Technology Transfer

The STRIDE project has allowed us to go into small, rural communities and start a dialogue about their future. The ability to see how the form of urban development affects the quality of life of the people in those communities is what is most valuable to them about the project. – John Poros, Ph.D., Director, Carl Small Town Center, Mississippi State University

The grant from the STRIDE Center makes it possible for researchers in three different disciplines at three universities to work together to develop decision support tools that will help small and rural communities in Mississippi make the most of growth in manufacturing and efforts to increase heritage-based tourism. – Brian Morton, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill We envisioned the symposium as a showcase of the multidisciplinary research on transportation safety and to explore its real-world applications in the short- and long- term. This symposium follows in a series of annual events organized by the Transportation Research Center at the University of Florida on various themes. – Siva Srinivasan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Florida

The Orlando conference was a great venue for bringing together the agency and academic partners in STRIDE. As an agency participant, it provided me with a holistic view of STRIDE’s progress and plenty of interaction with the researchers themselves. I look forward to future venues like this within the UTC program – David Jared, P.E., Chief, Research & Development Branch, Georgia DOT/Office of Research The CORSIM Webinar gave participants a detailed introduction to managed lanes, covered the operations’ components of managed lanes and high-occupancy/toll (HOT) lanes, and prepared them for a hands-on workshop on simulating managed lanes such as HOV, HOT, and truck-only lanes using CORSIM. During the workshop, participants had the chance to actually use CORSIM to simulate different types of managed lanes and managed lane scenarios, understand the program output files, and compare the simulation results. I believe attendees gained valuable knowledge on managed lanes operations and their simulation using CORSIM. – Dimitra Michalaka, Ph.D., Research Associate, University of Florida (Currently an assistant professor at The Citadel, South Carolina)

Technology Transfer Activities

A Regional Land Use Transportation Decision Support Tool for Mississippi

Brian Morton, Ph.D., UNC Chapel Hill; John Poros, Ph.D., MSU; Joe Huegy, AICP, NCSU

The Regional Land-Use Transportation Decision Support Tool generates parcel level growth scenarios designed with CommunityViz and assessed with a land use-travel demand model built with the TRANUS modeling platform. The latter explicitly represents the study area’s economy and real estate markets; spatially allocates population and employment to census blocks; and projects trip distribution, trip generation, mode choice, and trip assignment.

The scenarios that have been designed thus far represent the status quo and, alternatively, favor new housing developed at a minimum density of seven dwelling units per acre and within walking and biking distance to the town centers. The new developments are connected to the just opened 43-mile Tanglefoot Trail, a Class 1 bike/hike trail. These scenarios have been shared with two communities. Community representatives have been interested to see that they have room for growth within their city limits and have been receptive to higher density, mixed use development. By creating a spectrum of development scenarios in CommunityViz and testing the transportation implications of those growth scenarios with the TRANUS-based model, local elected officials as well as citizens will better understand the choice between the status quo and a more bike and pedestrian friendly future.

2013 UTC Conference for the Southeastern Region

More than 180 people attended the University Transportation Center (UTC) Conference for the Southeastern Region in Orlando, Fla., on April 4-5, 2013, which showcased UTC projects and helped enhance collaboration amongst academic, private, and public sectors in the Southeast. STRIDE at UF organized and hosted the conference, the first such event in the region, which aimed to bring together faculty, students, practitioners, and public agencies in the Southeast, to disseminate information about on-going activities at all partner universities, and to further enhance collaboration among the academic community as well as the private and public sector agencies in the region.

Dr. Daniel Rodriguez of UNC Chapel Hill congratulating Prabha (Popa) Pratyaksa for winning 2nd Place in the Student Poster Competition.

STRIDE Student Poster Showcase & Competition

The Transportation Research Center at the University of Florida hosted a reception during the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board along with STRIDE-affiliated faculty, students, and staff. The well-attended reception was held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C, and included a STRIDE Student Research Poster Competition. Twenty-nine posters from students representing the partner institutions were selected for presentation. The winners of the student poster competition were Jay Shannon, 1st Place, Mississippi State University; Tabitha Combs, 2nd Place, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Xuanwu Chen, 3rd Place, Florida International University. Congratulations to these students!

Top image: Xuanwu Chen of FIU with his winning poster (3rd Place) at the STRIDE Student Poster Showcase, January 2013. At right: Dr. Siva Srinivasan and Dr. Sherrilene Classen during a break at the Transportation Safety Symposium.

CORSIM Workshop & Webinar

A webinar and workshop on using CORSIM to evaluate the impact of various pricing strategies and the management of toll lanes was held at the UF campus on April 29-30, 2013. A total of 42 people participated from consulting firms and state agencies in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Washington. The course was taught by Dimitra Michalaka, Ph.D., a former transportation student at UF. CORSIM, a microscopic traffic simulation software program maintained at UF, was recently enhanced to simulate the operations of high occupancy/toll lanes, thanks to a grant by the Center for Multimodal Solutions for Congestion Mitigation (CMS), a USDOT, grant-funded, Tier-1 University Transportation Center at UF.

Transportation Safety Symposium

This event, held on April 3, 2013, in Orlando, Fla., featured presentations based on a variety of projects related to transportation safety undertaken by researchers affiliated with the University of Florida. The topics covered included data, predictive methods, driving simulation, GIS-based analyses, computational methods, older driver needs, safe routes to school, evacuation modeling, and outreach to small agencies. The symposium followed in a series of technology transfer events organized by the UF Transportation Research Center in collaboration with STRIDE to disseminate research findings from projects funded in part by the Center for Multimodal Solutions for Congestion Mitigation (CMS), a USDOT, grant-funded, Tier-1 University Transportation Center.