Randall Guensler

Biography

Randall Guensler is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After working for the California Air Resources Board for seven years, and completing his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of California at Davis, Dr. Guensler joined Georgia Tech in 1994. During his years with the State of California, Dr. Guensler worked for four years in Compliance Assistance and for three years in the Executive Office, evaluating the design and implementation of transportation control measures by regional air quality management agencies. Since arriving at Georgia Tech, Dr. Guensler’s main research focus has been the development of new monitoring and modeling tools to assess the air quality impacts of transportation policies.

Dr. Guensler was the Chairman of the Transportation Research Board committee on Transportation and Air Quality from 1997 to 2002. From 1995 to 2001, Dr. Guensler served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mobile Source Technical Advisory Subcommittee. Over the past ten years, he has served on various National Academy of Sciences committees and panels charged with the assessment of vehicle emissions impacts and identification of research needs.

Dr. Guensler is the director of Commute Atlanta, a $2.3 million joint value pricing initiative sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and Georgia Department of Transportation. Commute Atlanta includes the collection and analysis of second-by-second vehicle speed, position, and engine operating data from 470 vehicles in representative Atlanta households. The researchers have monitored more than 1.4 million vehicle trips (more than 350,000 vehicle-miles per month). In 2005, the Commute Atlanta households began participating in road pricing experiments (cent/mile pricing, as well as real-time congestion pricing). Dr. Guensler’s research team is assessing consumer response to these pricing mechanisms. A secondary focus of the research is the enhancement of monitoring technologies and services to support future transportation planning, safety, and operations policy initiatives. Development of tools for data management, data analysis, and privacy protection became major research activities. Secondary research has also included analysis of speeding, journey to work route choice, trip chaining, activity-based demand, household tripmaking variability, household and vehicle range of travel, long-distance travel, freeway operations, engine load, start and soak distributions, transit bus operations, etc.

Research Interests

• Transportation Planning
• Vehicle Activity Monitoring
• Air Quality Modeling
• Environmental Impact Assessment
• Environmental Policy Analysis

Education

• Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of California at Davis, 1993.
• M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Davis, 1989.
• B.S., Individualized Engineering, University of California at Davis, 1985.