March 2019 saw three Vermonters, Jon Dowds, Michele Boomhower, and Glenn McRae visit Professor Lisa Aultman-Hall at her Davis California home where she is on sabbatical.  While every visitor biked with Lisa, in what some would argue is the bicycle capital of the US, only Jon tried the JUMP electric bike share during his visit.  All were there to attend events related to sustainable transportation.

Jon visited Davis to attend the 2019 meeting of the Joint Clean Climate Transport Research Partnership (JCCTRP).  The JCCTRP is a new interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research partnership focusing on issues related to transport and climate policy in Quebec, California, Ontario and Vermont. The ultimate goal of the JCCTRP is to identify technical, economic and political factors shaping the potential for environmentally effective, economically efficient, and politically viable low-carbon transport and climate mitigation policy, and to understand their implications for emissions trading.  Jon is the lead researcher on UVM’s JCCTRP project with Lisa, graduate student Sarah Howerter, and Dr. Paul Hines.  The project will utilize detailed travel behavior data to calculate time-specific regional demand for vehicle charging and input this high-resolution plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) electricity demand into a dispatch model for New York and New England.

Michele Boomhower, Director of Policy, Planning, & Intermodal Development at the Vermont Agency of Transportation and UVM TRC Adviser is also a dedicated member of the Leadership Council of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST), a USDOT UTC for which Lisa is Vermont’s associate director.  Together in Davis Michele and Lisa attended the Third Annual 3 Revolutions Transportation Policy Conference.  Michele’s VTrans team assisted in adding some Vermont examples of new mobility to Lisa’s presentation on the 3 revolutions in rural areas.  Following the 2-day conference, Michele participated in the NCST Leadership Council roundtables providing feedback on research policy briefs, center outreach and future research topics.

UVM TRC’s Glenn McRae was in Davis for the Leadership Council meeting as well.  He presented activities in transportation workforce development along with colleagues from California State University Long Beach, another NCST partner.  Lisa’s bikes were all too small for Glenn but he rode anyway listening to Lisa’s explanations of innovative bicycle infrastructure design .

PUBLISHED 4-18-2019