Ridehail and Commercial Vehicles Access in Urban Areas: Implications for Public Infrastructure Management

As urbanized populations and concentrations of activities increase, there is growing pressure in dense and constrained urban areas to unlock the potential of every public infrastructure element to address the increasing demand for public space. Specifically, there is a growing demand for space for parking operations related to the access to land use by people and goods. On one side, ridehailing services, such as those provided by Uber and Lyft, are on the rise and with them the associated passenger pick-up/drop-off (PUDOs) operations. On the other side, freight and servicing trips require a supply of adequate infrastructure to support vehicle access and load/unload activities and final delivery/service to customers. This dissertation aims to provide insights based on real-world datasets and tests to support the management of two key public infrastructure that provides access to land uses: alleys and curb lanes. To achieve this goal, first, this dissertation will investigate what roles alleys play in cities and inspect alleys’ physical characteristics and vehicle parking operations in these spaces. Secondly, this research will examine factors of PUDO dwell time and evaluate the impact of adding curb lane PUDO zones and geofencing ridehailing vehicles to these zones using a hazard-based duration modeling approach. Finally, this dissertation will analyze the impact of different ridehailing curb management strategies on curb lane utilization based on simulation.