http://hdl.handle.net/1903/2753 Thu, 23 May 2013 17:35:00 GMT 2013-05-23T17:35:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13860 Title: Agent-Based Models of Highway Investment Processes: Forecasting Future Networks under Public and Private Ownership Regimes Authors: Yusufzyanova, Dilya Abstract: The present highway funding system, especially fuel taxes, may become a less reliable revenue source in the future, while the transportation public agencies do not have sufficient financial resources needed to meet the increasing traffic demand. In the last two decades there has been increasing interest in utilizing private sector to develop, finance and operate new and existing roadways in the United States. While transportation privatization projects have shown signs of success, it is not always clear how to measure the true benefits associated with these projects for all stakeholders, including the public sector, the private sector and the public. "Win-win" privatization agreements are tricky to make due to conflicting nature of the various stakeholders involved. Therefore, there is a huge need to study the welfare impacts of various road privatization arrangements for the society as a whole, and the financial implications for private investors and public road authorities. In order to address these needs, first, an empirical analysis is performed to study the investment decision processes of public transportation agencies. Second, the agent-based decision-making model is developed to consider transportation investment processes at different levels of government which forecasts future transportation networks and their performance under both existing and alternative transportation planning processes. Third, various highway privatization schemes currently practiced in the U.S. are identified and an agent-based model for analyzing regulatory policies on private-sector transportation investments is developed. Fourth, the above mentioned models are demonstrated on the networks with grid and beltway topologies to study the impacts of topology configuration on the privatization arrangements. Based on the simulation results of developed models, a number of insights are provided about impacts of ownership structures on the socio-economic performance in transportation systems and transportation network changes over time. The proposed models and the approach can be used in long-run prediction of economic performance intended for describing a general methodology for transportation planning on large networks. Therefore, this research is expected to contribute significantly to the understanding and selecting proper road privatization programs on public networks. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13860 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13806 Title: STANDARDIZING AND SIMPLIFYING SAFETY SERVICE PATROL BENEFIT-COST RATIO ESTIMATION Authors: Tariverdi, Mersedeh Abstract: Safety Service Patrol (SSP) programs operate nationwide with the aim of mitigating the impact of traffic incidents, especially along urban freeways. The central mission of the SPP programs is to reduce incident duration thereby reducing congestion related travel delays, fuel consumption, emission pollutants, and the likelihood of secondary incidents. The SSP-BC Tool was developed herein to fill the need for a standardized benefit-cost ratio estimation methodology for SSP programs with wide applicability and substantiated and needed updatable monetary conversion rates. The developed tool is designed to capture characteristics of incident, traffic, roadway geometry, and weather particular to the state area. VISSIM, a traffic microsimulation platform, was used to develop several multiple regression models with R-square values of 0.7 to 0.9 to assess the impact of travel delay, fuel consumption, and emission pollutants. Separate approaches were employed to estimate the savings in secondary incidents. In addition, a comprehensive method to compute fuel consumption and emissions is presented. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13806 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13615 Title: The Effects of Urban Development on Sedimentation Authors: Gupta, Justin A. Abstract: Channels are the main conduit for floodwater conveyance in a watershed. The channel geometry can change due to a high peak discharge, which causes erosion and subsequent deposition that can change the downstream channel geometry. Urban development can lead to increases in peak discharge, and therefore, channel erosion and flood hazard. The purpose of this research is to assess the effect that urban development has on erosion and downstream deposition. A hydrologic model was built to simulate the effect urban development has on erosion volumes and depths of downstream deposition at the watershed outlet. The results indicated that the amount of erosion and deposition exhibit a non-linear relationship with the level of urban development. Therefore, developing watersheds should plan for a non-linear increase in flood hazard. The model developed can be applied to any watershed with knowledge of some basic regional and local characteristics. Guidelines for the model application were also developed. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13615 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13591 Title: A discrete-continuous modeling approach with applications to vehicle holding and use Authors: Tremblay, Jean-Michel Abstract: Transportation and automobile use is a major concern today in the United- States. The use of automobile has impacts on congestion, urban dynamics, environ- ment and on the economy in general. Good indicators of transportation demand are the number of vehicles owned by a household and the total number of miles traveled. This thesis aims at building a model that can predict the total vehicle miles traveled and number of cars owned by households, simultaneously. The discrete- continuous model that we present correlates the error terms of a utility-based probit with the error term of an ordinary regression. The objective is to capture the relationship between preferred ownership alternatives and miles traveled. We successfully show that households with high utility for owning a lot of cars also drive more and that households with high utility for owning few cars drive less. The correlation is between utilities and miles traveled. It also correlates the two transportation demand indicators without assuming that one precedes the other and, thus, does not suffer from circular variable inclusions. The thesis ends by incorporating sampling weights into the model before pa- rameters are estimated. We find slight changes in parameters' values calculated with weights. The difference however, is more quantitative than qualitative since the general analysis we make with the weighted coefficients remains the same, only the magnitude of the effects change Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1903/13591 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z