Researchers at the University of New Orleans Transportation Institute have received a $12 million, four-year federal grant for transit-oriented research and education conducted through the Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC).
In addition, the University received a $1.5 million federal grant to continue its maritime and multimodal transportation research and education conducted through the Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center (MarTREC).
“These awards highlight the importance of the transportation industry to our region and our nation,” said Bethany Stitch, planning and urban studies professor and director of the UNO Transportation Institute. “These combined awards, totaling over $13 million in funding, will investigate both passenger multi-modal and freight inter-modal topics. These projects will focus on improving accessibility and equity, on community and supply chain resilience, and environmental sustainability.”
CETOC is a U.S. Department of Transportation Tier 1 university transportation center that is funded under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as the nation’s premier source for expertise on transit. CETOC’s mission is to cultivate transit-centered, equitable and resilient communities that support residents’ multimodal travel needs and preserve the environment.
UNO is the lead of a five-university consortium that consists of renowned public transportation researchers dedicated to transferrable research, inclusive education and workforce development from the University of New Orleans, University of Utah, University of Colorado Denver, University of Florida, and Florida Atlantic University.
Guang Tian, associated director of the University of New Orleans Transportation Institute, is the director of CETOC and UNO’s principal investigator of CETOC.
In the next four years, the grant will fund $12 million in research and education activities. Examples of some of the proposed projects include redesigning microtransit and transit network, building a national database of transit and shared micromobility, coordinating land use and transportation planning, analyzing transit-based evacuation demand in hurricanes, and the support of UNO’s Master of Science in Transportation degree program.
MarTREC is a U.S. Department of Transportation Tier 1 university transportation center that is recognized as the nation’s premier source for expertise on maritime and multimodal transportation. Stich is UNO’s principal investigator of MarTREC.
In the last decade, UNOTI’s participation in MarTREC has funded over $3 million in research, education and workforce development activities in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. Some of those funded projects include an analysis of the economic development benefits of liquefied gas in the Gulf Coast region, the impact of trade policies on the transportation infrastructure of the Lower Mississippi River, the reason for and impact of supply chain disruptions, and support of UNO’s Master of Science in Transportation degree program—the only one in Louisiana.
Also, 10 MarTREC-supported UNO students have won U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored awards, including the prestigious Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, the Council of University Transportation Center Graduate Student of the Year and the Charley V. Wootan Memorial Dissertation Award.
