Assistant Professor Alex Karner Wins Transportation Research Board Grant

Community & Regional Planning Assistant Professor Alex Karner has received a $500,000 award from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) to fund the project, “Accessibility Measures in Practice: Guidance for Transportation Agencies.” Conducted in collaboration with Professor Kara Kockelman in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and others, the research will examine how “accessibility” concepts and measures can be more widely applied by transportation agencies.

In the context of Karner and Kockelman’s work, accessibility refers to the ease with which travelers can reach places they value. Traditionally, transportation planning has sought to reduce congestion, making it easier for people to travel across a region very quickly without thinking about how many places they can reach in the process. An accessibility perspective, instead, places destinations at the forefront – forcing transportation planners to not only think about infrastructure, but also about land use and how housing, jobs, and other destinations are located throughout a region. By enhancing accessibility, transportation agencies can help create places that reduce the need to drive, thereby improving public health by making walking, cycling, and public transit more attractive.

Over the course of their research, Karner and Kockelman will interview 45 transportation planning practitioners from around the country to understand how accessibility measures are currently being used, and where there is potential for future application. They will then produce a practitioner-ready resource for transportation agencies to provide guidance for immediate and mid-term steps for implementing accessibility measures.

“Accessibility Measures in Practice: Guidance for Transportation Agencies” builds off of and aligns with a graduate seminar Karner teaches at UTSOA each year, Transportation Equity and Accessibility Analysis. In the seminar, students learn advanced GIS techniques for measuring accessibility, and analyze whether transportation projects are equitable and fair.

For more information and to read the full scope of the research project, visit: https://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=4558