The inaugural USDOT Future of Transportation Summit was held August 13-15, 2024, in Washington, DC. The event was organized by the five National University Transportation Centers (UTCs), with the Safety21 National UTC on Promoting Safety as the lead and the National Center for Sustainable Transportation playing a significant supporting role. This invitation-only event was attended by nearly 500 academics, federal agency representatives, legislative staff, students, industry professionals, and more.

The Summit focused on harnessing the power of federal research and technology investments for the future of transportation through technical sessions, stakeholder panels, poster sessions, and technology demonstrations. Dr. Susan Handy (pictured), Director of the NCST, led the Environment Session and also organized stakeholder panel discussions. NCST Executive Committee member Dr. Marlon Boarnet of the University of Southern California presented during a Mobility Session. The packed three day agenda was aimed toward enhancing coordinated research amongst the UTCs and the broader transportation community, highlighting impactful projects, and identifying gaps, challenges, and opportunities in intermodal and multi-modal research.

Meet Reid Passmore, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate studying Civil Engineering!

Reid’s research looks at how cyclists navigate street networks. Cyclists often avoid hills and dangerous roads without bike lanes, and Reid captures these behaviors with machine learning models. The goal his research is to help provide supporting evidence for building cycling infrastructure in cities across the U.S., particularly in cities with few existing cyclists or bike lanes.

Reid has received the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, the Georgia Tech President’s Fellowship, and the Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions, and Dollars (CTEDD) Student Thesis/Dissertation Scholarship.

Congratulations on your accomplishments, Reid! 

Upcoming NCST Webinar: Opportunities for Improving Transit Travel Through Standardized Payments

September 18, 2024 @ 10:00 - 11:00 AM PDT | Online

Susie Pike | Director of the Transit Research Center at UC Davis

In this webinar, Dr. Susie Pike, Director of the UC Davis Transit Research Center, will shed light on the challenges facing small to medium transit agencies in the transition of California’s transit systems to open-loop payment systems, and some of the opportunities that may make adoption of these systems more feasible.

7th International Conference on Women and Gender in Transportation

September 9-11, 2024 | Irvine, CA

The 7^th International Conference on Women and Gender in Transportation will focus on “Progress and Possibilities: Bridging Perspectives.” This NCST-sponsored conference will highlight how far recognition of gendered issues in transport have come, while also noting the important work ahead to bridge inequities.

New Insights Into How Micromobility Services Affect Vehicle Miles Traveled

Tatsuya Fukushige | Postdoctoral Researcher at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies

Dillon Fitch | Co-Director of the BicyclingPlus Research Collaborative at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies

Micromobility services are often considered a good option for reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and related greenhouse gas emissions through mode substitution and changing routine daily travel. In this webinar, researchers shared the results of their study and examined factors influencing mode substitution of micromobility trips and person-level daily VMT. They also presented a conceptual framework for how to integrate their findings into a tool for cities to use to estimate potential VMT reduction from micromobility services.

Congratulations to our fourteen Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows, who just wrapped up their six-week research internships! Our fellowship program provides undergraduate students from CSU Long Beach, Texas Southern University, and UC Davis the opportunity to work closely with UC Davis faculty, professional researchers, and graduate students on sustainable transportation research projects. Fellows worked on a variety of research projects with topics including mobility wallet pilot program evaluation, the impact fare-free transportation programs have on youth populations, pedestrian safety, and more.

The NCST launched several new research projects this summer on topics ranging from reviewing and analyzing current and future battery technologies for transit electric vehicles, to social life cycle analysis of zero emission heavy-duty trucks, to investigating transportation decarbonization through transit and rideshare electrification (highlighted below). These projects were made possible through funding received from the U.S. Department of Transportation through the University Transportation Centers program.

Check out all of our latest projects

Texas Southern University (TSU) is currently undertaking new research, led by Dr. Mehdi Azimi, titled "Transportation Decarbonization through Transit and Rideshare Electrification," focusing on scenario analyses using large-scale models. For this project, Dr. Azimi also initiated a collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. This partnership grants the TSU research team access to DOE’s Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) workflow and the laboratory's advanced transportation models and tools.

In conjunction with this collaboration, Ajay Ghimire (pictured), a graduate research assistant under Dr. Azimi's guidance, was awarded a summer internship at Argonne National Laboratory, where he received mentorship from top researchers and experts, linking his academic efforts with advanced research and real-world applications.

a. Accelerate the zero-emission vehicle transition by generating market revenue and encouraging industry and investors

b. Hinder the zero-emission vehicle transition by burdening consumers and straining government budgets

The NCST and the UC Davis 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program recently released a suite of three reports prepared for the California Air Resources Board on ridehailing adoption patterns before the COVID-19 pandemic and the transportation impacts of the pandemic. The first report, to support the California Clean Mile Standard and Incentive Program, seeks to improve understanding on how ridehailing is used among people with different travel patterns, mode substitution of ridehailing, travel induced by ridehailing, and the use of pooled ridehailing. The second report, to identify the long-term impacts of the pandemic, discusses the results of four survey waves conducted between 2020 and 2023. The third paper analyzes how COVID-19 changed household travel behavior to provide policy ideas to preserve VMT-reducing changes and reverse VMT-increasing changes.

To Charge or Not to Charge: Enhancing Electric Vehicle Charging Management with LSTM-based Prediction of Non-Critical Charging Sessions and Renewable Energy Integration

Hanif Tayarani, Christopher J. Nitta, and Gil Tal | University of California, Davis

Because the carbon emissions of power generation vary in time, a key aspect of maximizing emissions reductions of battery electric vehicles (BEV) is ensuring that BEV charging is aligned with periods of low-carbon power generation. This is made possible by dynamic charging management strategies. This report discusses the research team’s development of a model for such a strategy by using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to forecast vehicle miles traveled up to two days ahead. The model then estimates the specific vehicle’s energy needs and necessity to charge. It allows drivers to determine which charging sessions are critical, and to shift non-critical charging sessions to periods of low-carbon power generation without significantly disrupting their routines.

Sustainable Incentives for Accelerating the Zero Emission Vehicle Transition

UC Davis researchers examined what makes an effective feebate and current feebate mechanisms in Europe to inform how such policies can support the zero emission vehicle transition in the U.S.

Extending public transit through micromobility facilities and services in the Bay Area

To assess how infrastructure—parking spaces, signage, lighting, etc.—affects public use of micromobility services to access public transit, UC Davis researchers studied 18 Bay Area Rapid Transit stations and surveyed/interviewed stakeholders.

Mileage Fees: An Equitable and Financially Viable Alternative to the Gas Tax

Through analysis of data from thousands of vehicles and surveys of hundreds of drivers, University of Vermont researchers gauged the financial and equity impacts of, as well as driver support for, replacing Vermont’s gas tax with a mileage fee.

Using Vehicle Miles Traveled Instead of Level of Service as a Metric of Environmental Impact for Land Development Projects: Progress in California

UC Davis researchers investigated local governments’ implementation of California Senate Bill 743 provisions, which replaced automobile Level of Service with Vehicle Miles Traveled as the main transportation impact metric for land development under the California Environmental Quality Act.

"Report: Roadkill a 'Preventable Natural Disaster'"

A recent UC Davis article highlights the 11th annual report released by UC Davis’ Road Ecology Center, which details more than 10% of deer deaths each year are caused by wildlife-vehicle collisions in California. In the report, Road Ecology Center Director Dr. Fraser Shilling describes how reduced wildlife collisions may indicate fewer animals in the area. However, Dr. Shilling emphasizes that “roadkill is a preventable natural disaster,” and similar to other natural disasters, transportation agencies can act urgently to prevent wildlife deaths caused by wildlife vehicle-collisions.

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; California State University, Long Beach; Georgia Institute of Technology; Texas Southern University; University of California, Riverside; University of Southern California; and University of Vermont.