As part of an emphasis on improving road safety, the Minnesota Department of Transportation seeks to identify the locations where older drivers were over-represented in accident records. This research project reports on the use of three methods to help improve the accuracy of identifying locations where older drivers were at increased risk: a basic statistical model, the Empirical Bayes statistical method and a clustering method.
Overall, the basic statistical model preformed the best. The clustering method and the Empirical Bayes method could both be usefully applied to the traditional task of high-hazard identification--that of automatically screening a large number of accident sites to identify potential candidates for improvement. This information can point the way to areas that may require a more detailed engineering analysis.
According to census data, the average length of time it took Minnesota workers to commute to work increased about 2.5 minutes during the 1990s. This increase was considerably larger than in previous decades. Because this increase occurred statewide, including in rural counties where traffic congestion and urban sprawl are minimal and travel speeds have not changed significantly, other factors were believed to be causing a basic shift in commuting behavior.
This spreadsheet accompanies Report 2003-19, "The Per-Mile Costs of Operating Automobiles and Trucks." It provides a model for calculating the costs of operating cars and trucks.
Commute durations in Minnesota increased by about two and a half minutes on average during the 1990s. Given earlier evidence suggesting that commute times remain fairly stable over time, this was a surprisingly large increase. The research described in this report was undertaken to try to identify reasons for this increase, and, specifically, for why it happened when and where it did. Growth in commute durations does not appear to have been significantly driven by land use or economic factors. Commutes grew slower in the Twin Cities and other urban counties than in the rest of the state, despite congestion and land use changes in these areas. And overall there was little correlation between economic factors and the rate commute growth, especially outside the Twin Cities area. Some of the increase seems to be due to a change in methodology in the 2000 census. Adjusting for this, the overall commute time increase in the 1990s (11%) was slightly larger than in the 1980s (7%) because in the 1980s travel speeds statewide increased slightly, offsetting longer distances to some degree. Because speeds statewide remained constant in the 1990s, all the increase in distance was reflected in longer travel times.
This report describes a project to develop a simple system for managing conflict in transportation project public involvement. This work was focused on finding simple methods for managing less challenging projects and was aimed toward those who may do public involvement only occasionally. The conflict management framework is derived from a distillation of expert opinion, based on discussions of specific projects by Minnesota transportation public involvement experts. The framework is comprised of two components. The first is a simple organizational scheme for categorizing conflict to assist in determining the appropriate management strategy. The second part is the management strategies themselves. Key among these are principles for managing stakeholder relations so as to preclude the occurrence of conflict to the extent possible.
This report gives a brief overview of four related small research projects. The full papers resulting from the projects are included as appendices. The four projects were related by the theme of bicycling preferences and behavior with regard to bicycling facilities. The studies were also connected by the fact that they were all based on information from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The four reports are: Effect of Trails on Cycling. Value of Bicycle Facilities to Commuters. Effect of Facilities on Commute Mode Share. Cycling Behavior Near Facilities. Generally speaking, the results support the notion that people value bicycle facilities, in that they are willing to incur additional time costs in order to use higher quality facilities. The presence of facilities also appears to be associated with higher amounts of riding, although the precise nature of the impact is still unclear..
This report addresses the question of whether there are financial benefits to acquiring transportation right of way far in advance of when the improvement will be done. The first part of the analysis is very general, comparing rates of price increase for different types of properties to the opportunity costs of holding land, over a long historical period. The second part of the analysis focuses on Minnesota and examines property price increases by county over shorter, more recent, time periods. While it is almost certainly worthwhile to acquire land that is in danger of becoming developed, this analysis did not find much apparent financial value in early purchase of land that is already developed, or is not likely to become developed. While there could be localized exceptions, prices of these types of land do not in general rise fast enough to offset the opportunity cost of the money that is used to purchase them. However, there could be other, non-financial benefits associated with early purchase that could compensate for some of the costs involved.
This report establishes basic facts about bicycling in Minnesota, and estimates the sizes of the various types of benefits that bicycling creates. There are three main parts to the report. The first uses surveys and data analysis to estimate the amount of bicycling that takes place in Minnesota, and to describe its characteristics. The second part is the development of a theoretical and accounting framework for categorizing and measuring benefits. The third part calculates estimates of the total general benefits of bicycling in Minnesota. Probably about half of adults bicycle at least once in a typical summer. The benefits that result from this riding are large relative to expenditures on bicycle facilities; by our conservative assumptions, total benefits in Minnesota are in excess of $300 million per year. The size of these benefits is particularly notable when one considers that they are derived from relatively limited bicycling by most of the population. We find that the benefits to cyclists themselves are much larger than the benefits to society that bicycling creates, and that recreational riding, due to its much larger volume, creates more total benefits than does utilitarian riding.
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 addresses the question of how different regional land-use patterns would impact travel behavior and resulting transportation costs and benefits. This report defines six hypothetical future regional land-use scenarios for the Twin Cities region, representing combinations of different styles of residential and commercial development. The traffic patterns resulting from each of these scenarios are then used to describe the resulting congestion, air pollution, and accessibility to jobs. The results of the research indicate that the current conventional wisdom that compact development is better is at best an oversimplification. Certain types of compact development do appear to be better for certain goals, or for certain locations; however, at the same time they are often worse for other goals or other locations. Despite some difficult methodological problems, this seems like a question worth exploring further. While it appears that land use alone cannot solve transportation-related problems, it does seem that the rate at which these problems grow can be impacted at least moderately at a regional level, and sometimes very substantially at local levels.
