We asked some of today’s leading experts in transportation and energy: What are the biggest challenges in transportation? And what are the big ideas in transportation? Touching on challenges of climate urgency, oil dependence, equity, financing, and indifference, these thought leaders pointed to policy integration, new mobility, road pricing, community engagement, education and sales, open data, and innovative financing to help pave the way for a forward-thinking transportation future.

Special Thanks to:

• Robbie Diamond – Securing America’s Future Energy
• David Friedman – Consumer Reports
• David Greene – University of Tennessee
• Christopher Grundler – U.S. EPA
• Holmes Hummel – Clean Energy Works
• Andreas Klugescheid – BMW
• Andres Ramirez – People for Mobility Justice
• Seleta Reynolds – LA Department of Transportation
• Susan Shaheen – Innovative Mobility Research, UC Berkeley
• Matthew Tipper – Shell

By Seth Karten

Last month in Washington, D.C., Dr. Patricia (Trish) Hendren, Executive Director of the I-95 Corridor Coalition, was presented with the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Eno Center for Transportation for her public service and contributions to the field of transportation. Eno is a D.C.-based non-partisan think tank that promotes policy innovation and provides professional-development opportunities in transportation. The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes former participants in Eno’s training and leadership programs who have made notable contributions to the transportation industry or to Eno.

Dr. Hendren, an alumnus of the Transportation Technology and Policy (TTP) Program at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis (ITS-Davis), said “I was amazed and honored to receive this award. It is a huge compliment—from an impressive organization that looks out for the transportation field and addresses issues in a thoughtful and comprehensive manner.”

Robert Puentes, President and CEO of Eno said, “As a 1999 graduate of our Leadership Development Program, there is no better person for this award than Trish. She has spent her career turning data into useful information, helping agencies overcome barriers to information-based decision making, and demonstrating investment needs to a range of stakeholders.”

Dr. Hendren is currently the Executive Director of the I-95 Corridor Coalition, a partnership of over 100 state transportation agencies, toll authorities, and public safety organizations from Maine to Florida. Under Dr. Hendren’s leadership, the Coalition has embarked on and enhanced initiatives related to incident management, traveler information, supply chain performance, freight planning, truck parking, toll reciprocity, connected and autonomous vehicles, and funding alternatives.

Dr. Dan Sperling, the director and founder of ITS-Davis and founder of the TTP program, noted, “Trish was a pioneer. She was in the very first TTP class. In fact, she came before the program was formally approved, in the hope and expectation it would be approved. We are so proud and have been so appreciative of Trish from Day 1!”

Dr. Hendren credited the TTP program for helping her to make an impact in the transportation world. “The program is unique in preparing students with a broad mix of skills that are needed to tackle transportation planning: engineering, urban planning, economics, social science, and public policy,” she remarked.

After majoring in English as an undergraduate, Dr. Hendren’s early career focused on enhancing energy efficiency. This led her to feel that transportation can have a significant impact on people’s lives while addressing problems in energy and the environment. Dr. Hendren’s graduate work at UC Davis provided an opportunity to explore her newfound passion.

“I appreciated how the [TTP] program could take an English major like me and bring me into a field typically thought of for engineers. What I learned at Davis continues to inform my approach to addressing our transportation challenges on a daily basis,” Dr. Hendren commented.

Seth Karten is a science writer for the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis.

“Self-driving” or fully automated vehicles (AVs) will likely have major, though largely unpredictable, effects on transportation in the coming years. Meanwhile, transportation agencies need to plan infrastructure projects that will endure 30 years or more. To address this need, modeling experts from around the United States and Europe met at UC Davis on April 29–30 to discuss how to update travel demand forecasting tools to accommodate AVs and other disruptive technologies (including shared mobility and alternative-fuel vehicles).

This “AV Modeling Expert Group Meeting” was hosted by UC Davis researchers in the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program of ITS-Davis. The meeting was funded in part by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which is concerned with the potential impacts of AVs on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The meeting included approximately 50 researchers and practitioners—i.e., researchers who develop new transportation models and study travel behavior, and practitioners who use transportation models to inform planning decisions. The participants came from academic institutions, state and federal agencies, U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories, metropolitan planning organizations, and selected consulting firms.

The meeting organizer and director of the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program, Dr. Giovanni Circella, said, “The overall aim of the meeting was to discuss what modeling assumptions should be introduced (and what data should be used) in large-scale travel demand modeling applications to account for AVs. Within this larger aim, we discussed expected impacts of AVs on roadway capacity, value of travel time, travelers’ activity patterns, household interactions, mode choice, vehicle ownership, and residential location.”

Until recently, models have relied on information from current transportation conditions and historical data to forecast travel demand with some reliability. “However, current models were not designed to and are not able to predict the impacts of emerging technologies, like shared mobility and electric vehicles, or technologies not yet in the market, like automated vehicles,” explained Circella. As a result, modelers are experimenting by testing assumptions—for example, about the percentage of AVs that will be on the road, or the degree to which people may change their travel patterns with the emergence of AVs. “The aim of this meeting and our ongoing work is to help agencies adopt modeling assumptions that are based on state-of-the-art research and the best experiences of practitioners,” Circella said.

The 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program will incorporate the findings from the meeting in an upcoming white paper on modeling the impacts of AVs on travel demand, which will be available to the public this summer. The output from the workshop will also support the modeling work that the research team will conduct during the upcoming stages of an ongoing project for CARB.

For additional information on the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program, please visit 3rev.ucdavis.edu.