Portland State University

The video begins at 4:15.

Abstract: The California High-Speed Rail Ridership and Revenue Forecasting Model is a state-of-the-practice transportation model designed to portray what future conditions might look like in California with and without a high-speed train. The model was developed by Cambridge Systematics, Inc., and took roughly two years to complete. The resulting ridership and revenue forecasts provided, and continue to provide, sound information for planning decisions for high-speed rail in California. This presentation briefly describes the underlying model that was developed to generate the ridership and revenue forecasts along with summaries of ridership forecasts from published reports.

Smart Growth America hosted a webinar Jan. 31 on NITC research finding that standard guidelines lead to a drastic oversupply of parking at transit-oriented developments. That restricts the supply of housing, office and retail space while driving up the price.

The webinar marks the release of Smart Growth America's lay summary of the NITC report, called "Empty Spaces," which will be available to webinar attendees.

Watch the recorded webinar here.

The research, led by Reid Ewing of the University of Utah, is one of the first comprehensive data-driven reports to estimate peak parking and vehicle trip generation rates for transit-oriented development projects, as well as one of the first to estimate travel mode shares for TODs. Ewing analyzed data on actual parking usage and total trip generation near five transit stations: Redmond, Washington; Rhode Island Row in Washington, D.C.; Fruitvale Village in Oakland, California; Englewood, Colorado; and Wilshire/Vermont in Los...

In the Engineering Building, Room 315

Abstract: Signal priority applications in the U.S. tend to be timid about giving priority to buses, because if they interrupt the green period of a competing traffic stream, they have no means of compensating that stream in the next signal cycle (by giving it a longer green period). Common restrictions set up to protect cross streets include preventing a priority interruption in consecutive signal cycles, having short extension intervals, and inhibiting priority when traffic is heavy on the cross street. In addition, most priority applications are limited to one or two simple control tactics, green extension and early green. As a result of these limitations, transit signal priority often falls far short of its potential, saving buses 3 seconds or less per intersection. We show how by using multiple intelligent signal priority tactics, in which traffic is aggressively interrupted but also compensated in the following cycle, large benefits can accrue to transit operations without any undue effect on general traffic. In a simulation study of four traffic signals around a large bus terminal in Boston, we found that average delay per bus could be reduced by almost 20 seconds per intersection with no change in average motorist delay.

The video begins at 0:36.