Page 19 - Inventing Tomorrow

speeds in Kansas are higher than New York, but in 10 minutes I can reach a lot more jobs in New York than I can in Kansas.”
“So it might be a lower speed, but much higher accessibility,” he added.
One of Levinson’s latest projects, the National Accessibility Evaluation, will measure how many jobs you can reach in speci c amounts of time, when traveling by car, bus, train, streetcar, bike, ferry, or foot. These measurements rely on existing sched- ule data from public transit agencies, bicycle and pedestrian network data from OpenStreetMap, and road
“If you live in a city, you’ll be able to summon a car in a few minutes, so you won’t need
— DAVID LEVINSON
network and speed pro le data from TomTom.
Within the next year, the study will produce a heat map showing accessi- bility to jobs for the 11 million-plus census blocks in the United States. From there, urban planners, policy- makers, and other stakeholders can evaluate their transportation net- works like never before.
“We should be looking at policies and investments that maximize accessibility subject to their cost— maximize output, minimize input,” said Levinson, adding that jobs are the rst criteria, but the analysis will
expand to schools, hospitals, parks, restaurants, and other points of interest.
“Getting and presenting this infor- mation in a systematic way opens up a lot of opportunities on how invest- ments are allocated,” said Levinson. “But knowing is the rst step.”
Visit z.umn.edu/dlevinson to view a one-minute video about David Levinson's research.
to own one.”
David Levinson, professor of civil, environmental, and geo- engineering, focuses one of his research projects on accessibility issues, which includes how easy it is to reach our most valued destinations—home and work.
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