Penn State's Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute has been awarded a $3.5 million grant from the U. S. Department of Transportation as part of its leadership role in the Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation Center (MAUTC).
MAUTC has been the federally designated University Transportation Center (UTC) for Region 3 since the inception of the UTC program in 1988. Region 3 encompasses Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
MAUTC resides at the Larson Institute, a multidisciplinary research unit within Penn State's College of Engineering. The grant carries the center's work forward into 2014. The University of Maryland, Morgan State University, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia University are also part of the center.
Penn State and the partnering universities will use the grant to focus on transportation systems operation and management, working on the needs of Mid-Atlantic states in the areas of safety, state of good repair and environmental sustainability.
The Larson Institute is also part of a nine-university National Transit Research Consortium led by the Mineta Institute at San Jose State University that will be one of two national university transit research consortia. This grant application to the USDOT was supported by U.S. senators Bob Casey and Pat Toomey, and U.S. representatives Jason Altmire, Bill Shuster and Glenn Thompson.