Transportation

What could collapse the Golden Gate Bridge?

09/19/14 KALW — At the movies, the Golden Gate Bridge has been leveled by earthquakes, apes, even a mega-shark. But how would the iconic span fare in more realistic disaster scenarios? Civil engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl helps KALW radio figure it out.

ITS grad students receive Eisenhower fellowships

08/29/14 — Three Institute of Transportation Studies graduate students, Frank Proulx, Jesus Barajas and Lisa Rayle, have won coveted 2014 Dwight David Eisenhower Graduate Fellowships for their research in transportation planning.

Last-minute mergers endanger drivers, worsen traffic jams

08/28/14 San Francisco Chronicle — The "jerk merge," where drivers cut into a traffic lane at the last possible moment, is "probably the most disruptive to traffic" and should be a target of police action, says Michael Cassidy, professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Scholars on scooters

08/14/14 — Students zip around campus on electric scooters while learning about energy, transportation and vehicle-to-grid systems in a new civil engineering class.

Delays persist for U.S. high-speed rail

08/06/14 New York Times — Despite enormous U.S. investments in high-speed rail projects since 2009, little progress has been made. Civil engineering professor C. William Ibbs explains why that might be.

More woes for high-speed rail

03/31/14 San Francisco Business Times — The $68 billion cost estimate for a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail network is far too low, and the system may be eclipsed by emerging technologies before the 30-year project is completed, civil engineering professor C. William Ibbs warned the state Senate transportation committee last week.

What does an ‘energy transition’ look like?

02/27/14 National Geographic — On National Geographic's Great Energy Challenge blog, Daniel Kammen, professor of energy and society at Berkeley Engineering, talks about first-hand experience with the kind of dramatic transition to a clean-energy economy that he studies as director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.

Tesla Team at the New York City finish line

Electric cars go cross-country

02/10/14 Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative — Santiago Miret, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering, writes about range anxiety by electric vehicle owners, and how it has prompted a pair of recent coast-to-coast road trips by drivers of the Tesla Model S.

Will we ride the Hyperloop before decade’s end?

08/14/13 CNN — In an op-ed article for CNN, Berkeley Engineering alumnus Saurabh Amin (Ph.D. '11 CEE), an assistant professor at MIT, writes that in putting his Hyperloop transportation system before the public in conceptual form, Elon Musk might be able to minimize the design bottleneck that slows most massive infrastructure projects to a crawl.

Mind the gap

05/01/13 — ITS graduate student Dan Howard re-envisioned the Berkeley campus in the style of the iconic London Underground map.

Connected Corridors aims to boost efficiency of existing roads

03/18/13 Berkeley Research — Connected Corridors, a project led by engineering professors Alex Bayen and Roberto Horowitz, is developing technologies to help Caltrans gather and analyze traffic data. A goal of the research: to make existing roadways more efficient, rather than launching new highway-construction projects.

Study gives glimpse of crowd-sourced commuting future

12/10/12 New Cities Foundation — Sharing real-time information about traffic or other transportation delays provides drivers and riders greater control over their commute, and it could help local authorities improve transportation planning, says a new study conducted by CITRIS researchers in partnership with San Jose and Ericsson.

Bullet-train planners face huge engineering challenge

11/12/12 Los Angeles Times — An audacious plan is taking shape on the drawing boards of California's bullet train planners as they envision a high-speed rail line from Bakersfield to L.A. that will travel over two mountain ranges and more than half a dozen earthquake faults. The crossing is seizing the imagination of engineers who see it as the greatest design challenge of the $68-billion project. "It is the project of the century," said Berkeley civil engineering professor Bill Ibbs.

Chart showing info collected by Quantified Traveler app

Rerouting behavior

11/01/12 — Associate professors of civil and environmental engineering Raja Sengupta and Joan Walker created the Quantified Traveler app to quantify what influences travel behavior and to encourage more sustainable travel.

Building green motorcycles

11/01/12 — Most of the things motorcycle makers call character, like throaty pipes, are really just covering up byproducts of internal combustion—and masking energy lost during power production. In contrast, electric motorcycles are stealthy and quiet, a trait not lost on riders. Abe Askenazi, head of engineering at Zero Motorcycles. (Photo courtesy Zero Motorcycles)“If you get on […]

$2.5 million grant to improve traffic safety

08/24/12 ITS — California's Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) has awarded nearly $2.5 million in grants to two research and education centers affiliated with the Institute of Transportation Studies to improve safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and drivers. The Safe Transportation Research & Education Center (SafeTREC) and the Technology Transfer Program (Tech Transfer) will use the funds to study better ways to prevent crashes and to help local agencies identify potentially hazardous surface roadway conditions.

Slow going

05/01/12 — In California, single drivers of hybrid vehicles could drive in carpool lanes until 2011, but after the state put the brakes on the program, transportation engineer Michael Cassidy and graduate student Kitae Jang found that hybrids in standard lanes slowed traffic on Bay Area freeways.

Diesel truck emissions in Oakland fall sharply

01/17/12 Institute of Transportation Studies — Recent field studies conducted by UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Robert Harley and his research team show that emissions of unhealthy pollutants from diesel trucks in West Oakland have been reduced by half in a matter of months, as a result of state regulations that banned the oldest, dirtiest trucks and set deadlines for retrofitting middle-aged trucks with diesel particle filters.

The electric Leaf’s true believers won’t leave well enough alone

10/14/11 The New York Times — Within weeks after Nissan first began delivering the Leaf to buyers last December, do-it-yourselfers were looking for ways to make the new electric car -- an engineering marvel from one of the world's leading automakers -- even better. Among those applying their engineering skills to the task was Berkeley Engineering alum Gary Giddings, a passionate supporter of electric vehicles. "At this point in my life, my goal is to spend whatever time I have trying to help E.V.'s become successful," Mr. Giddings said.

Ford “talking” vehicles give San Francisco peek at more sustainable driving with fewer crashes, reduced congestion

06/01/11 PR Newswire — As Ford's fuel-efficient vehicles gain momentum in California, company researchers are showcasing what could be next: intelligent vehicles that wirelessly talk to each other to reduce crashes and the billions of gallons of gas wasted in congestion each year. Today, Ford convened a panel of auto industry, transportation and technology visionaries to experience the technology and discuss how intelligent vehicles could soon lead to breakthroughs in a more sustainable transportation system. The San Francisco event includes remarks by Dr. S. Shankar Sastry, Dean of UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, and a panel including Dr. Pravin Varaiya, UC Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Professor Emeritus.