Summer 2011: Message from the Director

Last month, USDOT announced that federal funding for the current 59 University Transportation Centers (UTCs) across the country will be discontinued. Thus after 23 years, UCTC will sadly cease to exist as the federally designated Region IX UTC after July 31, 2011.

We do plan to continue running UCTC affairs for another year or so as we wind down the current program. Our focus during this wind-down phase will be on providing continued funding support for students in the form of fellowships and grant stipends, some tech-transfer activities (including publishing ACCESS), supporting education courses, archiving 23 years of records, and a handful of other mostly tech-transfer-related activities. Thereafter, all UCTC publications (faculty research papers, dissertations, issues of ACCESS, Policy Briefs, Annual Reports) will be available most likely through a link to the ITS Berkeley or some other Web site.

Sometime soon USDOT is expected to release an RFP to create 20 new UTCs nationwide, at least for FY 2011-2012 and perhaps longer (contingent on future federal transportation legislation and funding). Until the RFP is on the streets, it's hard to know what to expect, however it is quite likely that some new incarnation of UCTC will compete for one of the 20 new UTCs.

Thus keep an eye out for the possible formation of UCTC II sometime within the next year.

—Best Regards, Robert Cervero, Director UCTC, July 2011