Amy Lee, who received her Ph.D. from UC Davis, won a national award for her recently completed dissertation on the politics of highway expansions. Lee received the 2023 Charley V. Wootan Memorial Award from the Council of University Transportation Centers for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of transportation policy and planning. As a doctoral student at UC Davis, Lee studied a range of topics related to transportation policy and governance in California, specifically the continued investments in highway construction and expansion despite the state’s clear goals to mitig ..read more

Yazmin Martinez, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was recognized as the 2023 doctoral student of the year by the Pacific Southwest Region University Center for her innovative research methods and achievements. At UNLV, Martinez takes a unique approach to investigating issues in the transportation system. She uses the deep-learning method of artificial intelligence to predict road traffic congestion in Las Vegas. Her model aims to identify congestion and its causes at various traffic signals, which can then be used to determine optimal traffic signa ..read more

UC Irvine student Uriah Campos was recently named undergraduate student of the year by the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center. Campos is a senior majoring in urban studies with a GIS specialization and a minor in management.   Michael Hyland, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, first met Campos when he applied last spring for a position as an undergraduate research assistant as part of the Transportation Undergraduate Research Assistant Program at the Institute for Transportation Studies, Irvine.  Hyland is his faculty advisor for ..read more

Alejandra Rios Gutierrez’s work in comparative urban planning was shaped by her upbringing and experiences in both Mexico and the U.S. Her mother navigated the bus system in Guadalajara with Rios and her two siblings, and they also had extended family to rely on if needed. After moving to the U.S., they were suddenly dependent on her father’s driving to get around the suburbs of Illinois. While it took years to understand the influence of these starkly different transportation experiences, Rios now attributes them to her interests in mobility justice and transit access. She began to put the p ..read more

When Monisha Reginald decided to pursue a master’s in urban planning, she already possessed considerable experience shaping the strategic vision of research projects for Boston’s transit agency. Originally from Boston, Reginald spent five years working at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, or MBTA. As the manager of statistical research, she specialized in integrating automated data sources with survey data to understand transit riders’ demographics, travel behavior, and satisfaction with services. She played a key role in transitioning the systemwide passenger survey, MBTA Rider ..read more

Qinhua Jiang, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in transportation engineering, has been named the 2022 doctoral student of the year by the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center. At UCLA, Jiang uses data-driven and statistical methods to resolve issues in the transportation system, with a specific focus on how autonomous and electric vehicles affect individual travel choices and how those behaviors shape the larger transportation network. He works closely with the UCLA Mobility Lab, Institute of Transportation Studies, and the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences ..read more

Story highlights: USC’s METRANS Transportation Consortium has been awarded a grant from the USDOT to lead the US Region 9 research, education and technology transfer program. METRANS, a partnership between the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and the Viterbi School of Engineering, is led by USC Price School Professor Marlon Boarnet.  Through its many decades of existence, it has built a reputation for studying freight and goods movement and transportation challenges of large urban areas. The grant will support nine universities and one community college representing Arizona, Cali ..read more

UCLA students received three of the top national transportation research awards by the Council of University Transportation Centers. The CUTC was established in 1979 to represent transportation research centers and organizations across the country and connect their research to government and industry. Each year, students from across the country are recognized for best doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, master’s projects and overall accomplishment. During a Jan. 7 ceremony in Washington, D.C., Julene Paul, doctoral candidate in urban planning, was recognized as the Pacific Southwes ..read more

What could keep you from driving to work alone all the time? What would you say if you were paid to give up your free parking space at the office? Many employees in California have been offered this deal since the 1990s, and many of them have subsequently benefited from this policy — called parking cash out.  One relatively simple tax policy change could have a huge impact on the number of commuters who drive alone, and therefore on greenhouse gas emissions and congestion.  Read the article linked above or the video linked below to learn more. The post Parking Cash Out appeared ..read more

People who live in dense, walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods tend to drive less. This fact may seem intuitive to many transportation professionals, but why exactly is this the case?  Whatever the reasons, there may be implications for how we encourage more people to choose non-auto modes of travel. So what is it? Is it the self-selection of people who prefer transit and walking, or something else entirely? To control for this selection bias, researchers looked to San Francisco housing lotteries to see what was the real cause, and they found a remarkably clear influencer: parking.  ..read more