Center for Transportation Research: Highlights

News Release
For Immediate Release
April 30, 2013

Chandra Bhat awarded Humboldt Research Award

AUSTIN, Texas – Chandra Bhat, Director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

This prestigious award is given in recognition of a researcher’s entire achievements to date and specifically to “academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.”

As part of the Humboldt Award, Bhat plans to collaborate with Prof. Kai Nagel at Technische Universitat (TU) Berlin on research issues at the interface of transportation demand modeling and transportation supply modeling. He will also collaborate with Prof. Claudia Czado in the mathematical statistics field at TU München. Prof. Czado and Chandra share interests in the area of complex multi-dimensional dependency modeling, an important methodological issue in accommodating interactions between decision making agents in complex systems such as transport systems.

“I am tremendously honored to receive this international recognition from the Humboldt Foundation. Collaborative research initiatives at a global level expand the knowledge of all the researchers involved and benefit the fields that the researchers work in. I am particularly excited by the inter-disciplinary nature of my collaboration with leading German academics” said Bhat. “When you get right down to it, we serve the public and help society through our research and this gives us an opportunity to do so on an international stage.”

This award is the latest in a lengthy series of distinctions he has received. Dr. Bhat is a leading expert and professor in travel demand modeling and travel behavior analysis. His pioneering contributions in econometric choice modeling are now routinely used in the transportation field as well as several other fields.

For more information: Joey Williams – joeywilliams@utexas.edu – 512.484.1135

The April 2013 issue of the Research Digest is now available for download from the CTR Library’s website. This month’s digest provides abstracts for 20 recent publications from TxDOT’s university research program.

The research projects represented here are sponsored through TxDOT’s Research and Technology Implementation Office and conducted by researchers here at the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) as well as at Texas Tech University’s Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Transportation (TechMRT), the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), Lamar University, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Abstracts and full-text links are provided for each report. Print or CD-ROM copies are also available at the library and in some cases we may have spare copies to give away.

To stay up-to-date on all the latest research published through different transportation programs, visit the library’s “New Materials” web page or follow @ctrlib on Twitter. When publishers make their reports available online for free, CTR Library provides links to the online full-text in our catalog.

April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month and TxDOT launched the Talk. Text. Crash. campaign to coincide with the national promotion. Throughout this month, TxDOT will reach out to Texans through community events, TV public service announcements, and online and outdoor advertising.  As part of the campaign, TxDOT is asking Texans to do their part by making a simple commitment to focus on driving when they get behind the wheel.

Texans can watch campaign videos onYouTube.

Learn more about the Talk. Text. Crash. campaign by liking the TxDOT Facebook page:www.facebook.com/txdot.

For media inquiries, contact TxDOT Media Relations at MediaRelations@txdot.gov or (512) 463-8700.

CTR is proud to announce the Texas Distinguished Lecture Series in Transportation. This series will present the latest thinking and challenges in the field of transportation. In keeping with CTR’s mission of research, education, and public service, the Texas Distinguished Lecture Series is open to the public, as well as to transportation researchers and practitioners.

We are honored to host Victor Mendez, FHWA Administrator, as the speaker at the inaugural lecture. Please join us on May 3, 2013, at 3:00 p.m., when Mr. Mendez will speak on the theme of Pursuing Innovation in Transportation.

Meredith Cebelak, P.E., was recently selected to represent The University of Texas at Austin at the 21st Annual Leadership Development Conference, hosted by the Eno Center for Transportation. This conference, held in Washington DC June 2–6, is attended by 20 of the nation’s top graduate students in transportation and gives them a first-hand look at how national transportation policies are developed. During the Conference these “Eno Fellows” meet with federal officials and leaders of business and non-profit organizations.

The Eno Leadership Development Conference is designed for students in transportation-related programs, including engineering, planning, public policy, public administration, economics, business, and law. Universities are invited to nominate one student from each transportation-related discipline.

Ms. Cebelak had over 10 years of experience in the private sector before returning to school to pursue her masters and PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. As a graduate assistant to Dr. C. Michael Walton, P.E., she is on the Technical Assistance project for the Texas Department of Transportation’s Austin District, which investigates the use of intelligent transportation system (ITS) solutions for the area’s transportation needs. She is a member of the student chapter of Women’s Transportation Seminar and the student chapter of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, and is the current president of the student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Additionally, she serves on the CTR Employee Council Committee as the student representative.

The March 2013 issue of the Research Digest is now available for download from the CTR Library’s website. This month’s digest provides abstracts for 16 recent publications from Southwest Region University Transportation Center (SWUTC). The SWUTC is a consortium of five universities (Texas A&M University System, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas Southern University, Louisiana State University, and the University of New Orleans). All research from SWUTC is meant to support the theme of Sustainable Transportation Solutions to Enhance Economic Prosperity and the Quality of Life.

Abstracts and full-text links are provided for each report. Print copies may also be available at the library; in some cases we may have spare copies to give away.

To stay up-to-date on all the latest research published through different transportation programs, visit the library’s “New Materials” web page or follow @ctrlib on Twitter. When publishers make their reports available online for free, CTR Library provides links to the online full-text in our catalog.

On March 4, 2013, Alejandra Cruz Ross was invited to present testimony before the newly created International Trade and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. Representative Poncho Nevárez, Chairman of
the International Bridges and Border Crossings Subcommittee, was particularly interested in the work that CTR and TTI’s study team has been developing in the border region for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

The March 4 hearing was dedicated to port, airport, and surface transportation infrastructure. Cruz Ross first provided the Representatives with socio-economic information for border counties and municipalities. She highlighted the rapid increase in population and employment  in the El Paso/Júarez, Webb/Nuevo Laredo, Hidalgo/Reynosa, and Cameron/Matamoros areas. Most of the latter will see an increase in population and employment from 25 to 40% between 2010 and 2030.

In addition, Cruz Ross provided snapshots of several tools and documents to provide the Representatives with specific data on border crossing numbers (i.e., by port-of-entry, by type), and wait times and the different ways of measuring these (i.e., time, economic losses). She included information provided by Customs and Border Protection, for example. Cruz Ross also presented a summary and maps of the major trade corridors in the region, including the following:

• I10, US 54, US 67, and Mexico’s Corridor 4 and 10 in the El Paso/Presidio region;
• Ports to Plains, I35, US 83, and Mexico’s Corridor 6 in the Laredo/Eagle Pass/Del Rio region; and
• I69, US 281, US 77, and Mexico’s Corridor 17 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley region.

Ms. Cruz Ross spoke at the Texas Capitol.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Center for Transportation Research’s Annual Symposium
April 3, 2013 in Austin, Texas

CTR’s symposium will focus on relationships between the evolving energy sector and solutions to future transportation issues

AUSTIN, TX (March 27, 2013) — The Center for Transportation Research (CTR), a transportation research center at The University of Texas at Austin, hosts its annual symposium on Wednesday, April 3, 2013, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Commons Learning Center at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, 10100 Burnet Road (for map and directions: http://www.utexas.edu/commons/maps/).

This year’s theme is Energy is the Key, and keynote speakers Dr. Larry Lake (from UT’s Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering Department) and Dr. Ross Baldick (from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department) will be providing insight on related issues. Dr. Lake will highlight the “Perspectives on the Past and Future of the Oil and Gas Industry” and Dr. Baldick will present the latest on “Harnessing Electric Vehicle Demand Flexibility.” In addition, Mr. Robert Harrison of CTR will talk about freight in Texas and Dr. Oguzhan Bayrak of the Ferguson Structural Engineering Lab will provide an update on TxDOT-related structural research.

Albert Einstein once said that “we cannot solve our problems with the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This symposium will explore how the evolving energy sector may demand innovative new thinking to solve tomorrow’s transportation problems.

The poster session will allow participants to meet with more than a dozen UT Austin graduate student researchers and transportation faculty who will demonstrate progress and preliminary findings in active projects on diverse topics including highway drainage, highway infrastructure, land use modeling, transportation network modeling, pavement management, roadway pollution mitigation, traffic safety, transportation funding, transportation research support services, sustainable transportation planning, and transportation planning in border regions.

At the event, CTR will announce this year’s winner of the Mac Shelby Award, which honors a TxDOT research project director who has provided exceptional leadership, technical expertise, ability to address special challenges, and dedication to research.

For more information and to register online: http://www.utexas.edu/research/ctr/symposium or call 512-232-3100.

Media Contact Information:
Maureen Kelly
Center for Transportation Research
The University of Texas at Austin
512-232-3128
maureenk@mail.utexas.edu