Event Date
Sustainable and Equitable Funding for Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance
Event Overview
Walking as a means of transportation has health, environmental, and economic benefits. Well-maintained sidewalks are important for communities to meet their active travel goals. But pedestrian infrastructure in many communities is discontinuous, inaccessible to those with physical disabilities, and poorly maintained – particularly in lower-income neighborhoods. The availability of an adequate, sustainable, and equitable source of funding is a major challenge for maintaining sidewalks in a state of good repair. Governments across the nation maintain and repair roads and highways, but most cities require adjacent property owners to maintain the sidewalks. In this presentation, researchers shared findings from separate studies regarding alternative approaches for funding sidewalk infrastructure and whether these approaches could lead to more sustainable and equitable outcomes when applied to the cities of Atlanta, Georgia and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
This webinar is co-sponsored by the Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET). Tran-SET is Region 6’s University Transportation Center, and is a collaborative partnership between nine major institutions and two community colleges across five states (Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas).
Read more about the study on Sustainable Sidewalk Infrastructure for Atlanta, Georgia.
Read the report on Sustainable and Equitable Financing for Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance.
Speakers
Dr. Randall Guensler is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. While working for the California Air Resources Board for seven years, Dr. Guensler earned his M.S. in Environmental Engineering and his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering from the University of California, Davis. Since arriving at Georgia Tech, he has managed more than $21 million in transportation, energy, and air quality research, including a recent $3 million U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E TRANSNET project on regional transportation simulation and assessment of real-time incentives to change travel behavior and reduce energy use. He has also served on a variety of professional committees and panels tasked with the assessment of energy use and emissions and identifying research needs. Dr. Guensler is currently an Associate Director of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation.
Dr. Gregory Rowangould is the Director of the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center and an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on the environmental and financial sustainability of transportation systems and how well they serve different communities. His current research projects include understanding how new transportation technologies such as electric and autonomous vehicles will affect travel behavior and land-use patterns, how the design of streets affect walking and bicycling, the impact of street infrastructure on urban heat microenvironments, and opportunities to reduce transportation related greenhouse gas emissions in small and rural communities. Dr. Rowangould received a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis, a MS and Resource Economics and Policy and BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maine, and was a Science Fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica, CA.