Research Projects | National Institute for Transportation and Communities

Employment-Worker Balance & Polycentric Transit-Oriented Development: Towards an Index

Principal Investigator: Robert Hibberd

This dissertation will further NITC goals to increase access to employment opportunities and provide better models for an increasingly complex transportation system. It will consider the effectiveness of transit-oriented development (TOD) at addressi ... Read More

Rural Gentrification and the Spillover Effect: Integrated Transportation, Housing, and Land Use Challenges and Strategies in Gateway Communities

Principal Investigator: Danya Rumore

Co-Investigator: Philip Stoker

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities throughout the west are experiencing rapid growth and increased visitation. These “gateway communities” comprise a significant portion of the rural west, consti ... Read More

Assessing Cool Corridor Heat Resilience Strategies for Human-Scale Transportation

Principal Investigator: Ladd Keith

Co-Investigators: Nicole Iroz-Elardo , Kristina Currans

Road pavement is a known contributor to the urban heat island effect. Several vendors are providing engineered pavements coatings – known as “cool pavement” - to reflect light and therefore heat to reduce the thermal load of roads. The City of ... Read More

Sustaining Multimodal Choices: Examining Travel Behavior for Non-work Trips Beyond COVID-19

Principal Investigator: Yizhao Yang

Co-Investigator: Rebecca Lewis

Abstract Travel by sustainable modes such as public transit, biking, and walking provides positive outcomes for urban residents for the environment and health. Integrating these mode choices into regular travel trips has been challenging for many Am ... Read More

Toward Data and Solution-Focused Approaches to Support Homeless Populations on Public Transit

Principal Investigator: Anne Nordberg

Co-Investigators: Jaya Davis , Stephen Mattingly

People experiencing homelessness frequently rely on public transit systems and facilities as more than a mode of transportation to needed services but also as safe shelters from weather and danger. This is a challenge for many transit agencies and im ... Read More

Do Travel Costs Matter? Using Psychological and Social Equity Perspectives to Evaluate the Effects of a Low-Income Transit Fare Program on Low-Income Riders

Principal Investigator: Liu-Qin Yang

Co-Investigators: Liming Wang , Aaron Golub

Access to transit can deliver a host of benefits to the riders and to the region. Previous research aiming to study these benefits has primarily relied on data collected from the opening of new routes or transit systems, and has focused on the genera ... Read More

Incorporating Bicycle Activity and Vehicle Travel Reduction from Bicycle Infrastructure into Strategic Planning Tools

Principal Investigator: Joe Broach

Co-Investigator: Kristina Currans

Planners and modelers at all levels of government have been grappling with the problem of how to better represent bicycling when modeling and forecasting future scenarios. Planners want to know how and to what extent infrastructure projects can incre ... Read More

Launching the Wasatch Transportation Academy

Principal Investigator: Nathan McNeil

Co-Investigator: Keith Bartholomew

How can community members become more engaged in transportation decision making? Individuals and groups can learn to effect powerful change, but success requires some familiarity with how civic processes work. Community Transportation Academies, o ... Read More

Communicating Research through Comics: Transportation and Land Development

Principal Investigator: Kelly Clifton

Co-Investigator: Kristina Currans

This project created a transportation comic, "Moving From Cars To People," which offers a succinct and fun introduction to a complicated topic: namely, how the built environment in the United States came to be designed for cars and what we can do abo ... Read More

The use and influence of health indicators in transportation decision-making

Principal Investigator: Kelly Rodgers

Research on health and transport has increased significantly in the past 20 years, both across health and transportation fields. Researchers and practitioners have called for the use of health indicators in transportation, which come amidst the growi ... Read More

Enabling Decision-Making in Battery Electric Bus Deployment through Interactive Visualization

Principal Investigator: Xiaoyue Cathy Liu

Co-Investigator: Jianli Chen

Encouraged by the advancement of battery technology, the transition from diesel or compressed natural gas to fully zero-emission bus fleets has been the trend in the United States. Policymakers and transit agencies have set up goals to accelerate suc ... Read More

Access to Opportunities: Redefining Planning Methods and Measures for Disadvantaged Populations

Principal Investigator: Arlie Adkins

Co-Investigator: Stephen Mattingly

This project will be made up of two separate studies that together will investigate areas where transportation planning and engineering can better serve disadvantaged and underserved communities. An interdisciplinary team of planning and public healt ... Read More