Center for Transportation Research News

View Video: http://www.kvue.com/v/?i=70265707
Austin’s new car sharing program, Car2Go, starts today. It is the first of its kind in the nation. During a six-month pilot program, city employees will have access to 200 Smart cars, which will be pre-positioned at parking spots around town. Austin city officials say it will offer a convenient, environmentally-friendly alternative to [...]

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Dr. C. Michael Walton, professor of civil engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, received the Texas Road Hand Award from the Texas Department of Transportation for his public spirit in championing transportation projects. The award recognizes citizens who have given their time, energy and vision to help improve transportation throughout the state.
Walton holds [...]

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Texans may soon be paying more at the pump. To help generate money for new roads in Texas, some lawmakers are pushing for the first gas tax increase since 1991.

“We are in the critical position in this state where we are growing and will need more roads. But we have no money to build them [...]

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Following the successful launch of the new mobility concept car2go in Europe (in the City of Ulm, Germany), car2go and the City of Austin, Texas will launch the first North American pilot program for car2go on November 17th. car2go is a new, sustainable mobility concept from Daimler which redefines individual transportation in congested areas. [...]

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The City of Austin is testing four bicycle safety improvements with research involvement of the Center for Transportation Research. KVUE News in Austin covers “sharrows” in a news segment today; the video is posted online.
http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-part-of-bike-and-car-sharing-experiment-68806662.html
Anyone driving, walking or cycling down Guadalupe between MLK and 4th street Monday may have seen them being installed and [...]

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Stolen and vandalized rental bikes challenge a system designed to reduce congestion in France.
Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.
Renters of Vélib’ bicycles in Paris say it can be a challenge to find functioning ones among those that have been vandalized. In Paris 80 percent of [...]

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Transit systems from New York to Taipei, and from Ames, Iowa, to Ann Arbor, Mich., are adding hybrid buses at a rapid clip. New York, by far, has the nation’s biggest fleet of hybrid buses, which run on electricity and diesel fuel, with nearly 1,000 in all five boroughs, most in Manhattan.
Even though the initial [...]

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Joseph A. Yura, emeritus professor, was inducted as an honorary member into the Adademy of Distinguished Alumni. Although he did not attend UT-Austin, his outstanding service to the department as a faculty member is recognized.
Each of the new inductees received at least one degree from the department and are outstanding in their field, leaders in [...]

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Center for Transportation Research researchers are working with the City of Austin to test some new initiatives to make biking safer in Austin.
[As part of the study, the city has] set up colored bicycle lanes, to examine just how well they protect cyclists.
“Bike boxes allow cyclists to come up to a cue at [...]

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Safety experts have convinced some hybrid car manufacturers that silence may not be golden, when it comes to pedestrian traffic.
lug-in hybrid and electric cars, it turns out, not only reduce air pollution, they cut noise pollution as well with their whisper-quiet motors. But that has created a different problem. They aren’t noisy enough.
So safety [...]

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