published journal article
published journal article
This paper provides new evidence on the link between airline traffic and employment in US metropolitan areas. The evidence confirms the common view that good airline service is an important factor in urban economic development. Frequent service to a variety of destinations, reflected in a high level of passenger enplanements, facilitates easy face-to-face contact with businesses in other cities, attracting new firms to the metro area and stimulating employment at established enterprises. The empirical results show that a 10 per cent increase in passenger enplanements in a metro area leads approximately to a 1 per cent increase in employment in service-related industries. However, airline traffic has no effect on manufacturing and other goods-related employment, suggesting that air travel is less important for such firms than for service-related businesses. These estimates are generated controlling for reverse causality between employment and traffic. The results imply that expansion of Chicago’s O’Hare airport would raise service-related employment in the Chicago metro area by 185 000 jobs (this impact assumes that expansion raises traffic by 50 per cent). Thus, the expansion of O’Hare airport represents a powerful economic development tool, as argued by its proponents.
conference paper
Working from home (WFH) increased tremendously after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. A critical research need is to understand the associated impacts on travel behavior in the post-pandemic era, particularly on Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). In this context, we conceptualized a causal structure to investigate the interrelationships between WFH and VMT by considering non-work trip rates and travel efficiency as mediator variables. Travel efficiency is introduced as a latent factor, defined as a sustainability measure consisting of four indicators: activity-trip ratio, proportion of short-distance trips, proportion of micro-mobility trips, and proportion of travel time in non-auto modes. By applying a Structural Regression model based on the 2022 National Household Travel Survey data, we derived both direct and indirect effects of WFH on VMT. The indirect effect of WFH on VMT via non-work trip rates suggests that the frequency of non-work trips increases with the frequency of WFH, leading to an increase in VMT. On the other hand, the indirect effect of WFH on VMT via travel efficiency revealed that more WFH days induced more sustainable travel choices and thus contributed to reductions in VMT. The direct effect of WFH on VMT appeared negative, and the summation of both direct and indirect effects also resulted in a negative total effect of WFH on VMT. The findings of this study will provide important insights into the WFH arrangements and their impacts on travel behavior from several demand and performance measure perspectives, which will help policymakers formulate relevant post-pandemic transportation policies.
conference paper
published journal article
conference paper
published journal article
published journal article
Expanding participation of marginalized groups within decision-making could help address environmental injustice and increase equity. This article assesses the potential and challenges of expanded engagement by examining community steering committee (CSC) processes of three communities in the San Joaquin Valley participating in California’s Assembly Bill 617 program to engage local stakeholders to mitigate pollution hotspots. Researchers use case study and interview analysis to assess CSC resident experiences prioritizing, approving, and monitoring implementation of one community-identified strategy: the installation of vegetative barriers (VB) between hazardous facilities (e.g., freeways) and sensitive uses to mitigate pollution exposure. Although residents successfully directed substantial funding toward community-identified VB priorities, the researchers find that the scale of adopted VB projects was modest relative to resident aspirations for a more robust, community-wide protective VB network. Findings point to the opportunities and challenges of using a steering committee model to integrate impacted residents into emissions reduction planning processes.
published journal article
conference paper