David Seunglee Park, Sustainable Transportation & Infrastructure Planning; Camille Boggan; Sustainable Transportation & Infrastructure Planning; Emily Kennedy, Sustainable Transportation & Infrastructure Planning; and Kate Sutton, Transportation and Spatial Data Science; University of Pennsylvania
CM2 UTC partner institution the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) has won the ITS America’s Emerging Leaders Program Global Challenge. UPenn team members Camille Boggan, Emily Kennedy, Kate Sutton, and CM2 GRA David Seunglee Park won the America’s regional award for their inclusive mobility plan, ‘Move! Philadelphia’.
According to the team’s report, Philadelphia has long struggled with equity issues, and the inequities found within the city’s failing transportation system disproportionately burdens communities of color and low-income people. The ‘Move! Philadelphia’ model includes multiple strategies to limit private vehicle use within the city using the latest technologies and to direct diverted funds to the city’s public transit system. UPenn team members are graduate students in the Master of City Planning program, and UPenn professors and CM2 researchers Dr. Erick Guerra and Dr. Megan Ryerson acted as the team’s Faculty advisors. Congratulations to these students for this terrific achievement! Read the team’s full proposal here.
The Emerging Leaders Program strives to discover the “new age” of the transportation workforce by engaging students and developing young professionals globally to become involved in the field of mobility and transportation through competition and exposure. The Global Challenge was initially developed for the 2020 ITS World Congress in Los Angeles. Each ITS World Congress regions (Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific) are running parallel competitions to select winning teams – one team in each region. Teams were recruited to design an inclusive mobility model for an urban environment in their area. Teams from 13 universities in the United States and Canada submitted papers for the competition in the Americas. A team of 15 subject matter experts representing public, private, and academic sectors reviewed the papers and recommended three to advance to the regional finals. ITS America held the regional final, virtually, on June 8. Each team made presentations and answered questions from five judges including representatives from ITS America, U.S. Department of Transportation, HNTB Corporation, Los Angeles Department of Transportation, and the University of Florida.
Source: ITS America.
