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About UCTC—Director's Message

Spring 2013 Message from the Director

Robert Cervero, UCTC DirectorThis past year, UCTC embarked on its journey as a newly constituted Region 9 UTC, devoted to advancing knowledge and practice in the areas of “economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability, and livability”. Twenty-three new faculty research grants were awarded this past year, spanning such diverse topics as peer-to-peer car-sharing, reconfiguring left-turn designs to improve intersection throughputs, and tour-based modeling of freight movements. In addition, we awarded four multi-disciplinary faculty grants under the new “Linking UCTC Themes” program, spanning topics such as air-quality impacts of transit-oriented developments, pedestrian safety at college campuses, transit access via bike-sharing, and eco-driving technology for heavy-duty trucks. We’re particularly delighted that this cross-thematic research program is allowing faculty from not only UC campuses to collaborate but is also involving researchers from all four of UCTC’s California State University partner campuses.

What form UCTC takes in coming years remains to be seen. In late December, the U.S. Department of Transportation formally announced a new University Transportation Centers competition under the recently passed MAP-21 federal legislation. Because the number and type of UTCs has changed, and tighter limits have been placed on university participation in UTCs, the future UTC for Region 9 will likely take on a different complexion. UCTC has been the Region 9 UTC for a quarter-century and hopes and expects to be around, in whatever incarnation, for years to come. I suspect I’ll have more to say in the Fall 2013 Director’s message.

Speaking of anniversaries, besides UCTC having served as the nation’s Region 9 UTC for 25 years, UCTC’s flagship publication, ACCESS, celebrated its 20th anniversary with the Fall 2012 issue. Over the first 40 issues, UCTC published 217 articles spanning 1,578 pages of text and illustrations, shipping hard copies of the magazine to all corners of the world, twice a year and free of charge.

Among the upcoming events of note is the UCTC Student Conference, to be held at UCLA on February 28-March 1. Professor Jonathan Levine of the University of Michigan (and a masters and PhD graduate from UC Berkeley) will be giving the Mel Webber Memorial Lecture. See the conference’s web site to more on what’s in store and how to register for the event.

Another UCTC-supported event this coming Spring is the Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture in Transportation, scheduled for April 24 on the Berkeley campus. Ed Glaeser, Professor of Economics at Harvard and author of Triumph of the City, will give this year’s Wachs Lecture. This is the seventh occasion of this bi-annual event that alternates between the UCLA and Berkeley campuses, the two UC campuses where Marty taught.

Visit our web site frequently to find out more about all-things UCTC-related. Also, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Your comments and suggestions, whether via social media or a friendly email to me, are always welcomed.

—Robert Cervero, UCTC Director
January 2013

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