conference paper
published journal article
conference paper
Phd Dissertation
Privatization is often linked with innovation–new ideas the private sector brings to service delivery to cut costs and/or improve quality. But most discussions do not delve into what innovation means in the context of privatization nor into how important it is. Is innovation in privatization merely the replacement of staid government practices with more dynamic private practices? Or is there actual discovery of new practices previously not thought of, or at least not put into practice? I extend the Hayekian/Kirznerian theory of entrepreneurial discovery and develops a theory of discovery in the privatization process. A detailed discussion of privatization of prisons and fire protection services in the United States, reveals that privatization does provide scope and motivation for discovery. These insights are used to show that policy makers, in the course of creating law and policy regarding privatization, should consider the discovery benefits of privatization in their deliberations.
Phd Dissertation
published journal article
published journal article
The dynamic pricing problem of a freeway corridor with high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes was formulated and solved based on a point queue abstraction of the traffic system. However, existing pricing strategies cannot guarantee that the closed-loop system converges to the optimal state, in which the HOT lanes’ capacity is fully utilized but there is no queue on the HOT lanes, and a well-behaved estimation and control method is quite challenging and still elusive.
This article attempts to fill the gap by making three fundamental contributions: (i) to present a simpler formulation of the point queue model based on the new concept of residual capacity, (ii) to propose a simple feedback control theoretic approach to estimate the average value of time and calculate the dynamic price, and (iii) to analytically and numerically prove that the closed-loop system is stable and guaranteed to converge to the optimal state, in either Gaussian or exponential manners.
published journal article |
Oct 2020
published journal article
conference paper
A systematic evaluation of the performance and effectiveness of a field operational test (FOT) of an integrated corridor-level adaptive control system was attempted from fall 1994 through spring 1999 in Irvine, California. The FOT was conducted by a consortium consisting of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the city of Irvine, and two private-sector consultants-National Engineering Technologies Corporation and Farradyne Systems, Inc., a division of Parsons Brinckerhoff-with the city of Irvine as the lead agency. The FOT was a cost-share funded by FHWA as part of the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System Field Operational Test Program. The FOT involves an integrated advanced transportation management system, which extends the capabilities of existing traffic management systems in the city of Irvine and in Caltrans District 12. The evaluation originally entailed both a technical performance assessment and a comprehensive institutional analysis. This report of the Irvine FOT does not constitute a technical evaluation because of the failure of any of the planned technologies to be successfully implemented in the field. Because of the extended time frame associated with the project and the significant range of technical and institutional issues associated with the development and eventual failure of the FOT, a summary of project development, institutional barriers, and lessons learned is provided.
published journal article |
Jan 2002
policy brief
During the pandemic, California’s four major rail systems— Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT), and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro)—experienced an average ridership decline of 72 percent between 2019 and 2021. BART had the greatest decrease (87 percent) and MTS the lowest (47 percent). However, ridership changes varied significantly across individual stations, with stations located in the central business district or at the end of lines having the highest ridership losses. Land use, development density, and the pedestrian environment are strongly associated with station-level transit ridership. This brief examines how these characteristics affect transit ridership pre- and post-COVID and how they differ across station types based on longitudinal data collected between 2019 and 2021 for 242 rail stations belonging to BART, MTS, SacRT, and LA Metro.
research report |
Sep 2024
published journal article |
Dec 2025