Tuesday, April 21, 2026
noon–1:30 p.m. CDT, Virtual
Understanding how infrastructure materials perform over time is critical to making informed design, construction, and maintenance decisions. This webinar will feature two recent University of Minnesota research efforts that examined the real-world performance of commonly used transportation infrastructure materials.
Continue reading CTS Webinar: Infrastructure Materials and PerformanceThursday, April 23, 2026, 2:00–3:30 pm, Virtual
Transportation policy and energy markets are evolving rapidly as states explore strategies to reduce emissions and support new fuel technologies. This webinar will examine two current policy areas shaping transportation systems: electric vehicle infrastructure development and low-carbon fuel standards.
Beth Kallestad from MnDOT’s Office of Sustainability and Public Health will provide an overview of Minnesota’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. Her presentation will discuss how the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and NEVI funding have shaped the development of EV infrastructure in Minnesota, the program’s current status, and what to expect in the next phase of implementation.
Monica Haynes and Neil Wilmot from the University of Minnesota Duluth will highlight a 2025 study that examined the relationship between low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) programs and gasoline prices. They will explore how LCFS programs in other states have affected retail fuel costs and discuss the challenges of predicting the economic impacts of a potential LCFS program in Minnesota.
Through these presentations, webinar attendees will gain insights into how emerging transportation energy policies influence infrastructure planning and economic outcomes.
Beth Kallestad is the sustainable transportation planning director with MnDOT’s Office of Sustainability and Public Health. She has a wide range of experience in the environmental field, including in the private, government, academic, and nonprofit sectors. This experience has given her a strong background in the management and implementation of a variety of sustainability planning efforts, public and stakeholder engagement, effective communications, trust building, and collaboration. Beth joined MnDOT in June 2022 and has focused her work on the development and implementation of the EV infrastructure program with federal NEVI funding and supporting MnDOT’s internal fleet transition.
Monica Haynes has served as the director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Minnesota Duluth since 2014, supervising a small team of student researchers and a writer/editor. During her time in this role, the department has completed more than 90 funded research projects on a wide range of topics related to current events, proposed development opportunities, and economic trends. She also serves as adjunct faculty in the Labovitz School of Business and Economics (LSBE), as chair of LSBE’s outreach committee, and on the Duluth Workforce Development Board.
Neil A. Wilmot is an associate professor and head of the Department of Economics and Health Care Management, Labovitz School of Business and Economics, at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is also an associate of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. Wilmot’s research interests include energy economics and energy commodities, encompassing a wide range of topics including oil and gas markets, renewable energy integration, and energy pricing mechanisms. He has published numerous articles in leading energy economics journals, including Energy Economics, Resource and Energy Economics, and The Energy Journal.
This webinar is free, but registration is required. Once you have registered, you will receive an email confirmation with a Zoom link. The link should not be shared with others; it is unique to you.
Transitioning to EV Fleets: Best Practices and a Decision Tool | MnDOT Digital Library
Wednesday, April 22, 2026, 12:00–1:30 pm, Virtual
Bats frequently use bridges and culverts as roosting habitat, creating challenges for transportation agencies working to balance infrastructure needs with environmental compliance. Traditional visual surveys can be limited, especially when bats are hidden within structures or present only intermittently.
This webinar will highlight ongoing research exploring the use of DNA analysis from bat feces (guano) as a noninvasive method to identify bat species occupying culverts and bridges. Speaker Ron Moen will discuss how this approach works, share early findings from field applications, and explore how the results could support more efficient environmental review, project planning, and species protection efforts for transportation agencies.
It is being held in conjunction with a CTS Environment and Energy in Transportation Council meeting.
Ron Moen is an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a senior research associate with the Natural Resources Research Institute’s Center for Water and the Environment. His research focuses on mammalian ecology, including habitat use, movement patterns, and predator–prey interactions, often using GPS radiotelemetry. His current work includes studies on moose, Canada lynx, American marten, wood turtles, bats, and other wildlife, as well as projects related to climate change impacts and carnivore monitoring in the Upper Midwest.
This webinar is free, but registration is required. Once you have registered, you will receive an email confirmation with a Zoom link. The link should not be shared with others; it is unique to you.
Species From Feces: A New Tool to Identify Bats in Culverts and on Bridges
The Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota has called for speakers. If you have recently completed or participated in an innovative transportation-related research, implementation, or engagement activity, consider sharing your work in a presentation at the 2026 CTS Transportation Research Conference!
Continue reading Call for Presentations: 2026 CTS Transportation Research ConferenceWednesday, April 1, 2026, 9:00–10:30 am CST, Virtual
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly influencing how transportation and infrastructure projects are planned, delivered, and communicated. This Education and Engagement Council webinar builds on CTS’s earlier AI discussion by highlighting how AI is being used in practice, both nationally and internationally.
Speakers from outside Minnesota will share real-world examples of AI integration in infrastructure and construction contexts. Nicole Moon, Strategic Communications Highways and Roads Market Sector Lead at HDR, will discuss how AI is supporting transportation agencies and project teams through applied industry use.
Mr. Tomi Kotala, Project Director, City of Helsinki Public Works Department, and Mr. Pieti Marjavaara, Chief Innovation Officer, Construction Management, AINS Group, will discuss the Infrastructure Programme Helsinki, Finland. This strategic urban development initiative focused on designing and constructing a sustainable future for the city, including a massive expansion of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) network. They will demonstrate how their approach to Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and alliance models optimizes infrastructure lifecycles through fair partnership. Efficiency is driven by Knowledge Management and industrial construction via data-driven, repeatable processes. The Project-AI concept evolves situational awareness into active AI-driven support for all project members, ensuring smarter, more predictable, and value-driven outcomes.
This webinar is designed to foster shared learning and discussion around how AI is being adopted today, why organizations are investing in these tools, and what lessons transportation professionals can take from industry and international experience. It is intended for practitioners, researchers, students, and others interested in the evolving role of AI in transportation and infrastructure.
Continue reading CTS Webinar: Industry and International Perspectives on AI IntegrationReprinted from Catalyst, December 15, 2025
Across the country, transportation agencies, including the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), are working to meet ambitious targets for reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and climate emissions. To succeed, they need to understand what actually encourages households to drive less.
A recent University of Minnesota (UMN) research study aimed to answer this question. Led by Eric Lind, director of the UMN’s Accessibility Observatory, the study examined how accessibility—the opportunities reachable by different travel modes such as driving, public transit, or biking—influences a household’s VMT.
“We wanted to go beyond the typical approach of using roadway volume counts and instead examine households, because that is where VMT comes from,” Lind says. “This helps us better understand the influence of transportation and land-use systems on the travel decisions people make in their daily lives.”
Lind and his research team used Twin Cities travel behavior survey records to match households with access to opportunities on three different levels: local access (biking to jobs within 20 minutes), transit access (walking or rolling to transit to reach jobs within 10 to 40 minutes), and regional access (driving to jobs within 20 to 60 minutes). The models also accounted for important demographic factors including household income, vehicle availability, and number of workers.
The findings point to a challenging road ahead for transportation agencies working to reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that higher local and transit access does lead to lower expected VMT. However, the impact is modest: doubling local or transit access to jobs results in a VMT decrease of about 3 percent.
Conversely, higher regional auto access is the most influential factor and positively predicts higher VMT. According to the model, a modest 10 percent increase in regional auto access to jobs resulted in a VMT increase of roughly 4 percent.
“The challenge is that MnDOT is required to balance increasing roadway capacity with strategies that reduce VMT to the same extent,” Lind explains. “Increasing what is easily reachable by bike or transit does lead people to drive less, but these are nudges compared with the main effects of roadway expansions that have a much larger, counteracting effect on VMT.”
To meet VMT goals, the research team recommends a two-pronged approach. First, agencies must continue to invest in and increase local and transit and nonmotorized access. Second, they must critically assess any planning that increases regional auto access, as its VMT-boosting impact requires non-auto mitigation to balance it out.
These findings will provide MnDOT and other transportation agencies with a clearer understanding of the levers available to them, offering the estimates needed to calculate the true VMT impact of future infrastructure changes.
This study was sponsored by the Applied Research in Transportation (ART) Program, which addresses time-sensitive research questions in a 6- to 12-month timeframe. CTS and MnDOT contributed initial funding to launch this pilot program in 2024, with the Metropolitan Council joining in 2025. To reinforce the applied nature of the program, ART projects must directly address a current process, document, or policy need with an initial focus on sustainability in transportation and climate change impacts.
For an overview of travel behavior in the U.S. generally, see Ten years of measurement reveals evolution of destination access across America.
To see how the transportation system is performing in Minnesota, see MnDOT performance measures.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
noon–1:00 p.m. CST, VIRTUAL
Accessibility is the ease of reaching valued destinations. It can be measured for various transportation modes (auto, transit, bicycling, walking), to different types of destinations (home, work, school, shopping), at different times of day. Accessibility measures can be used to answer questions such as: How many jobs can I reach within a 30-minute transit trip from my home in Evanston, Illinois?
Continue reading CTS Webinar: Reaching Opportunities Through Transportation—New Results from the National Accessibility EvaluationMonday, December 15, 2025, 12:00–1:30 pm (Virtual)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how we design, plan, and manage infrastructure systems. In this webinar, CTS scholars Qizhi He and Seongjin Choi from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering will discuss how AI tools are beginning to influence teaching, research, and professional practice in civil engineering. Their conversation will consider how the field can adapt curriculum and training to prepare future engineers for an AI-integrated profession. They will also explore questions around quality management, professional ethics, and community-centered design in an AI-driven context.
Offering a practitioner’s perspective, Melissa Barnes will share insights from MnDOT’s ongoing AI pilot identification project. She will discuss how state agencies are evaluating opportunities and risks associated with AI implementation—and engaging and educating their staff about AI.
This webinar will highlight opportunities for collaboration between academia and practice as the transportation industry navigates the evolving impacts of AI on engineering education, quality assurance, and workforce development.
Qizhi He is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and a CTS scholar. Before joining the UMN, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Scientific Machine Learning Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His research focuses on developing hybrid physics–AI/ML computational methods for predictive modeling and the simulation of complex mechanical behavior in civil and geomaterials under extreme and multiphysics conditions. His work aims to advance next-generation, high-performance computing and digital-twin technologies that enhance infrastructure resilience and support natural hazard mitigation.
Seongjin Choi is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota and a CTS scholar. Choi was previously a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in Canada and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. His research focuses on developing machine learning and (generative) artificial intelligence models for transportation and mobility data, with the goal of enhancing both individual-level travel experiences and system-level performance.
Melissa Barnes is the Operations Division artificial intelligence program manager (mobility) at MnDOT and a licensed civil engineer with more than 21 years of experience in transportation. She has worked at MnDOT for more than 12 years, including positions in Central Office and the Metro District. Her expertise spans program delivery, traffic engineering, planning, safety, operations, project management, policy, and cross-functional leadership, and she is known for her commitment to equity and collaboration.
This webinar is free, but registration is required. Once you have registered, you will receive an email confirmation with a Zoom link. The link should not be shared with others; it is unique to you.
Visit the CTS website or contact Samantha Hahn-Douville at snhahn@umn.edu.
If you’re unable to join us for the live broadcast, a recording will be available here after the event.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m. CST
Zoom Virtual
School bus stop-arm violations by motorists pose a serious risk to children. A new University of Minnesota study investigated the existing violation reporting ecosystem, finding issues like underreporting, underenforcing, and significant workflow inefficiencies and barriers across all stakeholder groups.
To address these systemic barriers, study researchers concluded that a centralized statewide online portal is needed to streamline communication, simplify data access, and standardize reporting. They also provided near-term recommendations until this comprehensive solution can be developed.
Join this webinar to learn about the research findings and proposed short- and long-term recommendations for improving the reporting system, with the goal of making bus stops safer for children across Minnesota and beyond
Reprinted from MnLTAP News, November 17, 2025
The 2025 Salt Symposium highlighted two studies from Canada, one comparing salt applications on permeable and asphalt surfaces and another considering the impact of climate change on municipal operations. Hosted by Bolton & Menk, the August 5 Salt Symposium brought together professionals from throughout the world to share research, projects, and approaches for chloride management.
Continue reading Beyond the border: Canadian studies consider permeable pavement, climate change impacts on deicing operations
Crossroads 