pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

In early April of this year, PacTrans assistant director, Cole Kopca, and student researcher, Ruimin Ke, traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the annual Summit of University Transportation Centers for Safety. This event, facilitated by the T-SET University Transportation Center housed at Carnegie Mellon University, brings UTC academic researchers, private industry, and government agency together to discuss needs, achievements, and future collaboration opportunities.

During the one-day event, there were panel/group discussions on technology implementation with regard to new and rehabilitated infrastructure, safe deployment of connected and autonomous vehicles, and safety issues in rural transportation. At lunch, Mr. Kopca had the opportunity to present on an ongoing PacTrans outreach project. The last item of the day was a reception where universities had the opportunity to showcase work with posters. Mr. Ke presented recent work on bus automated collision avoidance warning systems.

With PacTrans new FAST Act grant transitioning us from a UTC focused on safety, to one focused on mobility, this will likely be our last Summit of University Transportation Centers for Safety. However, we were notified at the event that because Carnegie Mellon is making the exact same transition, they will likely begin hosting a new Summit of University Transportation Centers for Mobility, beginning next year.