Center for Transportation Operations, Planning and Safety –

Our Research

The Center for Transportation Operations, Planning and Safety conducts transportation education, research, and technology-transfer activities throughout the state and region. All faculty and staff members from The University of Alabama (UA), are eligible to conduct projects in all of these service areas.

Operations

Transportation operations involve monitoring, managing, and operation of the various elements of the transportation system including the highway network, vehicular, and non-vehicular traffic to facilitate safe and efficient movement of people and goods.

Planning

Transportation and mobility planning is a forward-looking process to examine current transportation systems, design for future mobility needs, and combine all of that with the elements of budgets, goals and policies. It helps shape how a community or city grows and it can influence everything from economic development to quality of life.

Safety

Road crashes kill more than one million people around the world each year. CTOPS conducts a range of research focused on reducing the occurrence and severity of crashes. The research at CTOPS is based on a Safe Systems approach that seeks to understand the overwhelming influences of human factors within a context of how engineering, enforcement, education, and emergency response can be leveraged to eliminate crashes and mitigate their impacts on society.