Research from: * ITS Berkeley * ITS Davis * ITS Irvine * ITS Los Angeles

ITS 15-Year Review: Campus "Snapshots"

In its first-ever "sunset" 15-Year Review, the Institute of Transportation Studies was described as "enormously productive and recognized throughout the world for its excellence," in the final report by the outside review panel, whose recommendation for continuance was formally accepted by the Office the President in June 2005. (Go to main story.)

As part of the report to the review committee, the director at each of the three campuses which house Institutes of Transportation Studies wrote "snapshots" of his organization.

• ITS Berkeley "Snapshot" by Martin Wachs
• ITS Davis "Snapshot" by Dan Sperling
• ITS Irvine "Snapshot" by Will Recker

ITS Berkeley

Martin Wachs, who was then director of ITS Berkeley (he was succeeded on July 1, 2005, by Samer Madanat; see related story), which is also the headquarters for the multi-campus unit, noted the following:

"The Berkeley transportation community is especially proud of the fact that accomplished doctoral graduates of the Transportation Engineering Program in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and of the Transportation Planning Program in the College of Environmental Design are among the leading transportation faculty members at universities around the world."

More than 100 graduate students take part in the program, and some 200 faculty and staff researchers are associated with it. The six research centers at Berkeley each has a specific area of emphasis: the Berkeley Center for Future Urban Transport, the California Center for Innovative Transportation, California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways, the National Center for Excellence in Aviation Operations Research, the Pavement Research Center (in transition to ITS-Davis), and the Traffic Safety Center.

ITS Berkeley receives on average more than $25 million in research funds each year, making it among the largest of Berkeley's research units. Its researchers' interests span a broad range of areas, including aviation and airport design and operation, intelligent transportation, transit, traffic safety, transportation finance, transportation economics, infrastructure design and maintenance, traffic theory and control, public policy, logistics, systems analysis, and environmental policy. Currently, especially active areas include logistics, transportation systems operations, strategic management of infrastructure, the national aviation system, intelligent transportation systems, and transportation planning and policy.

Areas of future growth include building on the work of the Traffic Safety Center, established in partnership with the School of Public Health in 2001, expanding research on complex person-machine systems, on goods movement and terminals, and doing work at the interface of technological change and policymaking, which was the subject of a recent grant from the Volvo Education Foundations establishing the Berkeley Center for Future Urban Transport.

ITS Davis

Dan Sperling, Director of ITS Davis since its founding in 1991, described his programs. He wrote, in part:

"ITS Davis now has 40 affiliated academic faculty, 15 research staff, and 80 graduate students. ITS Davis administers a large number of research projects, but also supports transportation research activities administered by other units on the Davis campus—including the Pavement Research Center (gradually shifting to Davis from Berkeley), Hybrid Electric Vehicle Center, Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology Center, Caltrans-UC Davis Air Quality Project, Road Ecology Center, Information Center for the Environment (with large Caltrans funding), and the Caltrans-funded storm water program. Total annual expenditures of extramurally-funded transportation research at these centers is well over $10 million, with roughly $4 million per year of it administered directly by ITS Davis. ITS Davis funding is roughly split among industry (mostly automakers and energy firms), California government agencies, and Federal agencies (mostly DOE, FTA/DOT, and NSF)."

ITS Davis is unique among the three Institutes (and likely among all research units in the UC system) in that it also hosts a graduate program in transportation education, through the Transportation Technology & Policy group, which grants Master's and Ph.D. degrees. Established by the UC Regents in 1997, it had 38 students enrolled at the time of this review, in addition to the numerous additional students working in its affiliated transportation programs on the Davis campus. It is led by ITS Davis Associate Director Pat Mokhtarian.

ITS Davis has also developed a private fundraising program, starting in 2003, which has attracted about $1.5 million. Sperling also wrote: "ITS Davis maintains relations with more than 70 companies worldwide. In May 2004 it launched a $35 million fundraising campaign. These funds will be used to co-fund a new environmental vehicle research facility (on a prominent site approved for a new south entrance to the campus), endow professorships and graduate fellowships, and support a variety of transportation education, research and outreach activities on the Davis campus.

"ITS Davis anticipates strong growth in research, graduate enrollment, and public outreach activities in the coming years. Industrial and federal government support is on a sharp upswing; the campus recruited six new transportation professors in the past two years in a variety of disciplines, with additional recruitments anticipated in the near future; and the campus has committed to partial funding of the proposed $15 million ITS Davis environmental vehicle research facility that we anticipate will attract more faculty, students, and funding.

ITS Irvine

Will Recker, Director of ITS Irvine since its founding in 1973, described his program.

ITS Irvine involves faculty and students from a number of schools, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, the School of Social Sciences, the School of Social Ecology, the Graduate School of Management, and the School of Information and Computer Science. It supports nearly all the students enrolled in the three graduate programs in transportation on the Irvine campus, which are the Transportation Science Graduate Program, the Graduate Concentration in Transportation Economics, and the Transportation Systems Engineering Graduate Program–as well as to graduate students with a transportation research focus in the Urban and Regional Planning Graduate Program.

Recker noted that over 200 graduate student research positions have been funded through ITS-Irvine grants and contracts in the past five years, and more than 500 total during the past 15.

Research at ITS Irvine covers a broad spectrum of transportation issues," Recker wrote. "Much of the research conducted by the Institute is organized around centers. The ITS Irvine Center for Activity Systems Analysis (CASA) supports research directed toward the development of activity-based approaches to travel behavior analysis. For over 25 years, CASA research associates have been on the leading edge of evolving research in activity systems analysis, establishing an international reputation in the study of complex travel behavior, activity-based approaches, agent-based models, microsimulation approaches, data collection technologies, and empirical modeling. The ITS Irvine Center for Advanced Transportation Management Systems Research supports research directed toward the development of intelligent transportation systems. The ITS Irvine Advanced Transportation Management Systems (ATMS) Laboratories provide facilities for the teaching, research, and development of intelligent transportation systems. These laboratories form the backbone of the State of California's research initiative in ATMS. This major effort is complemented by the ITS Irvine Center for Traffic Simulation Studies (CTSS), which features prototype systems for modeling and evaluating intelligent transportation systems and telematics. The Center for Logistical Innovations in Freight Systems (CLIFS) focuses on the development of optimization techniques for dynamic and stochastic freight and fleet management and investigation of the impacts of information technology on logistics operations. The Center for Urban Infrastructure (CUI) organizes and conducts research into the role of transportation in achieving and promoting sustainable community development. The Institute also plays a major role in the intelligent transportation and telematics research component of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, one of the Institutes for Science and Innovation created by the Governor of California."

He also noted that a growth in extramural research funding on the Irvine campus has resulted from engineering faculty's involvement in advanced transportation research and that the campus recently allocated two faculty positions in transportation, "one in telematics to the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, the other in transportation economics and transportation planning to ITS Irvine and the Transportation Science PhD IDP. We believe that such explicit recognition of the bond between organized, interdisciplinary research and the academic programs that support this research will help to ensure that UCI’s interdisciplinary strength and reputation in graduate transportation education and research is maintained."

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