Claudio Barbieri da Cunha, Professor, Department of Transportation Engineering, Polytechnic School at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil

This presentation is sponsored by ITS-Davis’ partnership with the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center.

Title

Transit Network Design (TND): An Introduction and Some Practical Aspects

Time

1:40pm - 3:00pm

Location

1605 Tilia, Room 1103, West Village

Abstract

The significant rise in the use of private cars and motorcycles for daily commuting within urban and suburban areas, particularly in developing and emerging economies, has brought forth numerous challenges. These include persistent traffic congestion, heightened GHG emissions, noise pollution, increased traffic accidents, and escalated energy consumption. Improving public transport systems and enhancing their attractiveness emerges as a practical solution to mitigate these issues. In this context, the transit network design and frequencies setting problem aims to find a set of routes and their associated frequencies, according to the users’ travel demand in an urban area, to create or revise an urban public transport system. The problem is applicable for public transportation networks, including, buses, bus rapid transit (BRT) systems and trams. When designing a transit network, different and conflicting interests must be addressed, thus, making the problem multi-objective. First, the total generalized cost for each user must be as close as possible to a minimum. This aggregate cost encompasses various components, including waiting times, in-vehicle travel duration and transfer penalties incurred due to the additional time, along with other inconveniences like walking. Second, the operator costs, intricately linked to the total fleet required, are to be minimized. In other words, reducing users’ costs usually leads to increase in operator costs, and vice versa. However, determining the most efficient operation for both users and operators, for given levels of service and cost requirements, is essential for the success of such systems. This talk aims to cover some of the main aspects of research in TND, including model formulation, solution methods, benchmark instances, results and potential research directions.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Claudio Barbieri da Cunha holds the position of full professor at the Department of Transportation Engineering within the Polytechnic School at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. His academic leadership extends to serving as the former department Head and Deputy Head. He is also the Director at the Center for Innovation in Logistic Systems (CISLOG) at USP. Currently, he is on a Fulbright Chair position at University of California Davis (Fall 2023).

Dr. Cunha earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1983, followed by his M.S. in Transportation Engineering in 1993, and his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering in 1997. His research interests span across freight and passenger transportation modeling, network design, urban logistics, and mathematical modeling applied to logistics and transportation. He has about 40 years of experience in transportation planning and logistics.