Workforce Development Resources

Sebastian Thrun helped build Google's amazing driverless car, powered by a very personal quest to save lives and reduce traffic accidents. Jaw dropping video shows the DARPA Challenge-winning car motoring through busy city traffic with no one behind the wheel, and dramatic test drive footage from TED2011 demonstrates how fast the thing can really go.

As other mobility innovations individual electric mobility will presumably have a significant market share only in decades from now. Scenario planning technique provides a framework for exploring the mobility market of the future with a long term perspective. Against this background the chapter at hand has a twofold objective: (a) It promotes scenario planning as an alternative approach to explore the distant future of mobility to establish market conditions. (b) The chapter presents results from a scenario planning study for Germany as an example. Three scenarios for the future of mobility emerged from an elaborate scenario planning process: (1) Matured Progress, (2) Global Take-Off, (3) Frantic Standstill. In all three scenarios, the German population ages significantly, concentrates in urban areas and is increasingly aware of environmental issues with consequences for consumer choice. The scenarios differ specifically regarding immigration to Germany, the global and national economies, and the farsightedness of political decision making. Conforming to expectation, these heterogeneous external developments lead to different projections for future travel. Hence, the presented study can assist in identifying future developments that are very likely while others are subject to specific conditional processes. This helps explore the future market for electric mobility among other mobility innovations.

Research In-Service needs within DOTs and provide a summarizing report as a resource for DOT.

The EU recognizes that urban transport plays a fundamental role in meeting the objectives of economic competitiveness, social cohesion and sustainable growth. In accordance with the subsidiarity principle, the EU is supporting local governments in tackling mobility issues which form common patterns across Europe.
Demand for passenger and freight transport is constantly increasing in cities and towns, contributing to congestion, pollution, and traffic accidents. Combating congestion is a common challenge for governments and transport authorities in all EU Member States. According to the EU, putting current mobility trends on a sustainable path requires a total rethink of urban mobility.
Local decision makers need to deliver sustainable and integrated transport policies that optimize the use of all transport modes in the urban network for both passengers and goods. The challenge is to respond to citizens' requirements for accessible, reliable, and safe transport. Meeting these challenges requires forward looking policies that incorporate innovative measures to meet pressing societal challenges and environmental constraints.
EU-funded research on urban transport is directed to supporting local decision makers in delivering sustainable and integrated policies and offering smart and green solutions. Fundamental research is backed by demonstration projects and pioneering initiatives to accelerate market take-up in cities and towns in Europe and elsewhere.
An essential element is sharing innovative solutions among local authorities and thus the exchange of research results and best practices is incorporated in research programs.

The Urban Growth Seminars are hosted by USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy. For the 2012-2013 year, this seminar series will be co-sponsored by the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research (IPR) in the USC Keck School of Medicine.

This year's theme is Planning and Health: From Research to Practice. Please join us as leading researchers discuss cutting edge knowledge about planning and health, with interpretations about what the research implies for practice.

During the 1960's, Berlin's city planners, inspired by Los Angeles' Modernist "city of tomorrow" sought to rearrange the urban form so automobiles would be unchallenged as they sped through the city on spacious roads. This led to the construction of car-centric locales such as the Bundesplatz and the Bundesallee, which contrast and conflict with the 19th Century urban fabric of much of the rest of Berlin. Professor Christ and a group of students are visiting Los Angeles with a group of students from Berlin to again seek inspiration from this city - this time to undo the car-centric ethos and return control of the city to its human inhabitants. This seminar will focus on the relationship between function and form in Modernist locations and the quest to develop place-making strategies that balance form and function to regain the quality and values of the traditional European city.

This paper proposes and applies a micro-simulation model for the modeling of urban freight transportation that describes freight transportation at the behavioral level. The proposed model is a modification of the traditional four-step approach considering the behavior of each freight decision maker individually. The model structure consists of three stages: commodity production and consumption, commodity distribution, and conversion of commodity flow to vehicle movement. The proposed model has been applied to estimate truck movement in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area for model validation. This paper discusses the issues involved in model development and validation including conceptual framework, mathematical formulation, and estimated results.

In the last several years there has been a surge of interest in fostering more sustainable logistical operations in urban areas. Under the umbrella of the generic term City Logistics, these initiatives try to take advantage of the coordinating power of a municipal government to convince urban delivery companies to participate in collaborative schemes that by reducing truck trips, increasing the utilization of trucks, or both, may reduce the negative externalities associated with urban truck traffic. While most research on this topic focuses on freight models (Holguin-Veras, et al, 2001), freight transport networks (Yamada, et al, 2010) and urban freight project evaluation (Thompson and Hassall, 2005), not much research has been conducted to understand the behaviors of urban carriers and freight receivers in response to the cooperative multicarrier delivery initiatives and assess its impacts on a disaggregate level. Some researchers had studied the behavioral modeling between freight agents (Thompson and Hassall, 2005). It is important to investigate the interactions between freight agent and how those relations impact decision making and policy implementation. To investigate a cooperative multicarrier delivery initiative and assess its impacts on a disaggregate level, this report is divided into two parts. The first part studies freight delivery patterns in New York City and related influential factors. Results would serve the feasibility study of implementing FCC in New York City. The second part focuses on studying the decision-making process for developing urban freight consolidation centers (FCC) using experimental economics approach. Players acting as different stakeholders are given cash bonus to mimic the decision making process.