Dr. Gurbuz is an Assistant Research Scientist in the Research and Implementation Program at the El Paso office of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. His areas of expertise include Parking Demand/Supply, Pricing, Econometric Analysis, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and Innovative Transportation Finance. Dr. Gurbuz dissertation topic for his Ph.D. degree was “Decision Support Tools for Parking Management on University Campuses”. Although his focus was mainly on university campuses, since there had not been many studies for parking at university campuses, he had expanded his research to the extent that on and off-street parking for downtown areas and airport parking facilities.
Dr. Gurbuz has developed unique econometric models to predict parking demand and estimate permit prices. He has also worked on parking permit zoning and setting prices for each zone based on walking distance, willingness to pay, and parkers’ value of time. This effort was recognized by a Tier One University Transportation Center (UTC) called C2SMART. He developed an easy to use tool for parking officers called Smart PARKing MANagement (SPARKMAN) which estimates the parking demand, defines zones and set prices for each zone according to the data entered by the user related to his/her university. He has also introduced the Level of Service Criteria for parking based on the users’ experience, which is the parking search time.
After joining TTI, Dr. Gurbuz started working in the assessment of Transportation Reinvestment Zones (TRZ) revenue potential to fund transportation improvements along major corridors in the State of Texas. His focus on those projects have been related to developing methodologies to predict the growth rates and forecasting socio-economic indicators affected by land development.
Dr. Gurbuz holds a Master of Science degree in Construction Management and a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Gurbuz has eight years of experience in the oil-gas industry where he was responsible for the project management of construction and maintenance of gas stations.
