The Transportation Research Board (TRB) awarded Professor Susan Handy with the Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lectureship at TRB’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. Handy is the Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science and Policy and Director of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation at the University of California, Davis, a member of the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (PSR UTC). The Lectureship is an honor conferred upon one academic leader associated with TRB every year.

Handy’s January 8 lecture, entitled Shifting Gears: Reflections on the Role of Researchers in Shaping the Ideas that Shape Transportation, explores the impact of research on thinking within the transportation profession. The lecture highlighted the importance of catalyzing the paradigm shifts needed to improve transportation and more broadly, the environment.

Handy illustrates that the research-practitioner relationship can change traditional thinking through the analysis of three areas: 1) Mobility and Accessibility, 2) Capacity and Demand, and 3) Hierarchy and Connectivity. While research has had an impact on these fields, public demand and professional practice have also played parts in shifting thinking.

Another area that Handy underlines is the way in which research has impacted parking policy through the work of Professor Donald Shoup at UCLA. Elevating parking policy reform to a serious topic within transportation policy and urban planning required considerable effort, and its success in shifting public dialogue is a great example of how research shifted traditional thinking within the field. 

Handy encourages researchers to recognize their role in facilitating paradigmatic shifts and to be thoughtful about the questions they ask in the coming years as practitioners deliberate on the emergent technologies such as autonomous vehicles. Researchers can assist professional practitioners to do better.

“What’s really going to change things,” Handy says, “is when…old people are going to retire and our students take over. I’m pretty sure I’ve had more impact on the field through my students than through any of my research.”

Watch Dr. Handy’s full lecture here.