TEXAS A&M CIVIL ENGINEERING | engineering.tamu.edu/civil After collecting and analyzing this data, Burris and his team have begun exploring travel behavior in new and innovative ways. Partnering with a psychologist and a behavioral economist, Burris is now working to find ways to model travel behavior decisions in laboratory studies.
the traveler choose the best route – or reroute when an incident occurs. In theory, this should reduce travel times and emissions. However, if too many vehicles reroute at once it could have negative overall impacts
on travel. Their research will examine these potential impacts and strategies that combine data from connected vehicles and travel behavior to maximize potential benefits of connected vehicles.
“This real-world data has led to some very surprising findings that put my research at the forefront of this field,” said Burris. “This improves our understanding of how travelers’ value different travel options and should dramatically change how we model travel behavior. Combined, this allows transportation agencies to better predict and prepare for future travel demand.” These advances in understanding traveler behavior come at the same time great advances in automobile technology are occurring. Automated and connected vehicles will also greatly impact travel behavior. Burris has teamed with Texas A&M University Hagler Institute for Advanced Study fellow Dr. Kumares Sinha and doctoral student Arezoo Samimi to examine some of these potential impacts. They are developing a traffic simulation model of El Paso to determine the travel time and emissions impacts of having connected vehicles in the traffic stream. These vehicles will have information on travel times to their destination and can help Featured Researcher
Dr. Mark Burris Herbert D. Kelleher Professor mburris@tamu.edu 979.845.9875
ceprofs.civil.tamu.edu/mburris
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