The Fifth Bridging Transportation Researchers (BTR) Conference was held August 9 and 10 with the help of over 200 researchers, program chairs, and Zoom coordinators. It is a completely online conference and over the course of the two days participants chose from sessions with a variety of topics centered around bridging.
The program was split into Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere sessions. In the Eastern Hemisphere there were 47 presentations. The time blocks were introduced by seven BTR chairs and three Zoom coordinators helped the conference run smoothly. In the Western Hemisphere there were 78 presentations, 11 chairs, and 8 Zoom coordinators. Two of the chairs were Dr. Jason Hawkins and Dr. Li Zhao from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Civil and Environmental Engineering department.
Presentation topics ranged from autonomous vehicles and emerging technologies to congestion management and pedestrian urban mobility. There were two headline speakers for each hemisphere in which all participants would come together to listen, as theirs was the only presentation during that time block.
On the first day of the Eastern Hemisphere, the headline presentation was given by Dr. Maya Abou-Zeid from the American University of Beirut. Her presentation was over the “Subjective Well-Being & Travel: Behavioral Insights & Integration with Choice Models”. On the second day Dr. Graham Currie from Monash University presented on “Pragmatic Strategies to Legitimise Implementation of Sustainable Transport in Cities”.
In the Western Hemisphere Dr. Kay Axhausen from ETH Zürich posed the question “Could an e-Bike City (with Walking, Transit, & Scooters) Work?”. On Day two Dr. Patricia Mokhtarian from Georgia Tech gave a presentation titled “Does Teleworking Increase or Decrease Travel? Using Selection Models to Obtain (Counterfactual) Longitudinal results from Cross-Sectional Data”.
All presentations will be made available on the BTR Conference website at https://bridgingtransport.org/instruction-for-presenters/archive-of-btr-presentations/. Next year’s conference will also be announced and registration made available on this site.