Cal Poly Alum Returns

We were very happy to welcome Mr. Robert (Bob) Preston, P.E., T.E., PTOE, back to Cal Poly on January 26, 2016. Mr. Preston was a Transportation Engineering graduate in 1974 and worked in the transportation profession including many years as the Alameda County Traffic Engineer. Students and faculty enjoyed hearing about his experiences and about his love for Cal Poly. He encouraged us to think about priorities and people, and to always make sure we have a mentor. We hope he will visit us again soon!

Randy Iwasaki Visits Cal Poly

As always we were extremely happy to have our "rock star" alumnus Randy Iwasaki, Director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority and former Caltrans Director visit our campus on Thursday January 21, 2016. Randy spoke to my CE 523 Transportation Systems Planning class and to the ITE student chapter and toured TESPA. We are very grateful for his support!

Great Cal Poly Participation at the ITE Student Leadership Summit

A total of 27 students and faculty from Cal Poly SLO Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) student chapter actively participated in the Third Annual ITE Student Leadership Summit, held January 22-24, 2016 at Cal Poly Pomona. There were about 150 students from 15 universities in the western U.S. I was pleased to participate as a member of a Leadership Panel. The future is bright with such energetic and passionate future leaders in transportation!

95th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C.

As always it was a wonderful and busy week at the Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting held January 10-14 in Washington, D.C. I was a co-author on 7 presented papers, chaired two sessions and led the Operations Section Executive Board Meeting. It was wonderful to have 5 current Cal Poly students and 2 faculty colleagues in attendance. Here are some of the highlights:

Measurement and Assessment of Driver Compliance with Variable Speed Limit Systems: Comparison of United States and Germany (Paper 16-3032)

Gary Riggins, Technical University Munich
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University
Williams Ackaah and Klaus Bogenberger, Universität der Bundeswehr München

Assessing the Harmonization Potential of Variable Speed Limit Systems (Paper 16- 2688)
Williams Ackaah, Gerhard Huber and Klaus Bogenberger, Universität der Bundeswehr München
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University

Bus Transit Service Reliability: Understanding Impacts of Overlapping Bus Service on Headway Delays and Determinants of Bus Bunching (Paper 16-2059)
Ehab Diab, University of Toronto
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University
Ahmed El-Geneidy, McGill University

Toward Assessing State Department of Transportation Readiness for Connected Vehicle and Cooperative System Deployment Scenarios: Oregon Case Study (Paper 16-2057)
Robert L. Bertini and Kevin Carstens, California Polytechnic State University
Haizhong Wang, Oregon State University
Anthony Knudson, Oregon Department of Transportation

Development of a Transportation System Simulation Manual (TSSM) Framework: From Theory to Practice (Paper 16-3600)
George List, North Carolina State University
Mehdi Mashayekhi, North Carolina State University
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University
Brandon Nevers, Kittelson & Associates, Inc. (KAI)

Perspectives on Transit: Potential Benefits of Visualizing Transit Data (Paper 16- 5474)
Ehab Diab, University of Toronto 

Ahmed El-Geneidy, McGill University
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University
Colin Stewart

Capturing Benefits of Variable Advisory Speed System in Portland, Oregon: Empirical Before-and-After Evaluation (Paper 16-0687)
Matthew Downey
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University


Freeway Traffic Control (Session 323)
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University, presiding

Operations Section Executive Board (AHB00)
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University, presiding

Applications for a Connected Transportation System (Session 465)
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University, presiding

Macroscopic Features of Traffic Flow (Session 694)
Robert L. Bertini, California Polytechnic State University, presiding

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

TRR Review Advisory Board, Robert. L. Bertini, Member

Constantinos Antoniou and Loukas Dimitriou Visit Cal Poly

Dr. Constantinos Antoniou of the National Technical University of Athens and Dr. Loukas Dimitriou of the University of Cypress visited Cal Poly on Friday January 15, 2016. Dr. Antoniou presented “Making Connected Vehicles Succeed: Beyond the Core Technical Challenges,” to the CE 523 Transportation Systems Planning class and to our Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) student chapter. We were very happy to welcome Dr. Antoniou and Dr. Dimitriou to campus and we hope this will lead to further collaboration in the future!

Presentation to ITE Student Chapter

I was very happy to present "Lessons from Taking the Fork in the Road" to the Cal Poly Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) student chapter on January 7, 2016.

Elected to IEEE ITS Society Board of Governors

I was honored and excited to be elected to the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Board of Governors for a three-year term January 1, 2016 - December 3, 2018. I look forward to working with many friends and colleagues to further develop this wonderful society to the next level of excellence!

Visit to Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China December 2015

Fantastic visit to the College of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou China! Special thanks to Prof. Yibing Wang for the invitation and the wonderful hospitality! I was honored to present "Toward Assessing State Department of Transportation Readiness for Connected Vehicle/Cooperative Systems Deployment Scenarios: An Oregon Case Study" to students and faculty from the Traffic Control Lab, and also was honored to be able to meet with Prof. Yafeng Yin (University of Florida), the Editor in Chief of Transportation Research Part C, and Prof. Hai Yang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), the Editor in Chief of Transportation Research Part B. Hangzhou is a beautiful city, in particular the famous West Lake.

Visit to Chang'an University, Xi'an, China

I had the fantastic opportunity to present "Toward Assessing State Department of Transportation Readiness for Connected Vehicle/Cooperative Systems Deployment Scenarios: An Oregon Case Study" at the 2015 International Conference on Information Technology and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITITS 2015) at Chang'an University in Xi'an, China on December 12, 2015. Wonderful colleagues, hosts and experiences!

  

Lance Knox Successfully Defends Master's Project

Today Lance Knox, master's student in city and regional planning and civil and environmental engineering (dual master's), successfully defended his project, "Roundabout Feasibility Study: Highway 227/Huasna Road in Arroyo Grande." Congratulations Lance!

New Paper on Bus Route Forecasting Published

Our paper "Real-time bus route state forecasting using particle filter and mesoscopic modeling" was just published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 61, December 2015, Pages 121-140. You can download it free until January 2016. Special thanks to my friends and collaborators at ENTPE: Etienne Hans, Nicolas Chiabaut and Ludovic Leclrecq for a great experience developing this paper!

IPAM Workshop: Decision Support for Traffic

The Institute for Pure and Applied and Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA kindly hosted a long program in New Directions in Mathematical Approaches for Traffic Flow Management. I was pleased to be a member of the organizing committee (with Alexandre Bayen, Serge Hoogendoorn and Laura Wynter) of Workshop IV: Decision Support for Traffic, held at UCLA November 16-20, 2015. On November 17, 2015 I chaired the afternoon session and also gave a presentation, "Multimodal Transportation System Simulation Manual (TSSM) Framework: From Theory to Practice." It was great to have this opportunity and my thanks to IPAM and my co-organizers for their support.

Dr. David Lovell Visits Cal Poly

We were honored to have Dr. David Lovell, University of Maryland visit Cal Poly from November 11-15, 2015. Dr. Lovell presented to the ITE student chapter, discussing his research aimed at improving air transportation systems. He also spoke about air traffic operations management to the CE 321 Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering class. His primary mission was to participate in the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) West Coast Regional Conference hosted by the Cal Poly EWB student chapter.

Ray LaHood Book Signing

I had the pleasure of attending former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood's book signing for his memoir, Seeking Bipartisanship: My Life in Politics, held at Bloomberg in Washington, D.C. on November 4, 2015. Having served under Secretary LaHood at the U.S. DOT from 2009-2011, I was happy to see the former Secretary as well as many wonderful members of the DOT team. Having read the book on my trip back west the following evening, I was particularly struck by the section describing LaHood's work in Congress on civility. I knew that he had spoken about the importance of civility in politics but did not know about the broader initiatives he had led. I admire Ray LaHood immensely - he is a true leader, who treats people well in all environments and situations. The civility portion of the book particularly resonated with me, having also strived to improve communication, collaboration and integrity in my work. It was an honor to serve under Ray LaHood and work with the amazing DOT team, and reading this memoir further cemented my respect, admiration and appreciation for this great leader.

Cal Poly Chi Epsilon Civil and Environmental Engineering Honor Society Participates in Pacific District Conference

I was asked to accompany the Cal Poly Chi Epsilon Civil and Environmental Engineering Honor Society to the Pacific District Conference held at San Jose State University November 6-8, 2015. Five Cal Poly students, including Carley Burford, Jason Hsia, Carley Thomas, Elizabeth Coffey and Jonathon Centofranchi participated, and through their efforts earned third place (out of 14 universities) in the Pacific District Cup Competition! My congratulations to the team for a job well done! As a former president of the Cal Poly Chi Epsilon chapter (c. 1987) I was especially proud!

9th University Transportation Center (UTC) Spotlight Conference on Connected and Automated Vehicles November 4-5, 2015, in Washington, D.C.

I was honored to be invited to serve on the organizing committee for the 9th University Transportation Center (UTC) Spotlight Conference on Connected and Automated Vehicles November 4-5, 2015, in Washington, D.C. Held at the National Academy of Sciences, the meeting was sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, U.S. Department of Transportation (OST-R) and organized by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), under the leadership of Dr. Melissa Tooley, I chaired the plenary session and breakout session on Modal Applications of connected and automated vehicles, along with John Maddox of the University of Michigan. We had a great session with speakers from Carnegie Mellon, Texas Transportation Institute, NREL and Zipcar. Conference proceedings will be published later. Special thanks to TRB and OST-R staff Rich Cunard, Freda Morgan, Robin Kline and Thomas Bolle for their support.

CE321 Field Trip to Los Osos Valley Road Interchange Project

We had a great field trip hosted by Kyle Rowland from the City of San Luis Obispo at the construction site of the Los Osos Valley Road Interchange with U.S. 101 on October 31, 2015. The CE 321 Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering class learned about all of the issues involved with building a new bridge across U.S. 101, extending a multiplate superspan triple culvert on San Luis Creek, construction of retaining walls, traffic control, stormwater management and more. Thanks to Kyle for a great experience!

CE424 Public Transportation Field Trip to Santa Barbara

Thanks to Eugene Jud for arranging his traditional Amtrak trip to Santa Barbara as a field trip for CE 424 Public Transportation on Saturday October 24, 2015. We are grateful to colleagues at the MTD, and UCSB for their wonderful hospitality. We rode the train, electric trolley, express bus, local bus as well as bicycles on this multimodal trip! We also experienced bicycle roundabouts and several highway roundabouts, all working smoothly! We saw a few skateboards, surfboards and sailboats as well!

SOLARIS Advisory Board, University of Nevada Reno

I am grateful to Prof. Zong Tian for the invitation to serve on the Advisory Board for the Safety and Operations of Large-Area Rural/Urban Intermodal Systems (SOLARIS) Institute which is a Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC) based at the University of Nevada Reno. SOLARIS focuses on safety as the strategic focus area, supported by a broad spectrum of other transportation-related fields. I had the opportunity to visit the Institute and meet with the other advisory board members, faculty and staff on October 16, 2015. An exciting year of research, education and outreach surely lies ahead!