The NC State University Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) formed the Center of Excellence (CoE) for Mobility and Congestion in response to the NCDOT’s inaugural CoE solicitation of June 26, 2019. NCDOT aimed to drive the creation of collaborative academic research centers that would be “forward-looking and strategically focused and produce work that is accessible to and usable by transportation decision-makers.”
The center consortium included NC State, Fayetteville State University, Duke University, NC A&T State University, and UNC-Chapel Hill. ITRE assembled the consortium in full alignment with NCDOT’s goals to:
Leverage “multi-disciplinary skills and knowledge across multiple universities”
Draw on strengths in North Carolina’s “Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions”
Provide “a long-term view and cutting-edge approach”
Explore multifaceted research as outlined in the CoE solicitation
The consortium first designed the center’s themes by mapping the solicitation’s mobility and congestion-related research goals to three core center research themes:
Research Goals
ITS and data usage
Active/adaptive congestion management
Alternative intersection and interchange designs
The role of transit in improving mobility and reducing congestion
The role of transit and Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in improving economic and healthcare access for underserved populations
Core Themes
Big Data and Data-Driven Transportation Management and Decision Support
Active Transportation Management/Integrated Corridor Management
Transit and MaaS
All interested faculty at the five consortium universities were invited to submit research ideas under the established center themes. Approximately forty submitted research ideas. Fourteen candidate project ideas emerged from the submissions, and the participants evaluated and ranked the ideas. This collaborative project development process resulted in the three projects that the center completed:
Theme 1: Deep Learning Software for Traffic State Prediction
Theme 2: Smart Connected and Automated Vehicle Fleet Management: Developing Regional Dispatch Decision Support for Congestion Mitigation
Theme 3: First Mile to Health: Improving Healthcare Access in North Carolina
The center’s research efforts concluded in February 2023. Final reports for each of the three projects are available on NCDOT’s Research and Development unit website:
https://connect.ncdot.gov/projects/research/pages/ProjDetails.aspx?ProjectID=TCE2020-02
