My efforts in teaching, research, and service all focus on improving critical analysis and decision making processes to optimize the use of, and investment in, transportation infrastructure. My motivation lies in knowing that there are finite resources available and transportation engineers have an obligation to society to maximize the benefits derived from these resources. In addition, it is rewarding to see your ideas implemented – resulting in improvement to people’s daily travel. To date, much of my research has focused on innovative tolling strategies to maximize the use of existing infrastructure. As a byproduct of this research I have investigated traveler’s true values of travel time savings and reliability plus their behavioral change due to changes in travel cost.

Recent efforts have focused on a better understanding of traveler choices that appear irrational. For example, paying to use express lanes when those lanes are slower than the toll free lanes. This has lead to a much better understanding of travel behavior that incorporates psychology and behavioral economics.

Brief Bio:

Dr. Mark Burris is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University and a Research Engineer with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. His main area of interest is traveler behavior in response to pricing, particularly congestion (or value) pricing. He has served in an evaluation and monitoring role for managed/express lane projects around the country. He has also led many studies and surveys on how travelers will react to innovative tolling strategies and the costs and benefits associated with those projects. He recently completed a 6 year term as chair of TRB’s transportation economics committee.

His research has provided a better understanding of traveler behavior in response to tolls and helped to improve our ability to predict this reaction. Due to his experience in this area he was asked to serve on the NCHRP panel overseeing a research project on “Estimating Toll Road Demand and Revenue” and was invited by the FHWA to attend an “Expert Forum on Road Pricing and Modeling”. Prior to joining Texas A&M in August 2001, he was a senior research associate at the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) in Tampa, Florida.

Education:

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of South Florida, 2001.

Master of Science in Engineering, University of New Brunswick, 1995.

Bachelor of Engineering, Civil Engineering Co-op Program, Technical University of Nova Scotia, 1993.