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Researchers are increasingly aware of the importance of crowdsourced data and consider them as possible complementary data sources to existing traffic monitoring systems. In this study, we investigated the coverage, timeliness, and location accuracy of Waze user reports over the years (2018–2021) by comparing their reports with official abnormal event records. The results indicate that the coverage of Waze reports is not constant over time and space. The matching rate of Waze crashes to official records was affected by traffic volumes. It dropped at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) and recovered gradually in 2021, coinciding with the decline and recovery of traffic during the COVID-19 period. Other factors affecting the matching rate include incident duration and location. In addition, Waze reports were timely. On average, 55% of the crashes were reported sooner by Waze users than by the official records. Location accuracy was evaluated as well, and the average absolute distance difference was 0.40 mi for crashes and 0.29 mi for stopped vehicles. Nearly all (90%) of the distance differences between Waze reports and Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) records were between −0.85 and 0.80 mi for crashes and −0.67 to 0.62 mi for stopped vehicles. No obvious change in the spatiotemporal accuracy over time could be observed. Moreover, those Waze reports that could not be matched to TDOT records were analyzed, and the number of crashes covered by those reports was estimated. The results suggest that Waze reports have potential value in identifying missed/unreported crash records and complementing the existing incident database.

Improving transit access for people in low-income communities is an important consideration for transit providers. However, there has only been a limited amount of research on the transit accessibility of affordable housing units. This paper aims to develop a method for evaluating the transit equity of existing affordable housing units and propose easy-to-implement modifications to local bus services to increase transit accessibility levels (assuming housing locations do not change in the short term). The proposed method has three steps, and it is applied to three cities in Tennessee with primarily bus-based transit systems. The first step measures the transit accessibility of specific affordable housing locations and citywide transit accessibility levels using a web-based platform built using open-source software. The second step evaluates the transit equity of affordable housing programs at the city level using Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients, and the transit equity of specific affordable housing locations by proposing a simple inequity index. The results reveal that the level of transit equity for affordable housing units differs across housing programs and cities. In the third step, an example of a modification to a local bus route is evaluated for one affordable housing location with a high inequity index to demonstrate the applicability of the method. The substantial increase in accessible jobs after modification, from 135 to 6,400, highlights the potential effectiveness of implementing short-term transit service changes to improve the accessibility of existing affordable housing locations. This three-step method primarily relies on open datasets that are also available for other regions in the U.S.A.

This research identified current challenges, constraints and interest in the implementation and management of new mobility services (on-demand and micromobility) for United States transit agencies. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews with employees of transit agencies were conducted, and NVivo, a qualitative analysis software, was used to classify agency involvement, constraints, and challenges with services. The most common constraints and challenges for on-demand services (cited by more than five agencies) were labor shortages, software performance, fare integration, vehicle shortages, and funding. For agencies not offering on-demand services, developing strong backbone networks with fixed-routes was a priority, and cost-effectiveness, service area design, and funding were additional concerns. The top constraints and challenges among transit agencies with respect to micromobility (cited by more than four agencies) included fare integration, obstruction of public space, funding, adequate supporting infrastructure, and development of equitable service. For integrating new mobility services, most transit agencies (14 of 20, 70%) expressed interest in becoming mobility managers, but larger agencies (those with more than 10 million unlinked passenger trips) were split between mobility manager and partner roles. This research suggests that transit agencies have evolved in the new mobility space, but some constraints and challenges still stand in their way. Policy makers and decision makers can help transit agencies by encouraging open-source software development, improving labor contracts, increasing funding opportunities, and coordinating land-use, transportation, and transit planning. Future research should continue investigating barriers to entry for new mobility services and identify how transit agencies can increase coordination with technology and micromobility companies.