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This study assessed the state of the practice in figuring out the placement of new rapid transit park-and-ride facilities and whether the existing body of literature was still in harmony with today's practice. The analysis was based on free-form interviews and a survey of transit professionals. The results revealed several emerging differences that had not been discussed in the literature. First, the cost of the park-and-ride facility was of critical importance to transit planners, as the pressure to deliver projects on budget was of the utmost importance. Second, the relationship between land use and park-and-ride demand as placement factors was one of the most important considerations of planners in the location of park-and-ride facilities. Contrary to the situation in larger metropolitan areas, land use compatibility may have superseded potential park-and-ride demand for determining park-and-ride facility locations in midtier cities, where light rail was most prevalent. Third, the survey indicated that individuals in a transit organization may have perceived the value of land use compatibility versus park-and-ride demand differently. Planners and engineers tended to prioritize land use over park-and-ride demand, in contrast to those in managerial positions. Finally, of the factors that transit planners considered when they located park-and-ride facilities, the analysis indicated that considerations aligned with convenience, such as highway access and adjacency to a congested highway, were more valued by transit planners than those that were aligned with economics, such as proximity to a residential area and relationship to primary activity centers. The reverse applied to larger cities.

Reinforced concrete structural walls are commonly used as the primary lateral load resisting system in modern buildings constructed in high seismic regions. Most walls in high-rise buildings are C-shaped to accommodate elevators or other architectural features. C-shaped walls have complex loading and response including: (1) symmetric response in the direction of the web, (2) asymmetric response in the direction of the flange and (3) high compression and shear demands when used as a pier in a coupled-wall configuration. A research study was conducted on C-shaped walls tested under (1) uni-directional and (2) bi-directional loading of an isolated walls and (3) bi-directional loading of a c-shaped pier in a coupled wall system. Each of the walls failed in flexure with strength loss resulting from low-cycle fatigue of the boundary element longitudinal reinforcement with buckling followed by fracture. The damage progression was as follows: (1) cracking at the wall-foundation interface, (2) concrete spalling in the web, (3) buckling and fracture of web reinforcement, (4) spalling in the flanges, (5) buckling and fracture of the bars in the boundary elements. Concrete spalling and steel bar damage occurred at lower strong-axis drift levels for the bi-directionally loaded, resulting in lower drift capacities for these loading protocols. However, for the strong-axis direction, bi-directional loading does not reduce flexural or shear effective stiffness values suggesting that current values are appropriate for design and evaluation of buildings with c-shaped walls.

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The authors would like to thank the Iowa Highway Research Board and the Iowa Department of Transportation for sponsoring this research. I would like to thank my committee members, Alice Alipour, Behrouz Shafei, and Omar Smadi, for their guidance and support throughout the course of this research. Thank you to the supervisors that made this project possible. Thank you to Kanta Prajapat for your help throughout this process. Lastly, thank you to the friends and family that helped guide and motivate me through my education, I could not have done it without you.