Multimodal Applications of Destination Access

About the Webinar

The Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota evaluates access to jobs for local, regional, and national contexts. This presentation highlighted three Observatory projects, covering automobile, transit, and bicycle modes, with the goal of prompting questions, ideas, and discussion from webinar attendees.

First, the presentation discussed the effects of traffic congestion on access to jobs by driving. Next, it reviewed research on the impact of managed lanes and park-and-ride facilities on transit access to jobs. Finally, the presenters showed bicycle access to jobs in the Twin Cities using the Level of Traffic Stress framework for bicycle routing.

This webinar was held in conjunction with a meeting of the CTS Transportation Safety and Traffic Flow Research Council.

Webinar Recording & Materials

• Watch the webinar recording
• Presentation slides (PDF)

Speakers

Andrew Owen is the director of the Accessibility Observatory and a researcher in the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies. His work focuses on building and applying systems for collecting, calculating, analyzing, and communicating data describing transportation systems. At the Observatory, he leads the development and maintenance of tools to calculate nationwide, multimodal accessibility to a variety of destination types. Owen directs the operations of the Observatory and leads its team of research assistants. Owen joined the field of transportation research following a career in computer science and network security and holds master’s degrees in civil engineering and in urban and regional planning.

Brendan Murphy is the Accessibility Observatory's lead researcher. He earned his M.S. in transportation engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2015, and his work at the Observatory focuses on the maintenance and improvement of data and database systems pertaining to accessibility-based analysis of transportation systems. His research interests include pedestrian and bicycle advocacy, the use of big data in sustainable city planning, and active living. He also cycles year-round for both commuting and fun, even in Minnesota blizzards.

Kristin Carlson is a researcher with the Accessibility Observatory at the Center for Transportation Studies. Her research focuses on the development and application of accessibility metrics for evaluating planned transportation infrastructure. Carlson has explored accessibility measurement using alternative destination types, units of time and money, and for diverse populations. She has a master's degree in civil engineering, and she is currently pursuing higher education in the field of data science at the University of Minnesota.