We believe that true sustainability goes well beyond the performance of an individual building. Entire neighborhoods and districts—when working as an integrated ecosystem—can reduce our consumption of natural resources and strengthen the social fabric of communities. The result is a higher quality of life and an exceptional urban experience. The Sustainable Communities Lab is researching how best to integrate ecological frameworks into urban infrastructure, and how to measure and benchmark performance at the district scale.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are a near future reality and the implications of AVs on city development and urban form, while potentially widespread and dramatic, are not well understood. This report describes the first order impacts, or the broad ways that the form and function of cities are already being impacted by forces of change including—but... Read more »
This study is an initial design exercise that seeks to understand the changing landscape of freight delivery, and evaluates two emerging delivery technologies: drones (air) and robots (autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), or droids) on the built environment. Given that this is a high-level exercise, the sole purpose of this document is to highlight emerging trends... Read more »
We are experiencing a technologically-driven shift in the transportation industry, which is transforming the way we move and live in cities. While new mobility options have the potential to profoundly change the way that we plan, design, and build transportation infrastructure, the impacts of these technologies on livability and urban design are not well understood This study aimed... Read more »
RB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 832: State DOTs Connecting Specialized Transportation Users and Rides, Volume 2: Toolkit for State DOTs and Others assists agencies and organizations with the process of designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating linkages that connect customers of specialized transportation services and programs with rides. The stand-alone toolkit directs lead agencies and partners through the decision process for their state, region, or county, and factors in budget limitations. Design decisions and evaluation criteria tailored to each functionality level are also provided.
Transit administrators, engineers, and researchers often face problems for which information already exists, either in documented form or as undocumented experience and practice. This information may be fragmented, scattered, and unevaluated. As a consequence, full knowledge of what has been learned about a problem may not be brought to bear on its solution. Costly research findings may go unused,... Read more »
It is a commonly held belief that the construction of rail transit systems and more specifically the stations along the system, drives real estate development in the areas they serve. The benefit is seen as a mutual one: high-density development at transit stations and along rail corridors generates the ridership and these systems need to... Read more »
The “LA REDCAR SF” project was realized as a colloquium as part of the San Francisco Chapter of the AIA “Architecture and The City Festival 2010” which rook place September, 2010, under the theme of “Investigating Urban Metabolisms.” The colloquium, entitled “Rethinking Urban Transportation: New Strategies for Mobility,” was the first of its kind where a moderated discussion with... Read more »
In the August 2014 issue of the ITE Journal, Jeffrey Tumlin, Eric Dumbaugh, and Wesley Marshall explore the error of assuming transportation performance measures are objective. They are not. The authors assert “we should be aware of how our performance measures relate to the values and desires of the public which we serve. If there... Read more »
BART Board member Gail Murray, Joey Goldman, Cathleen Sullivan, Bethany Whitaker, and other colleagues led a study that has been released from the Transportation Research Board. Under TCRP Project H-49, they identified and documented the motivations, benefits, and barriers to coordination and integration among multiple public transportation providers. The Transit Integration Manual (Volume I) provides... Read more »
Conference Outline: This conference, held on June 26th, 2012, in San Francisco, explored the notion that current developments and trends in technology, demographics and social software networks are impacting how residents of certain major metropolitan areas are approaching the means by which they are getting around their city or region. The current transportation models have evolved into... Read more »
In an era of limited and constrained funding, transportation agencies struggle to meet the needs of travelers and the demands on the system. Agencies need creative and low-cost transportation solutions and seek to identify ways to maximize use of existing multimodal networks.
