It was wonderful to welcome Beth Osborne, former Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation and currently with Transportation for America, as a guest lecturer for CE 528 Transportation Economics and Analysis. Students (and I) thoroughly enjoyed the lively discussion about the TIGER program and the past, present and future of transportation policy, planning and engineering.
Congratulations to Alex Bigazzi who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation "Effects of the Urban Transportation System on Bicyclists Uptake of Traffic-Related Air Pollution," at Portland State University on October 1, 2014. I was pleased to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Bigazzi when he was an undergraduate and master's student and have enjoyed remaining on his dissertation committee and tracking his work these past few years. Prof. Miguel Figliozzi chaired the committee, and other committee members included Prof. James Pankow and Prof. Jennifer Dill. Alex's work is significant in that it relates bicyclists' "uptake" of pollutants as a function of the level of exertion, street/facility type and other variables. I hope that this leads to more research regarding the impacts of air pollution on travelers and on our communities. One interesting finding was related to spikes in VOCs near point source emitters.
ITE International Director Jenny Grote visited the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering today to formally present the 2014 ITE Western District Outstanding Educator Award to our own Eugene Jud. We were pleased that (l-r) Prof. Dan Jansen, CEE Department Chair and Kaylinn Roseman, 2013-2014 ITE Student Chapter President, joined Eugene and Jenny for the ceremony. We all congratulate Eugene for this honor and thank him for his dedicated service to Cal Poly and to our students!
It was a great honor to receive the Peter DeFazio Transportation Hall of Fame Award on September 15, 2014 from the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC). Past recipients included: Dick Feeney, Stefano Viggiano, Gail Achterman, Andy Cotugno and Bruce Starr. The award is shared with students, predecessors, colleagues, supporters, agency colleagues and many others. I know that OTREC will continue to be at the forefront of innovative and collaborative multimodal transportation research and education!
I was honored to be selected to deliver the 2014 Ogden Transport Lecture, at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne Australia, sponsored by the Institute of Transport Studies (ITS), Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University on August 27, 2014. This lecture series honors Prof. Ken Ogden who founded the ITS at Monash in 1969. I appreciated the opportunity to meet Prof. Ogden and many other leaders in the transport arena in the State of Victoria. I also thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to meet with many of the Monash students who are focusing their research in the transport area. Prof. Majid Sarvi and his colleagues were wonderful hosts, and I truly appreciated their hospitality. A special treat was to see Dr. Meead Saberi who was my student at Portland State University, who went on to receive his Ph.D. at Northwestern University and is now a Lecturer at Monash. Many thanks to all for a wonderful experience.
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I enjoyed the opportunity to participate in EV Roadmap 7, sponsored by Drive Oregon and held in Portland, Oregon from July 24-25, 2014. I moderated an excellent panel on "Electric Vehicles as The Testbed For Connected Cars and ITS," that included Prof. Matt Barth and Scott Belcher (pictured), and I also spoke in a panel on "Vehicle Automation," with my talk entitled, "Perspectives on Degrees of Vehicle Connectivity, Automation and Autonomous Vehicles." Overall a fascinating experience.
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We are very happy to be hosting Stefan Groer as a visiting scholar from TU Darmstadt, in Germany. This is a continuation of our longstanding partnership with the team led by Prof. Dr. Manfred Boltze, who is the Head of the Section for Traffic Planning and Transport Technology of Technische Universität Darmstadt. Stefan presented a seminar entitled, "The Role of Local Climate Action Plans in Transportation" which describes his ongoing PhD research. We are excited to have Stefan in Portland for two months (during the best Portland weather!) and we hope that our partnership with TU Darmstadt will continue into the future!
This is slightly belated but I was very happy back in April to serve as a member of Dr. Wei Feng's dissertation committee. His dissertation is entitled "Analyses of Bus Travel Time Reliability and Transit Signal Priority at the Stop-to-Stop Segment Level," and is an innovative piece of work using high resolution data from TriMet buses as well as the City of Portland's adaptive traffic signal system. I first met Wei in China in 2006, and ultimately recruited him to come to the U.S., so I was very happy and proud of his work here at PSU and I wish him will in his new position with the Chicago Transit Authority starting in September!
PSU students are arriving in Delft, the Netherlands for the 2014 edition of the Study Abroad:Sustainable Transportation in the Netherlands, in partnership with Prof. Peter Furth and Northeastern University. Initiated in 2011 by Peter Koonce, this is the fourth year that PSU students have participated in this adventure focusing on pedestrian, bicycle and public transport planning and design in the Netherlands. Follow our ten student blogs below as the course unfolds:
I appreciated the opportunity to serve on the M.S. thesis committee for Pam Johnson and the doctoral dissertation for Sirisha Kothuri this week - both successfully defended their thesis/dissertation, and I want to thank them for including me in this important step in their lives! Sirisha's dissertation is titled "Incorporating Pedestrian Considerations into Traffic Signal Timing," and Pam's thesis is titled "Bicycle Level of Service: Where are the Gaps in Bicycle Flow Measures?" Congratulations and best wishes to Pam and Sirisha!
Tom Kristeleit, a visiting MS student from the research group of Prof. Klaus Bogenberger, Universität der Bundeswehr München (University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich Germany), presented his research on the state of the art in freeway ramp metering on Thursday June 5, 2014. We appreciated the opportunity to host Tom during his time in Portland, and we hope that this leads to further collaboration with Prof. Bogenberger's group!
I was very happy to be invited back to the U.S. DOT yesterday where I presented "Putting the Implementation Back in Innovation: Reflections on the Future of Transportation Research and Education," as part of the Transportation Innovation Series sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Research and Technology. It was great to see old friends and colleagues and hear about all the progress being made within the former-RITA offices, including ITS, BTS and RD&T. I was also fascinated to see the amazing new developments just behind the DOT building on the waterfront, absolutely beautiful! A great (and beautiful sunny) day in DC!
I was very pleased to participate in the Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) in connection with the Oregon State University Alumni Association on Friday April 11, 2014, where I presented a lecture on "Sustainable Transportation in the Netherlands," as part of ALL's World Cultures series focusing on the Netherlands. I also had the chance to present "Driverless Vehicles - Time to Panic or Rejoice?" with Oregon State University professor Haizhong Wang for his CE 491 Transportation Engineering course. All in all it was a beautiful day in Corvallis!
Two occasions stood out from the 2014 TRB Annual Meeting: first the session we co-sponsored entitled What Are Transportation Operations and Why Should I Care, featuring a very distinguished panel of leaders in transportation who are passionate about the field of operations. It was a terrific session organized by Nikola Ivanov and I hope that we can continue this conversation. Second, NITC sponsored a reception and it was filled with present and past students and friends and colleagues from around the U.S. and abroad. It is great to have the opportunity to meet (at least) once a year!
Happy 50th Birthday AHB45 Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics! Thanks to all of our volunteers, members, friends, paper reviewers, meeting participants, and Facebook friends! Special thanks to our past chairs Prof. Nathan Gartner and Prof. Hani Mahmassani as well as those chairs, members, friends, authors and supporters who came before. At the TRB Annual Meeting we held a celebratory workshop highlighting the past successes and future prospects of Traffic Simulation, where we also recognized the best Simulation paper for 2013; an inaugural workshop on Crowd Flow Dynamics, Modeling and Management; we held a celebratory podium session on 50 Years of Traffic Flow Theory: Achievements and Challenges, with four excellent presentations, the Greenshields Prize, the Highest Cited Paper Award, and birthday cake; we held our annual committee business meeting where we recognized new Emeritus Member Alex Skabardonis and past chair Nathan Gartner, founder of the Greenshields Prize; four other lectern sessions and five poster sessions. It has been my privilege to serve as chair of the committee since 2009, and I am proud of all of our accomplishments. We have a great circle of people who are wonderful friends and colleagues and I look forward to the next 50 years of collaboration and success!
