Written for our U.S. DOT grant reporting, our semi-annual progress reports share the activities and impacts of the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) research program. We also maintain the annual reports from our predecessor grant OTREC. 

In late 2016 this university research partnership, lead by Portland State University, successfully competed for five years of funding as one of five national centers in the U.S under the FAST Act. The NITC program continued its national expansion through the addition of University of Arizona and the University of Texas at Arlington. With this new grant and partners we adapted our research theme to focus on the mobility of people and goods.

On December 4, 2015, President Obama signed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act into law, making it the first federal law in over a decade to provide long-term funding for surface transportation infrastructure planning and investment. The FAST Act authorized $305 million in spending from fiscal years 2016 through 2020 for the maintenance of existing and establishment of new initiatives in research, education and workforce development, and the facilitation of technology transfer. As part of its efforts to fulfill the FAST Act federal mandate, DOT hosted a grant competition which resulted in the announcement of 32 new UTC Centers in December of 2016.