Working Papers (when not listed elsewhere)
Hover over the article title link for abstract, click for downloadable paper in pdf.
2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 1996
2007
2006
- Levinson, David (2007) Network Neutrality: Lessons from Transportation The politically-charged notion of network neutrality came to the fore in 2005 and 2006, using analogy from transportation as one of the key tools in motivating arguments. This paper examines how the various notions around network neutrality (common carriage, regulation, price discrimination) have played out in the transportation sector, and suggests many of the current arguments fail to understand the nuances of how complex networks actually operate to serve the many demands placed on them.(working paper).
- El-Geneidy, A. and David Levinson(2006) Place Rank: A New Accessibility Measure Accessibility is the potential of opportunities for interaction in an urban context. The
widely used accessibility measure consists of the number of opportunities that can be
reached within a region or a period of time multiplied by a cost or impedance function for
reaching these opportunities. This measure assumes that all people living within a region
will follow a certain impedance function and will equally evaluate the opportunities.
This paper proposes a new accessibility measure, “place rank.” Knowing people’s
origins and destinations is a key to develop this new measure. Both impedance and value
of opportunities are embedded in the dataset that includes origins and estination of each
person utilizing the studied region. Level of accessibility in a zone is determined based
on the number of people coming to this zone to reach an opportunity. Each person
contributes to the accessibility level in the zone where he is commuting to with a
different power. The power of the contribution of this person depends on the
attractiveness of his zone of his origin. In this paper we discuss the place rank measure
and compare it to the traditional gravity based measure. Since this measure is based on
people’s actual choices of origins and destinations it is more comprehensive and accurate
than previous accessibility measures in terms of impedances and opportunity
calculations.
Keywords: Accessibility, Mobility, Gravity Based, Cumulative Opportunity, Land Use, Place Rank (working paper).
2005
- Levinson, David and Bhanu Yerra (2005) How Land Use Shapes the Evolution of Road NetworksThe present research develops an agent-based model to treat the organization, growth, and contraction of network elements. The components model travel demand, revenue, cost, and investment. Revenue earned by links in excess of maintenance costs is invested on the link to until all revenue is consumed. After upgrading (or downgrading) each link in the network, the time period is incremented and the whole process is repeated until an equilibrium is reached or it is clear that it cannot be achieved. The model is tested with three alternative land use patterns: uniform, random, and bell-shaped, to test the effects of land use on resulting network patterns. It is found that similar, but not identical, equilibrium hierarchical networks result in all cases, with the bell-shaped network, with a CBD, having higher level roads concentrated in a belt around the CBD, while the other networks are less concentrated..
- Levinson, David, Michael Corbett, and Maryam Hashami (2005) Operating Costs for TrucksThis study estimates the operating costs for commercial vehicle operators in Minnesota. A survey of firms that undertake commercial truck road movements was performed. The average operating cost per kilometer for commercial vehicle operators was calculated from the survey responses. Results show that the translog and Cobb-Douglas models have approximately equal explanatory power in estimating the total cost from the data. The models also revealed the presence of nearly constant returns to scale, a finding consistent with earlier studies; an increase in output (total truckloads) of 1% increases total costs by 1.04%..
2004
- Nee, Brendan and David Levinson (2004) Value of Information for Transit RidersTransit information systems are crucial for informing riders of their location, destination, and arrival time. After reviewing and classifying the various types of transit information systems, an adaptive stated preference survey was developed and administered to determine the value of information for transit users. The survey consisted of two scenarios which included a picture and a written description. In a series of nine questions, participants were given the choice of a higher fare that included more transit information or a lower fare with less or no information. The average increase in fare for improved transit information was $0.83. An OLS model was developed based on the demographic information from respondents. Females, people between the ages of 20 and 30, and those with higher income were willing to pay the most for improved transit information. Respondents who were regular transit users and who lived far from where they worked were willing to pay the least. .
- Zhang, Lei and David Levinson (2004)
Relationships between ramp metering and sprawlThis paper explores impacts of ramp metering
on urban land use. A regression-based transportation model is developed
to capture changes in accessibility caused by ramp metering on a highway
network. A Land Use Change Indicator (LUCI) model is modified to estimate
how the spatial distribution of employment and housing would change in
response to the redistributed accessibility in five hypothetical urban
areas with various initial land use patterns. Accessibility will be improved
in almost all areas in a city with ramp metering, but meters affect land
use patterns in various ways depending on initial land use conditions.
Ramp metering can exacerbate decentralization, but not necessarily sprawl.
Keywords: Ramp metering, Land use, Urban sprawl, Decentralization.