Outstanding Student of the Year:
Meg Slattery
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Meg Slattery was awarded the 2022 University Transportation Centers Outstanding Student of the Year! Meg is a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. For her dissertation, Meg is focusing on battery reuse and recycling, and lithium extraction in the Salton Sea. Her research endeavors have placed her in a unique position, allowing her to directly inform policy through supporting the California EPA's Lithium-ion Car Battery Recycling Advisory Group by providing background information, facilitating stakeholder discussions, and developing a final report that provided policy recommendations to the state legislature. In addition to pursuing her Ph.D., Meg serves as the Chair of the Natural Resources Commission for the City of Davis and has been invited to give presentations about the EV battery supply chain and recycling for the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and UC Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute.
Congratulations on your achievements, Meg!
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International Conference on Ecology and Transportation 2023
June 4-8, 2023 | Burlington, Vermont + Virtual programming and training
| ICOET is the foremost interdisciplinary, inter-agency supported conference addressing the broad range of ecological issues related to transportation systems in all modes. It provides a venue for sharing information and for training across multiple disciplines related to transportation and ecology. The conference is organized by the UC Davis Road Ecology Center, with assistance from the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies and the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. | |
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Exploring the Impacts of e-Commerce on Urban Transportation, Land Use, and Shopping Behavior
Dr. Genevieve Giuliano | Professor & Margaret and John Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government at the University of Southern California
Dr. Miguel Jaller | Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis
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This webinar uncovered some of the important societal and environmental impacts of the growth of e-commerce by delving into the findings of two distinct but related research projects. Questions that were explored include what the potential transportation-related effects from the shift to e-shopping will be, and what the patterns of e-shopping are with regard to frequency, goods purchased, and how these are related to attributes of e-shoppers. | |
Featured Report
Travel Behavior in E-commerce: Shopping, Purchasing, and Receiving
This report explores how e-shoppers choose to have their purchases delivered. It is argued that e-shopping decreases passenger travel and total VMT, but the net effect of e-shopping on passenger travel is still unknown. This research thus focuses on how delivery preferences affect individual travel behavior and emphasizes alternative delivery methods that cluster local deliveries, such as automated parcel lockers (APLs). The authors conduct two surveys to explore the potential of APLs as an alternative to residence deliveries.
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Featured Project
National Impacts of E-commerce Growth - Development of a Spatial Demand Based Tool
Last-mile distribution is costly and a major contributor to greenhouse gases. These distribution operations have been increasing due to a shift in purchasing behaviors, and will continue to grow in the coming years and decades. This project seeks to answer: How much will e-commerce grow? Will the growth be consistent across locations and demographics? And what are the impacts on the transportation system?
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Capitol Hill Research Briefing
NCST’s 8th annual Capitol Hill Research Briefing, “Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Mobility & Access to Sustainable Transportation in Rural Communities”, was held the second week of January in conjunction with the 102nd Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. NCST Researchers Dr. Caroline Rodier (University of California, Davis), Dr. Greg Rowangould (University of Vermont), and Dr. Gil Tal (UC Davis) highlighted recent research pertaining to meeting the mobility needs of small, rural, and marginalized communities while also addressing sustainability challenges in California and Vermont. The briefing was held in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC and was attended by transportation-focused legislative staff from several congressional offices. Additional congressional outreach during TRB included meetings with legislative offices. Staff from the UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy, as well as NCST researchers and students, met with the offices of Congresswoman Matsui, Congressman Tonko, Senator Duckworth, Congressman Garamendi, Congressman Thompson, Senator Feinstein, and Senator Padilla.
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STEPCon returned to in-person this past October! Every year, students and educators alike gather in Riverside, California to participate in two separate but complementary conferences. Student STEPCon is the premier student STEM conference in the Inland Empire where students conduct experiments, interact with STEM professionals, and more! Educator STEPCon is the Inland Empire's premier STEM professional development event for educators of all levels; educators are immersed in workshops and discussions, and hear from motivating keynote speakers.
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Which of the following was the most important factor in the environmental benefits of complete streets? | | |
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b. Volatile organic compounds | |
c. Vehicle Miles Traveled | |
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Frequent bike-share users were found to have ___ perception of the bike-share service. | |
Recently Completed Research | |
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Economic Sustainability of Sidewalk Networks and Funding Scenario Cost Distribution in Atlanta, GA
Vincent M. Bray, Freyja Brandel-Tanis, Will Reichard, Scott O'Brien, and Randall Guensler | Georgia Institute of Technology
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This research contributes new methods to identifying sidewalk presence by refining prior sidewalk network generation techniques. Using a baseline sidewalk network for Atlanta, the authors quantify sustainable sidewalk infrastructure costs by verifying sidewalk presence, estimating periodic repair requirements, and joining sidewalk facilities to adjacent land use parcels. The authors assess whether low income neighborhoods will be disproportionately affected by Atlanta’s requirement of adjacent property owners to repair sidewalks, instead of traditional property tax assessment methods.
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Jobs and Automated Freight Transportation: How Automation Affects the Freight Industry and What to Do About It
Miguel Jaller, Carlos Otero-Palencia, and Mollie D'Agostino | University of California, Davis
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This study offers an overview of the expansion of automation in the US economy and its potential impacts on labor in the freight sector. It also offers recommendations in three directions: 1) strategies that may help impacted workers within and outside of the heavy freight sector transition, 2) examples of existing public policies that can support a transition for impacted workers, and 3) insights on how different freight subsectors are likely to be impacted by automation.
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Developing Environmentally Friendly Solutions for On-Demand Food Delivery Service
Peng Hao, Haishan Liu, Yejia Liao, Kanok Boriboonsomsin, and Matthew J. Barth | University of California, Riverside
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To inform delivery policy that mitigates urban traffic and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this project investigated the vehicle miles traveled and emissions impact of on-demand food delivery under different COVID-19 pandemic periods and multiple operational strategies, with real-world scenarios set up in the city of Riverside. The authors found that a multi-restaurant strategy that allows food orders to be bundled into one driver's tour can reduce 28% of VMT and emissions while avoiding delivery delay. Their proposed framework can be applied to other types of delivery problems, such as same-day grocery delivery and parcel delivery.
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The Ridesharing Routing Problem with Flexible Pickup and Drop-off Points
Maged Dessouky and Zuhayer Mahtab | University of Southern California
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Ride-sharing systems in major metropolitan areas can reduce congestion and increase efficiency. To solve the rideshare routing problem with flexible pickup and drop-off points, the authors propose three solution approaches: one dynamic programming-based route enumeration procedure for small problems and two branch and price-based heuristics for solving large problems. The researchers performed numerical experiments on a San Francisco taxicab dataset to evaluate their approaches. The methodologies explored in this project can help transport planners design better and more efficient rideshare systems.
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The Pulse of the Nation on 3 Revolutions: Annual Investigation of Nationwide Mobility Trends
Giovanni Circella, Keita Makino, Grant Matson, and Jai Malik | University of California, Davis
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This study investigates the disruptions in transportation brought about from emerging technologies and the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors analyzed repeated cross-sectional databases collected with survey waves conducted in the United States and Canada; some respondents were invited from their previous survey participation, others from online opinion panels and convenience sampling. In all, several thousand participants provided the data necessary to understand the evolution of mobility patterns in the US, which in turn will guide planning decisions and policymaking.
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How Intelligent Vehicle Technologies Can Improve Vulnerable Road User Safety at Signalized Intersections
Intelligent vehicle technologies like blind spot detection, vulnerable-road-user beacon systems, bicycle/pedestrian-to-vehicle communication, and intersection safety have the potential to prevent vehicle, pedestrian, and cyclist deaths. Researchers at the University of California, Davis combined aggregate historical data analysis and micro transportation simulation to examine the safety impacts of these four technologies.
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Incentive Systems for New Mobility Services to Reduce Congestion
Rideshare/delivery organizations have great flexibility and power to affect traffic, meaning offering incentives to organizations may be more efficient than giving to individual drivers. Researchers at the University of Southern California developed a distributed algorithm for offering these incentives to make socially optimal routing decisions, lowering traffic flow without causing congestion in other parts of the traffic network.
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The Costs of Owning Battery-Electric Trucks – Is the Research Aligning?
Over the past four years, many studies have attempted to estimate the cost and future competitiveness of battery-electric trucks compared with diesel trucks. Researchers at the University of California, Davis reviewed 10 recent studies of total ownership costs of battery-electric trucks to derive general findings across all the studies and to identify areas for future research.
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"Beyond passenger cars and pickups"
To shed some light on California’s efforts to promote clean vehicles and lower greenhouse gas emissions, The Conversation held a Q&A with UC Davis researchers Daniel Sperling, Lewis Fulton, Marshall Miller, and Miguel Jaller. Among other things, they discuss the production capability and cost of zero-emission trucks, impacts of a diesel truck ban, and vehicle electrification in other states.
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The National Center for Sustainable Transportation is a consortium of leading universities committed to advancing an environmentally sustainable transportation system through cutting-edge research, direct policy engagement, and education of our future leaders. Consortium members: University of California, Davis; University of California, Riverside; University of Southern California; California State University, Long Beach; Georgia Institute of Technology; and the University of Vermont. | | | | |
