RSG Senior Director Matt Coogan authors “Understanding Demographics, Preferences, and Locations Influencing the Future of Public Transportation,” published in the Transportation Research Board’s bimonthly magazine, TR News.

Demographic groups respond differently to common sets of transportation options. In this article, Matt goes beyond simply analyzing travel times and costs to explore the underlying factors that influence mode choice.

In the US, road traffic noise levels are typically estimated without including the effects of meteorology. Research shows, however, that atmospheric changes can greatly impact these levels. The Transportation Research Board-sponsored NCHRP 25-52, Meteorological Effects on Roadway Noise, documents these meteorological effects and develops best practices for managing them.

RSG Senior Director Ken Kaliski was co-author to a follow-up article published in the latest issue of Transportation Research Record. It provides further information on the data collection and includes recommendations for applying this data to future highway noise studies.

RSG’s Joann Lynch, Jeff Dumont, and Elizabeth Greene published in the latest issue of Transportation Research Record. Their article, titled “Use of a Smartphone GPS Application for Recurrent Travel Behavior Data Collection,” details RSG’s pilot study for the Metropolitan Council merging the traditional two-part household travel survey into one continuous survey experience via RSG’s smartphone application, rMove™.

RSG’s Isaac Old is presenting this week at the 8^th International Conference on Wind Turbine Noise in Lisbon, Portugal.

The conference, organized by the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (INCE) – Europe, brings together researchers and designers from around the world to share and discuss the latest information on noise and vibration from wind turbines.

RSG’s Erica Wygonik at the 2019 International Conference on Transportation and Development (ICTD) today in Alexandria, Virginia. She’s on a multi-disciplinary panel on drones and will be talking about the environmental impacts of drone use for deliveries.

The conference, sponsored and organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), brings together experts from the public sector with leaders from the high-tech world to discuss the impact, challenges, and opportunities in engineering smart mobility for the smart city.

We're looking forward to sharing some of our work and learning from others at the 2019 Planning Applications this week in Portland, OR. We’ll be leading 23 presentations at the event, covering a range of topics—from a case study on the first large-scale survey of TNC users to our work on the behavioral-based national freight model.

The 2019 Planning Applications Conference is a four-day event giving attendees the opportunity to showcase and learn from practitioners and academics on new transportation planning techniques and methods emphasizing practical, innovative, and timely technical and policy approaches to transportation planning. We are proud to be a sponsor of the event.

We are proud to sponsor and attend the 2019 ITE Northeastern District Annual Meeting this week in New Haven, CT.

RSG Director Steve Gayle will present at the meeting alongside John Sterbentz of the Binghamton Metropolitan Transportation Study on the benefits of using smartphone surveys with smaller metropolitan planning organizations. The use of RSG’s smartphone survey application rMove™ on the Broome-Tioga Household Travel Survey showed more trips were captured and a higher level of accuracy than a traditional paper travel diary approach. Steve will also be moderating the session “Lessons Learned on Data Collection and Applications.”

The George Wright Society has honored RSG Sr. Director Steve Lawson with their Social Science Achievement Award. The award is given in recognition of excellence in social science research, management, or education related to parks, reserves, and other protected areas.

Steve stands in a unique position at the intersection of theory and practice in public lands planning and management. He has conducted research in some of the United States’ most iconic national parks and has published extensively in the field’s most prominent journals, authoring and co-authoring dozens of influential papers. Though he secured a tenured faculty position in academia, he chose to transition to a consultancy where he could focus on applied projects—putting ideas into action at national parks, national forests, and other protected lands.

To celebrate his dedication, he will receive a Social Science Achievement award plaque, a year’s complimentary membership to the GWS, and recognition at a future GWS award ceremony.

We are looking forward to learning from others and sharing our work with three presentations at the 2019 Innovations in Freight Data Workshop this week in Irvine, CA.

The workshop is a two-day event to bring together freight data users and decision makers to learn and share the latest applications of emerging freight data sources, development of value-added features, integration of data sets, and other innovations.

In December of 2015, President Obama signed into law the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act—the first federal law in over a decade to provide long-term funding certainty for surface transportation infrastructure and investment. It expires in September 2020 which, in legislative terms, is right around the corner.

Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) International President Bruce Belmore just appointed RSG Director Steve Gayle to serve on a new ITE Reauthorization Task Force around this legislation. Steve, a past president of ITE, has been asked to contribute his policy expertise and knowledge of transportation planning and the federal requirements that govern MPOs.

The Task Force will deliver specific bill recommendations to the ITE Board of Direction later this year. They will use these to develop the official policy of ITE and both organization and individual members will then use this policy as a basis for talking to Congress.