Dr. Mudge is President and founder of Compass Transportation and Technology Inc. This firm specializes in the economics, finance, and policy of transportation, with an emphasis on autonomous vehicles and shared mobility. Dr, Mudge holds a Ph.D. in Regional Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree from Columbia College.
Dr. Mudge is a nationally recognized expert in the economics and finance of all modes of transportation. He has held a series of management positions as a transportation consultant. These include co-founder, President, and Chairman of the Board for Apogee Research. He also directed the transportation policy group for the Congressional Budget Office and worked in applied research at the RAND Corporation.
Dr. Mudge currently serves on TRB’s Congestion Pricing Committee, is part of the organizing panel for the ITS World Congress meetings in Montreal, Los Angeles, sites in Europe and Asia. He organizes one of the workshops for TRB’s annual Symposium on Automated Vehicles. He is a frequent speaker at conferences (TRB, AASHTO, ITS America, etc.) and has served as an expert witness in federal court and before Congressional Committees.
Past Relevant Projects: Congestion Performance Measures Under contract to the Washington State Auditor, Dr. Mudge led a team to identify ways to reduce traffic congestion in Puget Sound within five years. This work identified demand management techniques, traffic management applications, and a family of ITS and related technologies. These methods were cost effective and did not require an increase in state funding,
Automated Buses Dr. Mudge is working on the economic and business case for automated buses. He co-authored a report that describes the specific applications, including estimates of benefit-cost impacts. He is part of a team that is deploying automated technologies for a BRT line in Connecticut, improvements for a Kansas City BFRT and automation of existing buses on the Express Bus Lane (XBL) that serves the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC.
Scenarios to Help DOTs and MPOs Develop Plans for Shared Mobility and Autonomous Vehicles Dr. Mudge is part of a team that prepared alternative scenarios for FHWA that can help state and local planners assess the potential impacts for the deployment of autonomous vehicles and shared mobility. In work for the Society of Actuaries, he prepared a set of trigger points that can track the pace of technology deployment. He also prepared scenarios for Northern Virginia – these showed that new technology and new forms of shared mobility reduced traffic congestion without the need for capital intensive investments.
Economic and Financial Implications for New Technologies Dr. Mudge has prepared a series of studies of the costs and benefits of new technologies. A study published by SAFE emphasized the macro-economic implications based on past network-scale investments in transportation and technology – the Interstate Highway System and the internet provide examples. Dr. Mudge was also co-author of a report for US Treasury regarding the economic impacts of large infrastructure projects.
