/ATP, and a cross-case analysis, the study documents information gathered from ATP members and representatives from Mn/DOT on the key features of the ATP process. A summary of the perceived strengths and challenges for the three themes of partnership, prioritization, and planning shows that several of the strengths and challenges appear more than once across the three themes. As the ATPs and Mn/DOT explore the possibility of future changes, the cross-cutting issues in the ATP process are: the composition of ATP membership; the nature of public involvement; decentralized decision making; enhancement projects; ranking regional significance; intermodalism; urban and rural tension; fiscal constraint; and the role of planning in the ATP process. Volume I of the report includes the cross-comparison of ATP processes and practices, findings from the common characteristics of the research data, and issues and challenges identified by ATP members in the interviews.

Census measures are used to classify Minnesota counties and metropolitan area census tracts according to demographic, journey-to-work, and mobility characteristics in 1990. Counties differ regarding scores calculated with respect to Population Mass-reflecting measures such as numbers of persons, of commuters, and of vehicles available for personal use; and a general Commuting tendency-reflecting proportions of commuters traveling more than 30 minutes, average commute time, and average number of vehicles per household. Three other basic characteristics of counties-average Socioeconomic Status of residents, degree of Mobility Impairment of residents; and Solo Commuting tendency-provide scores further differentiating counties. County scores are used to group Minnesota's 87 counties into six diverse clusters: 1) Hennepin (Minneapolis); 2) Ramsey (St. Paul); 3) Anoka and Dakota (Twin Cities suburbs); 4) St. Louis (Duluth); Olmsted (Rochester), Stears (St. Cloud), Washington (Twin Cities); and 6) all others. The second analysis examines 833 census tracts in the Minnesota's five MSAs, classifying them with the procedures used for counties. Resulting classifications illustrate that relationships between travel activity and socioeconomic characteristics vary considerably for different metropolitan contexts. As a demonstration of potentially useful methods applied to census data for Minnesota, the study provided results. On other grounds, its value is more limited.

The intent of this design manual is to replace as many of the subjective decisions made during street tree design and plant selection with objective criteria. The manual will assist communities and planners to not only select the best trees for their available planting sites, but to use specific principles of street tree design to most effectively create public green spaces, positively affect traffic patterns, and create healthy living spaces. The format of the design manual is one of prompting questions. This will not only help the user select the best plants for the area, but will pose sufficient questions to better ensure that issues of spacing, relative placement to travel corridors, and a wide variety of design elements will be satisfied. The tree species selection philosophy includes not only whether the tree is hardy enough but whether it can achieve the design function for the area. In theory, a well-placed tree in a well-designed landscape will require less maintenance and yield more rewards for the community.

The primary objective of this project was to identify and evaluate parametric models for making default estimates of travel times on arterial links. A review of the literature revealed several candidate models, including the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) function, Spiess's conical volume delay function, the Singapore model, the Skabardonis- Dowling model, and the Highway Capacity Manual's model. A license plate method was applied to a sample of 50 arterial links located in the Twin Cities seven county metropolitan area, to obtain measurements of average travel time. Also obtained were the lengths of each link, measurements of traffic volume, and signal timing information. Default values for model parameters were obtained from the Twin Cities planning model's database. Using network default parameters, we found that the BPR and conical volume-delay models produced mean average percent errors (MAPE) of about 25%, while the Singapore and Skabardonis-Dowling models, using maximal site-specific information, produced MAPE values of around 6.5%. As site-specific information was replaced by default information the performance of the latter two models deteriorated, but even under conditions of minimal information the models produced MAPE values of around 20%. A cross-validation study of the Skabardonis-Dowling model showed essentially similar performance when predicting travel times on links not used to estimate default parameter values.

This report proposes and evaluates two ideas for improving efficiency and service quality of paratransit operations. For carrying out this analysis, the authors use data from Metro Mobility, the agency responsible for providing ADA-mandated transportation services in the Twin Cities. However, the underlying principles, mathematical models, and algorithms are applicable to a variety of similar transportation operations in urban and rural areas. The first idea is to re-optimize routes developed by Metro Mobility's route-building software (a commercial product named Trapeze) at the end of each day of booking operations to reduce the total time it takes to serve booked trips. The second idea evaluates the selective use of non-dedicated vehicles and service providers (e.g. taxi services) for lowering operational costs. Mathematical models and computer algorithms are developed for each of these approaches. These are then tested on actual operational data obtained from Metro Mobility. The report shows that a conservative estimate of savings from re-optimization would be 5% of Metro Mobility's operating costs. Additional savings from the use of taxi service would be in the hundreds of dollars per day. The actual magnitude of these savings would depend on the proportion of customers who agree to travel by taxi.