About UTC and UCCONNECT
The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), enacted on July 6, 2012, authorized up to $72.5 million per year from Federal FY2013-2014 funds for grants to establish and operate up to 35 University Transportation Centers (UTCs) throughout the United States. Under MAP-21, all of these UTC grants were competitively selected during 2013. UCCONNECT was awarded the Region 9 UTC grant during that call and has since started its activities in the areas of Education, Research, and Workforce Development.
History
In 1987, the U.S. Department of Transportation established the University Transportation Centers Program to operate transportation centers in 10 Federal regions. Additional centers were named in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991 and in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) in 1998. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act ( SAFETEA-LU) , enacted in 2005 was the most recent federal legislation supporting UTCs. SAFETEA-LU authorized up to $76.7 million per year from Federal FY2005-2009 funds for grants to establish and operate up to 60 University Transportation Centers (UTCs) throughout the United States.
The UTCs conduct research that directly supports the priorities of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to promote the safe, efficient and environmentally sound movement of good and people. UTCs work with regional, state, local and tribal transportation agencies to help find solutions to challenges that directly impact their communities and affect the efficiency of the nation’s transportation system.
UCCONNECT's predecessor, the University of California Transportation Center (UCTC) successfully competed to be the Region 9 transportation center more than 20 years ago when the UTC program was first established and it successfully competed for Region IX UTC designation four times since then, until 2012. After winning the 2013 UTC grant, UCCONNECT is now poised to follow that line of work with a sharpened focus on Economic Competitiveness in Transportation.
A list of other active UTC centers can be found here.