Decision-grade, reproducible evidence for transportation policy and community health

Transportation policy is already a health policy because the air we breathe along roads is shaped by what we drive and how we move. In 2026, Canada and the US’s renewed push for electric vehicles (EVs), which can also become an immediate public health opportunity.

Yet health benefits are not automatic, because “zero tailpipe” from EVs does not mean “zero exposure.” As EV uptake rises, pollution composition shifts toward non-tailpipe sources such as tire and brake wear and resuspended road dust, and net impacts become sensitive to regional context, including fleet turnover, electricity generation, industrial background emissions, and ozone chemistry. The same EV target can therefore deliver strong early gains in some places while plateauing or producing localized harms in others, often in communities already overburdened.

At Harvard-UofT, I will build a transferable, neighborhood-scale model that links explicit policy levers to exposures and premature mortality burdens under uncertainty, and I will compare strategies that emphasize new sales against those that prioritize retiring the oldest, highest-emitting vehicles first. The outputs will help agencies identify which policies become dominant levers, and where safeguards are needed so health gains are shared.

Faculty Supervisor:

Steve Easterbrook;Meredith Franklin

Student:

Partner:

Harvard University

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Toronto

Program: