Research

The Transportation Research and Visualization Lab is a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the research, training, and education of human interaction with transportation infrastructure through the use of immersive virtual simulation methodologies.

Grant Street is an important connector between northern and downtown Buffalo, and is made up of small-scale, owner-occupied, mixed-use development in a historically underserved community. Many of the residents in surrounding neighborhoods rely on walking, bicycling, electric scooters or public transportation to travel, and the current vehicle-centric design of Grant Street limits their ability to do so.

GObike Buffalo promotes active mobility options – like bicycling and walking – develops trails and greenways and implements complete streets in Western New York. TRAVL and GObike Buffalo are developing alternative roadway designs to provide multimodal transportation infrastructure and reconnect the Grant Street community with the rest of the city. TRAVL is developing multiple roadway design alternatives within immersive virtual environments and engaging the community to participate in pedestrian and bicyclist virtual reality studies to evaluate roadway user safety, behavior and preference to make the most impactful and informed decisions for implementation. TRAVL is also demonstrating and communicating these alternatives and working to educate the community on proper use of new infrastructure in public meetings.