CTS has been celebrating its 30th anniversary this year with a look back at significant milestones. One of our goals for the anniversary was to show how research progresses over time to lead to new knowledge.

In February we shared videos that trace the path of progress in two of our key research areas: traffic operations and pavement design. Today, at our 28th Annual Transportation Research Conference, we debuted a video about another important research topic: accessibility metrics.

In the new video, Andrew Owen, the director of the U’s Accessibility Observatory, explains how accessibility looks at the end-to-end purpose of transportation: fulfilling people’s need to reach destinations. “The Observatory is pushing the envelope and staying ahead of research into what new types of metrics are possible,” he says.

The Observatory builds on tools and expertise developed in two previous University research studies: the Transportation and Regional Growth Study (1998–2003) and the Access to Destinations study (2004–2012).