Understanding Transit Agency Perceptions about Transportation Network Companies, Shared Mobility, and Autonomous Transit: Lessons from the United States

Author(s):  
Mengjie Han ◽  
Matthew D. Dean ◽  
Pedro Adorno Maldonado ◽  
Parfait Masungi ◽  
Sivaramakrishnan Srinivasan ◽  
...  

Emergent technologies like autonomous/connected vehicles and shared mobility platforms are anticipated to significantly affect various aspects of the transportation network such as safety, mobility, accessibility, environmental effects, and economics. Transit agencies play a critical role in this network by providing mobility to populations unable to drive or afford personal vehicles, and in some localities carry passengers more efficiently than other modes. As transit agencies plan for the future, uncertainty remains with how to best leverage new technologies. A survey completed by 50 transit agencies across the United States revealed similar yet different perceptions and preparations regarding transportation network companies (TNCs) and autonomous transit (AT) systems. Transit agencies believe TNC market share will grow, either minimally or rapidly (72%), within the next 5 years and have either a negative (43%) or positive (35%) impact on their transit system. Only 30% of agency boards instructed the agency to work with TNCs, despite no perceived transit union support. For AT systems, 22% of agencies are studying them, 64% believe the impacts of AT over the next 10–20 years will be positive, but fewer agencies are influenced to consider new technologies because of AT systems (38%) compared with TNCs (72%). Surprisingly, transit administration is mostly unsure about driver and transit unions’ perceptions of these technologies. In addition, a significant number of transit agencies do not believe they should play a role in ensuring TNCs are safe and equitable and that TNCs should not have to adhere to the same regulations (50%, 28% respectively).

Author(s):  
Jean H. Baker

Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe is a biography of America’s first professionally trained architect and engineer. Born in 1764, Latrobe was raised in Moravian communities in England and Germany. His parents expected him to follow his father and brother into the ministry, but he rebelled against the church. Moved to London, he studied architecture and engineering. In 1795 he emigrated to the United States and became part of the period’s Transatlantic Exchange. Latrobe soon was famous for his neoclassical architecture, designing important buildings, including the US Capitol and Baltimore Basilica as well as private homes. Carpenters and millwrights who built structures more cheaply and less permanently than Latrobe challenged his efforts to establish architecture as a profession. Rarely during his twenty-five years in the United States was he financially secure, and when he was, he speculated on risky ventures that lost money. He declared bankruptcy in 1817 and moved to New Orleans, the sixth American city that he lived in, hoping to recoup his finances by installing a municipal water system. He died there of yellow fever in 1820. The themes that emerge in this biography are the critical role Latrobe played in the culture of the early republic through his buildings and his genius in neoclassical design. Like the nation’s political founders, Latrobe was committed to creating an exceptional nation, expressed in his case by buildings and internal improvements. Additionally, given the extensive primary sources available for this biography, an examination of his life reveals early American attitudes toward class, family, and religion.


Author(s):  
Seth W. Whiting ◽  
Rani A. Hoff

Advancements in technologies and their mass-scale adoption throughout the United States create rapid changes in how people interact with the environment and each other and how they live and work. As technologies become commonplace in society through increased availability and affordability, several problems may emerge, including disparate use among groups, which creates divides in attainment of the beneficial aspects of a technology’s use and coinciding mental health issues. This chapter briefly overviews new technologies and associated emerging applications in information communication technologies, social media networks, video games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and online gambling, then examines the prevalence of use among the general population and its subgroups and further discusses potential links between mental health issues associated with each technology and implications of overuse.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 151-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Avey

Many self-identified realist, liberal, and constructivist scholars contend that ideology played a critical role in generating and shaping the United States' decision to confront the Soviet Union in the early Cold War. A close look at the history reveals that these ideological arguments fail to explain key aspects of U.S. policy. Contrary to ideological explanations, the United States initially sought to cooperate with the Soviet Union, did not initially pressure communist groups outside the Soviet orbit, and later sought to engage communist groups that promised to undermine Soviet power. The U.S. decision to confront the Soviets stemmed instead from the distribution of power. U.S. policy shifted toward a confrontational approach as the balance of power in Eurasia tilted in favor of the Soviet Union. In addition, U.S. leaders tended to think and act in a manner consistent with balance of power logic. The primacy of power over ideology in U.S. policymaking—given the strong liberal tradition in the United States and the large differences between U.S. and Soviet ideology—suggests that relative power concerns are the most important factors in generating and shaping confrontational foreign policies.


Urban History ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 22-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Reilly

The debate about the comparative performance of the British and American economies around the turn of the century has involved most industrial sectors. In the case of the railways, the argument goes back at least to 1887, when a critical analysis of English railway operations compared to those of the United States was published. For British railway companies, the years after 1900 were a particularly difficult time especially in the capital market, and many new investment projects were abandoned, although not solely because of adverse conditions in the capital market. A substantial number of these projects were probably of a marginal nature but the eighteen-year period between 1890 and 1908 also saw the development of a new type of railway – the urban rapid transit system. This was in response to two very different factors – the continuing growth of cities and the application of electric power in a form suitable for railway use. The spread of these systems in Britain paralleled their expansion in the United States.


1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-344
Author(s):  
Frances B Jamieson ◽  
Pamela Chedore

Since the mid-1980s, the rate of new cases of tuberculosis (TB) diagnosed in Canada ceased to follow a downward trend, and has instead stabilized at approximately 7 cases/100,000 population. In the United States, a similar trend emerged, such that in the early 1990s there was an increase in new cases of TB. Outbreaks of drug-resistant TB also occurred with devastating clinical impact. These observations prompted laboratories to re-examine their role in halting the spread of TB. Laboratories play a critical part in the diagnosis of TB; procedures must be optimized to provide rapid and accurate results. This review discusses the role of the mycobacteriology laboratory in the diagnosis of TB, and how new technologies available today have enhanced the ability of the laboratory to provide timely, efficient and accurate results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Zimmer ◽  
Jennifer Bridgewater ◽  
Fatima Ferreira ◽  
Ronald van Ree ◽  
Ronald L. Rabin ◽  
...  

The topic of standardization in relation to allergen products has been discussed by allergists, regulators, and manufacturers for a long time. In contrast to synthetic medicinal products, the natural origin of allergen products makes the necessary comparability difficult to achieve. This holds true for both aspects of standardization: Batch-to-batch consistency (or product-specific standardization) and comparability among products from different manufacturers (or cross-product comparability). In this review, we focus on how the United States and the European Union have tackled the topic of allergen product standardization in the past, covering the early joint standardization efforts in the 1970s and 1980s as well as the different paths taken by the two players thereafter until today. So far, these two paths have been based on rather classical immunological methods, including the corresponding benefits like simple feasability. New technologies such as mass spectrometry present an opportunity to redefine the field of allergen standardization in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Vasily D. FILIPPOV

The article is devoted to the work of Irving John Gill during his heyday, and then in conditions when the principles of modernism discovered by him, due to the lack of society’s need for new architecture in the United States, were not needed in this country - from 1909 until his death in 1936. New technologies used by Gill in the construction of public and residential buildings from concrete are described as well as his unsuccessful participation in the Panama-California World Exhibition of 1915-191, the construction near Los Angeles of the “ideal” city of Torrance and end-of-life projects. The reasons why Gill did not become the leader of the American and one of the leaders of world architecture are discussed, and his work is still controversial.


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