Research Projects | National Institute for Transportation and Communities

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

No matter where you live, but especially if you live in a big city, you have likely seen people experiencing homelessness (PEH) using public transportation services. PEH use public transportation not only to get from place to place but also as shelte ... Read More

Do Travel Costs Matter For Persons With Lower Incomes? 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

In recent years, there has been a nationwide push to move from using cars to using other modes of transportation. The benefits of active transportation (that is, walking, biking, and even using public transit) are widely known. Not only can these mod ... 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

As a social determinant of health, transportation significantly contributes to well-being through several pathways. Researchers and practitioners have called for health indicators as one way to integrate public health concerns into transportation dec ... 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

Integrate Socioeconomic Vulnerability for Resilient Transportation Infrastructure Planning

Principal Investigator: Liming Wang

Co-Investigators: John MacArthur , Yu Xiao

This research project develops a novel methodology for assessing transportation network vulnerability and resilience, with a particular focus on incorporating social vulnerability into the analysis. The study addresses a critical gap in existing rese ... Read More

Applying a Mt. Mazama Volcanic Ash Treatment as a Trail Accessibility Improvement

Principal Investigator: Charles (C.J.) Riley

Co-Investigator: Ashton Greer

In the latest instance of taking research to practice, researchers at Oregon Tech have completed a pilot section of trail using a NITC-developed sustainable paving method. A quarter-mile section of the Klamath Geo Trail, just east and up the hill fro ... Read More

How Can E-bike Purchase Incentives Grow the E-bike Market?

Principal Investigator: John MacArthur

Co-Investigators: Christopher Cherry , Luke Jones

The electric bicycle (e-bike) is a low-emission mode of transportation that offers communities benefits in the areas of health, planning, time, cost, street safety, congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, and energy security, among others. Despit ... Read More