News: Building Smart Curb Spaces, Understanding Transit Equity

October 6, 2021

NEWS

Senator Harrell Visits The UFTI & Rides The Gainesville Autonomous Shuttle

Florida Senator Gayle Harrell visited the UFTI on September 24th, and Drs. Elefteriadou, Manjunatha, Ranka, Srinivasan, Zhao, and Yan presented their research, the UFTI activities and the I-STREET Living Lab.

Senator Harrell also took a tour with a connected vehicle around the UF campus. Mr. Emmanuel Posadas, Traffic Operations Manager for the City of Gainesville, drove the connected vehicle and demonstrated how the vehicle receives signal timing information and warnings regarding the presence of pedestrians.

During the last part of the tour, Senator Harrell rode the Gainesville Autonomous Shuttle from the downtown area to 13^th Street and discussed other autonomous shuttle deployments around the state.

NSF Grant on Building Smart Urban Curb Environments Awarded to UFTI Affiliates

Dr. Yan Wang, Dr. Lili Du, Dr. Shigang Chen, along with Dr. Ruth Steiner, have teamed up to work on a recently awarded project by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will study curb space uses of urban communities and develop strategic management to adapt increasingly diverse and conflicting curb space uses in response to emerging vehicular technologies and mobility innovations. The NSF project is titled “SmartCurb: Building Smart Urban Curb Environments".

The project team will form novel research problems from socio-technical perspectives in the context of campus-downtown settings, develop academic and community partnerships with the necessary knowledge to address the problems, and prepare testbed “Smart Curb” environments.

UFTI Dr. Mehri Mohebbi Works on Transit Equity & Environmental Health Project

Dr. Mehri “Mehrsa” Mohebbi, UFTI’s Transportation Equity Lead, is working on a collaborative project along with Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition, and members of the Baltimore community. The project aims to better understand the relationship between the public transit system, social vulnerability, air pollution, and health impacts in the Baltimore region.

UFTI Graduate Student Sagar Patni Awarded Outstanding Achievement Certificate

Sagar Patni, Ph.D. student in Transportation Engineering, will be recognized for his academic excellence and contribution to UF by the UF International Center (UFIC) during International Education Week in November.

The International Student Achievement Awards Ceremony is celebrated each year in tandem with UF’s International Education Week and is sponsored by the University of Florida International Center. These awards acknowledge outstanding achievements of international students in the fields of academic excellence, outstanding teaching, community service and civic involvement, leadership, and innovation, developing creative solutions to global problems and contributions to global research projects.

Watch the Video! UFTI Affiliates Lead NSF Study to Create Methods that will Address Social & Health Issues Related to Noise

Dr. Hassan Azad and Dr. Sanjay Ranka were awarded an NSF project titled "CC-PG Remote Sensing and Prediction of Environmental Noise to Facilitate Addressing the Social and Health Issues of Noise – Pilot Study: Schools and Hospitals". The project is in collaboration with UFTI’s I-STREET living lab Director Dr. Pruthvi Manjunatha, Dr. Laurie M. Heller from Carnegie-Mellon University, and Dr. Alireza Shoajei Kol Kachi from Mississippi State University.

The project will create novel methodologies to measure, record, and analyze the environmental noise in large scales for cities using a combined remote sensing technology.

Dr. Hassan Azad & Dr. Sanjay Ranka Lead Project Funded by The National Science Foundation

EVENTS

REGISTRATION OPEN!

2021 STRIDE Research Products Showcase (virtual)

November 16, 17, & 18

12 PM to 2 PM, ET

The STRIDE Center Research Products Showcase will provide participants with snapshots of products as described by STRIDE researchers. Each day, from 12 PM to 2 PM, ET, will focus on one of three themes: Transit and Mobility; Advance Strategies and Technologies for Congestion Mitigation; and Equity. Register for the event to receive a Zoom providing access to all three days.

The UFTI’s STRIDE Center, which is the USDOT grant-funded 2016 Regional University Transportation Center for the Southeast, has produced a variety of products which impact and benefit transportation agencies, state DOTs, transportation professionals, transit agencies, planners, low income or marginalized populations, researchers, students, and more.

WEBINARS

T2 Center Courses

As an umbrella organization for many national and state-based programs, the T2 Center provides training, technical assistance, technology transfer services, and safety information to transportation, public works, and safety professionals as well as the general public. Our mission is to transform engineering research and technology into common practice and to foster a safe, efficient, environmentally sound transportation system by improving skills, and knowledge.

McTrans Training Webinars

Highway Safety Analysis Webinars:

8 PDHs are provided for each series

Oct 26 - 27 1 - 5PM ET

Highway Capacity Analysis Webinars:

18 PDHs are provided for each series

Nov 01 - 05 1 - 5PM ET

HCS Hands-On Training:

8 PDHs are provided for each series

Nov 09 - 10 1 - 5PM ET

The McTrans Center at the University of Florida distributes and supports software programs for traffic engineering and transportation planning applications.

STRIDE Webinar: "Evaluation of Work Zone Mobility by Utilizing Naturalistic Driving Study Data, Phase II"

This research aims to evaluate the work zone mobility by studying complete Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) work zone trip data. The NDS data provide a unique opportunity to study car-following models for different driver types in different work zone configurations. As driver characteristics (e.g. gender, age group, risk perception, etc.) are usually unavailable using the traditional roadside data collection methods, most previous work zone mobility studies mainly applied the simulation-based method or collected field data to estimate and predict work zone capacities without considering the driver characteristics. However, driver characteristics can be an important factor in estimating the work zone capacity because different driver types react differently to work zones, resulting in different car-following behaviors. These findings suggest that WZ capacity may be modeled more accurately if separate headway distributions are constructed for different driver characteristics. Such headway selection is essential to replicate the real-world variability and ultimately capture more accurate estimates of capacity.

STRIDE Webinar: "Findings from Autonomous Shuttle Demonstrations & Challenges Ahead"

Low-speed automated shuttles (AS) are being deployed throughout the U.S. via demonstration projects. Lessons learned and refinements made during these demonstrations are pivotal in determining the future role of AS in public transit. In this webinar the speakers present findings from three research projects to better understand the interactions of road users with AS. The first study captured public perception “before” and “after” an AS deployment in Gainesville, FL. The second study compared the effects of exposure to an automated driving simulation and on-road AS on older adults’ perceptions of AS. The third study evaluated the interactions of an AS in Lake Nona, FL with other vehicles and pedestrians via recorded video.

You can help power and move forward the Research, Education, Technology Transfer, and K-12 efforts at the UFTI by making your tax-deductible contribution.

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