Public subsidy of transit services has increased dramatically in recent years, with little effect on overall ridership. Quite obviously, a clear understanding of the factors influencing transit ridership is central to decisions on investments in and the pricing and deployment of transit services. Yet the literature about the causes of transit use is quite spotty; most previous aggregate analyses of transit ridership have examined just one or a few systems, have not included many of the external, control variables thought to influence transit use, and have not addressed the simultaneous relationship between transit service supply and consumption. This study addresses each of these shortcomings by (1) conducting a cross-sectional analysis of transit use in 265 US urbanized areas, (2) testing dozens of variables measuring regional geography, metropolitan economy, population characteristics, auto/highway system characteristics, and transit system characteristics, and (3) constructing two-stage simultaneous equation regression models to account for simultaneity between transit service supply and consumption. We find that most of the variation in transit ridership among urbanized areas – in both absolute and relative terms – can be explained by factors outside of the control of public transit systems: (1) regional geography (specifically, area of urbanization, population, population density, and regional location in the US), (2) metropolitan economy (specifically, personal/household income), (3) population characteristics (specifically, the percent college students, recent immigrants, and Democratic voters in the population), and (4) auto/highway system characteristics (specifically, the percent carless households and nontransit/non-SOV trips, including commuting via carpools, walking, biking, etc.). While these external factors clearly go a long way toward determining the overall level of transit use in an urbanized area, we find that transit policies do make a significant difference. The observed range in both fares and service frequency in our sample could account for at least a doubling (or halving) of transit use in a given urbanized area. Controlling for the fact that public transit use is strongly correlated with urbanized area size, about 26% of the observed variance in per capita transit patronage across US urbanized areas is explained in the models presented here by service frequency and fare levels. The observed influence of these two factors is consistent with both the literature and intuition: frequent service draws passengers, and high fares drive them away.

Nature and/or nurture? Analyzing the determinants of transit ridership across US urbanized areas

Environmental contamination caused by active pharmaceutical ingredients is an emerging global concern. Unfortunately, China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), lacks information on the quantities of pharmaceutical products consumed and disposed. Thus, an in-street survey using systematic sampling was conducted in 2015-16 to capture 1865 respondents from seven sites for their practices in handling and disposing unused pharmaceuticals in the household. Three-quarters of the population has unwanted medicines at home and on average, each household is storing 138.4 g, of which the major drug type is medicines for cold. Middle class populations in HKSAR are more likely to have larger quantities of unused medicines stored at home and slightly more than half (53.9%) of people dispose unwanted drugs in garbage cans along with normal solid waste. Our observations also suggest appreciable noncompliance and consumption of unused medicines following self-diagnosis of symptoms. The level of support for a future waste medicine take back scheme was less than 40% being wholehearted supporters. The most preferred location to return unwanted drugs was out-patient clinics, followed by convenience stores. While HKSAR is a developed world city by income level, survey results show that it is more similar to the developing world in terms of pharmaceutical resource management, especially due to lack of consumption data, pharmaceutical waste handling infrastructure and medication compliance. Insights gained from this survey can help public health and waste management authorities in other cities to improve pharmaceutical resource management in urban areas.

Identifying household pharmaceutical waste characteristics and population behaviors in one of the most densely populated global cities

Best management practices from agricultural economics: Mitigating air, soil and water pollution

Using a targeted ecopharmacovigilance intervention to control antibiotic pollution in a rural aquatic environment.

Cross-national attraction is the first stage in international policy borrowing and analysis of its indicators provides insight into shifts in educational policies. We analyse cross-national attraction within the media discourse on the OECD’s PISA in four countries: Australia, Finland, Japan and South Korea. Using the largest circulation English language newspapers in each of these countries (2001–2015), we analyse references to the other three countries, then expand the focus to tally all international references and map emerging patterns. Finland is the predominantly referenced country, with media attention that eclipses all other countries. The attraction to Finnish educational culture is focused on aspects beyond what is measured in PISA; and flourishes despite Finnish performance in PISA, which although strong is deteriorating. Although limited to English language media, this study finds complex, sometimes inconsistent and paradoxical, patterns of cross-national attraction that deserve further research.

The PISA Phenomenon: Analysis of its Ascendancy in Media, Policymaker and Academic Discourses in Education

Pharmaceutical pollution in the aquatic environment is an issue of concern that has attracted attention by the news media. Understanding the factors that contribute to media framing of pharmaceutical pollution may lead to a better understanding of the management and governance of this issue, including why these pollutants are generally unregulated at this time. This study conducted a content analysis of 405 newspaper articles (81 had substantive information on the topic) from 2007 to 2014, using the search terms “water” and “pharmaceuticals” in the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. We sought to analyze the factors that contributed to the news media presentation of pharmaceutical pollution in the United States, including the presentation of the risks/safety and solutions by various actors. We found that the primary issues in the news media were uncertainty regarding public health and harm to the environment. The primary solutions recommended within the news media were implementing additional water treatment technologies, taking unused pharmaceuticals to predetermined sites for disposal (take-back programs), and trash disposal of unused pharmaceuticals. Water utilities and scientists presented improved water treatment technology, government actors presented take-back programs, and pharmaceutical representatives, while sparsely involved in the news media, presented trash disposal as their primary solutions. To advance the understanding of the management of pharmaceutical pollution, this article offers further insight into the debate and potential solutions within the news media presentation of this complex scientific topic.

U.S. News Media Coverage of Pharmaceutical Pollution in the Aquatic Environment: A Content Analysis of the Problems and Solutions Presented by Actors

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2447&context=etd

An investigation of the performance of urban rail transit systems on the corridor level: A comparative analysis in the American west

Bellwethers have been studied for decades in the realm of election forecasting. Presidential election forecasting has historically focused on the study of bellwethers at the level of the state, likely due to the fact that presidential candidates win electoral college votes based upon the winner of the popular vote in each state. However, states can be difficult to study due to their large sizes and diverse political environments, leading these authors to examine whether bellwethers can also be studied at the finer resolution of individual counties. To do so, the popular vote winner of each county for every presidential election from 1980 through 2016 was tabulated and mapped, yielding 19 true bellwether counties for the period. These counties were geographically clustered in the Midwest and in the Northeast. Demographically, the bellwether counties tended to be whiter, older, less educated, have lower median incomes, have a lower percentage of workers in the labor force, and have higher rates of vacant housing than the country as a whole. Finally, numerical bellwether scores for all 3142 counties in the US were computed based upon the number of elections in which each county voted for the winner of the election. Counties with the highest bellwether scores were also disproportionately found in the Midwest and in the Northeast.

An Inquiry of Bellwether Counties in US Presidential Elections

Electric vehicles are seen as one of the technological solutions to transition our transportation systems away from carbon, and cities offer unique opportunities to electrify transportation. To be equitable, however, this transition will not merely require technological innovations. Acknowledging socio-spatial inequalities and creating strategies to address them are critical—yet relatively underexplored—dimensions of the transportation transition. This paper integrates relevant literature into a micro-urban social typology (MUST) approach that uses agglomerative clustering techniques to examine, first, the factors and attributes defining transportation inequities within 36 U.S. cities, and, second, the implications of these inequities for policies that foster a more equitable transportation transition. By combining socio-spatial and transportation data, we identified five MUSTs: Wealthy, Urban Disadvantaged, Urban Renters, Middle-Class Homeowners, and Rural/Exurban. Rather than being tied to any particular indicator (e.g., homeownership), these MUSTs contain intersecting factors and features of inequities. We compare transportation and health outcomes across MUSTs, and the results suggest that user-centric strategies and public investments are necessary to foster true transportation equity. These must go beyond the electrification of private vehicles and should be tailored to the specific characteristics of each MUST. These could include electric carpooling for the rural/exurban MUST and electrification of transit for the urban disadvantaged and renter MUSTs. Our typology offers a critical next step toward informing transportation transition policies to target critical sociodemographic, economic, and techno-infrastructural factors. 

Daniel Zimny-Schmitt

Papers

U.S. News Media Coverage of Pharmaceutical Pollution in the Aquatic Environment: A Content Analysis of the Problems and Solutions Presented by Actors

An investigation of the performance of urban rail transit systems on the corridor level: A comparative analysis in the American west

An Inquiry of Bellwether Counties in US Presidential Elections

Inequality and the future of electric mobility in 36 U.S. Cities: An innovative methodology and comparative assessment

What Your Job Says About Your Politics: The Relationship Between Employment Sector and Voting Behavior