National Institute for Transportation and Communities

Learn more about this and other "Smart Cities" technology by registering for this September 14 workshop.

Connected Vehicle (CV) technology is coming to Portland, Oregon. We're excited to announce the first step in what could be a long-term game changer for the city: during the winter of 2018, researchers from Portland State University and University of Arizona will work with the City of Portland to deploy a test concept of CV tech on the Portland Streetcar.

Primarily funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Connected Streetcar Project is one of the Portland...

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is soliciting proposals for our two 2018 Pooled Fund projects:

Exploring Data Fusion Techniques to Derive Bicycle Volumes on a Network

This project will address the need of cities and municipalities to combine bicycle data from different sources (such as manual counts, automatic counts, and crowd-sourced data from apps such as Strava) to assess an accurate accounting of bicycle traffic on a network. Current work on data fusion techniques is limited and additional research is needed to fully understand the choice of weighting techniques, inclusion of spatial vs. temporal variation in the...

Regular assessment of public transit performance is essential. With limited funding and growing public needs, performance evaluation helps identify areas for improvement. But what, exactly, is the desired improvement that transit agencies seek?

If the answer is operational efficiency, then agencies have a clear goal: to achieve the highest ridership possible with the lowest operational costs.

If the answer is access equity, then again a clear goal emerges: to extend transit to neighborhoods with high concentrations of low-income residents and minorities, and to evaluate proposed route changes through the lens of supplying much-needed services.

The real answer, of course, is both. Historically, research has examined...

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2018 Small Starts request for proposals (RFP). Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by September 17, 2018.

The Small Starts grant assists researchers (based at NITC partner universities) who are interested in transportation but have not had an opportunity to undertake a small project ($20,000 or less). Read about the Small Starts projects that were funded in 2017. Projects must be consistent with NITC's theme of improving the mobility of people and goods to build strong communities.

Our theme includes a few key topics:

• Increasing access to opportunities
• Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure
• Advancing innovation and smart cities
• Developing data, models, and tools

Key Dates

• RFP Opens: July 18, 2018
• Proposals due: September 17, 2018
• Award Selection: Sept-Oct 2018
• Projects begin & funds...