The University Transportation Center Region 2 (UTRC) was recently honored with two awards from the Volvo Research Education Foundations (VREF) to become VREF Centers of Excellence (CoE) on Urban Freight. One award was given to a global team of freight experts led by the METRANS Transportation Center (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), and includes UTRC (City College of New York, Columbia University, Hofstra University, and University at Buffalo); the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR), University of Paris-Est; and the Korea Transport Institute (KOTI). The vision of this center, known as METROFREIGHT, is to become a global leader in urban freight research, education, and outreach. Though each member institution will address specific regional needs, the Center will also recognize both the local and global challenges of urban freight logistics. For UTRC, this award will support research consistent with UTRC’s focus area on “Promoting freight productivity, efficiency, and sustainability through multi-modal policy, planning, and logistics.” In addition, a key component of the VREF CofE is to include public and private industry partners in the effort to address the issues and propose solutions. Researchers will seek input from UTRC’s agency partners, including the New York City Department of Transportation.

The second CoE award was given to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to develop a Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems (CoE-SUFS), led by Dr. José Holguin-Veras, the William H. Hart Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. As part of the CoE-SUFS, an international network of leading freight transportation researchers—collectively the most widely published and cited group of freight researchers—will collaborate with multiple world cities to increase the sustainability of urban freight systems. The CoE will have as its core partners the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the cities of New York and Albany; University of Westminster and the City of London, Kyoto University and Osaka, Monash University and the City of Melbourne, and TNO/Delft University and Rotterdam. In addition, the CoE will be supported by a network of Associate Research Centers distributed all over the world, which will work together towards a transformation of urban freight systems that includes: Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg and Gothenburg, Sweden; Universidad de Los Andes and Bogota, Colombia; Universidad del Norte and Barranquilla, Colombia; UAE University and Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi; Universidad de Cantabria and Santander, Spain; Universidad Ibero-Americana and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; University of Pretoria and Pretoria, South Africa; Institute for Transport and Logistics and Bologna, Italy; Indian Institute of Technology-Madras and Chennai, India; SouthEast University and Nanjing, China; University of Toronto and Toronto, Canada; Dalian Maritime University and Dalian, China; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and Belo Horizonte, Brazil; and Universidade de São Paulo and São Paulo, Brazil.