Spring/Summer 2022 Newsletter | |
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Meet Erica Quallen, a Civil Engineering Master’s student at the University of Vermont graduating this month! Erica is most interested in travel behavior, specifically the travel decisions of people within small and rural communities. In her Master’s research, Erica explored the impact of various definitions of the term “rural” on our collective knowledge of rural travel behavior as well as its potential implications for policy decisions.
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Understanding the Biofuels Market from 2010 to Present, and Looking Forward to 2030
Dr. Julie Witcover | Assistant Project Scientist at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies and Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy
Tuesday, June 21, 2022 @ 10:00am - 11:00am PDT
Online
Low-carbon biofuels are projected to play a critical role in the early and middle stages of a transition away from petroleum fuels, and they will likely have a longer-term role in uses like aviation and maritime transportation that require energy-dense fuels in high volumes. Policies over the last decade encouraged the production of conventional biofuels such as crop-based ethanol, but cellulosic fuels with a significantly lower carbon footprint failed to materialize at commercial scale. This webinar will look back at the past decade to understand why this happened, and will consider the likelihood that current policies will deliver low-carbon biofuels at the scales needed for hard-to-decarbonize sectors by 2030.
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Preparing for Automated Vehicles in Rural America
Dr. Lisa Aultman-Hall | Professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada
Joe Segale (guest) | Director of the Policy, Planning and Research Bureau for the Vermont Agency of Transportation
Mollie Cohen D'Agostino (guest) | UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy
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Fully automated vehicles hold the potential to significantly improve traffic safety, mobility and accessibility. The technology could also significantly increase vehicle travel and associated environmental impacts, the magnitude of which will depend in part on the extent to which automated vehicles are available for individual ownership vs. carsharing or ridesharing. For this reason, shared mobility is commonly cited as an important strategy for mitigating growth in vehicle travel in urban contexts. But changes in travel behavior brought about by automation will likely differ in rural areas, which are characterized by long travel distances and dispersed populations. Different policies may be needed to realize the mobility and safety benefits of vehicle automation in rural areas. This webinar outlined the benefits and challenges of automated vehicle deployment in rural areas relative to urban areas. | |
Featured Report
Estimating Changes in State-level Vehicle Miles of Travel for Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Scenarios
Researchers at the University of Vermont and the University of Waterloo reviewed the existing literature on automated vehicles (AVs) in shared and private ownership scenarios and assessed the benefits inherent to AVs (regardless of ownership model) as well as of the benefits and challenges of AV-sharing in rural areas relative to urban areas.
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Surveys find that most truck drivers use unauthorized parking locations at least once a week and studies report that many drivers often spend more than 30 minutes looking for parking, or park one hour earlier than required in order to guarantee parking, both of which reduce productivity. Despite being recognized as one of the trucking industry's top issues, truck parking is rarely considered by studies on truck routing and scheduling. This research developed a central parking coordinator system capable of directing the multiple planners of the trucking industry into choosing itineraries that will not overburden parking facilities. | |
Featured Report
Balancing of Truck Parking Demand by a Centralized Incentives/Pricing System
Long-haul truck drivers often have difficulty finding appropriate parking, leading to illegal parking, safety risks, and increased pollution and costs. In this project, the researchers consider the issue of coordinating the parking decisions of a large number of long-haul trucks through the usage of a formulation that uses a modified TDSP (Truck Driver Scheduling Problem) mixed-integer programming model which tracks parking usage by dividing time into time-slots and charging drivers per time slot used.
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High School Team Wins Oregon Regional Science Fair and Advances to International ISEF
An NCST mini lecture on vehicle tailpipe emissions helped to inspire an award-winning high school science project. Corvallis, Oregon high school student Mary Parmigiani contacted NCST Associate Director Brit Holmén of the University of Vermont last year after seeing Dr. Holmén’s NCST mini-lecture on vehicle tailpipe emissions. Dr. Holmén advised the team of three sophomores on their science project, and the team’s design, construction, and field-testing of a personal air quality measurement device, complete with tri-color LEDs to visually indicate air quality for fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide, won several awards at the Central Western Oregon Science Expo in February 2022. The team also earned the opportunity to present their project at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Atlanta in May.
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UC Davis Transportation & Climate Blog | |
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Ecology 101: Protecting Wildlife from Transportation
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills, California, which will soon be under construction, is unprecedented in its size (spanning ten very busy lanes of US Highway 101), cost, and primary purpose. Estimated to cost $90 million, it is the first major wildlife over-crossing primarily aimed at bringing genetic diversity to isolated animal populations rather than preventing roadkills—though it will do that, too.
The crossing, also known as the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing, features design elements that will encourage use by mountain lions and other species that are sensitive to light and noise. Barriers and berms will be built to reduce the amount of traffic-generated noise and light that reaches the areas that animals will use to approach the crossing. Several UC Davis Road Ecology Center research projects on roadway light and noise helped influence this design.
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On average, households have ___ off-street parking spaces available to them than they have vehicles. | |
By how much would the rapid adoption of privately owned connected and automated vehicles increase vehicle miles traveled over the levels predicted if there were no automation? | |
Recently Completed Research | |
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Environmental Plans and Freight Movement at the San Pedro Bay Ports: A Quick Strike Analysis
Deanna Matsumoto, Caitlin Mace, Tyler Reeb, and Thomas O'Brien | California State University, Long Beach
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This white paper presents three case studies from the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP), including brief analyses of their effects on freight movement in the region. The case studies are provided to elucidate how self-regulating agreements and operator-led programs contribute to regional environmental goals for freight operations. This research helps to illustrate examples of unintended consequences of freight-related environmental measures which will prove useful to policymakers and operators alike.
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Evaluating the Sustainability Impacts of Intelligent Carpooling Systems for SOV Commuters in the Atlanta Region
Diyi Liu and Angshuman Guin | Georgia Institute of Technology
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Community-based carpooling has the potential to alleviate traffic congestion and reduce the transportation carbon footprint. One of the major barriers to implementation is the difficulty of optimizing carpool formation in large systems. This report discusses two different methods to solve the carpooling optimization problem: 1) bipartite algorithm and 2) integer linear programming. These two methods are carefully compared to evaluate the carpooling potentials among single-occupancy vehicles.
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Integrating Zero Emission Vehicles into the Caltrans Fleet
Mike Todd, George Scora, and Jill Luo | University of California, Riverside
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This report details the development and application of a spreadsheet tool which enables the evaluation and use of electric and hydrogen Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) within the Caltrans fleet. The spreadsheet tool assists with both the placement of ZEVs and determining placement of new fueling stations to obtain the maximum benefit. The ZEV tool created as a result of this project allows Caltrans to maximize the usage of ZEVs that will be procured within Caltrans.
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New Open-Source Analyses of Transit Job Access and Transit Ridership
Marlon G. Boarnet, David Flores Moctezuma, and James Gross | University of Southern California
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This research project examines the link between job access and stop/station level transit ridership using data for the Los Angeles Metro bus and rail system and the BART rail system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cumulative opportunity job access measures of this sort have become common in the recent access literature, and those measures have often focused on access via transit. Yet there have been few studies that examine the link between transit job access and transit ridership, and of those none that examine the link at a station or stop level. This report focuses on these gaps in the literature.
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Exploring the Consumer Market of Microtransit Services in the Sacramento Area, California
Yan Xing, Susan Pike, Elham Pourrahmani, Susan Handy, and Yunshi Wang | University of California, Davis
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Why are some people interested in microtransit while others are not, and who are the early adopters? For people who have never used it, what factors could work as facilitators or barriers in their willingness to adopt microtransit? This project aims to fill these gaps in knowledge by conducting a large-scale survey of microtransit adopters and users of other means of transportation in the Sacramento area of California in 2021, with a focus on the microtransit service SmaRT Ride, operated by the Sacramento Regional Transit District.
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A Before and After Evaluation of Shared Mobility Projects in the San Joaquin Valley
Caroline Rodier, Brian Harold, and Yunwan Zhang | University of California, Davis
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This project presents the methods and results for “before” and “after” evaluations to assess the performance and impacts of three innovative mobility pilot programs in the San Joaquin Valley region. These pilots seek to (a) provide improved access to destinations for individuals with limited transportation alternatives, (b) and achieve greenhouse gas reductions through mode shifts from traditional internal combustion vehicles to EVs, ridesharing, and fixed transit.
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Real-World Brake Activity Testing in Heavy-Duty Vehicles to Inform Emissions Inventories
Researchers at UC Riverside aimed to establish a test method to determine brake activity of a heavy-duty vehicle under both dynamometer tests and on-road tests. Their study was designed to quantify heavy-duty vehicle brake pad activity during chassis and in-use on-road testing. The results advance the research methodology, ultimately contributing to a more accurate determination of brake activity and informing efforts to improve non-tailpipe PM emissions inventories.
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Revolutionary changes in transportation, from electric vehicles to ride sharing, could slow global warming – if they’re done right, IPCC says | |
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. | | | | |
