UC Davis to Lead Sustainable Transportation Consortium

The University of California, Davis, will lead a 2-year, $11.2 million research consortium studying ways to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from passenger and freight travel and prepare U.S. transportation infrastructure for the extreme weather that climate change is expected to bring.

The new National Center for Sustainable Transportation will receive $5.6 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation and $5.6 million in matching funds from state, regional and local agencies. It will be based at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.

The center will mobilize a network of universities to generate knowledge and tools that address climate change and environmental sustainability in transportation and design and evaluate strategies that contribute to mitigation of greenhouse-gas emissions and other environmental impacts, UC Davis says.

Other consortium members include the University of California, Riverside; University of Southern California; California State University, Long Beach; University of Vermont; and Georgia Institute of Technology.

Susan Handy, UC Davis professor-environmental science and policy, says the U.S. has sharply reduced many of the transportation sector's most damaging environmental impacts on air, water, natural ecosystems and human health.

“However, one major impact that hasn't received enough attention is climate change, which is a game-changer,” she says in a statement. “Fortunately, almost all strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation also improve economic efficiency, energy security, social equity, livability and health.”

Dan Sperling, director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies and the new national center's executive director, says the goal is to transform the transportation system to improve environmental sustainability nationwide.