University of Washington

Letter from the Director PacTrans focuses on using technological advances to develop data-driven, sustainable solutions for the diverse transportation needs of the Pacific Northwest. PacTrans has been in operation for over a year. Through this period, we have been working hard to set up its operational team, strategic partnerships, collaborative framework, and effective management system to ensure that all its missions in research, education, workforce development, and outreach for Region 10 can be successfully fulfilled. Solid progress has been made in building PacTrans as Region 10's research engine, applied technology showcase, workforce development base, educational leader, information center, and collaboration platform. Among the many exciting things we have accomplished, I would like to highlight three as examples. The first is the PacTrans Launching Summit in May 2012. The first big event organized by PacTrans, it attracted more than 100 participants from transportation agencies, companies, and research institutions. They offered great input and helped form an initial collaborative network on important regional transportation issues. The dialogs among collaborative partners have been continuing and will be reported at the Region 10 Transportation Conference in October 2013. The second accomplishment is the collaboration among PacTrans consortium universities and local partners. Seven multi-institutional research projects have been funded by PacTrans and all are progressing well. One project focuses on outreach, another on education, and the remaining five focus on research. All five consortium universities play active roles in both the outreach and educational projects. Each multi-institutional research project addresses one of the five U.S. DOT strategic goals. A monitoring panel that involves match fund providers and external experts has been formed for each multi-institutional project to ensure the quality and progress. The third accomplishment is the recognition of Region 10 UTC research and education. The University of Washington's Greenroads project was selected as a White House "Champion of Changes" in 2013 for its contribution to sustainable transportation. Also, several PacTrans-funded graduate students received prestigious awards from various institutions. For example, Cathy Liu's paper on high occupancy toll (HOT) lane analysis was selected as the best student paper by Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and won the 2012 Daniel B. Fambro Student Paper award. PacTrans students also hosted the 2013 National Student Steel Bridge Competition at the University of Washington, which drew more than 700 attendees. You will find more information about PacTrans activities in this annual report. Our goal is a report that is informative and useful to both internal and external readers. We also hope that it will help memorize and publicize every milestone we have reached with your great support. We welcome any suggestions and/or feedback you may have on our work and highly appreciate your continued support and care! Sincerely yours, Yinhai Wang, PhD, Professor DIRECTOR OF PACTRANS 2012-2013 Annual Report 1

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