UI Wants To Shift Into High Gear Transportation Research Center Hopes To Lure Federal Dollars
The financial horsepower driving a University of Idaho transportation research center could double if Congress gives a federal highway bill the green light.
UI’s Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies is slated to receive $1.2 million more annually if Congress reauthorizes the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act this year.
“Idaho is not the largest state in the country, but Idaho trains a lot of transportation engineers, so our students need to have access to the best engineers and technologies,” center Director Michael Kyte said Thursday.
Kyte will testify Saturday along with several state and local lawmakers, highway users and planners at a Senate Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing in Coeur d’Alene.
Gov. Phil Batt and Jane Garvey, acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, also will attend the hearing, chaired by Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho.
“I expect our witnesses will offer compelling examples of what needs to be improved, what the future needs are and what kind of planning and research is being done at places like INEEL (the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory) and the University of Idaho,” Kempthorne said.
The UI facility is one of four national centers established by the 1991 transportation bill, which governs the collection and distribution of federal gasoline taxes. There also are 14 regional centers and seven institutions with the similar aim of developing transportation technologies.
In Moscow, approximately 25 students from different disciplines are involved in the center’s research. Engineering students built and raced a hybrid electric car that meets federal zero-emission requirements. Computer sciences students are developing software to be used to design highways more efficiently. Agriculture students have put more than 60,000 miles on a pickup that runs on 100 percent rapeseed biodiesel, an alternative fuel with fewer pollutants than fossil fuels.
The center exists on a $1.2 million combination of state money, competitive grants and federal government research grants.
Appropriations in the proposed bill would pump $6 million more into the center over five years.
“If it doesn’t happen, we still will continue to do the things we are doing,” Kyte said. “But if it does happen, it will allow us to be more efficient in meeting the state’s, region’s and nation’s transportation technology needs.”
An average of $1.73 in highway funding is returned to the state for every $1 Idahoans pay in federal gasoline taxes. Since 1992, $709.5 million in highway funds has been returned to Idaho for highways, mass transportation, research and recreational trail programs.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: HEARING The hearing will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday in North Idaho College’s Boswell Auditorium.