By Jamie Knapp • J Knapp Communications

In today’s connected world, Wi-Fi is available almost everywhere, it seems. Free Wi-Fi, first offered in coffee shops and public buildings, is now ubiquitous in retail stores, hotels, airports and even on passenger trains in the U.S. and abroad.

Is it valuable? Yes, according to new UC Davis research conducted for the Amtrak Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority in Northern California.

The findings are described in a new ITS-Davis report, “Did Free Wi-Fi Make a Difference to Amtrak’s Capital Corridor Service? An Evaluation of the Impact on Riders and Ridership.” The report’s authors are Professor Patricia Mokhtarian, student researchers Amanda J. Neufeld and Zhi Dong, and post-doctoral researcher Giovanni Circella.

The researchers find that a majority of riders surveyed rank free Wi-Fi service as extremely important. This majority holds within each age group under 75. Free Wi-Fi service is especially important to commuters, 79% of whom accessed the Internet during their trip. The research attributes a 2.7% increase in round trips between 2011 and 2012 to free Wi-Fi aboard trains.

The UC Davis report outlines the survey methods, analytical approach, results and recommendations for further research. The researchers collected more than 1,500 passenger surveys over a three-day period onboard Capitol Corridor trains in March 2012, three months after Amtrak had launched its free Wi-Fi service on the route. Amtrak had previously introduced free Wi-Fi connectivity on trains in the Northeast Corridor and Pacific Northwest, and sought to evaluate its impact on passengers’ travel behavior.

The primary goals of the study were to assess riders’ reactions to the Wi-Fi service on board, to develop a model of the choice to use the free AmtrakConnect Wi-Fi, and to estimate the change in ridership due to the addition of free Wi-Fi.

Amtrak’s free Wi-Fi business model had predicted that a 1% to 2% inducement in ridership would offset its capital and operating costs.

“Our research indicates that free Wi-Fi has been a win-win – both as an amenity for Capitol Corridor riders and as a revenue-booster for Amtrak,” said Mokhtarian.

Read the full report, visit http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/?page_id=10063&pub_id=1845

 

Photo credit: Thinkstock / Digital Vision

By Jamie Knapp • J Knapp Communications

Richard Plevin, a scientist with expertise in life cycle modeling, analysis and carbon accounting associated with transportation fuels, has joined the UC Davis research faculty as an assistant professional researcher.

For the last decade, Plevin has been conducting research and consulting to governmental and non-governmental agencies on carbon accounting and environmental policy. He received master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley in 2006 and 2010, and has been an assistant researcher with the Berkeley campus’ Transportation Sustainability Research Center since finishing his Ph.D.

Plevin is a lead contributor to the University of California research team that is providing technical guidance to the California Air Resources Board on the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). That team is led by ITS-Davis research scientist Sonia Yeh.

“Rich has played a critical role in developing the tool, the methodology and the data for supporting the fuel pathways analyses for the LCFS,” said Yeh. “We are delighted he is joining us.”

Given his work with ITS-Davis researchers in recent years, Plevin’s move here is a natural transition. His work complements numerous ongoing projects at ITS-Davis, including the transition modeling underway in the NextSTEPs program, Mark Delucchi and Alissa Kendall’s lifecycle emissions analyses, and Nathan Parker’s biomass and biofuels production modeling.

“I like collaboration, working in a team environment,” Plevin says. “I’m excited about this opportunity to be formally affiliated with one of the nation’s top carbon and fuels modeling teams.”

Plevin also serves on the transport chapter team of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which is set for publication in 2014. ITS-Davis NextSTEPS program co-director Lew Fulton is also on that review team. Fulton, whose own work entails global energy transition modeling, admires Plevin’s expertise in land use change modeling.

“To understand how growing crops for biofuels affects land use in other places – and to try to gauge the net effect – is a critical area of study at this time,” Fulton says. “I’m very glad Rich will be joining us so we can learn from him on this and other issues.”

For one so accomplished in transportation studies, Plevin is a relative newcomer. His early degrees in mathematics and computer science led him to a 20-year career in software design for the financial services industry. His priorities changed around the year 2000.

“I had this epiphany in a hotel room during a business trip to Tokyo,” he said. The second IPCC report had just come out, California was mired in an energy crisis and the media buzz over global warming was palpable.

Plus, he had a newborn daughter.

“I was concerned about her and where the planet was heading. I wanted to engage on climate change and still use my technical background.”

A decade later, Plevin has succeeded in combining his skills into a career that provides intellectual stimulation and a sense of purpose – and that still allows him to work complex software challenges on sophisticated computers.

Photo: Rich Plevin, February 14, 2013. Photo by Dorian Toy, UC Davis

On Thursday, February 28, the University of California Center Sacramento (UCCS) teamed up with Capitol Weekly to present a day-long conference on California’s new “cap and trade” program. State Senator Fran Pavley, author of California’s landmark AB 32, delivered the noon keynote.

As with past Capitol Weekly-UCCS events, the conference was divided into three panels, in addition to Pavley’s keynote. Topics included the logistics of cap-and-trade, financial impacts on industry and the state, environmental benefits and — of course — the politics of cap-and-trade.

Among the panelists were Anthony Eggert of the UC Davis Policy Institute; Timothy O’Connor of the Environmental Defense Fund; Dorothy Rothrock of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association; and Linda Adams, former administrator of Cal EPA.

Watch all the videos from the conference here

Watch the video of Anthony Eggert’s panel below:

 

Photo caption: Anthony Eggert, director of the UC Davis Policy Institute on Energy, Environment and the Economy, at the California Capitol. Photo credit: Sylvia Wright, UC Davis

 

About 50 ITS-Davis researchers are participating in the 92^nd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, January 13-17, 2013 in Washington, DC. Their presentations are listed below with session number, title, date, time, location, paper title, and authors. (ITS-Davis presenters are listed by name only; other presenters are listed by institution as well.)

Click here for a full schedule of ITS-Davis presentations

By Alston Lim • UC Davis 2014

Three articles by ITS-Davis researchers are featured in the latest issue of the University of California Transportation Center’s ACCESS Magazine. The articles, which range from domestic policy subjects to topics of international consequences, translate the findings of ITS-Davis research into pertinent material for the magazine’s global audience.

In “Peering Inside the Pork Barrel,” Gian-Claudia Sciara discusses ways to improve transparency and effectiveness of federal transportation funding earmarks. Although recent fiscal pressures from the economic crisis have forced both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives to temporarily suspend the practice of earmarking federal funding to transport projects, Sciara suggests it will inevitably resume. She thus focuses on what elected officials and agency leaders can do to coordinate earmarks with their regional and state transport plans and explains how members of Congress can adjust their own practices to make future earmarks more compatible with planned investments. Sciara is a postdoctoral scholar at the Urban Land Use and Transportation Center (ULTRANS).

In “Double the Fuel Economy, Half the CO2 Emissions, and Even Automakers Like It,” Nic Lutsey discusses the political and stakeholder process and the technical underpinnings of the recently finalized 2017-2025 federal standards on fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission for light-duty vehicles. Lutsey provides a clear look at the challenges and solutions that automakers, regulators and stakeholders addressed and offers insight into the ways that the federal standards interact with California’s vehicle greenhouse and Zero Emission Vehicle regulations. But most importantly, Lutsey illustrates the significance of these new vehicle efficiency standards in terms of their impact on consumers and their broader societal benefit. As a postdoctoral researcher at ITS-Davis, Lutsey served as a research consultant for the California Air Resources Board while the agency worked with federal regulators on these new standards. He recently joined the International Council on Clean Transportation as a program director.

The third article is a collaboration between Yunshi Wang, director of the UC Davis China Center on Energy and Transportation; Jacob Teter, a graduate student researcher at ITS-Davis; and Daniel Sperling, founding director of ITS-Davis. It examines the implications of a rise in China’s vehicle population for both the environment and global energy resources. In “Will China’s Vehicle Population Grow Even Faster than Forecasted?” the ITS-Davis authors studied the historical growth of large vehicle-producing countries, in order to project China’s annual vehicle growth. Their data show how rapid motorization in China could threaten global oil supplies and exacerbate climate change.

The articles are available in the 41^st edition of the publication, which also marks the magazine’s 20^th anniversary.

Photo: The Gravina Island Bridge, originally funded by a $223 million earmark in the 2005 federal highway transportation bill, would have linked Ketchikan, Alaska, with Gravina Island. It became famous as a “bridge to nowhere” in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. It was never built. Credit: Conceptual rendering by Gravina Access Project, 2001.

Daniel Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, has been named one of fifteen Sacramento locals “involved in essential work on mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions” by Sacramento News & Review.

Dr. Sperling was described by Sacramento News & Review as “an international leader in the field of alternative transportation fuels” and as someone who “knows well that transportation is the source of a massive 40 percent of California’s contribution to climate change.” His research in the fields of alternative transportation and fuels, as well as his work on policies such as AB 32, which “created the country’s toughest low-carbon fuel standard for California,” have earned him a top spot on the list of Sacramento’s most influential climate changers.

While his outlook for climate change in the future may seem bleak, he speaks with an optimism that reveals his passion and confidence in his work: “Humans are very creative and resourceful. If humans get focused on a task, I have confidence that we’ll dramatically reduce carbon emissions,” says Sperling.

For more information, read the full article here: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/climate-changers/content?oid=8569198

A UC Davis report documents industry response since 2011 to California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), one of several state policies targeting greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. The report finds that industry exceeded LCFS requirements for 2011 and the first quarter of 2012 by a substantial margin, though the requirements for the first few years of the LCFS program are rather modest.

“Status Review of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) 2011- August 2012” by UC Davis researchers Sonia Yeh and Julie Witcover, starts a planned series. Each status review will examine how industry is complying with the regulation and will analyze credit trades and prices. Each report will address a special topic; for this initial report, the special topic is the effect of the 2012 summer drought, the nation’s worst in half a century, on LCFS compliance.

Yeh, who leads the UC Davis LCFS research team, says this report aims to provide as much information as possible about the performance of this important state policy and is useful for policy makers and stakeholders in California, the United States and beyond.

“Our initial findings indicate that companies are responding to the state policy, and the low-carbon fuel market in California is growing,” Yeh says. “The question is how fast and at what scale companies will respond as the requirements are strengthened over time.”

Witcover adds that the LCFS is designed to be transparent.

“Getting data about LCFS performance into the public realm is key to meeting that important goal,” she says.

Adopted in 2009, California’s LCFS is a performance-based regulation that requires the state’s transportation fuel providers, such as oil producers and importers, to reduce incrementally the carbon intensity of their fuels starting in 2011. It phases in gradually with small reductions required in the early years and grows more stringent, requiring a 10 percent reduction, by 2020.

“The gradual carbon intensity reduction built into the standard is one reason companies are able to exceed the goal in these early years,” Yeh notes. Excess credits generated now can help companies meet requirements in later years.

Among the status report’s key findings are the following:

• Companies required to meet the LCFS exceeded the standard’s carbon reduction targets for each quarter of 2011 and for the first quarter of 2012.
• Based on available data, the average compliance cost in August 2012 was $13 per equivalent metric ton of carbon (MT CO2e), adding about a tenth of a penny per gallon to the production cost of gasoline.
• Summer drought increased costs of corn ethanol, but the full impact of the drought on California LCFS compliance and compliance costs will not be known for some time.

The European Union and the Canadian province of British Columbia have adopted policies modeled after California’s LCFS. Other U.S. states are considering adopting LCFS-like policies to incentivize long-term emission reduction in the transportation sector.

Yeh also co-directs the National LCFS Project, which last summer released a series of reports on the prospects of a national LCFS policy.  Witcover is an ITS-Davis postdoctoral researcher working on indirect land use effects of biofuels policy. The analysis was conducted under a UC Davis research contract with the California Air Resources Board.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto/Thinkstock

By Jamie Knapp • J Knapp Communications

After 15 years, Professor Pat Mokhtarian is stepping aside as chair of the Graduate Group in Transportation Technology and Policy (TTP).

“It’s healthy to say, ‘it’s someone else’s turn,’” says the modest professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who was the founding chair and has led TTP as chair and graduate advisor.

Mokhtarian, who has provided strategic direction for the graduate group, guided its students and tracked the day-to-day administrative needs, will stay on as graduate advisor. She also remains as associate director for education at ITS-Davis.

Since the unique, multidisciplinary program was approved by the UC Office of the President in February 1997, UC Davis has awarded 80 master’s degrees and 36 Ph.D.s in TTP. Roughly 10 to 15 new students enroll each year.

Even though five students were waiting to enroll from day one, Mokhtarian says it has been tricky to promote the program because its offerings don’t fit neatly into traditional academic categories. Most university graduate transportation programs focus on hard-core engineering studies, or constitute a specialization within a discipline such as economics or geography.

“In most graduate fields there are clear channels from which to recruit undergrads and places you advertise your program to prospective graduate students,” she says. “But because our program is so diverse, there is no efficient way to reach our potential market.”

TTP has relied heavily on word of mouth, drawing students from academic backgrounds as varied as English, history, psychology, geography, marketing, government and sociology, in addition to more common paths including engineering and economics. That diversity, says Mokhtarian, is the key to TTP’s success.

“TTP, by design, was made available to any grad student of any major whatsoever,” she says. “That’s our secret weapon. The fact that we have these different students all working together, socializing and educating their geeky engineering professors with multidisciplinary perspectives, has created research teams and products and ideas that wouldn’t have happened anywhere else. And that makes us unique and exciting.”

Mokhtarian credits ITS-Davis Director Dan Sperling for proposing and gaining university approval of TTP.

“I think Dan and I make a great team. He has the ideas and the vision. I have complementary skills and some inclination for day-to-day management and organization. You need both.”

Sperling returns the compliment.

“Pat has been an extraordinary leader and mentor. Her commitment and focus have elevated TTP into a premier graduate program.”

Mokhtarian says TTP received a fortuitous boost early on from the prestigious five-year National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant, which she led. IGERT provided fellowships for TTP students and other transportation students across campus. It enabled UC Davis to compete for outstanding graduate students who otherwise might have been attracted to a more traditional engineering school.

Looking forward, Mokhtarian sees a need and an opportunity for TTP to strengthen both its technology and its policy offerings.

“It’s ironic that our technology students think we overemphasize the policy side and our policy students think we overemphasize the technology side,” Mokhtarian notes. The students’ perceptions point to a need for additional lab space and technically oriented faculty, and for a stronger presence in urban planning, economics, integrated land use and transportation modeling, she says.

She also looks forward to having more time to devote to her travel behavior research and her students. She currently advises nine students.

“I wouldn’t trade my interactions with students for anything. My legacy is in the lives of the students that I advise and teach, and in the training I give so they can be well-equipped, critical thinkers.”

Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor John Harvey has agreed to be the new TTP chair. In passing the baton, Mokhtarian says she is looking forward to a new era of growth and development for TTP.

“John is just the right person to carry us forward at this time.”

Photo: Professor Pat Mokhtarian with her graduate students, November 2012 (Dorian Toy – UC Davis)

By Jamie Knapp • J Knapp Communications

Lew Fulton, a highly respected researcher on international transport and energy policy, has joined ITS-Davis as co-director of NextSTEPS, the Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways research consortium.

Fulton, an expert in transportation energy policy and global energy transition modeling, has just moved to Davis from Paris, where he led the transport technology team of the International Energy Agency (IEA), and spent the past year as head of the Energy Technology Policy Division. Fulton enjoyed an unusually long research career at the renowned global energy think tank, serving multiple five-year terms (1999-2005 and 2007-2012), and helping to publish numerous major reports, such as the Energy Technology Perspectives series.

His time at the IEA was interspersed with two years (2005-2006) working in Kenya with the United Nations Environment Program. Fulton previously worked for the U.S. Department of Energy and at the Independent University in Bangladesh in the early to mid-1990s. He received his Ph.D. in Energy Management and Environmental Policy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994.

Having lived overseas for the better part of two decades, mostly in Paris, Fulton acknowledges the move to Davis has required a few cultural adjustments, like dining before 8 p.m. and shifting from Metro rides to biking for most trips. He’s also adjusting to the weather.

“In Paris, they say it will stop raining in about three weeks. Here, they say it will start raining in about three weeks.”

Fulton takes these changes in stride since his work fulfills more pressing needs.

“I’m a futurist and I like to think globally. I’m interested in the changes we need to make to our transport systems in order to meet our goals. We’re almost out of time to meet certain targets in 2050 – for example, limiting the increase in global temperatures to only 2 degrees Celsius.  And there are still many unanswered questions.”

NextSTEPS, which is dedicated to examining the pathways and transitions to a sustainable transportation energy future, is a perfect fit. As co-director, he will focus on strengthening the program’s international reach.

“At IEA we’ve been building up the Mobility Model, a globally consistent analytical framework for keeping track of transport trends and progress around the world,” he notes. “I hope we can make good use of it here in NextSTEPS, as well.”

Likewise, he adds, some of the ITS-Davis modeling techniques might be applicable at a broader level. “I want to scale up the higher resolution, greater precision modeling work being done here to examine things globally.”

Fulton has been a leader in the Global Fuel Economy Initiative, whose objective is to promote further research, discussion and action to improve fuel economy worldwide. A consortium of research agencies and nongovernmental organizations, GFEI has recently helped Australia, India, and Mexico develop their own fuel economy policy frameworks. The GFEI has invited ITS-Davis to become its sixth partner, recognizing that the institute can bring to GFEI additional technical and analytical support and the potential for even more international collaborations and policy support for governments.

“We have the tools and the experience thinking through these thorny problems. We might want to partner with experts in other countries to bring to these countries our knowledge and experience in how to solve these global transport energy problems we face together.”

Fulton says he was drawn to ITS-Davis by its comprehensive and forward-looking approach to solving the world’s transportation challenges.

“The institute’s work is highly respected and very cutting edge,” Fulton says. “The group here is very influential – nationally and internationally – and that of course is very appealing to me as an energy researcher.”

He also was enticed by California’s leadership in transportation and energy policy.

“No other state gets the same attention globally. When I go to conferences around the world, often there’s a representative from a California agency or university because people want to hear what’s happening here.”

Finally, he says he was drawn to ITS-Davis by its people. He has developed strong relationships with the faculty and has enjoyed working with ITS-Davis graduate students who interned at IEA. Fulton and ITS-Davis Director Dan Sperling first collaborated when Sperling spent a year on sabbatical in Paris at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2000. Sperling is delighted to have finally lured Fulton to Davis.

“Lew’s unparalleled knowledge and expertise in so many aspects of global transportation, and his engagement with many international research initiatives, will help ITS-Davis broaden its reach and play an even greater role in global efforts to make transportation more sustainable.”

 

Additional reading:

Fulton, Lewis (co-author), Energy Technology Perspectives 2012: Pathways to a Clean Energy System. International Energy Agency, OECD/IEA, Paris, June 2012.
http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/?page_id=10063&pub_id=1717

Fulton, Lewis, François Cuenot and Alex Körner. Technology Roadmap: Fuel Economy of Road Vehicles. International Energy Agency, OECD/IEA, Paris, September 2012
http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,31269,en.html

Press release regarding ITS-Davis’s partnership with the Global Fuel Economy Initiative
http://www.globalfueleconomy.org/updates/2012/Pages/WorldleadinginstitutejoinsGFEI.aspx

 

Photo: Lew Fulton, an expert in transportation energy policy, has just moved to Davis from Paris, where he led the transport technology team of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Photo by Dorian Toy, UC Davis