New paper – Street use and design: Daily rhythms on four streets that differ in rated walkability

Werner, C.M., Brown, B.B., Stump, T., Tribby, C.P., Jensen, W., Miller, H.J., Strebel, A. and Messina, A. (2018) “Street use and design: Daily rhythms on four streets that differ in rated walkability,” Journal of Urban Design, DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2018.1448706

Abstract.  Few studies have correlated counts of street users to walkability features or tested for temporal variations in use across the day. Trained observers counted street users for four streets that differed in walkability according to the Irvine-Minnesota audit. From 7 am to 7 pm weekdays, across four 2-hour observation periods, all four streets had significant quadratic trends of increasing then decreasing use. Furthermore, the two most walkable streets also showed significant linear increases in users across the day. Part of a street’s identity is its temporal activity rhythm, and both walkability and rhythms can inform urban design and renewal.

Opioid Innovation Fund – Franklin County Opioid Crisis Activity Levels (FOCAL) map

OSU’s Opioid Innovation Fund is supporting CURA’s project, the Franklin County Opioid Crisis Activity Levels (FOCAL) map. We will be building mapping and spatial analysis tools to understand the social factors associated with opioid overdoses and barriers to effective treatment.  This campus-community partnership involves Harvey Miller (CURA), Ayaz Hyder (College of Public Health), Lauren Southerland (OSU Wexner Medical Center). David All (WellHQ), Gretchen Hammond (Mighty Crow Media) and Sherri Kovach (Central Ohio Trauma System).

Media:

Measuring the impacts of new public transit services on space-time accessibility

Lee, J. and Miller, H. J. (2018) “Measuring the impacts of new public transit services on space-time accessibility: An analysis of transit system redesign and new bus rapid transit in Columbus, Ohio, USA,” Applied Geography, 93, 47-63.

Highlights

  • Lack of access to opportunities contributes to poor social and health outcomes.
  • Columbus, OH introduced a transit route and schedule redesign and bus rapid transit.
  • We analyze impacts on accessibility to opportunities in a deprived neighborhood.
  • Detailed route and schedule data allow high resolution accessibility analysis.
  • The new bus rapid transit has a much greater impact on accessibility

Abstract

The absence of effective access to opportunities and services is a key contributor to poor socio-economic and health outcomes in underserved neighborhoods in many cities. The city of Columbus, Ohio, USA is attempting to enhance residents’ accessibility by providing new public transit services. These new services include a major Transit System Redesign (TSR) of the conventional bus network and the introduction of a new bus rapid transit, named CMAX. Using a high-resolution space-time accessibility measure, we analyze whether these new public transit services will change residents’ accessibility to job and healthcare in an underserved neighborhood of Columbus. Also, we assess whether enhancing the CMAX service to reduce delays (e.g., reserved lane, off-board payment system) will improve accessibility. The high-resolution space-time accessibility measure in this study uses published public transit schedules via the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). We use multiple departure times during a day to account for the temporal fluctuations of accessibility based on the transit schedule changes. We also consider the operating hours of job opportunities and healthcare services. Results suggest that the TSR yields ambiguous benefits for accessibility to jobs and healthcare. However, the new CMAX service and its potential upgrades lead to a substantial increase in both job and healthcare accessibility. The results can be used for city officials and urban planners to evaluate the effectiveness of public transit innovations in improving accessibility.

Keywords: Transportation; Space-time accessibility; Public transit; Bus rapid transit; Jobs; Healthcare