A team of researchers from the Pacific Southwest Region (PSR) university transportation center presented their PSR-funded research at the inaugural edition of the Future of Transportation Summit held at the United States Department of Transportation’s headquarters in Washington D.C on August 13-15. The three-day event featured technical sessions, stakeholder panels, and technology demonstrations meant to showcase the societal impact and importance of university transportation centers funded by the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The summit aimed to enhance coordinated research amongst the UTCs, highlight impactful projects, and identify gaps, challenges, and opportunities, both in intermodal and multimodal research. PSR participation include: 

How Work from Home is Changing Transportation 

 Dr. Marlon Boarnet, PSR and METRANS Director, presented his lecture, Work-from-Home, Long Commutes, and Vehicle Miles Traveled Pre- and Post-COVID. This highlighted the work of researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) over the past five years. Boarnet’s lecture summarized trends in housing affordability, work-from-home, vehicle miles traveled, and greenhouse gas emissions. For more information, see the following publications: Bay Area to Central Valley Migration and Its Impacts; Commute Distance and Jobs- Housing Fit in Los Angeles; The Future of Working Away from Work and Daily Travel: A Research Synthesis; The Impact of Work-from-Home on Job and Housing Location in the Bay Area - Central Valley Region: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Traffic, Telecommuting, and Migration During and After COVID-19; How Remote Work Will Influence GHG Emissions: A National Analysis of the Relationship of the Impact of COVID-19 on Remote Work, Commuting, Residential Location, and Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction.

Data Driven Urban Traffic Control 

Dr. Ketan Savla, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC presented his poster, Data-driven Urban Traffic Control. The poster featured an overview of multiple PSR-funded projects which developed systematic principles for adaptive urban traffic control. The PSR-funded research resulted in a spinoff company, Xtelligent, Inc., which recently began implementing Savla’s work in targeted pilot programs in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Xtelligent gathered information from 141,000 data points from an 8-intersection corridor during a pilot deployment of Savla’s principles. This application of Savla’s research resulted in a 20% reduction in average detector occupancies (an indicator of congestion) during peak hours on major streets, and a 15% reduction on side streets when compared with the system presently in use at the intersection, which uses a signal timing baseline derived from the time-of-day.  

Sustainable and Efficient Goods Movement in Southern California 

Dr. Maged Dessouky, Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California; Dr. Genevieve Giuliano, Interim Dean at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy; and Dr. Petros Ioannou, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and Industrial and Systems Engineering at USC presented their poster titled Sustainable and Efficient Goods Movements in Southern California. Dessouky, Guiliano, and Ioannou summarized the work that METRANS has accomplished through its role in the Pacific Southwest Region (PSR) UTC, including the study of policies that can improve the efficiency and sustainability of Southern California’s goods movement system. METRANS research has supported California’s Sustainable Freight Action Plan and Freight Management Plan, including the development of metrics for economic competitiveness, and has informed the work of the ports, air quality management district, and state agencies. Click on the following links to view the research featured in this presenatation: Proposed SCOBE Approach; Warehouse Location and Environmental Justice; CO-SiMulation Optimization (COSMO) Approach; Developing Markets for Zero Emission Vehicles.

PSR’s Workforce and Education Pathways Initiatives 

The final poster, Beyond the University: The Role of the UTC in Developing Industry-Driven Educational Pathways presented by Dr. Tom O’Brien, Associate Dean of the College of Professional and Continuing Education (CPaCE) at California State University, Long Beach; Missy Blair, Advanced Program Manager and instructor for Pima Community College's Center for Transportation Training; and Dr. Karl Kim, Executive Director of the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at the University of Hawaii, summarized PSR’s innovation in educating students and professionals beyond the traditional university degree model. A few examples detailed by the poster include: Pima Community College’s commercial driver license training (CDL) program which has seen an increase in enrollment by 54% since 2019; California State University, Long Beach’s award-winning professional certificates (including the Global Logistics Professional); and the University of Hawaii’s National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, which trains between 5,000-8,000 first responders each year.   

A Micro-Simulation Traffic Model for LAX Airport Ground Access 

A demonstration from USC researcher Dr. Petros Ioannou and Ph.D. student Gary Rostomayan was also presented as a part of the summit’s program. The research report, Centrally Coordinated Schedules and Routes of Airport Shuttles with LAX Terminals as Application Area, elucidates the problems driven by the lack of schedule coordination between shuttle companies and airport operations. Airport workers and travelers encounter frequent congestion near the pick-up and drop off points at LAX – one of the nation’s busiest airports. The demonstration illustrated how a micro-simulation traffic model, tailed to LAX, can evaluate policy solutions. The results have informed policy changes at LAX.