If You Build It, They Will Come: Lessons learned in my 20 years of travel behavior research

The Sehlin Lecture
Kari Edison Watkins
Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of California at Davis 

ABSTRACT
Traffic crashes are the #1 cause of death from age 1 to 24. Forty-two percent 42% of adults in the US are obese and risk increases 6% with every additional hour spent commuting. Transportation accounts for 29% of total US Greenhouse Gas Emissions. The way we travel creates many societal problems, and yet our system has been designed the same way for generations. Decades of research has shown that how we use our physical roadway space is key to enabling active and shared public transportation to overcome these transportation issues. In this talk, Kari Watkins discusses what drives people’s willingness to bike and to use transit and how we can design cities to improve safety, health, and sustainability.  

SPEAKER
Kari Watkins is an Associate Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Davis where her research and teaching interests focus on the use of technology and public space to encourage active and public transportation modes. She was previously the Frederick Law Olmsted Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, where she served as the Director of the Transit-SCORE University Transportation Center from 2020 to 2023. Prior to her doctoral studies, Watkins worked for a decade as a senior transportation engineer. In line with this professional experience, she prides herself on the translation of research to practice. She directs the new USDOT-funded Center for Emissions Reduction, Resiliency, and Climate Equity in Transportation.