Concurrent #1B: Rural Mobility Innovations: No Critical MaaS

Dr. Aultman-Hall's research has focused on innovative travel data collection. She has recently focused on long distance intercity travel but remains committed to work in bicycle transportation, electric vehicle adoption and system resiliency especially as it relates to planning for climate adaptation. In 2014, Dr. Aultman-Hall was selected by the UVM Graduate Student Senate as Outstanding Faculty Advisor. Dr. Aultman-Hall enjoys a wide range of teaching duties at UVM including first year design, the third year introduction to transportation engineering and several interdisciplinary graduate sustainable transportation systems classes.

Dr. Aultman-Hall is active with the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies including chairing a task force planning the 2018 National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS) Conference, membership on the Travel Behavior and Values Committee, and chairing the National Transportation Data Committee. She recently founded a new TRB sub-committee on long distance and inter-city travel. At UVM, Dr. Aultman-Hall has recently served on the executive of the Faculty Senate and the committee overseeing the new system of administrative unit review. She is currently a member of the steering committee for review of the university's new budget model.

Dr. Caroline Rodier is the Associate Director of the Urban Land Use and Transportation Center at the University of California, Davis. Her major areas of research include transportation and environmental planning and policy analysis. Caroline has extensive experience applying land use and transportation models to explore both their promise and limits to inform public investment, planning, and policy decisions. At the University of California, Davis, she managed the development activity-based microsimulation models for the State of California and the San Joaquin Valley. She currently applies these models to investigate demand management policy synergisms, performance measurement, and policy effects on inter-regional and commercial vehicle travel. Previously, as a Senior Research at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, she designed and implemented research evaluation programs for transit and truck smart parking systems, shared-use low-speed modes, and automated speed enforcement systems. She currently serves at the Chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies Committee. Caroline holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and an M.S. in Community Development from the University of California, Davis and a B.A. in U.S. History from Barnard College, Columbia University.

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Sam Purington, MBA Clarkson, has demonstrated his leadership skills, first in the private sector and now for the past 10 years as Executive Director of the Volunteer Transportation Center, Inc. 

During the past few years, when NY State centralized Medicaid transportation from the counties to the NYS Department of Health, Sam was able to communicate the effectiveness and economy of a well-run system that utilizes volunteers driving their own cars to bring patients to medical appointments. As a result, the Department of Health now sees this approach as worthy of expansion into other parts of the state, and the VTC program has expanded into 7 Counties in NY in addition to volunteer operations throughout New Hampshire and also piloting the model in the rural areas surrounding Modesto, California.  

The VTC has established a regional Mobility Management department in Upstate NY and a Software Development department in San Diego, California, to not only solve barriers to care through volunteer transportation but also utilize any form of available transportation to serve the community. Ultimately, this best leverages our in-depth knowledge of the transportation industry as VTC offers an innovative approach to coordinating transportation.  

During his tenure at the VTC, the number of miles driven by volunteers has grown from 2 million to 6.6 million miles annually and the corps of drivers is now about 350. Benefiting from this growth are not only the people being transported to health care destinations (over 166,000 completed one-way trips for 2019), but also the volunteer drivers. Most are retired or unemployed, and the reimbursement for expenses allows them to sustain their own transportation. Approximately $5.4 million yearly is added to the economy in staff salaries and mileage reimbursements.