All Research Products

The National Center for Sustainable Transportation's primary output from research is reports and white papers. Many projects also produce a Project Brief to summarize and highlight the policy and/or research findings and implications. NCST research also produces journal articles, conference papers, books, dissertations, theses, presentations, and posters. The NCST has also created various tools that can be used by policymakers and practitioners, such as models, calculators, and planning tools.

Travel and the Built Environment in Rural Communities

Research Product Type
Policy Brief
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.

US-Mexico Second-Hand Electric Vehicle Trade: Battery Circularity and End-of-Life Policy Implications

Research Product Type
Research Report
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.

EVALUATE: Electric Vehicle Assessment and Leveraging of Unified models toward AbatemenT of Emissions, Phase I

Research Product Type
Research Report
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.

Evaluation of Rural Travel Constraints and Travel Burdens in the U.S. and in Rural Zero-Car Households

Research Product Type
Research Report
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.

Can Smart Growth Reduce Vehicle Travel in Rural Communities?

Research Product Type
Research Report
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.

Local and State Government Procurement to Reduce Transportation Infrastructure Environmental Impacts

Research Product Type
White Paper
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.

Dataset: EVALUATE: Electric Vehicle Assessment and Leveraging of Unified models toward AbatemenT of Emissions, Phase II

Research Product Type
Data
This repository stores the data of the NCST project titled "EVALUATE: Electric Vehicle Assessment and Leveraging of Unified models toward AbatemenT of Emissions, Phase II." Phase II focuses on forecasting emissions outputs through targeted case studies that extend prior work from light duty vehicles operated by individuals to service-oriented vehicles operated by small and medium businesses.

Can We Align VMT and LOS Analysis and Mitigation? Assessing Implementation of Senate Bill 743

Research Product Type
Research Report
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).

Relative Toxicity of Exhaust Particulate After Accelerated Thermal Oxidation of Recycled Vegetable Oil Biodiesel Fuel

Research Product Type
Research Report
Given that today’s real-world diesel fuel supply is comprised of biodiesel as a blendstock with petrodiesel, understanding how addition of biodiesel affects exhaust particle properties and their subsequent effect on human health is critically important. Here, samples of a commercial waste vegetable oil biodiesel B100 fuel were subject to thermal oxidation at 110°C for 5, 10 or 20 hr before diesel engine dynamometer emissions testing as the neat fuel (B100) and as a 20% v/v biodiesel blend (B20) with petrodiesel.

Industrial Ecology and the Just Transition: Lithium extraction, manufacturing, and end-of-life management for electric vehicle batteries

Research Product Type
Dissertation / Thesis
This dissertation examines clean energy supply chains in the context of the just transition and circular economy frameworks, focusing on a central technology for zero-emissions transportation: lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) for electric vehicles (EVs). The author focuses on three phases of the LIB life cycle: mineral extraction, component and cell manufacturing, and end-of-life management.