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Exhibit D - Research Project Requirement: PDF Link
Principal Investigator: Venktesh Pandey (NCAT)
Project Partners: North Carolina A&T State University (NCAT)
Research Project Funding: $140, 000 (Federal: $70,000;Non-Federal: $70,000)
Project Status: Active
Project Start and End Date: Jan 1, 2026 to Dec 31, 2026
Project Summary: This project develops a deployable, data-driven toolkit to help rural transit agencies evaluate and plan microtransit and other flexible service models. Current accessibility tools are designed or evaluated primarily for urban contexts, leaving rural regions without suitable methods to quantify access gaps, simulate service alternatives, or identify suppressed travel demand. Using case studies in Rockingham County (NC), Hall County (GA), and Baldwin County (AL), the project integrates parcel-level geospatial analysis, community surveys, fleet-based wait-time modeling, and open-source tools (such as r5py and fleetpy) into a unified computational pipeline. Agencies will be able to simulate tiered service models such as fixed-route, flexible microtransit, and configurations incorporating near-market autonomous shuttles, and test trade-offs in service coverage, wait times, and costs. Deliverables include an open-source evaluation pipeline, a latent demand identification framework, county-level simulation reports, and an interactive dashboard. The project emphasizes usability and direct deployment, supporting local transit providers with evidence-based insights tailored to their region.
Acknowledgement: Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), University Transportation Centers Program, through the Center for Regional and Rural Connected Communities (CR2C2) under Grant No. 69A3552348304.