Unsticking Traffic: When Transit Works and Why

摘要

This report presents an application of the Urban Transportation PerformanceMonitoring System (UTPM), a customer-based analytical method for measuring the performance of transportation on an intermodal level. This system makes and reports its measurements in a way that enables decision makers to identify the kind of improvements that make people, and the economy, better off. The Urban Transportation Performance Monitoring System recognizes and seeks to understand the role of customers in determining the success of transportation systems and technologies. It is based on the observation that, in certain 'strategic' corridors where traffic congestion is high and a high-capacity transit (e.g., rail or busway) is available, the door-to-door travel times on both modes tend to equalize. This phenomenon is known as the 'Mogridge-Lewis effect' after its primary investigators, Martin Mogridge and David Lewis. Under these conditions, an improvement in the higher-capacity transit mode results in a corresponding improvement in door-to-door highway travel times. Highway users may thus benefit more from an investment in transit than in additional highway capacity. This system has potential uses in forming a part of the cost-benefit framework for empirical multimodal performance analysis and may be useful in implementing the National Transportation System (NTS). This report contains the results of selected corridor studies to evaluate the Mogridge-Lewis effect.