March 25, 2020
Former Mc Trans Director Bill Sampson celebrates his retirement
Current and former co-workers and students gathered Friday, March 20, 2020 via Zoom to wish Bill Sampson a happy retirement after 30 years as Director of the Mc Trans Center.

During his time with Mc Trans, Bill was responsible for the ongoing development and technical assistance of the Highway Capacity Software. He taught training courses on Capacity Analysis and Traffic Engineering and also authored a textbook entitled, “Highway Capacity Analysis’ HCM6 and HCS7."

Changes taking place at the UFTI because of COVID-19
Faculty and staff have worked at record speed in the past week to adapt to changes brought on by the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the United States and throughout the world. Everyone finds themselves in an unmapped territory, but we continue to stay connected and on track with our research and other initiatives.

Upcoming Events
In view of the global concerns about COVID-19, the 7th Annual UTC Conference for the Southeastern Region, originally scheduled for March 26- 27, 2020, has been postponed to Fall 2020 . The Organizing Committee is monitoring the situation and keeping updated with the recommendations being announced by the international and national public health authorities.

The conference website will be updated when new dates become available.
STRIDE Webinar: Modeling Bus Ridership Trends on a Hyper-Local Level Between 2012 and 2018

April 1: 12:00 PM Eastern

In 2019, nation-wide bus ridership attained its lowest level ever recorded in history. We investigate the change in bus ridership over time in four cities using passenger count data at 50,000 stops. We find consistent results in all four cities: 1) the proportion of local residents who are white is correlated with a decline in bus ridership and 2) although the most frequent routes have the most passenger boardings per trip, ridership is inelastic to frequency. These results shed light on the causes of bus ridership decline and help identify strategies to reverse the trend.

Webinar Presenter:
  • Dr. Simon Berrebi, Georgia Tech


The Southeastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development, and Education (STRIDE) Center is the 2016 USDOT Region 4 (Southeast) University Transportation Center (UTC) housed at the University of Florida Transportation Institute (UFTI). 

TRB Webinar: Start Your Transportation Research with TRID

April 14: 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern

If you are conducting research in transportation, you want to start with TRB’s TRID database. Novice researchers, experts, and everyone in between is invited to this TRB webinar.
TRID (part of the TRIS database) helps researchers locate solutions to problems, avoid duplication of work, and save resources. It also satisfies the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requirements to consult TRB's TRIS databases to identify ongoing or previously completed research on a given topic.

This webinar is sponsored by the TRB Executive Office. There is no fee to attend this webinar; however, sign into MyTRB.org to view registration information.

Webinar Presenters:
  • Bill McLeod, TRB
  • Moderated by: Beth Ewoldsen, TRB

Webinar Outline
  1. Searching and browsing records in TRID
  2. Advanced search functionality
  3. Example search history
  4. Using the index terms fields for precision searches
  5. Exporting, emailing, and saving results
  6. Submitting publications for indexing

The first 45 minutes of the webinar will be for presentations and the final 15 minutes will be reserved for audience questions.

STRIDE Webinar: Performance Measurement and Management Using Connected and Automated Vehicle Data

April 22: 12:00 PM Eastern

The availability of connected vehicle (CV) data, even at lower market penetrations, can be sufficient to support critical transportation performance measurement and management functions. This webinar will discuss the use of CV data to estimate metrics that can be currently estimated using existing data sources including those related to mobility, reliability, and environmental impacts. In addition, the webinar will discuss the estimation and utilization of additional mobility and safety metrics that cannot be estimated based on existing sources of data. The utilization of machine learning techniques to predict these performance metrics is also discussed.

Webinar Presenter:
  • Dr. Mohammed Hadi, Florida International University


The Southeastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development, and Education (STRIDE) Center is the 2016 USDOT Region 4 (Southeast) University Transportation Center (UTC) housed at the University of Florida Transportation Institute (UFTI). 

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