Cal Poly Pomona is part of a coalition developing a national transportation research hub that will examine evolving transportation behavior as work patterns continue to shift and technology advances. The insights gained will enable the coalition to offer data-driven solutions, not only in the form of public policy or legislation, but also on how roads can be made safer and transportation systems more equitable.
A $40 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant will fund the Center for Understanding Future Travel Behavior and Demand, a first-of-its-kind research center that will bring together disparate sources of travel information and "collect longitudinal data from people, institutions and businesses about changes in travel patterns," according to a statement from the University of Texas at Austin, which is leading the effort.
The Center will also contribute to diversifying the transportation engineering workforce through student research projects and experiential learning opportunities.
Cal Poly Pomona will receive a total of $2.5 million over the next five years, which will help the civil engineering department deepen collaborations and forge new connections with major public agencies like Caltrans, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the Los Angeles Metro. The grant will also be used to offer greater research opportunities for students and fund opportunities like attending the international Transportation Research Board conference.
Civil Engineering Professor Wen Cheng, whose research focuses on analyzing transportation design and crash data, understanding traffic congestion and ways to improve traffic safety, will lead the Pomona team. His expertise includes nearly $4 million in research grants and more than 100 published articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings since joining the Department of Civil Engineering in 2009.
The Center's data collection will take both a quantitative and qualitative approach. The first method involves collecting data on existing sources of travel to gather insights on current travel patterns. The second method is what's called the Heartbeat Survey, a longitudinal survey that will follow a diverse group of individuals and households across the United States to get a first-hand understanding of how their travel decisions change as they move.
"Individually, human driving behavior is random," said Cheng. "So many factors can influence how an individual person drives, like their emotional state, for example. However, if you put together thousands and millions of individual driving behavior information, you can start to see an overall pattern of common driving behavior."
Together the two data-collection methods will help researchers understand how travel patterns evolve and change, especially as more and more autonomous vehicles share the road with human drivers.
The universities in the partnership are the University of Texas at Austin, Cal Poly Pomona, Arizona State University, City College of New York, Diné College, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan and the University of Washington.