Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2010
Volume 55, Number 2
Monday–Friday, March 15–19, 2010; Portland, Oregon
Session H8: Opportunities for Research and Employment in Transporation Science |
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Brian Schwartz, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York Room: Portland Ballroom 255 |
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
H8.00001: The Science of Transportation Analysis and Simulation Invited Speaker: Transportation Science focuses on methods developed to model and analyze the interaction between human behavior and transportation systems. From the human behavioral, or demand, perspective, we are interested in how person and households organize their activities across space and time, with travel viewed as an enabling activity. We have a particular interest in how to model the range of responses to public policy and transportation system changes, which leads to the consideration of both short- and long-term decision-making, interpersonal dependencies, and non-transportation-related opportunities and constraints, including household budgets, land use systems and economic systems. This has led to the development of complex structural econometric modeling systems as well as agent-based simulations. From the transportation systems, or supply, perspective we are interested in the level of service provide by transportation facilities, be it auto, transit or multi-modal systems. This has led to the development of network models and equilibrium concepts as well as hybrid simulation systems based on concepts borrowed from physics, such as fluid flow models, and cellular automata-type models. In this presentation, we review a representative sample of these methods and their use in transportation planning and public policy analysis. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
H8.00002: The Physics of Traffic Congestion and Road Pricing in Transportation Planning Invited Speaker: This presentation develops congestion theory and congestion pricing theory from its micro- foundations, the interaction of two or more vehicles. Using game theory, with a two- player game it is shown that the emergence of congestion depends on the players' relative valuations of early arrival, late arrival, and journey delay. Congestion pricing can be used as a cooperation mechanism to minimize total costs (if returned to the players). The analysis is then extended to the case of the three- player game, which illustrates congestion as a negative externality imposed on players who do not themselves contribute to it. A multi-agent model of travelers competing to utilize a roadway in time and space is presented. To realize the spillover effect among travelers, N-player games are constructed in which the strategy set includes N+1 strategies. We solve the N-player game (for N = 7) and find Nash equilibria if they exist. This model is compared to the bottleneck model. The results of numerical simulation show that the two models yield identical results in terms of lowest total costs and marginal costs when a social optimum exists. Moving from temporal dynamics to spatial complexity, using consistent agent- based techniques, we model the decision-making processes of users and infrastructure owner/operators to explore the welfare consequence of price competition, capacity choice, and product differentiation on congested transportation networks. Component models include: (1) An agent-based travel demand model wherein each traveler has learning capabilities and unique characteristics (e.g. value of time); (2) Econometric facility provision cost models; and (3) Representations of road authorities making pricing and capacity decisions. Different from small-network equilibrium models in prior literature, this agent- based model is applicable to pricing and investment analyses on large complex networks. The subsequent economic analysis focuses on the source, evolution, measurement, and impact of product differentiation with heterogeneous users on a mixed ownership network (with tolled and untolled roads). Two types of product differentiation in the presence of toll roads, path differentiation and space differentiation, are defined and measured for a base case and several variants with different types of price and capacity competition and with various degrees of user heterogeneity. The findings favor a fixed-rate road pricing policy compared to complete pricing freedom on toll roads. It is also shown that the relationship between net social benefit and user heterogeneity is not monotonic on a complex network with toll roads. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
H8.00003: The Changing Science of Urban Transportation Planning Invited Speaker: The last half of the 20th Century was the age of the automobile, and the development of bigger and faster roads defined urban planning for more than 50 years. During this period, transportation planners developed sophisticated behavior models to help predict future travel patterns in an attempt to keep pace with ever-growing congestion and public demand for more roads. By the 1990s, however, it was clear that eliminating congestion with new road capacity was an unattainable outcome, and had unintended effects that were never considered when the automobile era first emerged. Today, public expectations are rapidly evolving beyond ``building our way out'' of congestion, and toward more complex definitions of desired outcomes in transportation planning. In this new century, planners must improve behavior models to predict not only the travel patterns of the future, but also the subsequent environmental, social and public health effects associated with growth and changes in travel behavior, and provide alternative transportation solutions that respond to these broader outcomes. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
H8.00004: Trends in Transportation Sciences and How to Get a Job in the Industry Invited Speaker: Fifty years after the transportation engineering and planning industry began, the skill set of the prototypical professional has shifted radically. At its origins, transportation sciences were purposed to plan and construct a national infrastructure of highway facilities. A typical professional in those days was a civil engineer that narrowed their expertise to roadway design, construction and maintenance. Now, the focus of the profession is much more diverse, encompassing all modes of transport in both rural and urban contexts, and it plays a key role in economic vitality, livability and the environment. This presentation introduces three current trends and discusses their potential influence on the industry and the communities that they serve. First, now that the federal interstate system is largely built, there is great interest in better understanding how the system is really used in metropolitan areas, and how to get better value out of it. This helps professionals to better manage the regional system and its users. Second, the movement towards achieving more sustainable urban planning and design will require better empirical models about why people choose to walk, bike, or drive and how they are influenced by accessibility and land uses. These tools will measure trade-offs in public infrastructure, safety, health and energy consumption. Finally, there is a clear trend for putting transportation data in the public's hands to help them better use and evaluate the systems that are integral to their daily living. Responding to these trends will require new and deeper skills for the transportation professional. [Preview Abstract] |
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