Sustainability

Automated Vehicle Technology Has the Potential to Smooth Traffic Flow and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Almatrudi, Sulaiman
Parvate, Kanaad
Rothchild, Daniel
Vijay, Upadhi
Jang, Kathy
Bayen, Alexandre
2022

In an ideal world, all cars along a congested roadway would travel at the same constant average speed; however, this is hardly the case. As soon as one driver brakes, trailing cars must also brake to compensate, leading to “stop and go” traffic waves. This unnecessary braking and accelerating increases fuel consumption (and greenhouse gas emissions) by as much as 67 percent.1 Fortunately, automated vehicles (AVs) — even Level 2 AVs2 which are commercially available today — have the potential to mitigate this problem. By accelerating less than a human would, an AV with flow smoothing...

Creating a Regional Program for Preserving Industrial Land: Perspectives from San Francisco Bay Area Cities

Roach, Emily
Chapple, Karen, PhD
2018

Industrial land plays a vital role in supporting the regional economy in the San Francisco Bay Area. It provides the operating space and support services for export sectors and other important local clusters, maintains linkages between businesses and sustains a local supply chain, provides diverse employment opportunities for people with a broad range of skills (including those with lower educational attainment), and supports a high share of middle-wage job opportunities. However, the Bay Area’s current inventory of industrial land (and associated jobs) is at risk due to increasing...

MPO Planning and Implementation of State Policy Goals

Barbour, Elisa
Rodriguez, Emil
Thoron, Noah
Handy, Susan
Lee, Amy
2021

MPO Planning and Implementation of State Policy Goals evaluates California metropolitan planning organizations’ regional transportation plans and sustainable communities strategies and looks at the relationship between MPO plans and what is actually funded through transportation improvement programs.

Flexibility in California Transportation Funding Programs and Implications for More Climate-Aligned Spending

Segal, Katie
Elkind, Ethan
Lamm, Ted
2021

Flexibility in California Transportation Funding Programs and Implications for More Climate-Aligned Spending examines key features of the legislative authority for transportation planning and finance in California, including local option sales taxes for transportation, and assesses the amount of flexibility that current laws and practices allow for reprioritizing projects as problems and priorities change.

Review of Statewide Transportation Plans for California

Deakin, Elizabeth
Chow, Chun Ho
Son, Daisy
2021

California has adopted ambitious goals for its transportation systems. The state has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels and by 80 percent by 2050, and has also committed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. With transportation a major emitter, substantial changes in transportation vehicles, fuels, operations, and user choices must be achieved to meet these goals. As pressing as climate change goals must be, other goals remain important. California has pledged to maintain its transportation infrastructure in a state of good repair, provide...

The Producer Surplus Associated with Gasolne Fuel Use in the United States

Sun, Yongling
Delucchi, Mark A.
Lawell, C.-Y. Cynthia L.
Ogden, Joan M.
2019

Estimating the producer surplus – the revenue above the average long-run cost – is an important part of social cost-benefit analyses of changes in petroleum use. This paper estimates the producer surplus associated with changes in gasoline fuel use in the United States, and then applies the estimates of producer surplus to two kinds of social cost-benefit analyses related to petroleum use: (1) estimating the wealth transfer from consumers to producers as a result of policies that affect oil use and oil imports to the US, and (2) comparing the actual average cost of gasoline with the...

Life-cycle Environmental Inventory of Passenger Transportation in the United States

Chester, Mikhail V
2008

Energy use and emission factors for passenger transportation modes typically ignore the total environmental inventory which includes vehicle non-operational components (e.g., vehicle manufacturing and maintenance), infrastructure components, and fuel production components from design through end-of-life processes. A life-cycle inventory for each mode is necessary to appropriately address and attribute the transportation sector’s energy and emissions impacts to reduction goals instead of allowing tailpipe emissions to act as indicators of total system performance.

The contributions...

An improvement on the end-of-life of High-speed rail rolling stocks considering CFRP composite material replacement

Rungskunroch, Panrawee
Kaewunreuen, Sakdirat
Shen, Zuo-Jun
2019

It is undeniably true that transportation systems positively impact human life but, the use of transportation systems also emits green house gasses in the environment which leads to global warming. In this day and age, various technologies are being combined with transportation systems, aimed at reducing the global impact of greenhouse gas emissions. The high-speed rail (HSR), which is well-known for low CO2emissions, has continually been improved, especially its model. In this study, the material replacement method is taken to account for a feasibility study on the next model of the HSR....

New Metrics for Measuring Academic Research Outside the Ivory Tower

Levine, Kendra K.
2019

The need to demonstrate the value of research programs is critical for funding sustainability, particularly in the 21st century where research funding is rarely guaranteed beyond the life of a single project. After the great economic crash of 2008 many research programs have also diversified their funding portfolios, which means cultivating new relationships with funders and potentially different objectives of research projects. Measuring the impact of academic research outside academia is critical to providing a holistic view of a research program, but the methods to do so are still being...

User Acceptance and Public Perception Regarding Automated Driving Systems

Motamedi, Sanaz
Wang, Pei
Chan, Ching-Yao
2018

Fully Automated Driving System (ADS) is one of the most innovative and fundamentally disruptive changes in transportation. This technology has the potential to resolve or mitigate current transportation problems, including reducing traffic accidents, congestion, energy consumption, and pollution. However, the extent of these impacts will depend heavily on public perception and widespread adoption of ADSs. To gain a better understanding of user acceptance and public perception related to ADS, extensive interviews were conducted with Tesla end-users who have experience using partial ADS (i.e...