BEFORE-AND-AFTER STUDIES

We have always offered free access to our data resources for academic researchers whose mission aligns with ours.

For before-and-after studies, we think it’s absolutely critical, and hence we’re creating the StreetLight Data for Impact Studies Fellows program to promote a data-driven understanding of the impact of infrastructure and policy decisions on greenhouse gas emissions and social equity.

APPLY HERE

Program Requirements:

We will review rolling applications to admit Fellows for before-and-after studies that explore the impact of infrastructure and policy decisions on greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts and/or social equity and access. Here are some examples:

• A travel demand model forecasted (a certain impact) as the result of an investment or policy. Now that it’s implemented, where was the model right and where was it wrong?
• Looking at a cross-section of similar policies or infrastructure (say, 500 new bike lanes or 100 Slow Streets or 20 BRTs) — what was the impact on equity, greenhouse gas emissions, speed of travel, and/or commute times, etc? Can we characterize which environments or implementations lead to better outcomes?
• What is a consistent methodology, utilizing Big Data, that the industry can adopt for before-and-after studies?
• Literature review of past before-and-after study practices and results.

Provisions:

• The top five student or nonprofit sector applicants by Sep 1st 2021 will be granted a $500 award at the outset of their project, and an additional $500 when they publish their findings in some format within 12 months. StreetLight will not have review authority over any publications. We will reserve three of these spots to applicants from underrepresented demographics in the transportation field.
• Assuming we have more than five applicants (and if some come from the for-profit or non-student researchers) all great applications will still be named Fellows, but won’t receive the award.
• All Fellows will be given training in StreetLight InSight^® and invited to a shared forum to swap ideas and ask questions. We will host quarterly virtual meetings to talk about best practices. StreetLight data scientists will participate and support these forums. We may invite other practice leaders to join these as well.
• StreetLight will help promote published research via our website and social media channels.

APPLY HERE

Please review StreetLight’s data availability — everything an academic’s heart desires may not be available and successful studies will focus on the data that is readily available. For example, our bicycle and pedestrian data only goes to 2018, and our vehicular data to 2016. Thus, studies of more recent projects will yield much better results.

Consultants and agency members are welcome to participate! However, if this is work that would have been paid for in the normal course of business, we will charge our normal fees (but still encourage you to participate in the forums).

A “publication” can be a submission to a peer-reviewed journal (we know acceptance takes a while), a conference paper, a white paper, a community presentation or something else. We just want to be able to show others what you’ve done so we can all learn as a community.