Center for Transportation Research: Highlights

CTR Director Dr. Chandra Bhat has been selected to receive the Billy & Claude R. Hocott Distinguished Centennial Engineering Research Award from the Cockrell School of Engineering for 2012–13.

Initiated in 1983, this award recognizes faculty members who have significantly contributed to furthering the profession of engineering through documented research conducted while associated with The University of Texas at Austin. Of primary importance is that the recipient’s work must have brought significant credit to the engineering profession and been judged most worthy by the recipient’s peers.

Chandra is well known for his fundamental contributions through published research papers that have contributed to understanding the relationship between the built environment (or urban form) and activity-travel choices of individuals, an area with important implications at the interface of transportation and urban policy design, traffic management, public health, energy dependence, and greenhouse gas emissions. Methodologically, Chandra’s published analytic-oriented research pieces have been described by his peers as seminal and innovative contributions, and are now widely used not only in transportation, but also in several other fields. Chandra has over 150 high quality published or forthcoming refereed journal publications and he has been listed by Google Scholar as one of the top ten most cited civil engineering researchers in the world. He also has made significant scientific impacts on the transportation field by nurturing and producing a new generation of high quality researchers. Overall, since 2000, his students have received 38 external (non-UT) awards for their scholarly research and leadership contributions. Chandra has been appeared on radio and television several times to discuss his research with the general public, and has appeared in national and local newspaper media to provide timely perspectives on contemporary transportation issues.

CTR’s founder Dr Clyde E. Lee was given this award in 1998.

A dinner will be held in Dr. Bhat’s honor during the Fall 2013 Semester.

Civil engineering professor Kara Kockelman recently appeared on  Fox 7′s Good Day Austin morning program to discuss Austin traffic and transportation infrastructure. Watch the video.

A new transportation app will be in its testing phase during Austin’s South by Southwest music and media festival. The RideScout app aggregates ground transportation options so users can compare them in real time. As an incentive to help test the app, RideScout is offering free van and shuttle rides, which the app will track. If you’d like to participate by using the app during the festival, see details below.

Want to be part of the excitement at SXSW?

Want to meet new people and help us help Austin?  The big day for RideScout has finally arrived—we’re making our public debut during SXSW 2013.

RideScout, a new urban transportation app, based right here in Austin, is looking for volunteers to help us roll-out our Soft Launch of the app during SXSW 2013, March 7^th -17^th, 2013.   More about us: www.RideScoutApp.com

Volunteers are needed in all positions from driving vans, handing out fliers, and running operations…It is a chance to make money, do something for the environment and improve the quality of life for Austin and beyond.   And we might even improve the traffic situation here in town.

Groups or individuals can volunteer with a chance to earn money and prizes.    Groups such as your civic group, service group, non-profit, fraternity/sorority, church group, etc… that recruit 10 or more volunteers are eligible for a cash donation to their organization (potentially hundreds of dollars depending on the level of participation).  Individuals who work more than 10 hours are also eligible for a chance to win an iPad or other prizes.

All volunteers receive a free RideScout T-shirt, Clif Bars, food and drinks.

To sign-up, you have two choices.  As a representative of your group, you can forward this e-mail with these instructions—or you can sign on as an individual.    Here’s one way to do it in 3 easy steps for each person interested in helping:

1. Click this link: http://vols.pt/a4DJYy

2. Enter your email address: (You will NOT need to register an account on VolunteerSpot)

3. Sign up! Choose your spots by selecting

a. Your group affiliation (to credit your group for money), t-shirt size and preference

b. The day, job, and hours you want to work (you can choose any/all days from 7-17 March)

c. Choose multiple days and slots to increase your chance to win (we have several different positions open each day)

VolunteerSpot will send you an automated confirmation and reminders. Easy!

Note: VolunteerSpot does not share your email address with anyone. If you prefer not to use your email address, please contact me and I can sign you up manually.

Or you can simply contact Joseph Kopser at joseph@ridescoutapp.com and we’ll help you coordinate your group’s efforts.

What is RideScout:

RideScout is a mobile smartphone application that aggregates ground transportation ride options to allow users to compare them in real time. The RideScout mission is to provide ground transportation information so intuitively and efficiently that consumers will experience the same on-demand flexibility and reliability of car ownership and consider leaving their car at home, or giving up car ownership completely.

SXSW 2013 plans:

SX festival goers will be able to access Austin transportation options via the RideScout app: buses, taxi, electric cabs, pedicabs and Car2Go. Even a new app like RideScout will not be able to solve every person’s SXSW transportation woes because of the inevitable supply and demand problems, but the good news is that RideScout will bring more visibility to and will push more users towards Austin public transit. In addition, this is the first year that Car2Go memberships in the US allow for global access. RideScout will encourage Car2Go members nationwide to use the Austin fleet during the festival. By helping folks better use the options that are already here and by integrating a couple of other surprises, RideScout hopes to help festival goers get around better than ever before.

RideScout will also provide free van and shuttle rides, which can be tracked and accessed via the app as well. These shuttles will run on specific routes during certain times of the day and will be free for general users.

RideScout is also offering exclusive transportation options to partner companies during SXSW Interactive. For partners throwing SXSW parties, RideScout will provide free transportation get people home safely at the end of the night.

In addition, RideScout has partnered with the Austin Airbnb community to provide comprehensive transportation information to Airbnb hosts to share with their festival guests. Thousands of festival-goers are expected to be staying in Airbnb rentals this year.

The February 2013 issue of the Research Digest is now available for download from the CTR Library’s website. This month’s digest provides abstracts for 15 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), Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Texas State University-San Marcos, 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.

Transmetric Senior Software Developer Lee Kaufman accepts the Smart Solution Spotlight Award from ITS America President and CEO Scott Belcher. 

The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) hosted the Smart Solution Spotlight Award event on Monday, February 18, 2013 at the Center for Transportation Research. ITS America awarded its Smart Solution Spotlight Award to Transmetric  for the development of Traffic Server™ 6, a web-enabled traffic data system that helps transportation agencies collect, store and report information about transportation networks more efficiently. Traffic Server™ 6 connects monitoring devices, users and traffic software tools.

The Smart Solution Spotlight award honors companies and organizations for using innovative technology – known as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) – to create a safer, cleaner, more efficient and sustainable transportation system.

Pictured from L-R: Brian D. Burk, P.E., TxDOT; Scott Belcher, President and CEO ITS America; Lee Kaufman, Senior Software Developer, Transmetric; Mark Gardner, P.E., Senior Engineer, Applied Pavement Technology; Carol T. Rawson, P.E., Director, Traffic Operations Division TxDOT; Dr. Chandra Bhat, CTR Director; and Dan Seedah, Research Associate, CTR.

For more information about ITS America: http://www.itsa.org/

For more information about Traffic Server 6: http://transmetric.com/wp/traffic-server-6

For more information about Transmetric: http://transmetric.com/wp/

Post from the Center for Transportation Research (CTR)
CTR’s Vision is to: serve the public through transportation research, and the linking of research with practice, to promote a safer, happier, and healthier society; and contribute to the development of the transportation work force through research-based and experiential learning.

CTR’s Mission: To promote transformative developments in the field of transportation engineering and planning through an integrated systems approach that embraces technology advancements and proactive policy developments.

Dr. C. Michael Walton, Ernest H. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering, University of Texas, Austin, has been selected to receive the the 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Presidents’ Award. With this award, Dr. Walton is recognized for his exemplary career and contributions to civil engineering education and research and for his extraordinary professional and technical leadership in the fields of intelligent transportation systems, freight transport, transportation planning, economics and policy analysis.

The ASCE Presidents’ Award was established in America’s Bicentennial Year in commemoration of the nation’s first President, who was a civil engineer and land surveyor.

For for information about the ASCE Presidents’ Award:  http://www.asce.org/Content.aspx?id=12884905817

For more information about ASCE: http://www.asce.org/

For more information about Dr. Walton: http://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/walton/home.html

The January 2013 issue of the Research Digest is now available for download from the CTR Library’s website. This month’s digest provides abstracts for 28 recent publications that the library has received from the Transportation Research Board’s research programs including the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP), the National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP), the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), and the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). This issue focuses on guidebooks, syntheses, and research results summaries.

Full-text links are provided for each publication and print copies are available in the library.

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

Randy B. Machemehl 

Dr. Randy B. Machemehl received the Council of University Transportation Center (CUTC) Award, Distinguished Contribution to University Transportation Education and Research, on January 12, 2013, at the CUTC annual banquet in Washington, D.C.

Randy B. Machemehl at the CUTC annual banquet, January 2013

This CUTC award has been given annually since 1998 to honor individuals who have had a long history of significant and outstanding contributions to university transportation education and research resulting in a lasting contribution to transportation. Winners are chosen by vote of the CUTC Executive Committee from nominations submitted by CUTC members.

For more information about CUTC: http://cutc.tamu.edu

For more information about the CUTC annual banquet:  http://www.cutcbanquet.com/