Recent uctc items

Risk Assessment and Risk Management for Transportation Research

Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper sets forth a preliminary methodology to assess and manage risk for transportation research. The California Dept. of Transportation (Caltrans) funds numerous transportation research projects that range from studies that aim to improve the understanding of travel behavior to field operations tests and deployment studies for new technologies. The risk assessment methodology is designed to help 1) identify needs for transportation research, 2) identify likely audiences for the anticipated research products, as well as potential applications; 3) identify potential barriers that could impede research or prevent its implementation; and based on the findings of the first three steps, 4) assess whether Caltrans is best suited to fund and oversee the research, should co-‐sponsor it with other agencies, should support it in less direct ways, or should refrain from engaging in research efforts on the topic and simply monitor developments in the field. The methodology is intended...

Innovative DOTs: Identifying Critical Issues and Strategies with Broad Support

Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Many state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are engaged in strategic planning aimed at helping them improve their ability to identify coming problems and improve their ability to innovate. This paper examines common concerns or 'threats' currently facing DOTs, and identifies strategies to address them, or 'opportunities' that many DOTs support. The paper gives examples of innovative projects and programs from DOTs around the U.S., across a spectrum from leading innovative agencies to those just starting to initiate a discussion about change. Our methodology was to scan recent reports on critical issues and changing trends from a variety of experts and transportation stakeholder groups representing a broad selection of viewpoints. We then sought examples of how DOTs are currently innovating to address these critical issues and changing trends—both opportunities and threats—and identified ten main ways in which DOTs are adapting to meet them. Many reports on innovative DOTs...

Psychological economics, travel behavior, residential location choice, and sustainability: Possible new rationales for policy intervention

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The sustainability policy agenda includes various land use, road pricing, and parking pricing policies that are intended to reduce the use and ownership of autos in order to lower carbon emissions, pollution and road congestion. Such well-established policy interventions are largely rooted in the microeconomic concepts of market failure and externalities. But recent research in psychological economics has identified a new kind of problem: people may make decisions that are not in their own self-interest, contrary to the underlying microeconomic assumption that people are “rational actors.” This research in progress explores whether and how imperfect decision making significantly affects the choice of where to live and how to travel, with effects on the sustainability of urban growth. The psychological economics literature suggests that residential movers may systematically over-predict future housing and commute satisfaction. They may also fail to consider less salient criteria...

The Role of Behavioral Economics in Residential Choice: A Pilot Study Of Travel Patterns, Housing Characteristics, Social Connections, and Subjective Well-Being

Fri, 7 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Do people make imperfect decisions about where to live and how to travel? There is some evidence that people may overvalue privacy and material goods like housing and undervalue time for activities and social connections. We surveyed 84 individuals, almost all of them university students, before and after a planned move between homes. Respondents answered questions at two points in time about six months apart, before and after moving. They reported ratings of subjective well-being, information on travel patterns, characteristics of homes and neighborhoods, the number and type of social connections, demographics, and significant life events. This working paper describes the survey design and data collection process, and reports on survey results.

Truck Parking and Idling is Having an Impact on Disadvantaged Communities in California

Thu, 2 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Under California Assembly Bill 617 (Garcia, 2017),local and state agencies are working to reduce airpollution exposure in low income communities. These communities—often referred to as AB 617 communities—are disproportionately impacted by air pollution due to their proximity to transportation corridors, industrial installations, and logistics centers. A research team at the University of California, Davis investigated the impact of truck parking related activities on air quality in California’s AB 617 communities in Kern County, including truck idling, time spent searching for parking, and parking locations in communities. Searching for parking involves trucks driving extra miles to find available parking spaces, which leads to additional fuel consumption and increased emissions of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM 10). Once parked, prolonged or illegal parking can exacerbate congestion, noise, and localized pollution. These combined...

Overcoming battery life problems of smartphones when creating automated travel diaries

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Gathering data using travel diaries has been a requirement to analyze travel behaviour data for decades. Traditional pen and paper techniques of gathering data has been complemented by new technologies, most recently GPS loggers, and now smartphones. Smartphones appear to be the silver bullet in collecting travel data on a wide scale, they are widespread, applications are easy to distribute, and the hardware is reliable. However, conserving the battery life in smartphones is a challenge to creating automated travel diaries. The smartphone is not solely a travel diary tool and for a system to work, the travel diary application cannot be a burden to the user. In this paper we leverage work from the “everyday location monitoring” research community in a system to sparsely collect location data from smartphones in a battery efficient manner. With this sparse data, we present an algorithm to generate trips, and suggest six metrics to analyze the quality of the trip determination system....

The Quantified Traveler: Changing transport behavior with personalized travel data feedback

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Experiments using smartphones to influence behavior have been growing rapidly in many fields, especially in health and fitness research, and studies on eco-feedback technologies. In these studies, users are first tracked to understand their baseline behaviors, then measured continuously while they receive feedback about their actions. In transportation, studies using smartphones to change behavior have been limited due to the difficulty in even tracking users in the first place. Collecting data from smartphones in a battery efficient manner is a large research problem, and behavior change studies depend on being able to track travel behaviors. We developed an automated travel diary system which efficiently and unobtrusively collected travel data using smartphones and ran an experiment to evaluate how people’s awareness of their transportation behavior, attitudes towards sustainable transportation, intentions to change behavior, and measured travel behavior changed. For three weeks,...

Bay Bridge Toll Evaluation: Final Report

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On July 1, 2010, the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) raised the tolls on the seven state‐ owned bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area. For six of the bridges, a flat $5 toll was implemented for passenger vehicles with a 50% discount ($2.50 toll) for peak‐period 3+ person carpools, which had previously crossed the bridges free of charge. On the San Francisco‐ Oakland Bay Bridge, a more complex toll structure was put into place. The toll was increased to $6 during weekday peak periods (5‐10 a.m. and 3‐7 p.m.), and the off‐peak weekday toll was left unchanged at $4. The peak period 3+ person carpool toll was set at $2.50, the same as on other bridges.

Old Road, New Directions

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Old Road, New Directions

Great Streets: Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Great Streets: Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia

Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns

Clean for a Day: California Versus the EPA's Smog Check Mandates

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Clean for a Day: California Versus the EPA's Smog Check Mandates

THE Access Almanac: The CAFE Standards Worked