Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 3-11-2021 Short-term and Long-term Effects of New Light Rail Transit Service on Transit Ridership and Traffic Congestion at Two Geographical Levels Huajie Yang Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Transportation Commons, and the Urban Studies Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Yang, Huajie, "Short-term and Long-term Effects of New Light Rail Transit Service on Transit Ridership and Traffic Congestion atwo T Geographical Levels" (2021). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5658. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.7530 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible:
[email protected]. Short-term and Long-term Effects of New Light Rail Transit Service on Transit Ridership and Traffic Congestion at Two Geographical Levels by Huajie Yang A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies Dissertation Committee: Liming Wang, Chair Jennifer Dill Aaron Golub Wayne Wakeland Portland State University 2021 © 2021 Huajie Yang Abstract This dissertation quantitatively examines the effect of new Light Rail Transit (LRT) services on transit ridership and traffic congestion over time at two different geographical levels: at the corridor level, this study conducts case studies of two LRT lines in the Portland, Oregon region; at the regional level, this study uses a synthetic control method to construct a “synthetic” control Urbanized Areas (UA) that closely approximates the counterfactual transit ridership and traffic congestion scenario in the absence of light rail project in three UAs across America.