Center for Transportation Research: Highlights

The Flexible Workplace Initiative Program provides research on various aspects of flexible work options, including employee reactions and observed productivity, and mobility effects of implementing flex options. Consulting services are offered to companies needing assistance with development or implementation of new flexible work options or review of current policies. On Thursday, October 28 at 9:30 [...]

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(Photo: Mark Batchelder/KXAN) Some UT Austin engineering students are hoping to one day solve the problem of rush hour gridlock. Valerie Kaiser sounds like a kindergarten teacher as she counts numbers out loud: “One. Two. Three…” As she counts, she writes a tally mark in a spiral notebook. Today, Valerie and another classmate are posted [...]

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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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Johan Lehrer, contributing editor at Wired, has written a new book called How We Decide. In the book, Lehrer describes the process of choosing a residence in terms of choice of commute, finding that Americans often make the classic “weighting mistake” when choosing a home. Consider two housing options: a three bedroom apartment that is [...]

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According to the latest projected numbers on highway deaths, the USDOT says that total traffic deaths declined nearly 9 percent in 2009. Factors that may be contributing to this are more people are buckling up, new safety innovations, and the economy. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he was encouraged by the data but said there [...]

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Already a bicycle utopia, The Netherlands are upping the ante yet again by introducing a street-embedded lighting system to help cyclists avoid stopping at red lights. As Austin On Two Wheels reports: Back in December, we shared a video that mentioned how Copenhagen is so focused on making bikes the preferred form of transportation that [...]

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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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Traffic noise is influencing the behavior of animals, causing some birds to move their singing activities to night and affecting nearby frog populations. Traffic noise could be ruining the sex lives of urban frogs by drowning out the seductive croaks of amorous males, an Australian researcher said Friday. A well-projected and energetic croak is the [...]

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