John S. Niles

San Jose State University | SJSU · Mineta Transportation Institute

Existing and emergent microtransit and micromobility solutions promise to improve public transit for policy sensitive receptors and people in critical occupations and to create more financially sustainable transit. These multimodal solutions are examined for specific demographic segments. The study is based on an analysis of the Santa Clara Valley...

Abstract: Public transit ridership in California declined in the five years before the pandemic of 2020–21 and dropped significantly further after the pandemic began. A sharp downward step in the level of transit boarding occurred after February 2020, and continues to the date of this report as a result of the public-health guidance on social dista...

We examine the relative impact of increased housing vs. increased parking availability on ridership of public transit. The approach sheds light on the trade-off in alternative land uses near transit stops:park-and-ride(PnR)vs. transit-oriented development(TOD).In the example of one city studied here, econometric analysis suggests that PnR provides...

Could congestion be managed by paying drivers to travel as passengers, at a congestion-clearing level? This report answers this question by providing a method for evaluation of the idea, plus applying the method to a case study route.

This paper reports on a project that considers whether the goals of (de)congestion pricing could be achieved in whole or in part by incentivizing mode-shift rather than using charging to force it: buying rather than selling decongestion. The project developed a method for estimating the net present value of the costs and benefits of a permanent ITS...

Each day our collective use jams up the highway system, while also consuming excess energy and emitting both localised pollution and CO2-e, not to mention the time wasted and stress experienced by those sitting in traffic. What could we be doing differently? This is especially important in the context of the potential arrival of robotaxis, and the...

The End of Driving: Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles explores both the potential of vehicle automation technology and the barriers it faces when considering coherent urban deployment. The book evaluates the case for deliberate development of automated public transportation and mobility-as-a-service as paths...

This proposal is the first part of a larger project contemplated by the authors. The purpose of the full project is to cooperate with authorities in an urban region to test operationally the idea of reverse tolls, as a method for achieving corridor scale reductions in the volume of traffic. Tolls, or road pricing, are a known method of charging f...

The concept of Transit Leap is introduced and explained as robotic, shared-use, multi-passenger vehicle applications that start small, expand by demand, merge, and spread. It is an approach to deploying automated vehicles that is meant to blunt the long-established worldwide trend of ongoing increases in the number of private vehicles. Transit Leap...

For urban planners, the most important questions about vehicle automation are: When? How many? And, will they be privately owned or in shared use fleets? But even then — so what?

This report, released by the Residential & Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO.com), is applicable to any city with a population over 100,000. It details the interaction between two independent and competing markets for vehicle automation: household semi-automated vehicles and public-service robo-taxis and robo-shuttles. It examines how a...

There are two popular and somewhat utopian views of the future of the self-driving automobile. One is a long-fantasized, extra safe, super convenient, congestion-busting household vehicle that requires no attention to operate. The other is an on-demand robo-cab that rolls up to wherever you are within a minute or two of your request via smartphone...

Vehicle technology is about change dramatically. Two technology revolutions, the first regarding alternate energy systems and powertrains and the second regarding robotics comprising artificial intelligence and sensor systems, promise to make motor vehicles cleaner and safer. These two changes will make motorized travel cheaper, more convenient and...

One of the public policy goals for livable and sustainable communities is to minimize the use of automobiles. This paper focuses on introducing and justifying an important new policy principle. Even when car travel is minimized with smart growth land development policies, transportation demand management, and increased public transit, a significant...

Vehicle automation is one of three broad categories of emerging and disruptive technologies that have the potential to fundamentally transform surface transportation. The other two are the emergence of practical and commercially viable electric vehicles, and the constellation of innovative ways to connect vehicles to the Internet, other vehicles, i...

U.S. public transit faces a growing financial sustainability problem. The National Transit Database reveals that the 155 largest U.S. bus transit systems expended $16 billion for operations in 2011 but only collected $4.5 billion in fares. Transit funding comes mostly from taxes that are also needed to cover other critical public services such as h...

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) uses different combinations of techniques to improve service, such as bus-only lanes and roads, pre-boarding fare collection, transit priority at traffic signals, stylish vehicles with extra doors, bus stops that are more like light rail stations, and high frequency service. This study examines five approaches to BRT systems...

Provides justification for these recommendations for U.S. Metropolitan Planning Organizations: * Seek awareness of what's in think tanks, labs, incubators, start ups, overseas, dreamed about * Provide flexibility for uncertainty in plans for 30+ years out * Focus beyond Plan A to include contingency Plans B, C, & D and the tradeoffs among them * Co...

The Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San Jos State University assigned a project team to design a planning template for transit-oriented development (TOD) that incorporates an understanding of nonwork travel, that is, trips for shopping, eating out, and engaging in recreational and cultural activities. Nonwork trips are growing in signifiga...

Public policy intervention to change regional travel patterns in North America typically begins by constructing new transit infrastructure, often a dedicated guideway with limited geographic reach. This investment is leveraged with government efforts to put more housing and shopping in a specific, limited set of station areas. Meanwhile, the region...

Nonwork activities comprise the dominant general purpose for travel in the United States. Three-fourths of all person trips are made for nonwork purposes. Travel for nonwork purposes has grown as a share of all private vehicle travel over the last three decades, and now accounts for approximately four of five vehicle trips. Nonwork is the major rea...

An essential tenet of the new urbanism is that existing as well as new activity centers of metropolitan regions should be developed to higher densities and a greater mix of uses. New urbanism suggests that if centers with different commercial functions are numerous and linked by high-quality transit service, people will significantly reduce their u...

The idea that the primary purpose of telecommunications for society is simply `where best to go depends on what you know' is presented. Telecommunications facilitate a better level and mix of proximity to the people and the places people care about. The individual, organizational, and social forces that shape the choice between proximity and remote...

This essay is a modest attempt to propose a big idea that will be facilitated by broadband, computer-enhanced telecommunications, and provide an overarching meaning of what telecommunications does for society. In past years I have criticized the familiar and well-advocated ideas that advanced telecommunications solves traffic congestion, that telec...

This review and commentary of U.S. state and local government involvement in telecommunications infrastructure development finds a spectrum of activism defined by four patterns.

A review of a new book Telecommunications and the City is presented. The book is a definitive analysis of how `electronic spaces and urban places' co-exist and grow together. Exploring the relationship between urbanization trends and the technology of telecommunication. It describes the transformation of telecommunications from Plain Old Telephone...

Considers telecommunications infrastructure and applications as a means to stimulate travel and economic growth.

Conventional wisdom about social and economic behavior holds that the use of telecommunications is a natural substitute for transportation. For example, telephone calls can replace travel to meetings, and facsimile or electronic-mail transmission of documents substitutes for courier or postal delivery. The moving of information can replace the movi...

A pre-Internet examination of the impact of telecommunications on travel, and on other important industries. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in the early 1990s to support the development of what was called then, the National Information Infrastructure.

Conventional wisdom holds that suburban public transportation officials need to wage war against the American love affair with the automobile. A new, more constructive wisdom presented here suggests that public transportation officials try to create an Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) application that exploits that love affair. Computerize...

The transfer of management science into management practice is examined. Starting with the TIMS definition of management science, we delineate three fundamental classes of activity and associated personnel: (1) management science and scientists, (2) management technology and technologists, (3) management practice and managers. The inter-group commu...

Intuitive judgments based on the experience of managers have been the basis for decision making. Because the speed of environmental and technological change reduces the usefulness of experience, company executives are increasing their use of research on management problems to supplement experience-based practices. Two fundamental approaches to mana...

A strategy is specified for creating a management innovation capability which is similar to the R and D effort for new products/processes. The proposed capability is designed to overcome the barriers to management innovation which have limited efforts to increase management competence by professional staffs. A program for continuous management prog...

In management, a severe strain exists between the promises of scientific methods and the realities of practice. At a time when management is becoming more scientific, friction should be expected in the relationship between the practitioners of the art and the advocates of the new scientific knowledge. The practicing manager in the field is told tha...

Hiring MBA's represents an investment at a significant risk level, and data on the firm's historical experience with MBA investments should be maintained and evaluated. The characteristics of the MBA which count toward performance should be discovered. The authors suggest several: maturity measures, quantitative orientation, educational specialty,...

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has become the dominant urban growth planning paradigm in the United States. Yet scant evidence has been proffered to indicate that it will produce significant environmental and social benefits commensurate with the costs of the major transportation system improvements that it requires. Sixteen distinct planning i...

Transportation system investments that are costly and have a long intended life are risky if decision-makers shape those investments in response to inaccurate forecasts about the future travel environment. Historically, many forecasts have turned out to be wrong on the basic determinants of future travel patterns, including population, employment,...

Although there has been considerable discussion about how telecommunications will affect the demand for transportation, most studies have focused on substituting telecommunications for transportation. For example, telephone and video conferencing can replace travel for meetings; electronic mail can replace postal service. More importantly, people c...

Many metropolitan planning organizations across the United States have embraced transit-oriented development (TOD) as their regional planning paradigm. Regional and local transit agencies have made—or plan to make—major investments in new transit capacity, particularly rail systems. These agencies expect that dense and mixed-use development around...

We begin by reviewing literature describing the characteristics and policy issues bearing on freight. We extract from that literature a structure for describing those policy issues, and then go on to design a series of map displays and quantitative measures that provide a linkage between the characteristics of local delivery trucking and the public...

Effective public transit on a regional scale provides fast and frequent, high-capacity intercity service that can compete with the private vehicle. For the past 30 years, local transit agencies in the Puget Sound region have been working cooperatively in that direction. We are not talking about Link light rail or Sounder commuter rail, even though...