Event Date
Capitol Hill Research Briefing: Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Mobility & Access to Sustainable Transportation in Rural Communities
Event Overview
Join us for our 8th annual Capitol Hill Research Briefing in conjunction with the 102nd Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. We are excited to be back in-person!
Lunch will be provided.
Households in small and rural communities are often automobile dependent, and those with low incomes or who do not own a car have limited transportation options for accessing basic services that improve lives and livelihoods, including jobs, health care, healthy food, and more. In this briefing, researchers from the National Center for Sustainable Transportation will highlight research pertaining to meeting the mobility needs of small, rural, and marginalized communities while also addressing sustainability challenges in California and Vermont.
Insights shared will include the latest findings from a three-year experiment in electric vehicle (EV) carsharing that serves marginalized rural communities in California’s Central Valley. Research from Vermont will also be shared that evaluates differences in individual and household travel behavior, sustainable transportation policy support, and behavior change across the urban to rural continuum. Lessons learned from the carsharing experiment range from implementation challenges to the program’s impact on access to opportunities, vehicle travel, and greenhouse gas emissions. The Vermont research indicates that households in small and rural communities may have an underappreciated capacity to reduce transportation related carbon emissions. Rural areas present a new set of challenges for privately owned EV adoption planning in terms of population density, grid infrastructure, travel behavior, vehicle type, power needs, and the unique needs of rural communities. To maximize the usefulness and impact of a public EV charging network, it is vital to better understand how EVs will be used in rural areas and the infrastructure needs of rural EV owners, including the impact of fast chargers, home chargers, and public charging infrastructure.
For questions, please contact Sara Schremmer at sschremmer@ucdavis.edu.
Further Reading
Evaluating Pilot Approaches to Increase Rural Mobility (2022). Caroline Rodier, Brian Harold, and Yunwan Zhang. National Center for Sustainable Transportation.
Publicly Funded Electric Carsharing Services Can Reduce Emissions and Expand Transportation Access, but They Need More Study (2022). Caroline Rodier, Juan Carlos Garcia Sanchez, Makenna Harrison, Jerel Francisco, Angelly Tovar, and Creighton Randall. National Center for Sustainable Transportation.
Electric Vehicle Carsharing is Helping to Fill Transit Gaps and Improve Mobility in Rural California (2021). Caroline Rodier and Brian Harold. University of California Institute of Transportation Studies.
Shared-Use Mobility Services Can Improve Access and Reduce Costs in Rural Disadvantaged Communities (2020). Caroline Rodier and Laura Podolsky. National Center for Sustainable Transportation.
Featured Speakers
Dr. Caroline Rodier is a Researcher at the University of California, Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis). Her primary areas of research include transportation, land use, and environmental planning and policy analysis. Dr. Rodier's current research interests include the development and evaluation of shared mobility services designed to meet the needs of transportation-disadvantaged populations. Most recently, she has partnered with public agencies, community-based organizations, and technology services to implement and evaluate several shared mobility pilots in low-income disadvantaged Central Valley communities in California. Dr. Rodier holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and an M.S. in Community Development from the University of California, Davis, and a B.A. in U.S. History from Barnard College, Columbia University.
Dr. Gregory Rowangould is the Director of the Transportation Research Center and an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Vermont. He specializes in modeling transportation systems, transportation policy evaluation and mobile source air quality analysis. His research focuses on understanding how the design and operation of transportation systems and transportation policy affect the sustainability of communities, public health, and equity. Since moving to Vermont, he has focused greater attention on the transportation needs of smaller cities and rural communities where there are unique challenges to sustainability and economic development. Dr. Rowangould holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis, a M.S. in Resource Economics and Policy from the University of Maine, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maine.
Dr. Gil Tal is the Director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at ITS-Davis. He is currently leading multiple research projects on the future need for electric vehicle infrastructure, and the correlation between charging infrastructure, travel behavior, and the demand for EVs. Dr. Tal holds a Ph.D. in Transportation Technology and Policy from UC Davis, and an M.A. in geography and environmental policy and planning from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.