{"199291":{"#nid":"199291","#data":{"type":"news","title":"From the Motor City to Cycle Atlanta: Dr. Kari (Edison) Watkins\u0027 Journey","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDr. Kari (Edison) Watkins (CE \u201997) thinks it might be a good thing for Americans to cool down their love affair with the automobile. Her research promises to make that separation a little less painful.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cA lot of people think of public transportation as a stinky old bus that you have to wait for,\u201d says Watkins, an assistant professor of civil engineering whose work has focused on collective transit, alternative transportation, and real-time user information software.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022But if the service respects me, by being a nice, frequent, on-time vehicle, people change their attitude.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWatkins has some impressive science to back up her claim, much of which she and her research group will present at the Transportation Research Board\u2019s (TRB) annual meeting in Washington, DC., Jan. 13 -18, 2013. Altogether, she will present findings from four research projects, each focusing on some aspect of multi-modal transportation planning and the use of technology in transportation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHer interest in the subject runs deep.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen I was 16 \u2013 and dying to drive like everyone else my age,\u201d says the Detroit native, the daughter of an auto industry worker. \u201cBut then I went to Germany as an exchange student, and, for a whole year, I wasn\u2019t able to drive. What I found was I could get around to any place I needed to get to because the connections between buses and trains were seamless. I experienced greater freedom as 16-year-old in Germany than I would have in the United States.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn graduate school Watkins translated this revelation into an academic pursuit, collaborating with a colleague to create a computer app called \u201cOneBusAway\u201d (OBA) that allowed riders to know, in real-time, when the next bus is due to arrive. Over a three-year period, OBA was scooped up by more than 100,000 transit users in the Greater Puget Sound area.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe is currently working with her Georgia Tech graduate students to develop a similar app for Atlanta.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhat we found in Washington was interesting. In situations where people are waiting for a bus or a train, we find that they perceive themselves to be waiting for about twice as long as they actually are. So if a bus is late 10 or 15 minutes, they\u2019ll perceive it to be about a half-hour,\u201d she said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cBut when they had this app, they were able to see how long they were actually waiting. Their perception of the wait-time dipped. And they began sharing that information with others who were also waiting.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWatkins thinks more people will take advantage of available public transportation if they do not perceive it to be a protracted waiting game.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cA problem that plagues the transit industry is wait time, something you don\u2019t have when you drive a car,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you are standing around on a corner, waiting for a bus and you don\u2019t know exactly when it\u2019s going to come, you can\u2019t make a decision about doing something else. That\u2019s frustrating.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA survey that Watkins conducted three years after implementing the OneBusAway app in Washington backed up this hypothesis: results revealed \u201csignificant positive shifts in satisfaction with transit, perceptions of safety, and ridership frequency as a result of the increased use of real-time arrival information.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut even this high-tech tool has its limits. In a paper Watkins will present at the TRB, she and co-author, Dr. Alan Borning, will explore how rider perception of the margin of error affects user satisfaction with real-time transportation-reporting tools like OneBusAway.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen she lived in Washington, Watkins was happy to use the OBA technology to commute to her job and to navigate the city with her two children in tow. Daily trips became opportunities to engage her children in discussions about what they saw outside.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen she moved to Atlanta, she had to adjust her routine \u2013 and develop another app.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIn cities that are relatively spread out, like Atlanta, collective transportation options can\u2019t handle all of the demand, \u201cWatkins explains. \u201cAlternative forms of transport, like cycling, need to be a part of the mix.\u201c\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the fall of 2012, she and her Georgia Tech colleague, Dr. Christopher Le Dantec, developed a smart phone app, CycleAtlanta, that tracks cycling routes in Atlanta. Cyclists love it because it allows them to share information about good routes, average trip times, and safety issues throughout the city. They\u2019re not the only fans.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe city can use the information we collect from this app to make future decisions about where infrastructure is needed to create bike-friendly routes throughout Atlanta,\u201d Watkins said. \u201cAnd this can, eventually, lead to more riders on public transportation. After all, bikes can take you to the bus station, and the train station.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EA 1997 graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. Kari (Edison) Watkins holds a master\u2019s degree in civil engineering from the University of Connecticut and a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Washington. In addition to authoring dozens of articles in the field of transportation, she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2012 CUTC Wootan Award for Best Dissertation in Transportation Policy and Planning, the USDOT Eisenhower Scholarship, and the Women\u2019s Transportation Seminar Puget Sound Chapter Helene Overly Scholarship. In December of 2012, she was recognized by the National Academy of Engineering\u2019s Frontiers of Engineering program with an alumni spotlight.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ECycle Atlanta app works with the City of Atlanta to track and improve bike routes throughout the city.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Cycle Atlanta app works with the City of Atlanta to track and improve bike routes throughout the city."}],"uid":"27469","created_gmt":"2013-03-13 17:42:12","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:13:51","author":"Kristen Bailey","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2013-01-10T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2013-01-10T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"161641":{"id":"161641","type":"image","title":"Cycle Atlanta Photo 5","body":null,"created":"1449178908","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:41:48","changed":"1475894796","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:46:36","alt":"Cycle Atlanta Photo 5","file":{"fid":"195434","name":"cycleatlanta-005.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/cycleatlanta-005_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/cycleatlanta-005_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":449586,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/cycleatlanta-005_0.jpg?itok=-mb0x9Fl"}},"161621":{"id":"161621","type":"image","title":"Cycle Atlanta Photo 3","body":null,"created":"1449178908","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:41:48","changed":"1475894796","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:46:36","alt":"Cycle Atlanta Photo 3","file":{"fid":"195432","name":"cycleatlanta-003.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/cycleatlanta-003_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/cycleatlanta-003_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2258588,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/cycleatlanta-003_0.jpg?itok=24-R3mbp"}},"152851":{"id":"152851","type":"image","title":"Dr. Kari Edison Watkins","body":null,"created":"1449178848","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:40:48","changed":"1475894787","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:46:27","alt":"Dr. Kari Edison Watkins","file":{"fid":"195226","name":"kari-watkins-2.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kari-watkins-2_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kari-watkins-2_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":269093,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/kari-watkins-2_0.jpg?itok=xlZNkx04"}}},"media_ids":["161641","161621","152851"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/cycleatlanta.org\/","title":"Cycle Atlanta"},{"url":"http:\/\/ce.gatech.edu\/","title":"School of Civil and Environmental Engineering"}],"groups":[{"id":"1253","name":"School of Civil and Envrionmental Engineering"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"181","name":"alternative transportation"},{"id":"4776","name":"civil and environmental engineering"},{"id":"46191","name":"Cycle Atlanta"},{"id":"479","name":"Green Buzz"},{"id":"61421","name":"Kari Watkins"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:kathleen.moore@ce.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EKathleen Moore\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECivil and Environmental Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}