2 May 2006 –
Building Regional Partnerships
The
universities in the four state Northwest region have been
working together since 1988. The University Transportation
Centers program established ten centers at that time, one in
each of the ten federal regions. We were invited to
participate in the new region ten center, based at the
University of Washington, along with the transportation
programs at Washington State University, Portland State
University, and Oregon State University. For ten years, a
number of University of Idaho research projects were funded
through the University of Washington’s TransNow regional
consortium. During this time, we collaborated with other
northwest universities on several projects, including
studies of traffic flow and capacity at stop-controlled
intersections and the development of an on-line
transportation lab manual.
In
1998, NIATT received a four year grant to directly fund our
transportation research and education activities through the
UTC program. We were awarded an additional four years of
UTC funding after a successful national competition in
2002.
Even
with our own source of UTC funds, we have continued
collaboration with the other northwest transportation
programs. In October 2005, the directors of the
transportation programs in the four states and the research
directors or managers from the four state DOTs gathered for
two days in Seattle to discuss how we could improve our
collaboration in both research and education. The meeting
was organized by Nancy Nihan, director of TransNow. One of
the motivations for this discussion was the increased level
of funding available in the region, through the
establishment of new UTC programs at the University of
Alaska and Portland State University in 2005, as part of the
reauthorization of the US DOTs surface transportation
program. Over the life of the authorization, UTC funds
coming to the four state region will exceed State Planning
and Research funding by a ratio of 2.5 to one.
As a
result of the October 2005 meeting, three task forces were
established. The technology task force, chaired by Robert
Bertini of Portland State University, was charged with
testing the feasibility of using compressed video as a
meeting format for the four regional UTCs and state DOTs. A
successful test meeting was conducted in January 2006,
proving that compressed video was a viable tool for these
regional meetings. As a result, NIATT is now investing in
an upgrade to its conference room to provide for compressed
video meetings. This upgrade will be completed this summer.
The
education task force, chaired by me, also met via compressed
video in January 2006. The task force discussed a number of
ways in which the universities could share educational
resources. The group agreed to hold a transportation
seminar for traffic operations students in the four states
during the fall semester 2006. This will give our graduate
students the chance to share their work with students at the
other Northwest universities and to learn from these
students as well. If the seminar proves successful, other
course sharing opportunities will be explored.
The
research task force, chaired by Barnie Jones, research
director at the Oregon DOT, met twice during the winter and
spring 2006. The task force has organized a workshop,
scheduled for Seattle on June 8th and 9th,
designed to accomplish two things: (1) identify priority
research problems/projects that can be accomplished by UTC
collaboration and (2) identify alternative models for
regional research collaboration. In addition to the UTC
directors and the state DOT research directors, the workshop
will bring together Northwest university researchers and
senior DOT staff to identify ways in which NW university
transportation centers can undertake research projects to
solve critical national research priorities. The workshop
will (1) highlight research capabilities and interests of
university transportation research faculty in the region,
(2) highlight focus areas of region X UTC’s, (3) learn about
national research priorities from FHWA, FTA, and RITA, and
(4) identify and discuss possible mechanisms in which these
research needs and capabilities can be connected.
Why
is this so important now? To put it bluntly, the high level
of earmarking of Title 5 research funding in the 2005
reauthorization has greatly limited FHWA’s ability to
accomplish its own research program. Universities have
benefited from these direct earmarks. But with this
earmarking comes the responsibility of stewardship, of using
these funds for strategic purposes, including a refocus of
our work on high priority research identified by FHWA that
it can no longer fund
This
focus on national priorities is nothing new for NIATT. In
1998, when we first received UTC research funds, we had a
number of discussions with FHWA research staff to identify
ways that we could help them accomplish their research
program objectives. The outcome of these discussions was
the successful development of our Controller Interface
Device and our related work on traffic signal timing
research and education.
Our
recent discussion with FHWA researcher James Colyar has
identified several possible projects that we might undertake
as part of the NGSIM (Next Generation Simulation Model)
program. We intend to collaborate with Portland State
University and the University of Washington in this effort.
This project will be a new model for how UTCs can pool their
funds to help FHWA meet its research agenda. The project is
an example of our continuing leadership in the region and
nationally. |
