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Media Advisory

Largest international conference on transportation to be held on campus June 24-28
 

20 June 2007

ATTENTION: Reporters and editors covering transportation research

Contact: Sarah Yang, Media Relations
(510) 643-7741 scyang@berkeley.edu


WHAT
11th World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR), the largest international conference on transportation. More than 1,000 transportation managers, policy analysts, advisers and academics from more than 40 countries are expected to attend the conference, which seeks to promote state-of-the-art research in all areas of transportation. There will be specific interest this year in research on making transportation more sustainable, efficient and socially just.

The conference is organized every three years by the WCTR Society, based in France. It is hosted this year by the University of California Transportation Center (UCTC) at UC Berkeley, and is the first U.S. site for the meeting. Session topics include the politics of transportation, featuring Frederick Salvucci, former Massachusetts secretary of transportation and a key instigator of Boston's "Big Dig" project; truck and rail safety; and airline economics, including information about competition from high-speed rail.

WHEN
Sunday, June 24 to Thursday, June 28

WHERE
Various locations on the UC Berkeley campus

WHO
Daniel McFadden, the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences and UC Berkeley professor of economics, will be the keynote speaker. He was recognized for his work on developing methods to study consumer choice behavior. His methods have been used to study travel demand, and were applied in forecasting ridership on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system before the trains went into operation. The title of McFadden's talk for the conference is "The Behavioral Science of Transportation."

The opening session includes talks by Will Kempton, director of the California Department of Transportation; Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission; and Frannie Léautier, vice president of the World Bank Institute.

DETAILS
The first World Conference on Transport Research was held in the Netherlands in 1977. "At a time when the United States is running out of funds from the gas tax, we're hoping to learn a great deal from other countries that have developed new finance mechanisms for transport systems," said Elizabeth Deakin, UCTC director and chair of the conference's organizing committee.

 

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