Transportation Dissertations at UC Berkeley: A 15-year Look Back

This 15-year retrospective of transportation-related dissertations reflects the changing themes in the Berkeley transportation research community. Ranging from 2008 back through 1994, it also shows how some themes persist or evolve over time.

Among the dissertations from 1994 to 1998 is a thesis addressing transit and housing density and how that relates to residents' satisfaction, evocative of today's discussions on transit-oriented development. Transportation finance, which is being hotly debated in Washington and elsewhere around the country, appears as well.

In the next five years, from 1999 to 2003, there are a number of dissertations on logistics and transportation systems, freeway traffic analysis, and travel behavior modeling. Transportation infrastructure is also a frequent theme, including models to better predict the need for repairs and investment.

In the most recent five years, there is the addition of a more global flavor, with studies of transportation systems overseas. Environmental impacts and sustainability are also frequent topics, and a number of dissertations address issues in aviation.

Many of these developments reflect the changes in ITS (the growth of our aviation unit, NEXTOR; faculty interest in systems and modeling; the recent emphasis on sustainability).

But a closer look will also reveal that the doctoral students of one year build on and are connected to the work of those who came before. As these documents become more easily accessible through Internet databases and repositories, it is hoped that this type of cross-fertilization will become even more common. That is part of the aim of publishing this list, complete with links.

A recent example of this process at work occurred with a 2008 dissertation, "Life-cycle Environmental Inventory of Passenger Transportation in the United States," by Mikhail Chester. Chester's thesis, posted online, was downloaded hundreds of times, including by a transportation faculty member at another university. This person, who had been a student of UCLA parking expert Donald Shoup, pointed Chester to additional information about parking facilities that would strengthen his arguments. Chester is developing a new paper for possible publication as a result of this new knowledge.

A few notes about methods and results

These lists represent results of a number of different types of online searches. The dissertations are arranged in chronological order, more recent first, and by author last name, in three five-year periods.
They are drawn from several different fields on the UC Berkeley campus, including transportation engineering, city and regional planning, transportation systems, and urban design.
We have limited this list to dissertations that are available online from the Dissertations and Theses database hosted by ProQuest™, the ITS Publications Database, and the eScholarship Repository for ITS. We encourage you to contact us if you believe there is an online document that should belong in this collection.
One final note: dissertations that are hosted on our local servers can be downloaded in their entirety by clicking on the link. Those that are hosted by ProQuest™ will be accessible in their entirety only to subscribers to that service.