News Archive

December 10, 2023
TOMNET’s Quarterly Newsletter Available: Updates on Recent Activities and Collaborations

We are pleased to announce the release of TOMNET’s Annual Newsletter. This edition provides an overview of our recent activities, highlights from various events, and outlines our projects and publications. It also features the achievements of our students over the past year. We invite you to read our newsletter to stay informed about our progress and developments. The newsletter is now available for viewing. We appreciate your feedback and comments and are open to exploring opportunities for future collaboration. To view the newsletter, please click HERE.

September 15, 2023
Discover the “Pathways to the Future” NSF Workshop: Connecting Communities through Sustainable Urban Mobility

Join us at the NSF workshop “Pathways to the Future” on October 15, 2023! The workshop will be held at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication building (see on map) from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm. Participants in the workshop will have the opportunity to delve into topics such as AI and emerging technologies within the context of multimodal transportation planning, the establishment of open data standards for open science and ecosystems, strategies for bridging the gap between research and practice, and more. To register for the workshop and access further details about the program, please use the links below. 

Registration Form
Workshop Program
Event Flier

This workshop will be presented in-person and webcast live to a worldwide audience using Zoom. For inquiries, please reach out to the Workshop Organizing Committee at [email protected].

To access the digital archive of the workshop, please visit the workshop website at this link.

September 23, 2022
Autonomous Vehicles Serving Local Mobility Needs: Public Panel

The TOMNET University Transportation Center (UTC) led by SSEBE Director, Professor Ram M Pendyala, collaborated with the ASU Office of Applied Innovation led by SFIS Professor of Practice, Luke Tate, to organize a special event titled “Autonomous Vehicles Serving Local Mobility Needs” at the new ASU California Center in Downtown Los Angeles. The two-part event included a panel discussion open to the public, followed by a working session of key stakeholders on this critical topic.

TOMNET is conducting groundbreaking research to understand, model, and forecast the future of travel demand and evaluate automated vehicle deployments in different contexts, so that emerging transportation technologies can be deployed to enhance mobility for all in a sustainable and equitable way.

Relive the public panel at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsmV2dR5KSE

The summary of the public panel can be found in this report.

A big thank you to our great panel moderator Marisa Walker (she/her) (Arizona Commerce Authority), and passionate panelists Carol Ketcherside, AICP (Valley Metro), Evelyn Blumenberg (UCLA), Gwo-Wei Torng (Federal Transit Administration), and Bill Tsuei (Access Services).

Thank you to the many other attendees, including but not limited to: Juan Matute (UCLA), Bayarmaa Aleksandr (SCAG), Philip Law (SCAG), and Anurag Komanduri (Cambridge Systematics). TOMNET Deputy Director and SSEBE Research Professor, Steven Polzin, served as moderator for the stakeholder working session. We were joined by fabulous students from ASU including Irfan Batur, Abbie Dirks, and Tassio Magassy; and from UC Irvine, including Siwei Hu and Montana Kyle Rodriguez Reinoehl, among others.

 

April 27-28, 2017
TOMNET Holds Kickoff Workshop and Idea Factory

TOMNET conducted its kickoff workshop and research idea factory to plan the activities of the center and exchange information about ongoing and planned research endeavors.  The event was held at the College Avenue Commons (CAVC) building, the home of TOMNET on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe. The program started with a welcome by Professor Edd Gibson, Director of the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.  The University Transportation Centers (UTC) program managers, including Caesar Singh, Denise Dunn, and Dawn Tucker-Thomas, from the US Department of Transportation joined the kickoff workshop on the morning of April 27 before proceeding to tour a number of transportation research and education related facilities at ASU.  The workshop included a number of presentations by researchers whose work is related to the mission and vision of TOMNET. Check out the full meeting agenda.

March 31, 2017
TOMNET Director of Research and Associate Director, Professor Patricia Mokhtarian, Delivers Seminar at ASU

Professor Patricia Mokhtarian, who holds the Susan G and Christopher D Pappas endowed professorship in transportation at the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the Director of Research and Associate Director for TOMNET.  She recently visited ASU to deliver a seminar on methods to incorporate attitudinal variables and factors in travel behavior models.  She also met with a number of faculty and students to discuss collaborative research opportunities, both within and beyond the activities of the TOMNET UTC.  Seminar Announcement

March 24, 2017
TOMNET Welcomes Professor Anne Goodchild from the University of Washington

Dr. Anne Goodchild, who is the Allan and Inger Osberg Endowed Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington, visited ASU to deliver a seminar and visit with faculty and students.  University of Washington is a member of the TOMNET consortium.  Professor Goodchild talked about engineering urban freight systems with a view to making freight transportation more efficient, less disruptive, and more sustainable.  Seminar Announcement

March 23, 2017
Roads to Discovery: TOMNET UTC Featured in Media Article on ASU Transportation Research

The Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com featured a story about cutting edge research in transportation systems analysis and engineering underway at ASU.  Pendyala’s work on travel demand forecasting was featured prominently along with special mention of the TOMNET UTC.  Other ASU transportation researchers featured in the article include Professors Mikhail Chester, Narayanan Neithalath, and Hongbin Yu. Read the article. 

March 14, 2017
TOMNET Director, Ram Pendyala, Comments on Wrong-Way Driving Crashes

There has been a spate of wrong-way driving crashes in Arizona over the past few months.  TOMNET Director, Ram Pendyala, speaks to AZ CBS5 and TV3 about the role of driver behavior and error as a factor contributing to this phenomenon. Pendyala sees a future in which emerging technologies help reduce wrong-way driving and associated crashes substantially.  View the videos. 

February 17, 2017
Safety Expert, Professor Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Visits TOMNET

Professor Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Pegasus Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering at the University of Central Florida, visited ASU to explore collaborative research opportunities with TOMNET faculty members and students. He delivered a seminar that described methods for incorporating safety considerations in transportation planning processes, and spoke about the role of driver behavior and attitudes in determining safety outcomes.  Seminar Announcement

December 26-30, 2016
Pendyala and Garikapati Offer 5-Day GIAN Course in India

TOMNET Director Ram Pendyala and Assistant Director Venu Garikapati offered a five-day short course on “Emerging Methods for Activity-Travel Demand Modeling and Simulation” under the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) scheme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) of the Government of India.  The course was held December 26-30 at the National Institute of Technology, Warangal (NITW).  More than 70 individuals, including faculty members, consultants, research scholars, and students from around India, participated in the course.

December 19-21, 2016
Pendyala and Garikapati Participate in Conference in Mumbai, India

TOMNET Director Ram Pendyala and Assistant Director Venu Garikapati participated in the 12th International Conference on Transportation Planning and Implementation Methodologies for Developing Countries (TPMDC2016).  This conference, held every even year, is the premier international event dedicated to addressing issues, identifying solutions, and sharing research in topics related to transportation planning in rapidly developing economies of the world.  Pendyala served as a keynote speaker and delivered an invited plenary talk titled “Behavioral Implications of Transformative Disruptions in Transportation”.  Garikapati delivered a presentation on the factors that inhibit the use of the walk mode for short trips, and identified possible strategies to mitigate these factors and enhance walk mode share for trips less than 0.5 mile.  In addition, Pendyala and Garikapati offered a special 1/2 day workshop on Open Source Tools for Activity-Based Travel Behaviour Modeling.  More than 50 individuals attended the workshop and learned about open source tools for generating synthetic populations and estimating the multiple-discrete continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model in the context of simulating household vehicle type choice and fleet composition.