Connected Cities for Smart Mobility toward Accessible and Resilient Transportation
Read about research developments, student and faculty initiatives, and spotlights on achievements by C2SMART affiliates.
“Transportation,” says Bingqing Liu, “can be revolutionary.” For Liu, the rapidly changing nature of transportation systems is its biggest draw — as early as high school, she was fascinated by how quickly transportation technology was evolving.
Curiosity got the better of Ding Wang. She first became interested in transportation as an undergraduate, but it wasn’t necessarily the nuts and bolts that first captured her interest – it was people.
Dr. Semiha Ergan first fell in love with civil engineering as sixth rader in the Republic of Turkey, on a field trip to see Anitkabir, the mausoleum of the country’s the first president and founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The tomb, an imposing structure seated at the end of a long walkway, hypnotized her.
The Pink Tax is a form of gender-based price discrimination concerning the upcharge women pay for specific products or services. This white paper is based on the conviction that innovations to increase personal safety and improve accessibility for caregivers will provide greater access to education and jobs, deliver health benefits from more active transportation, and support women’s confidence and well-being in trip planning—while greatly reducing carbon emissions.
As part of USDOT’s Connected Vehicle Project, C2SMART researchers at New York University – in collaboration with NYCDOT and industry partners JHK and Harman – recruited volunteer participants with vision disabilities via local and national organizations to help conduct field tests of a phone application, PED-SIG, which could improve mobility of pedestrians with vision disabilities to navigate safely and independently through New York City.
The FloodSense alert system generates emails and telegram messages at the detection of a flood that exceeds 5 inches, and there are early indications that these warnings were received prior to warnings from other city detection systems.
Cities around the globe are using the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place orders to explore pedestrianizing streets. Strategies on which streets to open to communities and how to do so vary widely between municipalities. In some cities, busy streets considered too vital to close entirely are required to remove parking lanes to expand pedestrian space. A growing number of cities, including New York City, have developed plans to close parking lanes on several miles of street to provide more outdoor seating for adjacent restaurants and cafes. Many cities have also provided extra space in front of grocery and large chain stores to give lines of customers room to distance themselves. Cities such as Burlington and Providence have reduced speed limits in large portions of their downtown areas, and specifically in Burlington, the new lower speed limit was implemented citywide to try to mitigate pedestrian fatalities. Seattle has reserved many of its core streets for “local traffic only”, reducing congestion within certain neighborhoods, and improving street safety in high-density residential areas.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every economic sector and the shipping and trucking industries are no exception. Like a domino effect, the decline in manufacturing in other countries has reduced international trade leading to a loss of work at American ports and roads.