CEE Faculty Profile

Kari Edison Watkins

Assistant Professor

Affinity Group: Transportation Systems Engineering

Office: SEB
Address:

790 Atlantic Dr, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355

Georgia Institute of Technology
Phone: 206-250-4415
Email: kari.watkins@ce.gatech.edu
Web: http://watkins.ce.gatech.edu
Dr. Kari Edison Watkins, P.E., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  She returned to her undergraduate alma mater to become a faculty member in 2011 after completing her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington.  Her teaching and research interests revolve around multi-modal transportation planning and the use of technology in transportation, especially as related to transit planning and operations and improved traveler information.  At the University of Washington, Dr. Watkins’ research focused on transit travel time reliability and the effects of transit traveler information.  She co-created the OneBusAway program (http://onebusaway.org/) to provide real-time next bus countdown information and other transit information tools for transit riders in greater Seattle-Tacoma.  Dr. Watkins doctorate was funded by a three-year US DOT Eisenhower Fellowship, a UW ARCS Fellowship and a UW Valle Fellowship.  Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Watkins worked for a decade as a senior transportation engineer at Wilbur Smith Associates in New Haven, Connecticut.  Her work at WSA ranged from bus rapid transit and commuter rail studies to regional transportation visions.  In line with her years in industry, Dr. Watkins’ undergraduate teaching focus is on sending top-notch engineers into the workforce through practical experience in the Senior Capstone course.

Research Interests

  • Transportation planning
  • Transit planning and operations
  • Traveler Information
  • Mode choice decision making
  • Complete streets design

Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering, University of Washington, 2011
  • Master of Science in Civil Engineering, University of Connecticut, 2003
  • Bachelor of Civil Engineering (graduated with highest honors), Georgia Institute of Technology, 1997

Honors

  1. Invited to attend the Indo-American Frontiers of Engineering by the National Academy of Engineers - 2012
  2. CUTC Wootan Award for Best Dissertation in Transportation Policy and Planning – 2012
  3. University of Washington Valle Fellowship – 2010-2011
  4. Women’s Transportation Seminar Puget Sound Chapter Helene Overly Scholarship - 2011
  5. USDOT Eisenhower Fellowship – 2007-2010
  6. University of Washington ARCS Fellowship – 2007-2010
  7. UTC Student of the Year for TransNOW – 2009
  8. ENO Foundation Leadership Conference – 2008
  9. Women’s Transportation Seminar Puget Sound Chapter Helene Overly Scholarship - 2008
  10. WSA Outstanding Contribution Award – 2000 & 2002
  11. Georgia Tech Goodloe Yancy Scholarship - 1996 & 1997
  12. Georgia Tech H & H Smitha Scholarship – 1996 & 1997
  13. Georgia Tech Society of Women Engineers Scholarship - 1995
  14. Gamma Beta Phi & Chi Epsilon Honor Societies
  15. Congress-Bundestag Scholarship – Exchange Student – 1990

Articles

  1. Watkins, Kari, Brian Ferris, Yegor Malinovskiy and Alan Borning. “Beyond Context Sensitive Solutions: Using Value Sensitive Design to Identify Needed Transit Information Tools.” Submitted for publication in the Journal of Transportation Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers.
  2. Watkins, Kari, Alan Borning, G. Scott Rutherford, Brian Ferris and Brian Gill. “Impact of Real-time Transit Information Tools on Bus Drivers.” Submitted for publication in Transportation.
  3. Watkins, Kari, Brian Ferris, Alan Borning, G. Scott Rutherford and David Layton. “Where Is My Bus? Impact of mobile real-time information on the perceived and actual wait time of transit riders.” Transportation Research Part A, Vol. 45, No. 8, pp.839-848, Oct 2011.
  4. Wu, Yao-Jan, Mark Hallenbeck, Yinhai Wang and Kari Watkins. “Evaluation of Arterial and Freeway Interaction for Determining the Feasibility of Traffic Diversion.” Journal of Transportation Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. 137, No. 8, 2011.
  5. Watkins, Kari, Brian Ferris, and G. Scott Rutherford. “Explore: An Attraction Search Tool for Transit Trip Planning.” Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 111-128, 2010.
  6. Schramm, LisaRene, Kari Watkins, and G. Scott Rutherford. “Amenities That Effect Variability of Travel Time on BRT Systems.” Transportation Research Record #2143, pp. 77-84, 2010.
  7. Ferris, Brian, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning. “Location-Aware Tools for Improving Public Transit Usability.” IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 13-19, Jan-Mar 2010.
  8. Watkins, Kari, Timothy Sorenson, and Norman Garrick. “Platform Layout for the New Britain – Hartford Busway.” Transportation Research Record # 1791, Transportation Research Board, 2002.

Proceedings

  1. Watkins, Kari, Mark Wheldon and G. Scott Rutherford. “Measurement and evaluation of transit travel time reliability”. Proceedings of Conference on Advanced Systems for Public Transport, Santiago, Chile, July 2012.
  2. Watkins, Kari, Brian Ferris, Mark Hallenbeck and Alan Borning. “Next Steps in Transit Rider Information: Development of a Webapp for Personalized Transit Service Alerts.” Proceedings of Transportation Research Board 2012 Annual Meeting.
  3. Watkins, Kari, Brian Ferris, Alan Borning, G. Scott Rutherford and David Layton. “Where Is My Bus? Impact of mobile real-time information on the perceived and actual wait time of transit riders.” Proceedings of Transportation Research Board 2012 Annual Meeting.
  4. Ferris, Brian, Kari Watkins and Alan Borning. “OneBusAway: Behavioral and Satisfaction Changes Resulting from Providing Real-Time Arrival Information for Public Transit”. Proceedings of Transportation Research Board 2011 Annual Meeting.
  5. Watkins, Kari and Brian Ferris. “Explore: An Attraction Search Tool for Transit Trip Planning.” Proceedings of Transportation Research Board 2010 Annual Meeting.
  6. Watkins, Kari and Mark Hallenbeck. “Impact of Weather on Freeway Travel Times in the Rain City.” Proceedings of Transportation Research Board 2010 Annual Meeting.
  7. Ferris, Brian, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning. “OneBusAway: Results from providing real-time arrival information for public transit.” Proceedings of Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2010 (Best paper nominee).
  8. Ferris, Brian, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning. “OneBusAway: A Transit Traveller Information System.” Proceedings of International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications and Services (MobiCase), 2009.
  9. Watkins, Kari and Mark Hallenbeck, “Reliability Measures - Which Statistics Will Actually Help Manage Our Roadways?” Proceedings of Transportation Research Forum 50th Annual Forum, 2009.
  10. Watkins, Kari, Peter Plumeau, and Michael Munson. “A New Tool for Assessing Developments: The Land Use Transportation Index.” Proceedings of Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, 2003.
  11. Watkins, Kari, “How the stigma of a Bus Rapid Transit system was overcome – The New Britain to Hartford Bus Rapid Transit Experience.” Proceedings of American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Rail Transit Conference, 2002.

Presentations

  1. Human Systems Interaction: Transit Rider Information, Blended Research @ the Library, Georgia Tech, March 2012.
  2. So, You Want to be a Transportation Engineer, ASCE, Georgia Tech, February 2012.
  3. Using Technology to Revolutionize Public Transportation. Eidgenossishe Technische Hoshschule (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, December 2011.
  4. Location-Based Services for Public Transport. ITS World Congress, Orlando, Florida, October 2011.
  5. Panelist, Social Media in Transportation, Georgia Tech Women’s Transportation Seminar, August 2011
  6. OneBusAway. USDOT University Research Technology Transfer Day, Washington, DC, April 2011.
  7. Panelist, From Here to There Community Forum, Seattle City Council, March 29, 2011
  8. Using Technology to Revolutionize Public Transportation. University of Virginia, March 14, 2011.
  9. Using Technology to Revolutionize Public Transportation. Western Michigan University, February 21, 2011.
  10. Presentation Skills 101. University of Washington, January 2010 and January 2011
  11. OneBusAway: A Suite of Transit Traveler Information Tools. ITS World Congress, Busan, Korea, October 2010.
  12. OneBusAway: Using Technology to Revolutionize Public Transportation. ARCS Foundation, April 12, 2010.
  13. Discrete Choice Modelling. University of British Columbia, , March 10, 2010
  14. Using Technology to Revolutionize Public Transportation. University of British Columbia, March 11, 2010.
  15. Using Technology to Revolutionize Public Transportation. Georgia Institute of Technology, March 1, 2010.
  16. New Methods in Transportation Planning. University of Washington, December 2, 2009
  17. A Real-world Process for Transportation Senior Design. Transportation Education Conference, June 22, 2009.
  18. Transit Travel Information. ITE Washington Section Annual Meeting, June 8, 2009.
  19. Moderator, BRT, Land Use and Ridership, American Public Transportation Association Bus & Paratransit Conference, May 6, 2009.
  20. One Bus Away: An Open-source Transit Traveler Information System. American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Bus & Paratransit Conference, May 6, 2009.
  21. Panelist, University of Washington Women in Science and Engineering 2009 Conference, February 2009.
  22. Transportation Panelist, World Usability Day 2008, Usability Professional Association of Puget Sound, November 13, 2008.
  23. Reliability Measures - Which Statistics Will Actually Help Manage Our Roadways? TransNOW Student Conference (won 2nd prize for best presentation), November 7, 2008.
  24. Presentation Skills Training. Wilbur Smith Associates, monthly from Oct 2006 – Aug 2007
  25. What's New in Bus Rapid Transit? Guest speaker, University of Connecticut, February 6, 2007.
  26. New Haven, Hartford, Springfield Commuter Rail – Operations Simulation. American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Rail Transit Conference, 2006.
  27. Moderator, ITS Moving People, ITS Connecticut 8th annual meeting, September 19, 2005.

Reports

  1. Hallenbeck, Mark, Chong Pham and Kari Watkins. Incident Response Evaluation Phase 3. Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC). 2011.
  2. Muench, S.T., Anderson, J.L., Hatfield, J.P., Koester, J.R., & Söderlund, M. et al. Greenroads Rating System v1.0. (J.L. Anderson and S.T. Muench, Eds.). Seattle, WA: University of Washington. 2010. Author of the Transit Access Credit
  3. Schimek, Paul, Kari Watkins, David Chase, Karl Smith and Stephen Gazillo. Silver Line Waterfront Bus Rapid Transit Project 2007 Evaluation. Federal Transit Administration, 2007.
  4. Schimek, Paul, Kari Watkins, David Chase, Karl Smith, Stephen Gazillo and Bethany Whitaker. Las Vegas Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) Bus Rapid Transit Project 2006 Evaluation. Federal Transit Administration, 2006.
  5. Wilbur Smith Associates. New Haven-Hartford-Springfield Commuter Rail Implementation Study: Final Report. Connecticut Department of Transportation, 2005, http://ct.gov/dot/cwp/view.asp?a=3535&q=425110.
  6. Wilbur Smith Associates. Strategies Evaluation Report: Regional Transit Development Strategies Study: Final Report. South Central Regional Council of Governments, 2005.
  7. Wilbur Smith Associates. Hartford East Bus Rapid Transit Feasibility Study: Final Report. Connecticut Department of Transportation, 2004.
  8. Wilbur Smith Associates. Griffin Busway Feasibility Study: Final Report. Capitol Region Council of Governments, 2004.
  9. Wilbur Smith Associates. Congestion Mitigation Systems Plan Vision 2020. South Western Regional Planning Agency, 2003.
  10. Wilbur Smith Associates. Final Environmental Impact Statement and Section 4(f) Evaluation, New Britain-Hartford Busway. Federal Transit Administration, 2001.
  11. Wilbur Smith Associates. I-84 West Side Access Study. Connecticut Department of Transportation, 2001.
  12. Wilbur Smith Associates. I-84 West of Waterbury Needs and Deficiencies Study. Connecticut Department of Transportation, 2001.