March 8, 2021

Qing Shen’s proposal among those selected for funding by PacTrans

The Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) announced in January 2021 the project proposals selected for funding. Qing Shen, Professor of Urban Design and Planning and Chair of the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning is among those selected for project funding. Shen is working alongside Co-Principal Investigator Catherine (Casey) Gifford–Innovative Mobility Senior Planner–on the applied research project titled “Supplementing fixed-route transit with dynamic shared mobility services: a marginal cost comparison approach”.

The project goal is to address a key research need regarding how public transit agencies should respond to the rapid growth of shared mobility services, while leveraging unique policy innovations implemented in the Seattle metropolitan region. Using data from King Country Metro’s Via to Transit program, it will build operational agent-based models for KCM and other public transit agencies to estimate the marginal costs of delivering mobility services.

PacTrans is the Regional University Transporation Center (UTC) for Federal Region 10. Their main goal is to “provide data-driven solutions for the diverse mobility challenges in the Pacific Northwest.” This project aligns closely with this goal and other topic areas: “accessibility for all”, “system-wide efficiency”, and “data-driven solutions in transportation”. This project will be implemented from March 2021 to March 2022, in a seven-step process: expanding literature review, refining research design, processing analyzing data, agent-based modeling, analyzing model outcomes, writing project reports, and the conference paper and webinar.