Webinar: Developing a New Accessibility Measure to Support Older Adults in a Post-Pandemic World

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Older adults often face challenges with mobility and accessibility, which can limit their independence and quality of life. This seminar will explore these issues and lessons learned from the research to improve travel experiences and satisfaction for older adults.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

  • Highlights the importance of considering diverse dimensions of older adults' needs.
  • Found a significant dissatisfaction and vulnerability experienced by older adults with limited mobility.
  • Identified the need for addressing the critical accessibility and mobility gaps with older adults.

THE RESEARCH

This webinar is based on a study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communites (NITC) and conducted at the University of Utah. Read more about the project: Transportation for Seniors (T4S): Developing a New Accessibility Measure to Support Older Adults in a Post-Pandemic World.

SPEAKERS

Andy Hong, University of Utah...

Read more
Webinar: Visual Exploration of Trajectory Data

Webinar: Visual Exploration of Trajectory Data

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

This webinar will demonstrate the tremendous value of GPS trajectory data in understanding statewide travel patterns and measuring performance. First, Dr. Markovic (U of Utah) will conduct visual exploration of GPS trajectories that capture about 3% of all the trips in Utah. He will briefly discuss the problem of scaling GPS trajectories to the population, and then focus on the use of scaled trajectories in computing origin-destination matrices, vehicle-hours delays, vehicle-miles traveled, and trip-based performance measures. Second, Dr. Franz (CATT Lab) will demonstrate a suite of visual analytics that enables transportation agencies to easily explore terabytes of GPS trajectory data. He will demonstrate different tools and share the experience of 5 state DOTs that are currently using CATT Lab's trajectory data suite.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

  • Trajectory data represents the most complete vehicle-probe data and provides unprecedented opportunity for transportation system analysis.
  • Transportation agencies can easily leverage visual analytics to obtain insights in statewide traffic patterns and...
Read more

Webinar: Tools and Techniques for Teaching Collaborative Regional Planning and Enhancing Livability and Sustainable Transportation in Gateway & Natural Amenity Regions

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

Small towns and cities outside of national parks and other major natural amenities throughout the western United States are becoming increasingly popular places to visit and live. As a result, many of these gateway and natural amenity region (GNAR) communities—including places such as Jackson, Wyoming, and Moab, Utah—are facing a variety of “big city” issues, such as severe congestion, lack of affordable workforce housing, and concerns about sprawl and density. This webinar will introduce the planning and transportation concerns being experienced by GNAR communities throughout the west. It will then share the tools and resources developed by the University of Utah to train planners to work in these unique communities and to help these communities enhance livability and sustainable transportation options. The webinar will also introduce the University of Utah’s new Gateway and Natural Amenity Region Initiative and ongoing research aimed at better understanding and addressing the planning and transportation issues in GNAR communities. 

... Read more

Webinar: Data-Driven Mobility Strategies for Multimodal Transportation

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Multimodal transportation systems (e.g., walking, cycling, automobile, public transit, etc.) are effective in increasing people’s travel flexibility, reducing congestion, and improving safety.  Therefore, it is critical to understand what factors would affect people’s mode choices. With advanced technology, such as connected and automated vehicles, cities are now facing a transition from traditional urban planning to developing smart cities. To support multimodal transportation management, this study serves as a bridge to connect speed management strategies of conventional corridors to connected vehicle corridors.

The study consists of three main components. In the first component, the impact of speed management strategies along traditional corridors was evaluated. In the second component, the impacts of the specific speed management strategies, signal retiming and...

Read more

Webinar: Building Capacity in Gateway Communities through the GNAR Academy

 

OVERVIEW

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities across the West are experiencing rapid growth and increased tourism. As we have documented via our prior NITC-funded research, this has created a range of big city challenges for these “gateway communities,” particularly in the form of interconnected transportation, land use, and housing issues. Seeking to help gateway communities better prepare for and respond to their transportation and planning challenges, the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) Initiative team translated the findings from our research on planning and development challenges in gateway communities into an online learning program.

This program, the "GNAR Academy Fundamentals: Foundations for Planning and Collaboration in Gateway Communities and Regions" includes seven modules, each of which highlights key skills for addressing transportation and planning issues in gateway communities. This Fundamentals course will be an entry point for the rest of the GNAR Academy, which is currently in development.

In this webinar, we will introduce the GNAR Academy and Fundamentals course, explain how the course was developed, and share how we anticipate the course will result in improved transportation, planning, and development decisions in gateway communities and regions...

Read more
Connected Vehicle System Design for Signalized Arterials

Webinar: Connected Vehicle System Design for Signalized Arterials

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

It can be expected that connected vehicles (CVs) systems will soon go beyond testbed and appear in real-world applications. To accommodate a large number of connected vehicles on the roads, traffic signal control systems on signalized arterials would require supports of various components such as roadside infrastructure, vehicle on-board devices, an effective communication network, and optimal control algorithms. In this project, we aim to establish a real-time and adaptive system for supporting the operations of CV-based traffic signal control functions. The proposed system will prioritize the communication needs of different types of CVs and best utilize the capacity of the communication channels. The CV data sensing and acquisition protocol, built on a newly developed concept of Age of Information (AoI), will support the feedback control loop to adjust signal timing plans.

Our multidisciplinary research team, including researchers from transportation engineering and electrical engineering, will carry out the project tasks along four directions that capitalized on the PIs’ expertise:

  1. Data collection and...
Read more

Webinar: Community Transportation Academies: Rethinking Effective Community Engagement Around Transportation Decision-Making

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

This webinar will introduce you to the concept of the Community Transportation Academy (CTA), a model which has been operating in Portland for over 30 years in the form of the Portland Traffic and Transportation (PTT) class. Now catching on in other cities, the project team recently implemented the Wasatch Transportation Academy (WTA) in Salt Lake City. The presenters also include key stakeholders (and guest lecturers) in the WTA, and the PTT instructor. The presentation will include discussions about why CTAs can be good for both community members and transportation agencies/practitioners, and how you can bring a CTA to your city.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

  • How to make interactions between community members and transportation agencies more effective
  • How to increase human capital and community capacity by teaching community members how and where they can engage in transportation decision-making processes
  • Lessons from transportation...
Read more
Social Transportation Analytic Toolbox (STAT) for Transit Networks

Webinar: Social Transportation Analytic Toolbox (STAT) for Transit Networks

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

Miss the webinar or want a look back?

OVERVIEW

This webinar will present an open-source socio-transportation analytic toolbox (STAT) for public transit system planning. This webinar will consist of a demonstration of the STAT toolbox, for the primary purpose of getting feedback from transit agencies on the tool's usefulness. We are especially interested in hearing about any improvements that would aid transit agencies in implementing it.

The STAT toolbox was created in an effort to integrate social media and general transit feed specification (GTFS) data for transit agencies, to aid in evaluating and enhancing the performance of public transit systems. The toolbox enables the integration, analysis, and visualization of two major new open transportation data sources—social media and GTFS data—to support transit decision making. In this webinar, we will introduce how we...

Read more
A bus stop with a shelter, bench, and sidewalk showing people boarding the bus

Webinar: Bus Stops: Access and Equity

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Improving bus stops by providing shelters, seating, signage, and sidewalks is relatively inexpensive and popular among riders and local officials. Making such improvements, however, is not often a priority for U.S. transit providers because of competing demands for capital funds and a perception that amenities are not tied to measurable increases in system effectiveness or efficiency. This webinar focuses on the role that bus stops play as the point of first contact between transit agencies and their potential riders, and how the quality of that contact can influence both ridership and accessibility for riders with mobility-related disabilities. The webinar will use results from recent research sponsored by NITC and the Utah Department of Transportation looking at possible impacts that bus stop improvements made by the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) have had on stop-level ridership and demand for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) paratransit services. The results demonstrate how investments in bus stop facilities are not...

Read more

Webinar: Is Accessibility Planning Feasible in U.S. Shrinking Cities?

For fifteen years, scholars have claimed that accessibility-based transportation planning is at the brink of becoming a new paradigm. In contrast with traditional mobility-based planning methods, which focus on the cost of transportation per mile, accessibility-based planning methods place more importance on people's ability to reach various destinations and their access to transit systems. Its use may trail behind traditional planning methods nationally, due to vague definitions, momentum of traditional performance measures, and other factors. However, this webinar argues that accessibility-based planning is demonstrably necessary in shrinking cities across the U.S., and especially among minority populations in those cities.

As shrinking cities’ need for accessibility-based planning is distinct, the challenges to accomplishing it are also distinct and rather severe. Again, this is especially true when planning for minority populations, for whom there is often a level of mistrust in the policy process itself which must be overcome. After presenting evidence of both the especial need for and the challenges inherent in accessibility-based planning in shrinking cities (and especially among minority populations), this presentation proposes potential strategies for implementation and for applying this method in those scenarios in which it is most needed.

...

Read more

Pages