Several CTE staff members are on the program at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 91st Annual Meeting to be held January 22-26, 2012 in Washington, DC. CTE Director Downey Brill, Senior Research Associate Leigh Lane, Research Associate Ann Hartell, and Research Assistant Ted Mansfield are presenting at this event which reaches over 10,000 transportation professionals from around the world. CTE staff are scheduled as follows:

Sunday, January 22

• Lane will be moderating a workshop from 9am – 4:30pm, on Intersection of Health and Transportation: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and How We Can Better Integrate Health Considerations into Transportation Decisions. Sponsored by Social, Economic, and Cultural Issues Section and Traveler Behavior and Values Committee, this workshop will explore the linkages between transportation decisions and public health and the opportunities and challenges with incorporating public health into transportation policy, planning, and design decisions. The morning session will explore how policy and planning decisions affect public health. The afternoon session present information on the effects of transportation on public safety and health (e.g., air pollution, fitness, access to health care services, and healthy food). Additional information.

Monday, January 23

• From 8 – 9am, Hartell will moderate a session titled Social and Economic Factors of Transportation in International Contexts. This session features diverse research on social and economic factors of transportation in international contexts. Additional information.
• Brill and Hartell will present a poster titled Planning for Resilient Communities: Identifying Critical Infrastructure Links and Measuring Systemwide Performance Under Storm Hazard Conditions from 10:45am – 12:30pm. Additional information.
• Lane and Hartell will present a poster, Defining Community Context in the Transportation Project Planning and Development Process from 10:45am – 12:30pm. Additional information.

Tuesday, January 24

• Hartell and Mansfield will present a session from 8 – 9:45am titled, Institutionalizing Sustainability at the State Department of Transportation Level: A Quantitative Assessment of Transportation Sustainability Plan Quality. A quantitative plan quality assessment method is applied to a sample of state DOT sustainability plans. The analysis reveals that transportation sustainability plans are useful policy instruments in aligning institutional practices with sustainable outcomes and that stronger plans result when the plan is a response to a state mandate or when external funding sources are present. A broader and perhaps more important result of this assessment is the success of this new approach to assess transportation plan quality that has a wealth of potential applications of plan quality assessment within the transportation industry. Additional information.

Livability Solutions, a coalition of professionals from 11 nonprofit organizations, works with communities on planning issues that achieve livability, sustainability, placemaking, and smart growth. The purpose of the coalition is to consolidate and coordinate individual initiatives and tools, thus making it easier for communities or regions to gain the knowledge needed to implement livability or sustainability goals. CTE, along with the other partners in the coalition, contributes extensive experience in many facets of these initiatives and is prepared to provide the technical assistance needed to help communities implement sustainable development.

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS), a member of the Livability Solutions coalition, recently received a grant from US EPA's Office of Sustainable Communities under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program to provide free technical assistance to communities seeking to implement sustainable development and smart growth.

This grant will make it possible for CTE and the other partners in the Livability Solutions coalition to work with even more communities around the country, helping them to enhance livability, to create lasting economic, and environmental improvements, and to effect positive change in the public and social health of their residents.

For more information on Livability Solutions and how to apply for free technical assistance through the grant, please visit the Livability Solutions website or contact livabilitysolutions@pps.org.

CTE Senior Research Associate Leigh Lane and Research Associate Matt Watterson attended the Conference on Performance Measures for Transportation and Livable Communities held September 7-8, 2011 in Austin, Texas. The conference advances research in the field of livability performance measures and helps agencies such as state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, transit agencies, and other groups develop and use appropriate performance measures that address transportation and livability goals. Participants included representatives from numerous agencies and entities, including metropolitan planning organizations, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and several private firms, research centers, and city level organizations.

The conference also provided an opportunity to take note of progress in livability being made elsewhere in the industry, and to reach out to transportation professionals throughout the field for a peer exchange and information solicitation for CTE’s current FHWA project on finding methods to gauge livability improvements. The number of responses received were very encouraging, and the feedback and assistance from these professionals will be instrumental in completing this project.

CTE’s work was featured in Leigh Lane’s presentation, Using Performance Measures/Indicators to Calculate the Triple Bottom Line, which wove together findings from two research projects to showcase the relationship between performance measures that deliver sustainable and livable outcomes and the calculation of the triple bottom line results for transportation investments.

CTE is pleased to announce that Esther Kagure Wamunyu has joined the staff as an intern. Wamunyu will be part of the team that is inventorying tools and methods for evaluating return on investment for sustainable practices as part of the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s (NCDOT) sustainability blueprint process. She views this internship as an opportunity to make a contribution in the field of transportation and she hopes that her research at CTE will help in shaping the sustainability practices of NCDOT as well as DOTs in other parts of the world.

A current student at Meredith College in Raleigh, Wamunyu is working toward a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. At Meredith, she is participating in an engineering dual degree program with North Carolina State University in which she is also enrolled in the College of Engineering where she is pursuing a degree in civil engineering. She expects to complete both degrees in 2013.

In 2010, Wamunyu received the Banks Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship and Louise Moritz Molitoris Leadership Scholarship for Undergraduates from the North Carolina Triangle Chapter of Women in Transportation (WTS). She went on to be awarded the Banks Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship at the WTS International level.

Wamunyu developed an interest in exploring the issues between land development and transportation infrastructure while living in Nairobi, Kenya, where traffic congestion is a serious problem during peak hours. Her career interests lie in planning and policy arenas that will help shape better land use and transportation decisions.

Ann Hartell, CTE research associate, traveled to Arlington, VA, to participate in the Climate Leadership Academy on Low Carbon Transportation as a member of a team from the City of Durham. The Academy, held June 8-10, was sponsored by the Institute for Sustainable Communities, an outreach and engagement nonprofit.

Speakers and faculty at the three-day event included leading analysts and practitioners who discussed how to provide transit and nonmotorized transportation options through innovative funding partnerships, building local support, and integrating transportation planning with housing and economic development planning. Durham joined thirteen other cities and regions from across the country including Denver, CO; El Paso, TX; Johnson County, KS; the State of Maryland; Miami-Dade County, FL; the Twin Cities Region, MN; Portland, OR; and Seattle, WA.

In addition to Hartell, the Durham team consisted of John Tallmadge, Triangle Transit; Scott Whiteman, Durham City/County Planning Department; Joey Hopkins, NCDOT Division 5; Ellen Beckmann, Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO/City of Durham Transportation Department. The Durham team plans to incorporate an index that combines housing and transportation costs for households as a part of their transit planning in anticipation of the results of an upcoming transit sales tax referendum to support regional rail projects and improved bus service.

CTE welcomes Matt Watterson as the newest addition to its staff. As an intern, Watterson will be putting his skills to work on research applicable to North Carolina Department of Transportation’s sustainability blueprint process. He will be part of a team working on sustainability indicators research as well as a working on a project to inventory tools and methods to evaluate return on investment of sustainable practices. Watterson hopes his research work here at CTE will lead to greater application of the benefits in livability and long-term viability associated with such techniques as NCDOT implements their Sustainability Blueprint.

A recent graduate of East Carolina University, Watterson holds a master’s degree in geography with a supplemental certificate in geographic information systems. His undergraduate work, also completed at East Carolina, was in urban and regional planning. The focus of his master’s thesis was on the application of sustainable principles to historic preservation-based heritage tourism in the downtown district of New Bern, North Carolina.

Before coming to CTE, Watterson worked in both county and city level planning and GIS departments. He has been involved in several planning projects in North Carolina, including a land use study for the City of Wilson and the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness for Pitt County.

CTE Research Associate Ann Hartell served as a judge for the transportation competition at the annual American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Carolinas Conference, held April 14-16, 2011 at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Each year, the Carolinas Conference brings together engineering students from ASCE student chapters at colleges and universities throughout the southeast for a full day of contests including a concrete canoe, steel bridge design, and survey competitions.

Transportation teams were given information on a freeway interchange and were challenged to develop a conceptual design that demonstrated understanding of traffic engineering, cost-effective design, and vehicular, pedestrian and bicycle safety. Hartell joined former ITRE colleague Leta Huntsinger and NCSU Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering faculty Billy Williams to judge the transportation competition.

The Citadel placed first in the transportation competition, while the Clemson University team earned top honors after scores from all the competitions were tallied.

The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) selected Theodore Mansfield as the CTE Student of the Year for 2010.  CTE recognizes a graduate student within its Graduate Research Fellowship Program or Research Program whose academic work exemplifies outstanding research and leadership qualities in the transportation/environmental field.  Mansfield represented CTE at the annual University Transportation Centers awards banquet, held in January 2011 in concert with the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Mansfield, who is pursuing dual master’s degrees in city and regional planning and environmental engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, works closely with CTE research staff on a number of projects.  He recently contributed to “NCHRP 25-25 Task 69: Identification of Tools and Techniques to Define Community Context as Part of the Transportation Project Planning and Development Process” and is currently helping the North Carolina Department of Transportation develop an innovative sustainability plan.

Having interests that lie in improving the integration of transportation and land use planning in order to create highly accessible, livable, and dynamic urban spaces makes Mansfield a good fit with the CTE projects he works with. His academic research has included an investigation of the causal linkages between urban form and local air quality and an analysis of the ability of decentralized stormwater management to mitigate combined sewer overflows in highly urbanized areas.

Mansfield holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from New Mexico State University and plans to complete his graduate work in May 2012.