National Institute for Transportation and Communities

A new report offers lessons for post-pandemic transit policy and planning. Notably, it calls for planners to downplay the role of offices in transit station areas and increase the opportunity for people to live in them. Researchers Arthur C. Nelson and Robert Hibberd published "Transit Station Area Development and Demographic Outcomes (PDF)," updating their longitudinal analysis of the impacts of development near transit stations.

The new report includes a foreword by U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer. An excerpt reads:

"In this report, Arthur C. Nelson, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona, and Robert Hibberd, a doctoral student, chronical numerous economic and demographic changes that occurred in transit station areas between the Great Recession that ended in 2009 and the pandemic that started in 2020. Through detailed analysis of 57 transit systems operating...

The 103rd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) will be held January 7–11, 2024 in Washington, D.C., and NITC transportation faculty and researchers will be sharing their expertise at the world's largest transportation conference. The TRB annual meeting attracts thousands of transportation professionals from around the globe to address transportation policy, practice, and plans for the future.

Below are a few highlights of research being presented by transportation experts from our participating NITC-funded campuses: Portland State University (PSU), University of Oregon (UO), University of Utah (UU), University of Arizona (UA), and University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Check out our full NITC guide for all of the sessions:

VIEW THE ONLINE GUIDE TO NITC AT TRB 2024

*Due to the evolving status of speaker attendance and TRB programming, please check your TRB schedule for the most current information in the event of changes.*

NITC Research Highlights at TRB 2024

University of Texas at Arlington

Monday, January 8 - Older Adults, Travel Options, and Barriers to Accessibility

In this lectern session, Juana Perez, Mohammad Rashidi, Jobaidul Boni and Kate Hyun of the University of Texas, Arlington...

In 2022, one in ninety-five people in the world were forcibly uprooted from their homes, causing them to seek homes in other countries—that is, become refugees. Resettlement in a new country allows them to escape unpredictable or unsafe conditions, but it comes with its own array of challenges. Though refugees’ satisfaction in their post-resettlement environments has been studied, the role of mobility in their qualities of life remains understudied. 

To fill this research gap, professors from the University of Arizona conducted a mixed-methods study with members of the refugee community Tucson, Arizona. Their goal was to understand how transportation impacts refugees’ well-being in order to develop recommendations for how cities and nonprofits can better serve this vulnerable portion of the population. The findings not only highlighted the importance of transportation to refugees and the number of barriers that prevent refugees from fully utilizing the systems in place, but also provided interesting insights into perspectives of transportation that challenge the traditional white feminist viewpoint of gender roles. They challenge the idea that the population of refugees can be generalized, and they place an emphasis on the importance of individual experiences.

To learn more about the findings, watch an...

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is proud to introduce a new Dissertation Fellow, Adrian Cottam of the University of Arizona. Cottam's doctoral research project, Machine Learning and Big Data-Based Approaches for Quality Freeway Volumes, will focus on improving the quality of freeway volumes and expanding their spatial availability.

"I was drawn to Transportation Engineering because it is a field where you can make major impacts to better your community. I found that by merging my passion for Computer Science with Transportation Engineering, I could use data to obtain more information on how local transportation could be improved through Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and performance measurement. Throughout this process, I found that it was frequently a challenge obtaining high-quality data, or having access to data where you need it. This drove me to focus my dissertation on using machine learning techniques to improve data quality, and estimate traffic parameters where sensors were unavailable. My research is specifically focused on freeways, and seeks to use available data sources, such as crowdsourced data, to estimate data that isn’t always available. I am a firm believer in applied research, and hope to better my community through my research efforts. As such, I seek to develop methods that can be applied in a practical way, so...