Event Type: Seminar

This seminar will discuss on-going work in the area of energyshed development and its associated regulatory structures and land use implications. Specifically, the talk will focus on the concept of a regional energyshed and examine the ways in which social, jurisdictional, and regulatory constraints present clear and frequently unnecessary hurdles to reducing energy use.

In this paper travel behavior dynamics are examined from a lifespan development perspective using Lifecourse approaches, Brofenbenner’s Person-Process-Context-Time (PPCT) model of development, and Bourdieu’s habitus-fields-capital approach.  The combination of these three approaches to travel behavior analysis offers a unifying framework with unprecedented insight.  To illustrate the theoretical constructs, the life of a virtual individual is used as a case study.  Different periods of her life are reconstructed from a variety of data sources to show her situational, dispositional, and behavioral changes over time and to illustrate how patterns of behavior are reproduced within her cohort, household, and across generations. The paper also provides an overview of the data needed and a data collection schema that can help us unravel the complexity of each person’s observed behavior in its interactive relationship with other persons and their environments as they develop along their lifespan

This research explores the complex relationship between traffic
congestion and accessibility. Congestion describes both operating
conditions on transportation networks, and individual access to
opportunities. The effects of congestion variations remain relatively
understudied. Accordingly, this research proposes a conceptual
framework with three components. First, congestion can constrain
mobility and thus indirectly reduce accessibility. Second, congestion
is associated with agglomerations of activity and therefore with
increased accessibility. Finally, congestion is in part a phenomenon of
perception and behavior. Congestion and individual travel data for the
Los Angeles region are used to explore the localized spatial
relationship between congestion and accessibility. As the multifaceted
framework suggests, congestion varies substantially by neighborhood.
Some neighborhoods examined in this analysis appear to be more
“congestion adapted” than others. While individual tripmaking is to a
large degree a function of individual and household characteristics, we
construct a model to account for such characteristics. We conclude that
conventional network-based measures of congestion delays paint an
incomplete and perhaps misleading picture of the effects of traffic
congestion and call for a fresh look at both the down- and upsides of
traffic congestion.

In the United States, and increasingly the world, the automobile is
indispensable to economic and personal mobility needs. Unfortunately,
utilization of personal vehicles is currently entirely dependent on the
combustion of petroleum energy sources. Consequently, cars are a major
contributor to urban air quality problems, are the leading emitter of
greenhouse gases in car-crazy societies like California, and rely on a
diminishing supply of oil from geopolitically sensitive areas. As
global demand for mobility continues to increase, new energy sources and
new vehicle powertrains must be developed and commercialized that can
both appeal to consumers and mitigate the environmental side effects of
transportation.

This presentation examines the role that mobility plays in the progress of humankind and its importance as a cornerstone of the transportation profession. I first provide an interpretation of the elements of mobility and its evolution over time before analyzing approaches to perform mobility changes and criteria for successfully implementing new transportation modes. Finally, I present an overview of the issues and challenges created by mobility in a modern complex society.

Transportation-related air pollution and energy problems are a significant issue in the U.S. and across the world. The World Health Organization estimates that urban air pollution causes 200,000 deaths per year worldwide. Sacrificing transportation needs for environmental quality is simply infeasible since transportation provides a vital wheel for economic development. How do we meet the transportation needs in the age of development without sacrificing environment and energy sustainability? Dr. Gao’s research focuses on the nexus of transportation and environment/energy systems. In this talk Dr. Gao takes a phased approach looking into the inter-relationships of the following six intermingling topics that span across transportation, air quality, and energy systems: cleanup of the legacy diesel fleet-mathematical modeling in search for cost-effective environment abatement strategies; equity and environmental justice in the clean diesel programs; truck traffic and ozone weekend effect (OWE): emphasizing the nonlinear dynamics between transportation emissions control and ozone pollution; catching the moving targets: from PM mass to PM number; and environmental impacts of biofuels.

The transportation sector contributes approximately 30% of the total energy usage, which is mostly attributed to petroleum-based products such as gasoline and diesel fuels. Significant emissions of CO_2 , a greenhouse gas linked to climate change, are attributed to the transportation sector. However, it would be difficult to imagine our modern life without motorized transportation. The more compelling fact is that though transportation is not the largest source of greenhouse gases, this sector is the fastest growing source and is difficult to control. Alternative transportation energy sources such as hybrid-electric technologies, bio-ethanol, and hydrogen fuel cells are emerging and are being broadly investigated as replacements for the
conventional internal combustion engine. However, these new alternatives are still difficult to make competitive against oil-powered engines due to availability, cost, convenience, lack of technology, and accessibility. No simple solutions are suggested on the road toward the energy efficient and greener future. One of the key strategies in improving vehicle fuel efficiency is through enhancing vehicle fuel efficiency either by enhancing the vehicle powertrain efficiency, or by using alternative fuels, or by managing the transportation system more efficiently. This presentation describes the research that is being conducted at Virginia Tech to develop energy and emission models for use in Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS), IntelliDrive system, and eco-drive system applications.

Transportation provides both enormous benefits and enormous costs.
Indeed, society as we know it could not exist without an extensive and
efficient transportation system. Mobility is essential for people to get to
jobs, schools, medical care, or social activities. At the same time, the
transportation system imposes significant impacts, for example traffic
accidents, air pollution, congestion and noise. Decades of research show
that the costs and benefits of transportation are not equitably distributed.
Professor Genevieve Giuliano will discuss inequities in public transit and
suggest strategies for providing more effective and equitable services.

Advances in wireless communications have significantly impacted the everyday life of individuals. This has
already had an impact in transportation – simply consider, for example, the proliferation of navigation systems,
and the problem of driver inattention due to the use of wireless devices (as addressed by the new California law
banning the use of cellular phone handsets while driving). A significant challenge to the transportation
engineering community is to harness the capabilities provided by wireless communications to move beyond
traveler “convenience” applications, to create better system operations tools to provide improved mobility. At
a fundamental level, wireless communications provides transportation engineers two critical capabilities that
offer high potential.

1. The ability to collect system status data over links as opposed to points.
2. The ability to exchange data with targeted, mobile vehicles.

This seminar will detail research and findings in three emerging transportation areas supported by wireless
communications: probe-based traffic monitoring, managed lanes, and vehicle infrastructure integration (VII).

Transportation plays a significant role in greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for approximately a third
of the United States’ CO2 inventory. In order to reduce CO2 emissions in the future, transportation policy
makers are looking to make vehicles more efficient and increasing the use of carbon-neutral alternative
fuels. In addition, CO2 emissions can be lowered by improving traffic operations, specifically through the
reduction of traffic congestion. This research examines traffic congestion and its impact on CO2
emissions using detailed energy and emission models and linking them to real-world driving patterns and
traffic conditions. It has been found that CO2 emissions can be reduced through three different strategies:
1) reducing severe congestion, allowing traffic to flow at higher speeds; 2) reducing excessively high
freeflow speeds to more moderate conditions; and 3) eliminating the acceleration/deceleration events
associated with stop-and-go traffic that exists during congested conditions. Details on several CE-CERT
research projects that directly address these strategies will be provided.