March 2026 News

2026 National Mobility Summit - Advancing the Movement of People and Goods

The 2026 National Mobility Summit will convene leaders from the U.S. Department of Transportation, state and local government agencies, congressional offices, industry partners, and University Transportation Centers (UTCs) within the USDOT strategic area of “Improving the Mobility of People and Goods” to advance a shared national objective: strengthening the mobility of people and goods as a foundation for economic competitiveness, supply chain resilience, and quality of life across the United States.

📅 Date: Monday, June 8, 2026

⏰ Time: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

📍 Venue: University of Southern California Capital Campus

📌 Address: 1771 N St NW, Washington, DC 20036

Organized by the National Center for Understanding the Future of Travel Behavior and Demand (TBD) in collaboration with the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (PSR UTC) and eight other UTCs, the Summit will bring together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, industry leaders, and students to explore the forces shaping the future of mobility. It will serve as a dynamic forum to share new insights, highlight emerging research findings to inform policy and practice, and strengthen partnerships across academia, government, and industry.

The program will focus on advancing knowledge and practice across key mobility domains, including travel behavior, freight and logistics, rural mobility, urban transit, data and AI integration, emerging technologies, and transportation system performance, and will feature a keynote address, panel discussions, a fireside chat, and a UTC Directors Roundtable aimed at building a coordinated national mobility research and deployment agenda.

For more information about the event and to complete the Expression of Interest form to attend, please visit the Summit website.

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METRANS to Lead Four Webinars on International Transportation Planning

METRANS is concluding a two-year engagement with four Southeast Asian universities, leading research on transportation problems that are common across the U.S. and ASEAN nations.

Want to learn more about the use of sidewalks as public space, travel behavior in tourist cities, transit planning with open source data, or institutional structures for open loop payments? Then these webinars are for you!

Click the button below to access registration links.

Note webinar date and time are in GMT +7.

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Announcing the 2025 Pacific Southwest Region UTC Students of the Year

Get to know this year’s Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (PSR UTC) Students of the Year! Every year, faculty from across the ten PSR institutions nominate students pursuing transportation- related degrees based on technical skills, academic performance, and leadership qualities. One graduate student is selected as the UTC’s U.S. Department of Transportation Outstanding Student of the Year while the other four student winners are selected as Student of the Year within their particular degree levels. The 2025 winners are:

USDOT Outstanding Student of the Year
Aisling O’Reilly, USC, PhD in Urban Planning and Development

PSR UTC Doctoral Student of the Year
Yanlin Qi, UC Davis, PhD in Transportation Technology and Policy

PSR UTC Master’s Student of the Year
Jon Atkins, UC Berkeley, Masters in Civil Engineering and City Planning

PSR UTC Undergraduate Student of the Year
Ava Elia, Northern Arizona University, B.S. in Geography, Environment, and Society

PSR UTC Certificate Program Student of the Year
Ritchel Reynes, CSULB, Global Logistics Professional Certificate Program

USC Doctoral Student Wendy Zhou Awarded the 40th Annual Charles M. Tiebout Prize in Regional Science

Left to right: Dr. Genevieve Giuliano (USC); Dr. Marlon Boarnet (USC); Yuquan (Wendy) Zhou, PhD Candidate (USC); Dr. Geoff Beoing, Zhou's dissertation advisor (USC)

Yuquan (Wendy) Zhou, an Urban Planning & Development PhD candidate at USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy, has been awarded the 40th Annual Charles M. Tiebout Prize in Regional Science at this year's Western Regional Science Association conference. This prize is awarded in honor of the outstanding contributions to regional science made by Charles M. Tiebout.

Zhou's paper titled, "Overestimating Essential Services Accessibility? Static vs. Dynamic Spatiotemporal Measures Using Individual Mobility Data in Los Angeles" was deemed the best graduate student paper in regional science.

PSR Events

USC

METRANS Speaker Series |Zoox's Autonomous Shuttles as a Transportation Tool| Speaker: Phil Pierce (City Policy Lead, Zoox) | Wednesday, April 1, 2026 | IN PERSON ONLY

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UCLA

Webinar |State Preemption of Parking Minimums Speakers: Catie Gould, Senior Researcher, Sightline Institute; Amy Lee, Postdoctoral Scholar, UC Davis |May 7, 2026
100 Lecture Series | The Long Life of Urban Form: How the Past May Define the Future of L.A. Transit| Speakers: Dr. Genevieve Giuliano, USC | May 20, 2026

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Do you have an event you would like featured in future METRANS News issues? Complete and submit the form linked here.

The METRANS Transportation Consortium was established in 1998 as the first University Transportation Center in Southern California. METRANS is a joint partnership of the University of Southern California (USC) and California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).

METRANS' mission is to solve transportation problems of large metropolitan regions through interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach. Its three primary objectives are: (1) fostering independent, high quality research to solve the nation's transportation problems; (2) training the next generation transportation workforce; and (3) disseminating information, best practices, and technology to the professional community.

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