Month: October 2017

On Writing Tools

| David Levinson

I have been book-creating too much recently. I have used a number of tools to create these books. The tools below have all been used at various points for Future of Access, Spontaneous Access, the forthcoming Elements of Access, and the in-progress A Political Economy of Access.

MS Word – This is a terrible piece of software for writing and laying out books.

I don’t like MS Word and have issued a ukase against it.

Pros:

  • Everyone else in the world uses it, so it reduces time in migrating text from platform 1 to platform 2.
  • Track changes can be useful and doesn’t always crash.
  • It can be used to create proper figure and table captions.

Cons:

  • Consistent styles between words, paragraphs, sections chapters. Styles just proliferate, I can’t find a mode that doesn’t limit style proliferation automatically.
  • The ability to easily drag and drop sections and chapters. The text is continuous. Dealing with subsections is a pain.
  • Stability lacks, still.

Scrivener – This is a terrible piece of software for writing and laying out books.

I used this when initially setting up the books from blog posts, but eventually migrated out.

Pros:

  • It organizes books into Chapters and Sections, which is useful for reorganizing things without cutting and pasting. Its Storyboarding is the best feature.
  • It creates ePubs that can be uploaded to iBooks and Kindle, though I never got this far.

Cons:

  • It doesn’t keep styles consistent between chapters. The book is stylistically a mess, and anytime I bring text in from a new place, I have to fix the styles as well.
  • Footnoting/endnoting are not great.
  • Referencing is a mess.
  • Dealing with Figures and Tables is also not good.
  • Dealing with multiple authors (sharing files over DropBox) was a problem and led to version conflicts. Some of this was likely the fault of co-authors who don’t use DropBox carefully, but Scrivener seems not designed for this application.

Pages by Apple – This is a terrible piece of software for writing and laying out books.

Pros:

  • It’s a simple WYSIWYG writing tool.
  • It allows creation of  footnotes/endnotes.

Cons:

  • Consistent styles between words, paragraphs, sections, and  chapters are hard to achieve.
  • The ability to easily drag and drop sections and chapters.
  • Referencing is a mess.
  • It does not create proper figure captions. You are supposed to use a Text Box and attach it to the figure.
  • Each figure needs to be appropriately sized for ePub, it doesn’t do this intelligently.

iBooks Author by Apple – This is a terrible piece of software for writing and laying out books.

The ePub version of Spontaneous Access was published in this. Later I ported End of Traffic over from Pages because it is easier to reorganize with, and I wanted more consistency with the LaTeX version. I am using it not in the way it was intended to create iBooks, but instead the feature that creates ePubs.

Pros:

  • It creates ePubs that can be uploaded to iBooks and Kindle.
  • It also organizes books into Chapters and Sections, which is useful for reorganizing things without cutting and pasting.
  • It keeps styles consistent between chapters.

Cons:

  • It doesn’t create proper footnotes (it uses pop-ups instead, which is good on iBooks, terrible for Kindle),
  • It doesn’t create proper figure captions, though it is better than Pages in that it has some italic text below the figure. The Gallery feature is better in this regard.
  • Referencing is a mess.
  • It loses internal hyperlinks when cutting and pasting. Now I understand breaking links when moving if the thing linked to is no longer there, but when the two named things are both moved, the link should be regenerated, as it would be when moving an HTML or LaTeX file. In short the named link should be retained, not an index to that link which can then be lost. This is especially pertinent as the document may need to be rebuilt after a crash.
  • In addition to missing features, it is crash-prone. This kills just about everything. I have attempted to port Elements of Access, but get crashes for some reason. I assume there is a problem in the inputs (but somehow it worked before), but it doesn’t tell me what they are. In my limited time on earth, I will not spend more time debugging this document.

LaTeX – This is a terrible piece of software for writing and laying out books.

Pros:

  • It allows the author to organize books into Chapters and Sections, through use of \includes.
  • It keeps styles consistent between words, paragraphs, sections, and chapters.
  • It does footnotes well enough, though the raw text becomes a mess to look at, as the footnotes are not separate objects but part of the stream of text.
  • Referencing via BibDesk is excellent and allows standardization (aside from capitalization of proper names, which still needs customization). The .bib references can come straight from Google Scholar with a simple cut and paste.
  • The end product looks pretty good as PDF or paper. I really like the general look of the Tufte-Latex style.
  • It stores text in plain-text files, so it is robust to software evolution.
  • What you see is what you mean.

Cons:

  • Creating ePubs. ePubs from PDF look terrible.
  • Globally standardizing objects like figures and tables. Each can vary if the author is not careful, there are not systematic styles
  • It requires documents to be compiled, so you cannot immediately see your changes in a WYSIWYG manner. (Overleaf does this sort-of, but is laggy).
  • It drives the author to thinking like a programmer instead of getting out of the way, but The Overleaf cloud version reduces the pain points somewhat, but bogs down for long documents. Tracking down wayward commands or characters wastes time.
  • The learning curve is exceptionally steep

 

The problem is not writing text per se, it is combining text with images in an elegant way. Writing a book without images would be relatively straight-forward in most of these tools.

In short, my recommendation is to not undertake the creation of books until tools get better. Civilization can wait.

To be fair, I have not tested the Adobe products like InDesign. They look hard to learn (and I have learned LaTeX and program computers), are pricey, and proprietary.

Interview with Evan Ellis

| David Levinson

Interview with Evan Ellis, 9th grader at Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, Texas:

 

Hi Mr. Levinson,
Thank you for helping out! My questions are composed below:

  • What do you see transportation looking like in a hundred years? Will cars have been replaced by other technologies, or will they have just evolved?

Let’s just say 100 years is a long time. At some point, if civilization continues to progress and the world doesn’t get a major setback (disease, AI, war, solar flares, asteroids, or whatever), we should see personal flying vehicles. The difficulties have been in control (most people aren’t pilots), cost to build (these have been expensive), and energy intensiveness (they use a lot of fuel). However the progress in manufacturing, automation and control, and batteries or equivalents over a century should be enough to make these common place. Now surface transport is still likely to be useful for most trips, but for longer trips personal aviation (flying cars for lack of a better catchphrase) should be more widely used than today, when general aviation is the exclusive domain of people with a lot of resources.

  • Are there any companies in particular that you might admire or agree with what they’re doing? Why do you support them?

There are some companies that are doing interesting work, but I try not to be a fanboy. Now companies doing work in electrification and automation are moving in the  right direction, but I don’t know who will be the winners. 10 years ago, the dominant cell phone handset makers were Nokia and RiM.

  • What is the ideal situation for city planning that would have the least traffic, pollution, and travel times? How might we get there?

The ideal city for one mode of technology is not ideal when the technology changes, and the ideal for some purposes is not ideal for others. There can only be one New York, for instance, because in a country the size of the US, there are only a small set of industries for whom the benefits of being in New York (close interaction with other firms, especially in finance, advertising, fashion, media, and a few others), while for other industries the costs (higher land costs, higher wages, more transport costs) don’t outweigh the benefits.

  • When do you see autopilot finally being implemented in almost every car? Will their be any market for conventional driving after that?

At the level of today’s Tesla AutoPilot, (or Cadillac SuperCruise)  it should be standard in new cars by 2025. It will take a couple of decades for almost all the existing cars to be retired. Conventional driving will eventually be prohibited (say 2040) on public roads at most times.

  • Many consumers say they are still nervous about trusting a self driving car with their lives. What is your response to them? Do you too feel worried about the safety of these cars?

The safety of AutoPilot is on par with humans now, it will get better while humans will get worse. If they aren’t safer, they won’t be permitted by regulators.

  • Have you heard about the Hyperloop project? If so, do you see it playing a role in future commutes? Is their anything that we can learn from it?

Yes, No, No.

The only benefit of Hyperloop is exciting students about transport, but the idea itself (whatever it is, the definition keeps changing) doesn’t scale well.

People have been talking about maglev for a long-time, there are a few test tracks, it has not proven itself better than conventional High-speed rail. People have been talking about evacuated tube transport for a long time. There have always been problems (maintaining the vacuum, what happens when you loose vacuum) and the costs of construction could never be justified by demand. Now maybe there will be a set of technological breakthroughs, I doubt it. We have now written 3 editions of “The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport” and have not mentioned Hyperloop at all. [Editors note, it is mentioned once in the most recent edition as an identifier of something Elon Musk has done.]

  • What are some ways an urban planner can work to alleviate traffic?

Designing cities for people, not for cars, will enable people to achieve their daily goals without a car. This is primarily through good (implemented) land use plans that put people near jobs and other activities, and within reach of a transit network that gets them to destinations.

  • What are the most realistic solutions to transportation? How can we work to achieve this?

Someone (maybe a planner) should implement road pricing. This would charge drivers for the full social costs, including the congestion they impose on others, the pollution from their tailpipe, and the risk of crashes they impose on others. The charge needs to be salient, that is drivers need to think that every additional minute they are traveling is costing money, like a taxi-meter in a taxicab.

This is the simplest thing we can do for urban transport to get towards more rational travel patterns. We can start with pricing for Electric Vehicles, which don’t pay gas taxes, and phase it in over time.

Providing safe networks for bike transportation, including exclusive and protected bikelanes on all major streets is also really important to get more people willing to travel by bike, which can work for a large number of trips.

Improving conditions for pedestrians is also important. Pedestrians are second-class citizens in most cities, even places like Manhattan. Many more places should be car-free zones, as in urban Europe.

  • How do you see city transportation evolving to fit our ever growing population?

I think in core cities, walking and biking (and e-bikes) will become more significant, and driving less significant. Most people in the US will continue to live in suburbs and rely on the car for decades to come, but cities, which had peaked in population in 1950 and declined for the next half-century, have started growing again, so there is some promise that the people who live there will demand a better environment.

  • Are their ways to incentivize travelers to leave their cars and use alternative forms of transport?

Road pricing (see above). The alternatives need to be better in most places as well, so the transition needs to be staged, it can’t be all at once.

  • How do you get to work every day? Why do you use this method? How long is your commute?

I walk (23 minutes from home to my office). I like walking, it builds in physical activity, it is cheaper, it is calmer, it lets me think. I walked when I was in Minnesota as well (30 minutes, uphill in the snow, in both directions).

On the Replacement Bus (or Hot, Jerky, and Crowded).

| David Levinson

(Kiss Me) On the Bus, by the Replacements, is one of the great transit songs about public displays of affection. Today I was on the Replacement Bus for the T1 train, which was closed for works between Strathfield and Epping. This is a train route I take with my kids weekly to their Saturday class, we board the train in Redfern at 12:56 and arrive at 1:25 or so in Eastwood. Add  about 10 minutes on either side for access/egress costs.

Historic Sydney Bus. Ours was newer, but less well ventilated.
Historic Sydney Bus. Ours was newer, but less well ventilated.

We took the train from Redfern to Strathfield. The signs were excellent at both stations. At Strathfield we were easily routed to the replacement T1 bus with stops at West Ryde, Eastwood, and all stops to Hornsby. So this was in one sense more direct than a train, which had additional stops. In another, more important sense, it was not.

The bus runs in traffic along Concord Road [Map] from Strathfield to Ryde. Concord Road is heavily congested most of the time, aligning with one of too few bridges across the Parramatta River, the great tributary of Sydney Harbour. With the trains out-of-service, traffic is probably worse than normal.

More to the point, there were several other issues besides it being slow:

  1. The temperature was 24C (about 80F), with a humidity of about 100%.
  2. The aircon was not working on the bus (or rather it worked fine for the driver, not for the passengers.
  3. The windows were all closed. Someone eventually opened the emergency access on the ceiling to vent the bus.
  4. The bus was pretty crowded. I counted about 50 passengers, all the seats were taken and there were a lot of standees. It was hard to get an accurate count because that required me to face backwards. I have seen more crowded conditions, but obviously I would tend to avoid them if I can.
  5. The traffic was not merely slow, the bus driver was a lurcher, moving the bus to gain a couple of meters and than braking hard, as if maximizing physical jerk was a performance measure. That no one fainted or was actively vomiting I consider a minor miracle Perhaps the song should have been titled (Sick Me on the Buss)
  6. We made the strategic error of sitting facing backwards.

The Replacement Bus arrived at Eastwood station at about 2:05 pm, so 45 minutes slower total. (To be clear, this is significantly faster than scheduled local bus services between these destinations, as we avoided local stops.) Given we caught the bus almost immediately from Strathfield, that 45 minute extra travel time is compared to 15 minutes of train travel from Strathfield to Eastwood, meaning the effective bus speed (and for that matter car speed, since the bus was in traffic almost the entire time) would be about 3x slower.

Why would anyone drive when they can take the train in Sydney?

Now of course the train cannot serve every origin-destination pair, but it serves many of them, and people self-organize to take advantage of the services.

I don’t have any brilliant suggestions for what to do when the tracks are closed for works. Ideally that could be minimized, conducted automatically at night by robots, or some such. However given that they need to be shut down at least sometimes, this is where dynamic lane control might be useful. Ours was far from the only Replacement Bus, there was a veritable convoy. A dynamic bus-only lane would have sped the many thousands of people using buses on Concord Road, stuck in traffic behind many more vehicles carrying many fewer people. Similarly it might have been possible to reverse lanes from one direction to another in places. I realize this is a temporary condition, and trains will likely be back in service next Monday. On the other hand, there might be other conditions where these controls could be useful. Futher, I don’t think the buses had balanced loads, judging from an eyeball observation through the windows. Two buses made the same trip at the same time. Our was full, the following bus was not. This might have been managed better at Strathfield.

The Transportist: October 2017

| David Levinson

Welcome to the October 2017 issue of The Transportist. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter.

Announcements

We are pleased to announce the print publication of our latest book The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape

This is the Third Edition of The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport. It has been updated and reorganized, with new chapters on Connectivity, Demassification, Dematerialization, and Delivery, and new data where available. It is also available in a gorgeous PDF version, in addition to the updated ePub.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Lost Joy of Automobility
What Happened to Traffic?
1. Climbing Mount Auto: The Rise of Cars in the 20th Century [PREVIEW]
2. Less Traffic is a Good Thing
3. What Killed America’s Traffic?
4. Pace of Change
5. Electrification
6. Automation
7. Connectivity
8. MaaS Transport
9. Demassification
10. Dematerialization
11. Delivery
12. Transit
13. Up and Out: The Future of Travel Demand and Where We Live
14. Reduce, Reuse, (re)Cycle
15. Pricing
16. Redeeming Transport
A. The Traditional Transport Engineer
B. Traffic, What Is It?
C. Forecasting
D. Access, What Is It?
E. (Why) Is Transport Underfunded?

Jobs

 Transportist Posts

Media Appearances

Transport News

Transit

Roads

AVs

CVs

EVs / Energy / Environment

HPVs / Bikes

SVs / Taxis

Canals/Shipping/Maritime/Ferries

Land Use

Equity / Justice

Safety

Fantasy

Retail​ / Delivery

UAVs, Aviation and Space

Trains

Science

Culture

On Apple and Bureaucracy – Apple doesn’t think people move

| David Levinson

As faithful readers know, I have recently relocated from the US to Australia, and now my stuff, including my iMacs, arrived in their container. I would like to use them. Sadly, American power and Australian power are different voltages, different currents, different shapes of plugs. My MacBook works fine with an adaptor, surely, you say, one can go to the Apple Store / Town Center and pick up a replacement power cable. How hard could this be? I think the only difference from the computer’s perspective is the cable, not the country of origin, as the device itself has a transformer.

I went to Apple Store at Broadway, near campus. I learned after about 15 minutes of very polite back and forth that Apple does not sell replacement power cables, they are considered service parts. However if I had my serial numbers they might give them to me. Unfortunately, I did not memorize my iMac serial numbers, I barely remember my phone number. This is offloaded to the computer, which is of course not plugged in, as it is in Australia with American power cables. They could not look it up for some reason.  Also, I did not carry my iMac with me, which might have made this go faster, if my arms tired. Find my iPhone doesn’t tell you the serial number (also it doesn’t use TouchID).  The computer is out of AppleCare warranty. They said I should contact support online.

I had a lovely 20 minute text chat with Apple Support which in the end resulted in them saying they can’t do anything since they are in the US (though I logged in from Australia, my computers are American). But they very politely connected me with local technical support via telephone.

I repeated the story. After a 20 minute conversation with the first local technical support person, I had to be kicked upstairs to Herbert who informed me he was from Singapore (I am not sure where the first person had been located). After another 25 minutes, he was able to generate an exception and said the cables would be sent to my local address in a few business days.

So the good news is they could eventually resolve my problem. The bad news is it took 4 people and more than an hour of time (both mine and theirs) for something seemingly so simple and inexpensive.

So in answer to the question “how hard could this be”, the answer is very. The reason is that Apple, like so many large companies, is functionally a bureaucracy without empowered staff. They have systematically lost a can-do spirit, and almost everyone, while well-trained in customer mollification, lacks authority to do things that are exceptional. There is no doubt a reason bureaucracies exist. As the famous quote from the The Caine Mutiny says “The Navy is a system designed by geniuses to be executed by idiots. If you find yourself in the Navy and you are not an idiot, you can only function well by pretending to be one.” The US military is the extreme example. However Apple’s growth is clearly driving it in that direction too.

I realize the simpler solution would be to just get a off-the-shelf non-Apple US-AU power adaptor, but when I started the process, I didn’t think it would be so difficult. But, I am an edge case.

Post-script 2017-10-28. 1 Powercable arrived in the mail on Friday. I had clearly asked for 2. It did however work fine.

The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape

| David Levinson
The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape. By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.
The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape. By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.

We are pleased to announce the print publication of our latest book The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape

This is the Third Edition of The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport. It has been updated and reorganized, with new chapters on Connectivity, Demassification, Dematerialization, and Delivery, and new data where available. It is also available in a gorgeous PDF version, in addition to the updated ePub.

Table of Contents

  • Preface: The Lost Joy of Automobility
  • What Happened to Traffic?
  • 1. Climbing Mount Auto: The Rise of Cars in the 20th Century [PREVIEW]
  • 2. Less Traffic is a Good Thing
  • 3. What Killed America’s Traffic?
  • 4. Pace of Change
  • 5. Electrification
  • 6. Automation
  • 7. Connectivity
  • 8. MaaS Transport
  • 9. Demassification
  • 10. Dematerialization
  • 11. Delivery
  • 12. Transit
  • 13. Up and Out: The Future of Travel Demand and Where We Live
  • 14. Reduce, Reuse, (re)Cycle
  • 15. Pricing
  • 16. Redeeming Transport
  • A. The Traditional Transport Engineer
  • B. Traffic, What Is It?
  • C. Forecasting
  • D. Access, What Is It?
  • E. (Why) Is Transport Underfunded?

In this book we propose the welcome notion that traffic—as most people have come to know it—is ending and why. We depict a transport context in most communities where new opportunities are created by the collision of slow, medium, and fast moving technologies. We then unfold a framework to think more broadly about concepts of transport and accessibility. In this framework, transport systems are being augmented with a range of information technologies; it invokes fresh flows of goods and information. We discuss large scale trends that are revolutionizing the transport landscape: electrification, automation, the sharing economy, and big data. Based on all of this, the final chapters offer strategies to shape the future of infrastructure needs and priorities.

We aim for a quick read—and to encourage you and other readers to think outside your immediate realm. By the end of this book (today, if you so choose) you will appreciate the changing times in which you live, what is new about transport discussions, and how definitions of accessibility are being reframed. You will be provided with new ways of thinking about the planning of transport infrastructure that coincide with this changing landscape. Even if transport is not your bailiwick, we like to think there is something interesting for you here. We aim to share new perspectives and reframe debates about the future of transport in cities.

End of Traffic and the Future of Access | Spontaneous Access: Reflexions on Designing Cities and Transport | Elements of Access: Transport Planning for Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners | A Political Economy of Access

 

* The printer, Blurb, has periodic sales. Notably through October 24, 2017 25% off with code BKX2.

On Stationless Bike Sharing in Sydney

| David Levinson

Since I have moved to Sydney, which is to say, very recently, Sydney has seen the emergence of stationless bike sharing. I saw this in China in May, and now it is here. Technology deploys very quickly these days. I signed up for the first entrant, Reddy Go quickly, and gave them a deposit, but didn’t get around to trying to use it til last week. I also registered for oBike this weekend, after getting a 10 free rider voucher (Voucher Code SHARE) for signing up.

Not Reddy, No Go.

A broken Reddy-Go
A broken Reddy-Go

I said “trying to use it” as I was not successful. My first attempt was during the week. I had a breakfast appointment on Kensington Street and was in Chippendale, a nice residential area. It seemed like this would be a good opportunity to use the service without running into too much vehicle traffic, which makes long distance cycling very dangerous. Now biking in Sydney (NSW) is officially discouraged through helmet laws and lack of facilities (and shrinking at that) and heavy fines, though it is officially encouraged by words on plans. I wouldn’t let my kids ride in traffic, as the car drivers are more aggressive than in the US. But Chippendale is mostly traffic calmed.

I pulled out the app, scanned the bar code, and was told via the app, that sorry, this bike cannot be used. I don’t know why. I retried it a couple of times and walked to my destination.

Yesterday, my oldest son saw a Reddy Go, in Alexandria Park,  and tried to climb it and ride, but it was locked. Fortunately I had the app. I tried again just to see if it worked, since the kids had been bikeless for a few months.  It would not unlock. I subsequently noticed it was vandalized, and the spokes on the back wheel were bent out of shape (not accidentally). I reported this via the app.

O, a Bike.

A dirty OBike
A dirty oBike

Well, I signed up for oBike as well, having obtained a coupon card. In Alexandria Park, I saw an oBike, maybe I will try that. It was filthy, as if someone had taken it dirt-bike riding. Unlikely. I saw another oBike. Someone had piled dirt (I hope it was dirt) on the seat. Pass. Finally I saw a clean oBike, tried to unlock that. It actually worked. oReka.

My oldest son put on the helmet (I hope no lice) (probably violating terms of service), and rode around the park. Then my younger son tried it, but his legs were too short. I tried it. I adjusted the seat (which was easy, as these are fairly new bikes, not rusted out yet), put on the helmet, and rode. It rode fine, a bit heavy, with no obvious gears (but a bell, where the gears should be), so it tired my legs more than it should have. After a few minutes I ended the ride. Now how to lock it. I eventually discovered this is a physical mechanism. I put the helmet back somewhere (this is not at all clear where it should go). And left it. I hope it was properly checked out. I have not received a nasty-gram, so I assume I am fine.

Vandalism.

A pile of dirt on an OBike Seat
A pile of dirt on an oBike Seat

So this vandalism thing is a problem. In Minnesota, the bike shares were all station-based, so everything was tidy, and it seemed vandalism was a minimum. Perhaps it is something in the Australian (or Sydney) character that leads to the additional vandalism compared with Minnesota? Perhaps it is just because they are randomly placed and not station-based.  There have been news stories lately about bikes in the rivers. Perhaps Sydney-siders or Australians just dislike bikes, the way they dislike immigration by boat. Despite the massive number of shared bikes in China, it didn’t seem to be much of an issue there. Perhaps because of higher utilization, or it is more of a a biking culture, or perhaps because the communist Chinese are more respectful of property than capitalist Australia?

Next Steps

Finally, a successful ride
Finally, a successful ride

The next steps are probably mostly steps rather than rides. I may ask for a refund from Reddy Go, still debating whether to give them another chance. I will test oBike a few more times, but the protected bike lane network is Sydney is not terribly useful to me. (The walk to work wouldn’t be a bad ride, iffy in a few places, mostly around Redfern where there are many pedestrians, but it’s not a bad walk either).

Positions in Robotics at University of Sydney

| David Levinson

In addition to the post-doc I advertised yesterday, two other positions might be of interest:

(1) Research Fellow in Robotics and Intelligent Systems

Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering
Faculty of Engineering & Information Technologies
Reference No. 1632/0817

(2)  Lecturer / Senior Lecturer in Robotics and Intelligent Systems

Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering
Faculty of Engineering & Information Technologies
Reference No. 1633/0817

Both positions include “Transport and Logistics” as a potential application area.

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Transport Networks. Closing Date 11:30pm 19 November 2017  

| David Levinson

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Transport Networks

School of Civil Engineering
Faculty of Engineering and IT
Reference no. 779/0417A

  • Join an organisation that encourages progressive thinking
  • Be valued for your exceptional knowledge and experience in Transport Networks
  • Full-time fixed-term for 3 years, remuneration package: $106k  (which includes base salary, leave loading and up to 17% superannuation)


About the opportunity
Applications are invited for the appointment of one Postdoctoral Research Associate (Level A) in the School of Civil Engineering, within the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney. The position will support the research and leadership of School of Civil Engineering in the newly launched Transport Engineering program.

The successful applicant(s) will help build the new research group headed by Professor David Levinson to further the analysis of Transport Networks, understand the relationships between Transport Networks and Land Use, and consider the implications of changing Transport Technologies on optimal Network Structure.

Applicants should hold a PhD in civil engineering or a related field. They should be able to demonstrate high quality research in the area of transport networks, geo-spatial analysis, and econometrics. Demonstrated ability to publish research outcomes in high-quality international journals is also essential. Since the position will require frequent liaising with government and industry, applicants should demonstrate strong communication skills.

About you
The University values courage and creativity; openness and engagement; inclusion and diversity; and respect and integrity. As such, we see the importance in recruiting talent aligned to these values in the pursuit of research excellence. We are looking for a Postdoctoral Research Associate who:

  • has a PhD in civil engineering, or related fields,
  • conducts high quality research in the area of transport networks, geo-spatial analysis and econometrics,
  • demonstrates ability to publish research outcomes in high quality international journals, and
  • possesses strong communication skills as will be required to liaise with government and industry stakeholders.


About us
Since our inception 160 years ago, the University of Sydney has led to improve the world around us. We believe in education for all and that effective leadership makes lives better. These same values are reflected in our approach to diversity and inclusion, and underpin our long-term strategy for growth. We’re Australias first university and have an outstanding global reputation for academic and research excellence. Across 9 campuses, we employ over 7600 academic and non-academic staff who support over 60,000 students.

We are undergoing significant transformative change which brings opportunity for innovation, progressive thinking, breaking with convention, challenging the status quo, and improving the world around us.

 

The University of Sydney encourages part-time and flexible working arrangements, which will be considered for this role.

For more information about the position, or if you require reasonable adjustment or support filling out this application, Monika Browning, Lead Talent Acquisition Consultant, on +61 2 8627 6562 or monika.browning@sydney.edu.au

If you would like to learn more, please refer to the Candidate Information Pack for the position description and further details.

To be considered for this position it is essential that you address the online selection criteria. For guidance on how to apply visit: How to apply for an advertised position.


Closing date: 11:30pm 19 November 2017

The University of Sydney is committed to diversity and social inclusion. Applications from people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds; equity target groups including women, people with disabilities, people who identify as LGBTIQ; and people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, are encouraged.

If we think your skills are needed in other areas of the University, we will be sure to contact you about other opportunities.

The University reserves the right not to proceed with any appointment.

Selection Criteria

Candidate Information Pack

To Apply, Go Here.