The U.S. deputy secretary of transportation spent Monday at Georgia Tech talking about transportation infrastructure and seeing some of the ways researchers are helping improve the design, monitoring and creation of that infrastructure. Victor Mendez’s visit included conversations with School of Civil and Environmental Engineering students and faculty members.
Doctoral student Stephanie Amoaning-Yankson has won an international fellowship from the American Association of University Women to support her studies next year. The organization awards its international fellowships to graduate students who excel academically and who have demonstrated a commitment to women and girls.
A smartphone app and related study for Atlanta bicyclists has won the first-ever Excellence in Innovation / Research of the Year Award from the Young Professionals in Transportation organization. The Cycle Atlanta app, developed by CEE’s Kari Watkins and Christopher Le Dantec from the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, tracks the routes cyclists travel through the city and allows them to note amenities or problems along the way. That helps other riders, and it helps the city develop cycling infrastructure in the right places.
When Target proposed opening a 137,000 square foot store in Davis, California, some residents worried their city’s culture and economy was headed for disaster. It was to be the first-ever “big-box” retailer in a city known for its very strict planning guidelines that had kept such stores out of the community.
Ram Pendyala, the School’s Frederick R. Dickerson Chair in Transportation Systems, is the new chair of the Planning and Environment Group of the Technical Activities Division of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He’s also now associate editor for the journal Transportation Research Part D.
On GPB’s On Second Thought May 27, assistant professor Kari Watkins said Georgia needs the political will to invest in building bullet trains before the high-speed links will happen in the state. And that’s the hardest part.
Transportation planners have to forecast where you and thousands of your neighbors will go and decide what infrastructure your region needs to accommodate those demands. But the data they’re using today, in 2015, is probably a decade and a half old. So even though what you remember of your travels in 2000 is vastly different from your travels today, the 2000 version of you is who’s accounted for in 30-year regional transportation plans. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. alumna Josie Kressner has a plan to change all that.
The Eno Center for Transportation has selected third-year doctoral student Alice Grossman as a 2015 fellow. Grossman will join a handful of other graduate students from across the country at the Future Leaders Development Conference in Washington D.C. this summer.
Giving bus riders real-time information about when the bus will arrive actually does increase the number of people who choose to hop aboard. The boost mostly comes on high-volume routes. But overall, it could mean millions more dollars in revenues for public transit agencies.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278