Transportation Radio

Dr. Shihab Kuran discusses the key role state departments of transportation play in helping establish a national electric vehicle or EV charging network. Kuran is the co-founder and CEO of Power Edison as well as co-founder and executive chairman of its sister company EV Edison – companies offering innovative renewable energy, EV charging, and mobile energy storage solutions for the grid. Kuran ex...

The United States is a country with no national language, and with over 150 Indigenous languages still spoken today. With 5.2 million Indigenous people residing in the US today, speaking these 150+ languages—why aren’t more of our road signs printed in these native languages? Teams from the Iowa and Minnesota Departments of Transportation, along with Indigenous partners set out to change that. Joi...

Rob McInerney, CEO of the International Road Assessment Programme  (iRAP), joins the ITE Talks Transportation podcast to talk about global roadway safety through the Safe System Approach, Vision Zero, and how those integrate into the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030. He also highlights rural roadway safety, where a large portion of global fatalities are concentrated in run...

Equity in transportation has become a major topic of interest the past few years, but the need for a more just transportation sector is not new. Groups like the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) began working to promote equity in transportation decades before the concept became mainstream. COMTO was founded in 1971, just over 50 years ago, and as the association representing...

Jeremy Kashman , chief engineer and director of engineering for the City of Carmel, Indiana joins the ITE Talks Transportation podcast to talk about how his city became the "Roundabout Capital of the United States." With more than 140 existing roundabouts and more in the works, Kashman describes the process of installing these roundabouts and the benefits they provide, including decrease...

Empty your pockets at the gas station each week or navigate charging anxiety? Americans are caught in a Catch-22; and that’s just for folks with the income to consider purchasing an electric vehicle. As gas prices climb quicker than electric vehicle charging infrastructure expands, organizations like Forth and the Greenlining Institute are working to ensure equitable access to a growing electric v...

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) created the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to facilitate collaboration between the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Transportation . The Joint Office will align resources and expertise across the two departments toward leveraged outcomes. The office will be a critical...

Deputy Secretary of Transportation Polly Trottenberg joins the ITE Talks Transportation podcast to discuss the Department of Transportation ’s newly announced National Roadway Safety Strategy , which utilizes the Safe System Approach to achieve zero fatalities and serious injuries on roadways. She also shares the administration’s plans and perspective on transportation-related goals for the Infras...

With school buses providing 10 billion annual student rides, electrification presents a major opportunity to green the transportation industry; and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA, in concert with state DOTs and organizations like World Resources Institute , sets out to do just that. With a coming influx of $5 billion from the IIJA to replace existing buses, and additional fundi...

Gregory D. Winfree , Agency Director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), joins the ITE Talks Transportation podcast to discuss the impact of innovative approaches in transportation and how they can address real-world challenges and improve safety. He highlights emergent trends and technologies having an impact on the industry, and shares more about TTI’s ongoing safety efforts to...

Since 2020, the AASHTO Committee on Environment and Sustainability has held a weekly webinar series throughout the month of September with each week’s segment hosted by one of its four subcommittees. This year, when the Cultural Resources Subcommittee sat down to plan their webinar, it became clear that there was one topic on everyone’s mind– and that was: Post-World War II construction (and what...

Laura Chace , president and CEO of ITS America , joins the ITE Talks Transportation podcast to discuss the MobilityXX Pledge, an initiative led by ITS America, The Ray and WTS to advance the role of women as leaders within the transportation industry. She also talks about current priorities at ITS America, including integrating new technologies under the Infrastructure and Investment Act, and the...

This month's episode of AASHTO's ETAP Podcast will focus on the upcoming 2022 Transportation Research Board ’s Annual Meeting as well as provide a preview for the TRB Sustainability and Emerging Transportation Technology Conference taking place in March. This year’s meeting will be of particular interest to environmental practitioners and is titled: Innovating an Equitable, Resilient, Su...

“One of the significant advantages of serving as AASHTO president is that it gives me a platform to address issues that matter,” says Dr. Shawn Wilson . Dr. Wilson is the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and was elected AASHTO’s first African American president in October. During his tenure as president, Dr. Wilson will be facing ‘issues that matter’ head on....

Kelley Coyner, CEO and founder of Innovation4Mobility , discusses the current state of autonomous vehicle (AV) development and deployment, and how this technology marries accessibility, connectivity, electrification, and “shareability” to get the best possible outcome from our transportation system. She also touches on low-speed AVs in transit, including case study examples where these autonomous...

Joining us today to discuss the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (or IIJA) is Joung Lee, AASHTO’s Director of Policy and Government Relations. This episode of AASHTO’s ETAP Podcast was recorded while the House of Representatives was reviewing the IIJA. As the bill works its way to President Biden’s desk, AASHTO has been working to represent the interests of state DOTs, and has done so quite...

ITE’s Lisa Fontana Tierney and Kevin Hooper discuss the newly released 11th edition of ITE’s Trip Generation Manual on this episode of the ITE Talks Transportation podcast. They address the significantly expanded database including person, walk, bicycle, transit, motor vehicle, and truck trip generation and characteristics associated with an individual development site or land use. They also highl...

From loss of sleep to loss of hearing, noise can pose a real threat. Recent studies have even identified a possible link between noise exposure and dementia. Traffic noise is a major contributor to noise pollution that fuels these negative health outcomes. Tires hitting pavement make up the majority of highway noise. Better modeling and barriers can work to mitigate this for folks living near area...

ITE Talks Transportation host, Bernie Wagenblast, shares hosting duties for this podcast with Justin Ward, Head of Policy and Practice, CIHT (Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation) , London, UK. They speak about the evolution of urban form and function with with Noreen McDonald , Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning , University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill .

Mark Hoffman, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Auburn University , and his graduate research assistant Karl Bohnenberger have been studying one of the lesser known contributors to poor fuel economy: rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is a measure of the effort required to keep a tire rolling. It might not grab headlines, but rolling resistance has a substantial impact on emi...

This month, Bernie Wagenblast talks with Carol Schweiger, president at Schweiger Consulting LLC and co-chair of the TRB Committee on Innovative Public Transportation Services and Technologies. Carol has more than 40 years of experience in transportation consulting, nationally and internationally recognized in the area of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and advanced public transportation s...

Once ubiquitous in North America, the monarch’s striking orange and black wings are likely the first image that comes to mind when picturing a butterfly. The monarch is famed not only for its beauty, but also for its role in a healthy ecosystem – the pollinators are a critical support to some uniquely American landmarks: from the Great Smoky Mountains to Zion National Park. Yet, over the past few...

On this episode of the ITE Talks Transportation podcast, the director of the California Department of Transportation , Toks Omishakin , discusses how the agency dealt with the challenges of the pandemic as well as the strategies it is employing to create safer, more livable, and more equitable communities.

In this month’s episode of AASHTO’s ETAP Podcast, host Bernie Wagenblast sits down with Matthew Quirey, a Landscape Design & Research Fellow at The Ray . For his thesis , Matthew partnered with The Ray to produce new classifications of the most beneficial and well rounded roadside vegetation systems which can now be used to guide Georgia’s efforts in sustainability and harmonious roadside ecol...

Eulois Cleckley, the outgoing Executive Director of the Denver Department of Transportation & Infrastructure, discusses how he helped launch a new transportation and infrastructure department in a large urban city. Cleckley, who serves as president of both the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) as well as the Colorado Chapter of the Conference of Minority Transportat...