The Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans), of which Oregon State University is a member, was awarded $14.35 million over 5 years from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to fund research toward improving the mobility of people and goods across the Pacific Northwest.

PacTrans is a consortium of transportation professionals and educators from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho and is the Regional University Transportation Center (UTC) for Federal Region 10. Through the UTC program, the USDOT awards grants to universities across the U.S. to advance state-of-the-art transportation research and develop the next generation of transportation professionals. PacTrans focuses on using technological advances to develop data-driven, sustainable solutions for the diverse transportation needs of the region.

“This new grant will serve as a force multiplier for the impact of transportation mobility research currently taking place at Oregon State University,” said David Hurwitz, associate professor of transportation engineering and associate director at Oregon State for PacTrans. “The traveling public in Oregon – and the Pacific Northwest more broadly – will benefit directly from these efforts.”

“Through this grant, Oregon State will conduct further world-class research toward increasing mobility and accessibility,” said Jason Weiss, professor and head of the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State’s College of Engineering. “Our region presents diverse challenges and this award will contribute to optimizing freight and passenger movement, connecting rural and urban communities, and more.”

Previous research at Oregon State funded through PacTrans includes improving cyclist safety by considering levels of stress, evaluating the potential to perform bridge inspections with unmanned aerial vehicles, preventing accidents during the construction of transportation infrastructure, and reducing the occurrence of lane departure crashes.

The University of Washington leads PacTrans. Other university partners include Boise State University, Gonzaga University, Oregon State University, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Idaho, and Washington State University.