policy brief

Freight Companies Can Share Assets to Achieve Cost and Emission Reductions and Transition to Zero Emission Vehicles

Abstract

Researchers at the University of California, Davis developed a logistics decision-support tool that facilitates the joint routing of pick-ups and deliveries for cooperating entities to reduce environmental impacts and transport costs. The researchers implemented the tool in several hypothetical case studies to better understand the impact of joint routing and zero-emission vehicle policies on transport companies. The tool quantifies the cost and emissions savings from coordinated operations (pick-up and delivery) by estimating reduced fleet requirements and improved utilization factors. Additionally, the tool can consider the technical specifications (e.g., payload, range) and requirements (e.g., charging/fueling) of zero-emission vehicles.

published journal article

Assessing last-mile distribution resilience under demand disruptions

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant breakdown of the traditional retail sector resulting in an unprecedented surge in e-commerce demand for the delivery of essential goods. Consequently, the pandemic raised concerns pertaining to e-retailers’ ability to maintain and efficiently restore the level of service in the event of such low-probability high-severity market disruptions. Thus, considering e-retailers’ role in the supply of essential goods, this study assesses the resilience of last-mile distribution operations under disruptions by integrating a Continuous Approximation (CA) based last-mile distribution model, the resilience triangle concept, and the Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity (R4) resilience framework. The proposed R4 Last Mile Distribution Resilience Triangle Framework is a novel performance-based qualitative-cum-quantitative domain-agnostic framework. Through a set of empirical analyses, this study highlights the opportunities and challenges of different distribution/outsourcing strategies to cope with disruption. In particular, the authors analyzed the use of an independent crowdsourced fleet (flexible service contingent on driver availability); the use of collection-point pickup (unconstrained downstream capacity contingent on customer willingness to self-collect); and integration with a logistics service provider (reliable service with high distribution costs). Overall, this work recommends that e-retailers create a suitable platform to ensure reliable crowdsourced deliveries, position sufficient collection points to ensure customer willingness to self-collect, and negotiate contracts with several logistics service providers to ensure adequate backup distribution.

blog

Design Strategies in Shared Vehicles to Prevent Disease Transmission

research report

Homelessness on the Road: Reviewing Challenges of and Responses to Homelessness in State Transportation Environments

Abstract

In recent decades, homelessness has become an increasingly major challenge in the U.S. Of the half million unhoused people in the U.S., many seek shelter in settings under the auspices of state departments of transportation (DOTs), such as freeways, underpasses, and rest areas. DOTs are responsible for the health and safety of these settings and of their occupants, housed and unhoused. This study synthesizes existing literature and findings from interviews with staff from 13 state DOTs and eight service providers and organizations responding to homelessness. Homelessness represents a recognized and common challenge for DOTs, but the numbers and locations of unhoused individuals in state transportation settings vary and fluctuate. As DOTs face jurisdictional, financial, and legal hurdles in responding, DOT staff employ both “push” and “pull” strategies, the most common of which is encampment removals. However, the effectiveness of such removals is limited. Other strategies include “defensive design” and, more proactively, establishing or partnering with low-barrier shelters, providing shelters and sanitation on DOT land, and coordinating rehousing and outreach efforts. The findings suggest that DOTs should acquire better data on homelessness on their lands, create a homelessness coordinating office, establish formal partnerships with nonprofits/service providers, and evaluate the necessity of encampment removals, through the development and utilization of prioritization criteria. DOTs should coordinate with other bodies as they work towards broader housing solutions.

policy brief

Shifting Transit Use in COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Implications for Transit’s Recovery

Abstract

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health and transit agency officials recommended that people drastically curtail their interactions with others to slow the spread of illness. On public transit, where strangers congregate on large vehicles and travel together, the decline in riders was especially dramatic. While walking, biking, and driving, which enable social distancing, substantially recovered in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels, transit use remained – and remains – depressed. But transit use neither fell nor recovered uniformly over the course of the pandemic. While ridership declined in most places, it did so unevenly across neighborhoods and users. Our research suggests that in the early part of the pandemic, transit use declined more dramatically among higher-income people, who were more likely than lower-wage workers to work from home. Because people who owned automobiles could travel about without coming in close contact with strangers, and because vehicle access is positively related to income, those who rode transit early in the pandemic were more likely to be low-income, Black, Hispanic, and immigrants than pre-pandemic transit riders.With many workers still working from home, at least part-time, it is not clear when – or whether – transit trips into and out of major office centers will recover to their former levels. If that is the case, transit demand and service will likely continue to center around lower-income neighborhoods.

policy brief

Fare-free? Reduced fares? What research tells us about strategies for pricing public transit

policy brief

Homelessness in State Transportation Environments

Abstract

Homelessness has become an increasingly major challenge in the U.S. in recent decades. Of the half million unhoused people in the U.S., many seek shelter in settings under the auspices of state departments of transportation (DOTs), including freeway rights-of-way, under- and overpasses, rest areas, parking lots, maintenance facilities, and DOT-managed urban streets and sidewalks. State DOTs must adapt and implement measures from policy realms outside of transportation to address homelessness. Some are already doing so. Their response is critical for the welfare of unhoused denizens but also for ensuring a safe, operational road network.Most DOTs report frequent encampments on their land and encounter operational and legal challenges as a result. On public transit, a comparable transportation setting, those taking shelter tend to be more likely to be chronically unhoused and disadvantaged along other axes than their unhoused peers elsewhere. Freeway environments may offer certain advantages for those seeking shelter, but proximity of encampments and debris to traffic and infrastructure is dangerous to drivers, neighbors, and the unhoused individuals themselves.To investigate the challenges and strategies state DOTs have with regards to homelessness, we reviewed the websites of every state DOT, conducted interviews or received responses from staff at 13 DOTs that are responding to homelessness and/or particularly face it, and interviewed staff at eight relevant nonprofits, service providers, and external stakeholder organizations and partners involved in issues of homelessness.

published journal article

Vehicle Design Strategies to Reduce the Risk of COVID-19 Transmission in Shared and Pooled Travel: Inventory, Typology, and Considerations for Research and Implementation

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a plethora of ideas for modifying and redesigning public transportation and shared mobility vehicles to protect workers and riders from contracting the disease while traveling. This research seeks to inventory these strategies, and to organize and distill them in a way that enables researchers, policymakers, and public transport and mobility service operators to more systematically and efficiently evaluate them. Through literature search and analysis, the COVID-19 risk-mitigating vehicle design (CRVD) typology was developed, articulating 12 categories of strategies (e.g., Seating Configuration, Barriers) and 12 mechanisms (e.g., physical distancing, physical separation) by which the strategies may reduce COVID-19 spread. A secondary contribution of this research is to gather opinions of experts in fields related to COVID-19 and its transmission, about the identified CRVD strategies and mitigation mechanisms. The typology and expert opinions serve as a launching point for further innovation and research to evaluate the effectiveness of CRVD strategies and their relationship to user preferences and travel behavior, within and beyond the current context. Public transport and shared mobility service operators can use the CRVD typology as a reference, in conjunction with industry guidance and emerging research on strategy effectiveness, to aid decision-making in their continued response to the pandemic as well as for future planning.

published journal article

Health and equity impacts from electrifying drayage trucks

Abstract

Diesel heavy-duty drayage trucks (HDDTs) serving the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California are large contributors to regional air pollution, but cost remains an obstacle to replacing them with zero-emission HDDTs. To quantify the health and equity impacts of operating diesel HDDTs, we built a microscopic simulation model of a regional freeway network and quantified their emissions of PM2.5 (particulate matter with a diameter < 2.5 μm) and CO2 in 2012 and 2035, before estimating their contribution to selected health outcomes. We found that 483 premature deaths ($5.59 billion) and 15,468 asthma attacks could be attributed to HDDTs in 2012. Regulations and technological advances could shrink these impacts to 106 premature deaths ($1.31 billion) and 2,142 asthma attacks in 2035 (over 2/3 accruing to disadvantaged communities) despite population growth and a 145 % jump in drayage traffic, but they still justify replacing diesel HDDTs with zero-emission HDDTs by 2035.

research report

Considering Fare-Free Transit in The Context of Research on Transit Service and Pricing: A Research Synthesis

Abstract

In this report, the research team examines both the substantial research literature on transit pricing and use and the literature on free and reduced-fare (FAR) programs. In general, we find that free and reduced-fare programs can take many forms, and the idea of “fare-free” transit is far from a one-size-fits-all proposition. Second, while reducing or eliminating fares does indeed increase ridership, all else equal, transit research has consistently found that riders tend to be more service-elastic than fare-elastic. In other words, they tend to respond more to service improvements than price reductions, which means that, at the margin, money “spent” on fare-free programs (in the form of foregone revenues) may attract fewer riders than if that money were put toward improving service. Third, the social equity dimensions of fare-free transit are many, ranging from considering the share of fare-free benefits that flow to higher-income riders to the potential racial equity benefits of reduced fare enforcement policing on transit.