Center for Transportation Research: Highlights

The City of Austin is embracing alternative forms of transportation in an attempt to relieve its significant congestion. As part of this initiative, the City is creating Bicycle Ambassador Teams to increase the practice of bicycling for transportation. These volunteers will work city-wide to encourage a two-wheeled approach to commuting and running errands, and to promote law-abiding behavior among all [...]

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2011 Urban mobility study covered by local news network in Austin: Austin’s growth is showing up in the morning and afternoon commutes. According to the 2011 Urban Mobility report produced by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M , in 1982 Austinites spent an average nine hours a year in traffic. In 2010, that figure [...]

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Another on-demand car company is rolling into Boston today, joining several other “car-sharing’’ services that are challenging the industry leader, Zipcar Inc., on its home turf. Mint Cars On-Demand is providing vehicles in 11 neighborhoods, including the North End and Allston in Boston and near Harvard University and MIT in Cambridge. It calls itself a [...]

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Lights should respond to cars, not the other way around, suggests a working paper from Sante Fe transportation researchers. Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes [...]

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photo from http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2004/traffic.html According to a recent study by The Daily Beast and traffic services company INRIX, Austin has the fourth worst commute in the nation. They discovered that commuters experience most of this frustration on I-35 with the worst bottleneck being Northbound around Riverside Drive. Kara Kockelman, professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering [...]

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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 [...]

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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. For [...]

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According to the 2009 Urban Mobility Report, recently published by The Texas Transportation Institute: Travelers spent one hour less stuck in traffic in 2007 than they did the year before and wasted one gallon less gasoline than the year before. The differences are small, but they represent a rare break in near-constant growth in traffic [...]

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