RESEARCH SPOTLIGHTS
NEW FACULTY MEMBER DONNA CHEN
Dr. Donna Chen joined the Department of Civil &
Environmental Engineering as an assistant professor
in August. Currently, her research focuses on the
impacts of new vehicle systems and technologies
on traveler behavior and the environment. Her most
recent research utilizes a discrete-time, agent-based
model to explore the operations of a fleet of shared
autonomous electric vehicles (SAEVs) through
various charging and pricing decisions. Results
indicate that SAEVs can serve more than 95% of the
trip demand in a metropolitan area modeled after
Austin, Texas, with each SAEV replacing 3.7 to 6.8
privately owned vehicles with average wait times of
7 to 10 minutes per trip while producing an additional
7.1 to 14.0% of “empty” miles traveled for charging
and passenger pickup, under various vehicle and
charging infrastructure assumptions. Necessary fleet
size is highly sensitive to battery recharge time and
moderately sensitive to vehicle electric range, with
80-mile range electric vehicles paired with Level II
charging infrastructure requiring almost twice the
fleet size as 200-mile range electric vehicles paired
with Level III fast charging infrastructure. Financial
analysis suggests that the combined cost of charging
infrastructure, vehicle capital and maintenance,
electricity, insurance, and registration for a fleet of
SAEVs ranges from $0.42 to $0.49 per occupied
mile traveled, which implies SAEV service can be
offered at the equivalent per-mile cost of private
vehicle ownership for low mileage households, and
thus be competitive with current manually-driven
carsharing services and significantly cheaper than
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UVA CENTER FOR TRANSPORTATION STUDIES
on-demand driver-operated transportation services.
Dr. Chen’s other research interests include
transportation economics, demand modeling, and
safety, with published work on topics such as the
effect of corporate average fuel economy standards
on crash injury severity, optimally locating electric
vehicle charging stations under budget constraints,
effects of land use on household hybrid and electric
vehicle ownership, life cycle inventory impacts of
carsharing, and transportation demand modeling
improvement strategies for small-to-medium-sized
communities. Prior to joining academia, Dr. Chen
worked for HNTB Corporation as a transportation
planning engineer and has experience with roadway
design, cost estimation, and traffic operation
analyses. She holds Ph.D. (University of Texas at
Austin), ME (University of Texas at Arlington), and BS
(Texas A&M University) degrees in Civil Engineering.
APPLICATIONS
DEVELOPED THROUGH
CONNECTED VEHICLE/
INFRASTRUCTURE
UNIVERSITY
TRANSPORTATION
CENTER
CTS researchers have worked on at least
six projects for this UTC led by Virginia
Tech over the period 2012-2016. The Ph.D.
students and researchers working on these
projects have developed applications that
take advantage of communications between
vehicles and the infrastructure to improve
mobility, safety, and asset management.
In addition to traffic network simulation,
driver simulator studies, and the analysis
of CV data collected during the Ann Arbor
Safety Pilot, field testing of projects have
utilized the Northern Virginia Connected
Vehicle Testbed and the Smart Road at
Virginia Tech. Projects include Virtual
Dynamic Message Signs, Infrastructure
Safety Assessment, Infrastructure Pavement
Assessment, Transit Signal Priority,
Conne cted Vehicle Enabled Freeway Merge
Management, and a two-day Connected
Vehicle and Communications Software
Training Workshop.