Publications

This report uses the state-of-the-practice transportation demand model, the Sacramento Council of Governments SACSIM19 model, to examine (1) the model's representation of induced travel, (2) the influence of variation in key inputs on vehicle travel and roadway congestions, and (3) the effect of changes in induced travel-related input variables on the comparisons of scenarios with and without highway expansions.

This report summarizes the Caltrans 2024 Sustainable Freight Academy, which consisted of presentations from goods movement professionals and subject matter experts and allowed participants to develop their skills in grant writing by applying lessons learned from the course.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis gathered surveys from a small sample of transit agencies (N = 21) and found that agencies are interested in open-loop payments, agencies and passengers would likely support it, but that it also presents challenges for agencies and passengers. This policy brief summarizes the findings from that research and provides policy implications.

This report systematically reviewed the growing literature related to the application of advanced and novel materials (ANMs) and green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) to reduce urban heat island (UHI) effects and implemented a survey of urban planners and public works engineers to assess the current and planned use of these strategies and identify barriers to implementation.

This paper addresses the possibility of and reason for fugitive emissions of methane from the transportation sector by surveying and quantifying methane plumes from compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquified natural gas (LNG) storage tanks at vehicle fueling facilities in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.

This study explores opportunities for improving access to transportation affordable programs by gathering insights from existing income qualified transportation benefits. Researchers compare examples of these programs to design features of existing non-transportation benefits to characterize opportunities for increased coordination and standardization.

University of Vermont researchers analyzed national survey data on transportation burdens to evaluate the differences in who experiences transportation burdens in rural versus nonrural areas, the factors that drive these differences, and how to improve mobility and access in rural populations.

This policy brief summarizes findings from the University of Vermont project where researchers sought to answer the question: is the relationship between travel and the built environment the same in urban and rural areas.

This report explores driver charging behavior and their preference for public DC fast charging (DCFC), drawing on Stated Preference (SP) choice experiment data from a survey of 1,102 Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) owners across California.

This research undertook a battery material flow analysis, life cycle assessment of SHVs traded from the US to Mexico, and a qualitive analysis of environmental and transport justice implications of SHV trade. The research finds that SHVs disproportionately contribute to waste battery generation in Mexico, and that second-hand EVs are frequently retired early due to a lack of repairability.

This project examines multi-hazard risks and the performance of emergency evacuation routes in California using spatial synthesis, mapping, modeling, and performance analysis techniques. It enhances evacuation planning by analyzing road networks under natural hazard scenarios.

This report describes several related studies that focus on understanding the opportunities and constraints that people face in changing how they travel in small and rural communities in Vermont and also evaluates the equity implications of gas tax alternatives.

This study develops a framework and first order estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions from the build-out and maintenance and rehabilitation of global roadway infrastructure networks from 2020 to 2050.

This report outlines the technical development and application of the Total Cost of Ownership Spreadsheet Tool (TCOST), a Microsoft Excel-based calculator that simplifies and integrates the main functions, data, and outputs of pre-existing models (MOVES-Matrix and the GREET Model) and other external sources of economic data.

This research explores electric vehicle (EV) and grid interactions with a focus on CO2 emissions through integrating models and data that characterize: vehicle energy consumption, travel demands, vehicle charging, and temporal emission profiles associated with electric power generation dispatch. This convergence research helps quantify the relative emissions of light duty vehicle use and charging during various times of day to enable comparison of EV modes against one another and against conventional vehicle baselines.

The EVALUATE project develops methodology for forecasting emissions outputs of a class of vehicles and use cases. Phase II focuses on targeted case studies that extend prior work from light duty vehicles operated by individuals to service-oriented vehicles operated by small and medium businesses.

This study evaluates differences in travel burdens and the factors that drive them in rural and urban contexts in the United States. Using the 2017 National Household Transportation Survey, the authors first evaluate differences in travel burdens across rural versus urban communities, including i) the magnitude of travel burdens, ii) who experiences travel burdens, and iii) the individual and environmental factors that are associated with travel burdens.

In this report, travel behavior data from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey is combined with detailed built environment data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Location Database to evaluate the relationships between personal and built environment factors and sustainable travel behaviors including vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and mode choice.

Green Public Procurement is to be understood as a set of policies, actions and practices that leverage acquisitions to address all types of environmental challenges. This white paper lays out the case and a recommended approach for establishing public procurement programs to reduce, as fast as possible, the environmental impacts of keeping and improving transportation infrastructure functionality.

This report investigates how local governments (cities and counties) are implementing California’s Senate Bill 743, adopted in 2013 to eliminate traffic delay, measured using level-of-service (LOS) standards, as a basis for analyzing and mitigating transportation-related impacts of development projects and plans as called for under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).