Bike share responses to COVID-19.

Bike sharing can leverage its physical distancing advantages for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but system management and communication are essential to support healthy transportation. This study addresses the need to understand the range of bike share systems' responses to the pandemic by reviewing bike share system cases in the United States and reports survey responses from bike share users in San Antonio (TX). Five out of eleven bike share systems communicated their responses to the pandemic online at the time of review. 43% of survey respondents who were unemployed due to the pandemic reported increasing use of the bike share system, whereas 36% of employed respondents decreased ridership. Most respondents were unaware of the bike share operator's steps to control the spread of COVID-19 for users. Moderate-frequency riders (1-2 times per month) may increase bike sharing the most after Coronavirus restrictions are lifted, from 22% of respondents to 34%. Based on our findings, we suggest bike share operators should expand communication efforts about policies and actions to support community health, explore how to serve unemployed and low-income communities best, and prepare for the equitable expansion of ridership following the pandemic.

Comparison of critically ill patients from three freestanding ED's compared to a tertiary care hospital based ED.

BACKGROUND: Freestanding emergency departments (FEDs) care for all patients, including critically ill, 24/7/365. We characterized patients from three FEDs transferred to intensive care units (ICU) at a tertiary care hospital, and compared hospital length of stay(LOS) between patients admitted to ICUs from FEDs versus a hospital-based ED (HBED). METHODS: We performed a retrospective, observational cohort study from January 2014 to December 2016. Demographic and clinical information was compared between FED and HBED patients with chi-square and fisher's exact tests for categorical variables and Student's t-test for continuous variables. The main outcome of interest was hospital LOS. Multi-variable linear regression was performed to estimate association between LOS and emergency facility type, while adjusting for potential confounders. RESULTS: We included 500 critically ill patients (FED = 250 and HBED = 250). Patients did not differ by age, gender, or BMI. FED patients were more likely to be white (89.6% vs. 70.8%, p < 0.001) and have higher Charlson Co-morbidity Index scores (3.5 vs. 2.4, p < 0.001). Average LOS for FED patients was 5 days, compared to 7 days for HBED patients (p < 0.001). After adjusting for demographic and clinical confounders, there was significant correlation between ED facility type and LOS in hospital (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Patients transferred from FEDs to an ICU were similar in age and gender, but more likely to be white with a higher Charlson Comorbidity Index score. FED patients experienced shorter hospital length of stay compared to patients admitted from a HBED.

Crowdsourcing Bike Share Station Locations: Evaluating Participation and Placement.

Problem research strategy and findings: Planners increasingly involve stakeholders in co-producing vital planning information by crowdsourcing data using online map-based commenting platforms. Few studies, however, investigate the role and impact of such online platforms on planning outcomes. We evaluate the impact of participant input via a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS), a platform to suggest the placement of new bike share stations in New York City (NY) and Chicago (IL). We conducted 2 analyses to evaluate how close planners built new bike share stations to those suggested on PPGIS platforms. According to our proximity analysis, only a small percentage of built stations were within 100 feet (30m) of suggested stations, but our geospatial analysis showed a substantial clustering of suggested and built stations in both cities that was not likely due to random distribution. We found that the PPGIS platforms have great promise for creating genuine co-production of planning knowledge and insights and that system planners did take account of the suggestions offered online. We did not, however, interview planners in either system, and both cities may be atypical, as is bike share planning; moreover, multiple factors influence where bike stations can be located, so not all suggested stations could be built. Takeaway for practice: Planners can use PPGIS and similar platforms to help stakeholders learn by doing and to increase their own local knowledge to improve planning outcomes. Planners should work to develop better online participatory systems and to allow stakeholders to provide more and better data, continuing to evaluate PPGIS efforts to improve the transparency and legitimacy of online public involvement processes.

The Geography and Equity of Crowdsourced Public Participation for Active Transportation Planning.

Transportation planners increasingly use new forms of online public participation alongside traditional in-person approaches, including crowdsourcing tools capable of encouraging geographically specific input. Digital involvement may be particularly valuable in exploring methods to plan at a megaregional scale. Research is beginning to address digital inequalities, recognizing that broadband and smartphone access may restrict opportunities for disadvantaged groups. However, the geography and equity of participation remain pragmatic issues for practice and research. This paper reviews the geography and equity of the participation methods in Austin, Texas for active transportation (bicycling and pedestrian) through three approaches to co-produce informed plans: in-person meetings, public participation geographic information system (PPGIS), and an emerging smartphone platform that logs trips and encourages input on route quality. In addition to spatial analysis with standard deviational ellipses, we include qualitative case analysis to contextualize the geographic and equity implications of different participation approaches. Results show that both online techniques resulted in a larger geography for participation than in-person meetings, with the regional PPGIS covering the most area. However, review of the income levels in each area shows that use of the smartphone-based crowdsourcing platform was aligned with lowest-income areas. This study shows that online participation methods are not homogeneous regarding geography or equity. In some contexts, smartphone applications can help reach lower-income communities, even when compared with in-person meetings. Crowdsourcing tools can be valuable approaches to increase geography and equity of public participation in transportation planning.

Revisiting Image of the City in Cyberspace: Analysis of Spatial Twitter Messages During a Special Event.

This research investigated people's communication of urban space as reflected in Twitter messages (tweets) during the 2012 Super Bowl. The authors archived over 600,000 tweets related to the Super Bowl from January 23 through early February 6. The authors identified 78 Indianapolis-area places or routes named in the tweets. Based on occurrence of these terms, the authors retained 9,103 city-specific messages for analysis. The frequency of such tweets changed over the two-week period and peaked two days before game day. Instances of all of Lynch's (1960) The Image of the City elements (node, district, landmark, path, and edge) were found in the tweets. While node-referencing terms were most common among the 78 spatial identifiers, district and landmark references were most common in the tweet sample. Edge references were almost non-existent and only occurred as named waterways. This research has implications for city-oriented social media monitoring efforts for future special events.

Planning for Bike Share Connectivity to Rail Transit.

Bike sharing can play a role in providing access to transit stations and then to final destinations, but early implementation of these systems in North America has been opportunistic rather than strategic. This study evaluates local intermodal plan goals using trip data and associated infrastructure such as transit stops and bike share station locations in Austin, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois. Bike sharing use data from both cities suggest a weak relationship with existing rail stations that could be strengthened through collaborative, intermodal planning. The study suggests a planning framework and example language that could be tailored to help address the linkage between bike sharing and transit. Rather than an exhaustive study of the practice, this study provides evidence from these two cities that identify opportunities to improve intermodal planning. Cities that are planning or expanding a bike sharing system should consider carefully how to leverage this mode with existing modes of transport. Regardless of a city's status in implementing a bike sharing system, planners can leverage information on existing transport systems for planning at regional and local levels.

Public Transit Equity Analysis at Metropolitan and Local Scales: A Focus on Nine Large Cities in the US.

Recent studies on transit service through an equity lens have captured broad trends from the literature and national-level data or analyzed disaggregate data at the local level. This study integrates these methods by employing a geostatistical analysis of new transit access and income data compilations from the Environmental Protection Agency. By using a national data set, this study demonstrates a method for income-based transit equity analysis and provides results spanning nine large auto-oriented cities in the US. Results demonstrate variability among cities' transit services to low-income populations, with differing results when viewed at the regional and local levels. Regional-level analysis of transit service hides significant variation through spatial averaging, whereas the new data employed in this study demonstrates a block-group scale equity analysis that can be used on a national-scale data set. The methods used can be adapted for evaluation of transit and other modes' transportation service in areas to evaluate equity at the regional level and at the neighborhood scale while controlling for spatial autocorrelation. Transit service equity planning can be enhanced by employing local Moran's I to improve local analysis.

High-frequency annular array fabrication using a flex circuit matching layer.

Fabricating arrays for high-frequency image applications such as ophthalmic imaging, intravascular imaging, and small animal imaging is challenging. For example, an array for intravascular imaging must be small enough to fit within the lumen of a catheter and inexpensive enough to be discarded after a single use. This article presents a new method for fabricating high-frequency annular arrays that is simple and inexpensive. The annular array elements are defined by the electrode pattern on a back surface of a polyimide quarter-wavelength matching layer that is glued to the front face of a ceramic transducer substrate (PZT5H). Electrical losses associated with bonding the matching layer to the transducer substrate are reduced by fabricating a second set of electrodes on the transducer substrate and then bonding the substrates using an anisotropic conductive epoxy. The feasibility of this technique was established by fabricating a seven-element, 20-MHz, 5-mm diameter annular array. The prototype array produced a pulse with a -6-dB factional bandwidth of 50%, an insertion loss of 22 dB, and secondary lobes in the radiation pattern at f/2 that decreased to -65 dB with respect to the main lobe with a peak amplitude of -53 dB.