New England University Transportation Centers (UTC): Region One

The nationwide University Transportation Centers program was created in 1987 by the US Department of Transportation to attract the nation's best talent to the study of transportation. It established ten university transportation centers, one each in the ten standard Federal regions, to provide a national resource for research and education in both freight and passenger transportation.

The theme of the New England University Transportation Center is The Strategic Management of Disruptive Change.

Transportation systems are facing disruptive changes in technology, demographics and the environment.

These unprecedented changes call into question policy assumptions, systems design and the adoption of new technologies.

(*) How do we manage the increasing velocity of technological changes in personal mobility, vehicle design and infrastructure management?
(*) Can we help the members of an aging society cope with an increasingly complex transportation system?
(*) How can we balance the demands posed by environmental impact, globalization, security, aging infrastructure and allocation of energy resources?

At the New England University Transportation Center we feel that understanding disruptive change is the first step to creating transportation policy that meets our nation’s needs -- now and in the future.

MIT is the lead university in Region One, where the UTC program is administered through the New England University Transportation Center. The other schools in the New England Center consortium are: the University of Connecticut, the University of Maine, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Harvard University. For UTC contact information at each of these member schools, see the Policy Committee link under Key Personnel.

All five of these Region One schools have long-standing commitments to improve transportation in New England, which they have fulfilled through a variety of research and education activities. Region One, however, is also concerned with more far-reaching transportation issues, reflecting the fact that the Center's members draw students and research support from around the country and the world. The Region One program is designed to take advantage of these strengths to address research topics of national, regional and international importance.

The New England University Transportation Center conducts a multi-year research programs to understand, creatively exploit and manage the strategic implications of disruptive change on the transportation enterprise.

The Center is dedicated to developing future leaders able to meet the future challenges posed by our nation’s rapidly changing transportation needs.