Transportation

MIT's transportation group has provided leadership in the field of transportation research for many years by emphasizing an interdisciplinary systems approach incorporating engineering, urban planning, transport system management and public policy. We are now applying this interdisciplinary approach to the concept of sustainable transportation to address the critical issues confronting the world today.

The scope of our research has broadened from a focus on the operation of existing systems to include consideration of the interactions of transportation infrastructure and operation, urban spatial structure and land use, economic growth, resource and energy use, and environmental impacts at various spatial and temporal scales. These include issues of public health and environmental impact; the loss of livability of urban areas; the uneven distribution of benefits and costs of transportation projects among different geopolitical areas, social groups and generations; and the consequences of climate change.

Our goal is to contribute to the conceptualization and realization of a system in which people can readily move and effectively transport goods while facilitating economic growth and reducing environmental impacts to sustainable levels. Our research agenda encompasses the following areas.

Representative Research Areas

• Emission standards: Assessing various greenhouse gas production scenarios is fundamental to understanding what is truly sustainable as well as what level of irreversible damage has already occurred and therefore needs to be mitigated.
• New technologies: Significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption will require major transformations in vehicle and fuel technology. But vehicle use will also need to be transformed through the exploitation of information technologies, computing and communication capabilities. This involves collecting real-time data on traffic flow, noise, air pollution levels, etc., and using this information for regulation and individual user decisions.
• Transportation modes and regional planning: The control of congestion and environmental impacts requires radical changes in transportation mode choice and land use. The challenge is to inform and provide incentives to individuals so that they make choices that are consistent with overall sustainability goals-in purchasing an automobile, for example, or choosing a house.
• Equity: The transportation field generates very large external benefits and costs.  How can one capture a reasonable portion of the external benefits to finance the large investments required, and how can one equitably compensate people for the financial costs and environmental impacts of transportation systems?
• Infrastructure renewal: Addressing the problems of an aging transportation infrastructure at both the national and international level will require the development of effective techniques for financing, construction, rehabilitation and maintenance.

Research Projects

Researchers

Many of our current research projects fall within the previous narrower scope of transportation systems, but we anticipate the beginning of new projects dealing with sustainable transportation in the very near future. To read about current research projects, please visit the research websites of our faculty or visit Research Projects.