For assistant professor of city and regional planning Xiaoxia “Summer” Dong who joined the standing faculty this year, Philadelphia played a central role in his graduate studies and is central to his research, which focuses on transportation safety and accessibility. Dong, who earned both his master of city planning and Ph.D. from Penn, describes the ways that sound planning has impacted Philadelphia, his approach to teaching data and statistical analysis, and his findings on the complex relationship between pedestrians and driverless cars.
Dong cites SEPTA’s Route 49 bus as an example of positive change in the city. “[Penn alum Anita Davidson] noticed that there is a transit gap between Brewerytown, Center City, and University City, meaning that for people who live in Brewerytown and work in University City or Center City, there’s no easy transit connection,” he says. “It’s a great example of sound transit planning based on people’s actual need. Anita used some of the analytic programs that I’m teaching in Quantitative Planning Analysis Methods–or “Quant”–this semester. It shows how the tools that we teach in our department have a lot of real-world applications, helping students succeed in professional practice.”
Dong’s research on transportation focuses on emerging technologies and transportation, including ride sharing apps and driverless cars.
“It feels like we’ve been saying that driverless cars will be the next big thing in five years for the past 15 years,” Dong says. “My research focuses on the travel behavior and mode choice impacts of driverless cars. In one paper I co-authored, we surveyed a thousand residents in the Seattle and Philadelphia metro areas. We examined their attitudes towards driverless cars from the point of view of pedestrians by asking if people would jaywalk more often knowing that driverless cars will stop for them. The respondents overwhelmingly supported reducing the speed of driverless cars in urban areas, and even disabling driverless features or driverless functions in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic. What we learned from these findings is that there’s still a lot of mistrust of driverless technology.”
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