News Archives - Page 6 of 8 - The Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine

By Michael Hyland, Tanjeeb Ahmed, Navjyoth Sarma J S, Suman Mitra, Arash Ghaffar
Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Irvine

As cities and regions explore autonomous mobility solutions, understanding their real-world impact on employment accessibility is crucial. This study quantifies how Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs) can bridge employment gaps, particularly benefiting young and low-income workers in Southern California.

At ITS-Irvine, our faculty are advancing transportation research by examining how emerging mobility solutions impact accessibility and equity. In this study, Dr. Michael Hyland, alongside Tanjeeb Ahmed, Navjyoth J.S. Sarma, Dr. Suman Mitra, and Arash Ghaffar, analyzed the employment accessibility benefits of Shared Automated Vehicle (SAV) mobility services using a consumer welfare approach.

Key Research Findings

Shared Automated Vehicle mobility services (SAMSs) significantly improve job accessibility.
The benefits of SAMSs are greater for workers in lower-density areas.
Low-income workers experience slightly higher job accessibility benefits from SAMSs.
The benefits of SAMS as a transit feeder mode are minimal compared to SAMS-only mobility.
Job accessibility benefits heavily depend on per-mile costs of SAMS modes.

“The main finding from our model-based analysis is that robo-taxis can substantially improve connections between workers and employment opportunities in Southern California, benefiting workers and employers in the region. Moreover, we find that low-income and younger workers are likely to benefit the most from robo-taxis in addition to workers in households without cars.”

-Dr. Michael Hyland

Stay connected with ITS-Irvine for more insights on mobility innovation. To learn more, read the policy brief or explore the full report below.

Read The Policy Brief

Read The Research Report

Professor Jean-Daniel Saphores has accepted the invitation to become the official committee member of TRB ADC80, Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies.

De’Von Jennings have been selected as the recipient of the ASCE LA YMF Dr. Bill Goodin Outstanding Student Mentor Scholarship and its $1000 award. He accepted the award at the Student Night Job Fair on Friday, February 7th at the Taglyan Complex.

For the second time in a row, De’Von Jennings received the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship. The program awards fellowships to students pursuing degrees in transportation-related disciplines. This program advances the transportation workforce by helping to attract the nation’s brightest minds to the field of transportation, encouraging future transportation professionals to seek advanced degrees, and helping to retain top talent in the U.S. transportation industry.

From its initial support of graduate research fellowships in 1983, to the current program’s inception in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, the DDETFP has awarded over $50 million to the brightest minds in the transportation industry. From this investment, fellows have pushed for innovative change in multimodal areas from highway infrastructure to aviation to maritime, making the industry more effective and efficient. Fellows pursue careers in academia, private industry, and public service, becoming leaders across the nation.

De’Von Jennings has been awarded the HDR Transportation Scholarship for 2020. The scholarship committee granted two $10,000 scholarships to two exceptional graduate-level students associated with the transportation engineering industry. Along with the scholarship, De’Von is also offered a paid internship at HDR. Congratulations!

Faculty and students associated with Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California Irvine will present 21 papers at the 99th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council of the Academies of Engineering and Science, which takes place in January 2020.

We are also hosting a reception for UC Irvine transportation alumni, students, and faculty during the conference. For further details, please contact Youngeun Bae (youngeub at uci dot edu). We are looking forward to seeing you all at the 2020 TRB Night!

MondayTuesdayWednesday

Time
Session
Session Name
Title
Authors

Monday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Lecture 1093
Gender and Mobility Through the Course of Life
Gender Differences in Travel Patterns of the Elderly in the United States
Suman Mitra, Mingqi Yao, Stephen Ritchie

Monday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Lecture 1103
Electric Vehicle Market Development: Moving to Mainstream Adoption
Plug-in Electric Vehicle Diffusion in California: Role of Exposure to New Technology at Home and Work
Debapriya Chakraborty, David Bunch, David Brownstone, Bingzheng Xu, Gil Tal

Monday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Lecture 1120
Traffic Flow Modeling for Connected Automated Vehicles
Eco-driving Algorithm with a Moving Bottleneck on a Single Lane
Pengyuan Sun, Dingtong Yang, Wenlong Jin

Monday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Poster 1136
Congestion Pricing and Managed Lane Showcase, Part 1˙
Improving Urban Multi-Modal Transport System through Congestion Pricing and Bus Fleet Sizing: Bi-Modal Network Fundamental Diagram Modeling Approach
Irene Martinez, Michael Hyland, Wenlong Jin

Monday 1:30 PM-3:15 PM
Lecture 1237
Automated Transportation and Shared Mobility
Simulation Framework for Autonomous On-Demand Urban Air Mobility
Haleh Ale Ahmad, Hani Mahmassani, Michael Hyland

Monday 1:30 PM-3:15 PM
Lecture 1238
Automated Transportation and Shared Mobility
Dual-Horizon Forecasts and Repositioning Strategies for Operating Shared Autonomous Mobility Fleets
Florian Dandl, Michael Hyland, Klaus Bogenberger, Hani Mahmassani, Northwestern University

Monday 3:45 PM-5:30 PM
Lecture 1324
Freight Systems and Marine Transportation Work in Progress?Hybrid Session
Lightning Talk: Enhancing Truck Activity Monitoring through the Integration of Bluetooth and Inductive loop Signature Data
Yiqiao Li

Monday 3:45 PM-5:30 PM
Poster 1333
Travel Modeling Poster Session
Modeling Ridesourcing Trip Generation: Chicago Case Study
Arash Ghaffar, Suman Mitra, Michael Hyland

Monday 3:45 PM-5:30 PM
Poster 1346
Current Issues in Aviation
Pooling Transportation Network Company (TNC) Rides to the Airport to Reduce Curbside Congestion
Karina Hermawan, Amelia Regan

Time
Session
Session Name
Title
Authors

Tuesday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Lecture 1387
Forecasting Methods for Managed Lanes in the Future
Pricing Schemes for High-Occupancy Toll Lanes Considering the Departure Time User Equilibrium
Xuting Wang, Wenlong Jin

Tuesday 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Poster 1488
Current Issues in Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies
Environmental Impacts of Various Heavy-Duty Natural Gas Vehicles Incentivized in California
Junhyeong Park, Craig Rindt, Stephen Ritchie

Tuesday 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Poster 1489
Current Issues in Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies
Management of EV Fast Charging Stations: Dynamic Pricing Scheme Based on Station Queues with State-Dependent Arrivals
Dingtong Yang, Navjyoth Sarma, Michael Hyland, R. Jayakrishnan

Tuesday 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Poster 1490
Current Issues in Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies
Factors Influencing Alternative Fuel Adoption Decisions in Heavy-Duty Vehicle Fleets in California
Youngeun Bae, Suman Mitra, Craig Rindt, Stephen Ritchie

Tuesday 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Poster 1495
Traffic Signal Control with Connected Automated Vehicle or Trajectory Data
Cyber-Vulnerability Analysis for Connected Vehicle Based Traffic Signal Control Systems
Shihong Huang, Wai Wong, Qi Chen, Morley Mao, Henry Liu, Yiheng Feng

Tuesday 3:45 PM-5:30 PM
Poster 1643
Analyzing and Planning the Pedestrian Environment
What Street Improvements Better Promote Active Travel? A Case Study of the Seattle Neighborhood Greenway
Jiarui Tao

Time
Session
Session Name
Title
Authors

Wednesday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Poster 1688
Travel Behavior Mega Poster Session
How Do People Use Ride-Hailing? An Exploratory Analysis of Associated Travel Behavior
Rezwana Rafiq, Michael McNally

Wednesday 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
Poster 1688
Travel Behavior Mega Poster Session
Exploring the Role of Ridehailing in Trip Chains
Tanjeeb Ahmed, Michael McNally

Wednesday 2:30 PM-4:00 PM
Lecture 1745
The Transportation-Land Use Connection in the Global South
Trip Generation Rates of Land Uses in a Developing Country City
Tanjeeb Ahmed, Suman Mitra, Rezwana Rafiq, Sanjana Islam

Wednesday 2:30 PM-4:00 PM
Lecture 1753
Behavior and Policies for Taxis and Demand Responsive Transit
An Analysis of User Behavior Change Resulting from Transportation Mobile Applications – a Case Study of Taxi Drivers in Seoul
Daisik Nam, Bumsik Kim, Kijung Ahn

Wednesday 2:30 PM-4:00 PM
Poster 1756
Funding and Financing Surface Transportation: What Will the Future Bring?
Fair and Efficient Usage of Transportation Supply with Envy Minimization and Allocated System Efficiency
Daisik Nam, R. Jayakrishnan

Wednesday 2:30 PM-4:00 PM
Poster 1760
Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics, Part 4
Impact of Advisory Speed Limit on the Overall Performance of Signalized Networks: A Network Fundamental Diagram Approach
Ximeng Fan, Pengyuan Sun, Wenlong Jin

“All of that costs money, said Sarah Catz, a research associate at the University of California at Irvine’s Institute of Transportation Studies. In addition to growing expenses, she said, companies are feeling more pressure to make a profit. Some, she said, may be using price hikes to steer their customers into monthly passes. ‘There are all types of costs,’ said Catz, who studies the micromobility industry. ‘I think they are raising prices to maintain financial stability.’ ”

See the original story here.

Farzana Khatun, a 4th year PhD candidate of Transportation Science at ITS Irvine, has been selected to receive Women Transportation Seminar (WTS) 2019 graduate scholarship from Orange County (OC) chapter. WTS OC chapter provides multiple scholarships in four different divisions (graduate, undergraduate, community college and high school) to encourage girls and women in Southern California to pursue careers in transportation. The award will be presented to the winners at the Awards and Scholarship Gala at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim on Thursday, December 5, 2019. Under the supervision of Professor Jean-Daniel Saphores, Farzana is currently working on projects that focus on bus transit ridership of Orange County, travel behavior of Uber and Lyft users in California and in USA, active transportation and GIS application in transportation planning. Please also check out her WTS interview here.

The paper “Spatio-Temporal Clustering of Traffic Data with Deep Embedded Clustering” by Reza Asadi and Professor Amelia Regan has won the best paper reward at ACM PredictGIS 2019 Workshop.

Farzana Khatun won an award for securing the 2nd highest score at the doctoral level abstract in the International Conference on Transport and Health (ICTH) 2019 that held between 4th to 8th November in Melbourne, Australia. Her study, tilted as “DON’T HOP ON THE BUS GUS: An Analysis of recent changes in bus ridership in Orange County, California”, focused on how recent (2014 to 2015) changes in OCTA bus ridership can be explained by the implementation of California Assembly-Bill 60 (AB-60), after controlling for changes in transit supply, socio-economic variables, gas prices, and the built environment.