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METRANS

USC's Jessica Brown wins NCSEA Diversity in Structural Engineering Scholarship

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

On February 16, 2022, the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA) hosted a ceremony at its annual summit in New York city to celebrate recipients of the organization’s award and scholarship recipients. Among those that night was USC civil engineering major and METRANS Mentor Program Lead Jessica Brown, who received one of the NCSEA’s Diversity in Structural Engineering scholarships.   Jessica Brown accepting her award at the Structural Engineering ...

USC Hosts, UCI Wins So Cal ITE Traffic Bowl 2022

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

On February 26, 2022, the Southern California Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) held its annual Traffic Bowl competition. The virtual event was hosted by the University of Southern California (USC) chapter and featured ITE chapters from five universities in Southern California: Cal Poly Pomona, California State University Fullerton (Cal State Fullerton), University of California Irvine (UCI), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and USC.      ...

PSR

Optimizing Freight Routing: PSR Researchers Investigate Freight Coordination with Traffic Simulators

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Freight transport systems deliver products across the country. However, inefficient shipping methods, including sub-optimal routing, can cause unnecessary delays and contribute to congestion. In 2016, congestion from trucking, the most common method of moving freight, cost the US economy $74.5 billion by delaying traffic a total of 1.2 billion hours. There are also environmental costs. Trucking contributes 68% of all GHG emissions sourced from freight movement.   To optimize trucking ...

Where's My Bus? PSR Researchers Develop Tools for Predicting Public Transit Arrivals

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Congestion continues to increase as the city reopens in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. If public transit is to be part of the solution to increasing congestion, then system performance matters. This is the topic of interest to University of Southern California researchers Cyrus Shahabi, Yao Yi Chiang, and Luan Tran , and the subject of their recently released report, “ Large-scale and Long-term Forecasting of Performance Measurement of Public Transportation Systems . ”  ...

ASPD and METRANS TSA present State of Planning 2022

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Many career fields have been drastically altered with the current state of remote work, and planning is no exception. To gauge how the field of planning has changed in relation to the pandemic, on April 5th the Associated Students of Planning and Development (ASPD) and METRANS Transportation Student Association (METRANS TSA) held the second annual State of Planning event. The event also investigated the state of planning, in particular for young professionals and touched on soft skills needed for ...

METRANS Teams with USC Alumni Association to Introduce Local Youth to STEM Careers

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

On Saturday, March 12th, as part of the Annual USC Alumni Day of SCervice, the METRANS K12 student team once again hosted local high school youth for an interactive day of lectures and activities designed to introduce them to exciting STEM careers, this year with an emphasis on those in aerospace.      The day began on the USC campus with a presentation from NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) aeronautical engineer, Carson Schubert, who shared his own career path as well as ...

PhD Students Present their Work at PSR Emerging Scholars Research Symposium

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

On March 4th, the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (PSR) hosted its annual Emerging Scholars Transportation Research Symposium in partnership with METRANS on campus at USC. The event featured a mix of live and remote presentations from PhD students and researchers representing a number of universities affiliated with PSR.     Established in 2016, PSR receives funding from the US Department of Transportation under its University Transportation Centers ...

CSULB's Jenny Benitez is named PSR Undergraduate Student of the Year

Monday, April 4, 2022

We are pleased to congratulate Jenny Benitez for being selected as the Pacific Southwest Region (PSR) Undergraduate Student of the Year.  Jenny completed her BA in Economics at California University, Long Beach (CSULB).  While a student, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for International Trade and Transportation (CITT), and after graduating began working at RSG, a real estate agent and manager firm in Irvine, California.   While at CITT Jenny shares that she ...