More than 225 people attended the third METRANS National Urban Freight (NUF) Conference October 21-23 in Long Beach at the Hotel Maya. The conference brought together researchers and practitioners from North America, Europe, and Asia to examine the impacts of goods movement and international trade in metropolitan areas.
“The NUF Conference focuses on the urban aspects of goods movement, a major research area for METRANS,” said Thomas O’Brien, METRANS Associate Director for Long Beach Programs and Director of Research for CSULB’s Center for International Trade and Transportation. “It is the only conference devoted to freight issues in metropolitan areas, and it draws individuals from throughout the U.S. and abroad.”
In addition, there were sessions that highlighted METRANS’ new comparative research collaboration on major ports and regions and discussions on freight and livability issues. A special panel of industry experts provided attendees with valuable insight into the way that industry uses freight-related research coming out of universities. Other sessions covered environmental issues and mitigation, new modeling and simulation methods, and operational strategies for increasing efficiency of goods movement systems.
The METRANS Transportation Center is a US DOT University Transportation Center (UTC). Established in 1998 through the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), METRANS is a joint partnership of the University of Southern California and California State University, Long Beach. Under the UTC program, federal funding requires a dollar-for-dollar match with non-federal funds. The California State Department of Transportation (Caltrans) provides the full non-federal match to METRANS.
