Welcome to the inaugural issue of TransportLab News. This is the periodic newsletter describing what the University of Sydney’s TransportLab group has been up to. You can follow us at Twitter or LinkedIn, or on our Website.

Who are we

TransportLab is a group of transport researchers in the Faculties of Engineering and of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney.

Academic Staff

• David Levinson (Director)
• Somwrita Sarkar (Deputy Director)
• Mohsen Ramezani
• Emily Moylan
• Jennifer Kent
• Mengying Cui

Students

• Amir Valadkhani
• Hao Wu
• Ye Li
• Bahman Lahoorpoor
• Ang Ji
• Hema Sharanya
• Sabal Sharma
• Yadi Wang

Long-term Visitors (2019)

• Valentin Beauvoir
• Manman Li
• Masaki Yuya
• Xia Zhao

Long-term Visitors (2020)

• Louise Aoustin
• Jing Chen
• …

TRB 2020

Several TransportLab members (Levinson, Moylan, Cui, Wu, Ji) will attend the Transportation Research Board Conference in Washington, DC. You may catch us at the following:

• Australia Reception (6:30-9:30pm at Vapiano H St on Monday 13th). It’s for Australians working anywhere in transport, anyone working in Australia on transport, and anyone working with either of those groups.

Monday 01:30 PM-05:30 PM Marriott Marquis, Independence Salon C (M4)

Wu, Hao, El-Geneidy, Ahmed, Stewart, Anson, Murphy, Brendan, Boisjoly, Genevieve, Niedzielski, Michał , Pereira, Rafael H.M., and Levinson, D. (2020) Access Across the Globe: Towards an International Comparison of Cumulative Opportunities	

International Cooperation Committee A0010	

Tuesday 08:00 AM-09:45 AM Marriott Marquis, Pentagon (M4)	

David Levinson, University of Sydney, presiding
Public Transportation, Planning and Forecasting	Transport Accessibility Manual Working Group AP050	

Tuesday 08:00 AM-09:45 AM Convention Center, 147B	

Lahoorpoor, Bahman and Levinson, D. (2020) Catchment if you can: The effect of station entrance and exit locations on accessibility. Journal of Transport Geography. 82, 102556 

Event 1397 Designed to Attract: Transit Access and Inclusion AP045

Tuesday 08:00 AM-09:45 AM Convention Center, Hall A Poster-board Location Number: A106	

Davis, Blake, Ji, Ang,  Liu, Bichen, and Levinson, D. (2020) Moving Array Traffic Probes.	

Event 1408 Advances in Traffic Monitoring ABJ35

Tuesday 01:30 PM- 03:15 PM Convention Center, 146B	

Cui, Mengying and Levinson, D. (2019) Primal and Dual Access. Geographical Analysis.  

Event 1519 Transportation Accessibility Planning ADB50

Tuesday 06:00 PM- 07:30 PM Convention Center, Hall A Poster-board Location Number: A111, A112, A113

Wu, Hao, Somwrita Sarkar, and Levinson, D. (2019) How Transit Scaling Shapes Cities. Nature Sustainability doi:10.1038/s41893-019-0427-7

Cui, Mengying and Levinson, D. (2019) Measuring Full Cost Accessibility by Auto. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 12(1) 649-672.

Rayaprolu, Hema and Levinson, D. (2020) What’s Access Worth? A Hedonic Pricing Approach to Valuing Cities.

Event 1653
Poster Session on Transportation and Land Development ADD30

Tuesday 06:00 PM-07:30 PM Convention Center, Hall APoster-board Location Number: B344	

Ji, Ang and Levinson, D. (2020) A Review of Game Theory Models of Lane Changing.	

Event 1656 Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics, Part 3 (Part 1, Session 1654; Part 2, Session 1655; Part 4, Session 1760; Part 5, Session 1761) AHB45

Wednesday 08:00 AM-09:45 AM Convention Center, Hall A Poster-board Location Number: A138	

Cui, Mengying, and Levinson, D. (2020) Shortest paths, travel costs, and traffic.	

Event 1688 Travel Behavior Mega Poster Session ADB10

Wednesday
08:00 AM-09:45 AM Convention Center, Hall A Poster-board Location Number: B390	

Zhao, Xia, Cui, Mengying, and Levinson, D. (2020) Temporal Variations in Daily Activity Networks Using Smartcard Data	

Event 1694 Public Transportation Demand: Explorations of Traveler Response and Traveler Characteristics AP025

Wednesday 10:15 AM- 12:00 PM Convention Center, Hall A	

Valentin Beauvoir, Emily Moylan (2020) Bike Share System Reliability: The Distribution of Delay Caused by Bike Unavailability 20-05298	

Event 1736 Micromobility Poster Session: Planning, Policy, and User Behavior for Shared Bikes and Scooters

Wednesday 02:30 PM- 04:00 PM Convention Center, 150B	

Lahoorpoor, Bahman and Levinson, D. (2020) Trains, trams, and terraces: population growth and network expansion in Sydney: 1861-1931.	

Event 1740 Research in Urban Transportation History: From Sydney Trams to Los Angeles Ballot Box Planning to Canadian Street Cars ABG50

Wednesday 02:30 PM- 04:00 PM Convention Center, Hall A Poster-board Location Number: A114

Lahoorpoor, Bahman and Levinson, D.  (2020) The Transit Travel Time Machine: Comparing Three Different Tools for Travel Time Estimation.	

Event 1740 Road Scholars: New Research in Travel Time, Speed, and Reliability Data

Teach

In 2020 we launch the new, interdisciplinary Master of Transport, co-taught with ITLS in the Business School, Architecture, Design, and Planning, and Civil Engineering.

• Master of Transport

The Civil Engineering group also delivers the

• Undergraduate Transport Engineering Major

We supervise PhD students as well.

Engage

Co-Sponsored Events

• TransportCamp Sydney 2019 (22 Feb 2019) hosted at University of Sydney. Look for the next TransportCamp in late July 2020.
• TRANSW (Transport Research Association of New South Wales) (with ITLS, UNSW, UTS) December 2019
• Australian Research Summit on Connected and Automated Vehicles (With UNSW). November 2019. Sponsor: The Office of the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer
• The Transit Transformation Australia Needs. November 2019. with Prosper Australia

Popular Publications

We have published several articles in The Conversation this past year:

• Levinson Why Australian road rules should be rewritten to put walking first
• Sarkar, Levinson, and Wu How close is Sydney to the vision of creating three 30-minute cities?
• Kent Working the system: 3 ways planners can defy the odds to promote good health for all of us
• Kent Three changes in how we live could derail the dream of the 30-minute city
• Levinson Why Australian road rules should be rewritten to put walking first
• Levinson and Lahoorpoor How to increase train use by up to 35% with one simple trick
• Levinson and Wu Access across Australia: mapping 30-minute cities, how do our capitals compare?

and in Foreground:

• Levinson and Wu New infrastructure performance measures for Australian cities questioned
• Levinson and King It’s the (political) economy, stupid: when it comes to urban transport, we’re doing it wrong

Journals

TransportLab sponsors the peer-reviewed, open access journal Transport Findings. The journal is unique in that it aims to publish short-form research

• Transport Findings

Seminars

TransportLab sponsors the Transport Practice Seminar at the University of Sydney for our staff and students.

• Stephen Greaves, ITLS
• Rachel Kohan, Arup
• Graham McCabe, Urbis
• Tom Van Vuren, Mott MacDonald
• Kasun Wijayaratna, UTS

Discover

Books

• Levinson, David M. and David A. King (2019) The 30-Minute City: Designing for Access. Network Design Lab
• Kent, Jennifer L. and Susan Thompson (2019) Planning Australia’s Healthy Built Environments. CRC Press
• Levinson, David M. and David A. King (2019) A Political Economy of Access: Infrastructure, Networks, Cities, and Institutions. Network Design Lab

Papers

• Alizadeh, T., Sarkar, S., Burgoyne, S. (2019). Capturing citizen voice online: Enabling smart participatory local government. Cities, 95, 1-10. [doi]
• Carlson, Kristin, Murphy, Brendan, Owen, Andrew, Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2019) Safety in Numbers for Bicyclists at Urban IntersectionsTransportation Research Record. 2673(6) 677–684. [doi]
• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2019) Overestimation and underestimation of travel time on commute trips: GPS vs. self- reporting. Urban Science. 3(3), 70. [doi]
• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2019) Uncovering the influence of commuters’ perception on the reliability ratio. Transport Findings. 10.32866/8330. [doi]
• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2019) Route choice dynamics after a link restoration. Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics. 7(1), 1155-1174. [doi]
• Chaloux, Nick,  Boisjoly, Genevieve,  Grise, Emily, El-Geneidy, Ahmed, and  Levinson,  D. (2019) I only get some satisfaction: Introducing satisfaction into measures of accessibility. Transportation Research part F. 62, 833-843. [doi]
• Cui, Boer, Boisjoly,  Genevieve, El-Geneidy, Ahmed, and  Levinson, D. (2019) Accessibility and the journey to work through the lens of equity. Journal of Transport Geography. 74, 269-277. [doi]
• Cui, Mengying, and Levinson, D. (2020) Shortest paths, travel costs, and traffic.To be presented at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, January 2020. Environment and Planning B. (accepted and in press)
• Cui, Mengying and Levinson, D. (2019) Primal and Dual Access. Geographical Analysis.  [doi] [code]
• Cui, Mengying and Levinson, D. (2019) Measuring Full Cost Accessibility by Auto. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 12(1) 649-672. [doi]
• Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2019) Spatiotemporal Short-term Traffic Forecasting using the Network Weight Matrix and Systematic DetrendingTransportation Research part C.  104,  38-52. [doi]
• Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2019) Development and Application of the Network Weight Matrix to Predict Traffic Flow for Congested and Uncongested Conditions. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science.
  46(9) 1684–1705 [doi]
• Hamedmoghadam, H., Ramezani, M., & Saberi, M. (2019). Revealing latent characteristics of mobility networks with coarse-graining. Scientific reports, 9(1), 7545. [doi]
• Han, Y., Ramezani, M., Hegyi, A., Yuan, Y., & Hoogendoorn, S. (2020). Hierarchical ramp metering in freeways: An aggregated modeling and control approach. Transportation Research Part C, 110, 1-19. [doi]
• Harris, Patrick, Jennifer Kent, Peter Sainsbury, Emily Riley, Nila Sharma, Elizabeth Harris, Healthy urban planning: an institutional policy analysis of strategic planning in Sydney, Australia, Health Promotion International, , daz056, [doi]
• Huang, Jie, Levinson, D., Wang, Jiaoe, Jin, Haitao (2019) Job-worker spatial dynamics in Beijing: Insights from Smart Card Data. Cities 86, 89-93. [doi]
• Kent, Jennifer L., Corinne Mulley, Nick Stevens, (2019) Transport and wellbeing in a newly constructed greenfield estate: A quantitative exploration of the commuting experience. Journal of Transport & Health, 13 210-223. [doi]
• Lahoorpoor, Bahman and Levinson, D. (2020) Catchment if you can: The effect of station entrance and exit locations on accessibility. Journal of Transport Geography. 82, 102556 [doi] [full report]
• Mohajerpoor, R., & Ramezani, M. (2019). Mixed flow of autonomous and human-driven vehicles: Analytical headway modeling and optimal lane management. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 109, 194-210. [doi]
• Mohajerpoor, R., Saberi, M., & Ramezani, M. (2019). Analytical derivation of the optimal traffic signal timing: Minimizing delay variability and spillback probability for undersaturated intersections. Transportation Research Part B, 119, 45-68. [doi]
• Mohajerpoor, R., Saberi, M., Vu, H. L., Garoni, T. M., & Ramezani, M. (2019). H∞ robust perimeter flow control in urban networks with partial information feedback. Transportation Research Part B.  [doi]
• Moylan, Emily, and Somwrita Sarkar. 2019. “Defining Urban Centres Using Alternative Data Sets.” Transport Findings, May. https://doi.org/10.32866/8166.
• Nourinejad, M., & Ramezani, M. (2019). Ride-Sourcing modeling and pricing in non-equilibrium two-sided markets. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. [doi]
• Prior JH, Connon ILC, McIntyre E, Adams J, Capon A, Kent J, Rissel C, Thomas LE, Thompson SM, Westcott H. (2018) Built environment interventions for human and planetary health: integrating health in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Public Health Research and Practice. 28(4):e2841831. [doi]
• Ramezani, M., & Ye, E. (2019). Lane density optimization of automated vehicles for highway congestion control. Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics. [doi]
• Sarkar, S. (2019). Urban scaling and the geographic concentration of inequalities by city size. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, In Press. [doi]
• Sarkar, Somwrita, Wu, Hao and Levinson, D. (2019) Measuring polycentricity via network flows, spatial interaction, and percolation. Urban Studies. [doi]
• Sharma, Sabal and Levinson, D. (2019) Travel Cost and Dropout from Secondary Schools in Nepal. Transportation Research part A. 130,  385-397. [doi] [free until Nov 22, 2019]

• Siripanich, A., Rashidi, T. H., & Moylan, E. (2019). Interaction of Public Transport Accessibility and Residential Property Values Using Smart Card Data. Sustainability, 11(9), 2709. [doi]
• Walsh, Lexie, Xian, Tingsen, and Levinson, D. (2020) Walking and Talking: The Effect of Smartphone Use and Group Conversation on Pedestrian Speed.TeMA – Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment. (accepted and in press)
• Wu, Hao, Owen, Andrew,  and Levinson, D. (2020) Commute Mode Share and Access to Jobs across US Metropolitan Areas. Environment and Planning B. [doi]
• Wu, Hao, Somwrita Sarkar, and Levinson, D. (2019) How Transit Scaling Shapes Cities. Nature Sustainability doi:10.1038/s41893-019-0427-7 . [doi]

• Yildirimoglu, M., & Ramezani, M. (2019). Demand management with limited cooperation among travellers: A doubly dynamic approach. Transportation Research Part B. [doi]
• Yokoo, Toshi, and Levinson, D. (2019) Measures of Speeding from a GPS-based Travel Behavior Survey. Traffic Injury Prevention.  20(2), 158-163. [doi]
• Yokoo, Toshi, Marasteanu, Mihai, and Levinson, David (2019) Pavement condition and crashesTransport Findings. 10.32866/5771. [doi]

Reports

• Connon, I. L. C., Prior, J., Kent, J. L., Thompson, S., Rissel, C., McIntyre, E., … Westcott, H. (2019). What evidence is available to translate into planning strategies for healthy higher density living? Sydney: Landcom.
• Wu and Levinson (2019) Access Across Australia: 2018
• Lahoorpoor and Levinson (2019) Catchment if you can: The effect of station entrance and exit locations on accessibility

Grants

• Kent, Parenting and the Private Car, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)
• Marks, Guillard, Moylan & Ramezani (2019) Cities of the Future: Augmented Reality City. Sponsored by University of Sydney Teaching Innovation Grant
• Moylan, Wijayaratna, Jian, Saberi and Waller (2019) Moving Towards Network-wide Travel Time Reliability Measurement. Sponsored by TfNSW.
• Moylan (2020) Reducing Hypothetical Bias in the Valuation of Reliability Associated with Rare Events. Sponsored by University of Sydney Faculty of Engineering
• Ramezani, Levinson, Bliemer. Opportunities to Build Capability in Traffic Management (with ARRB) Austroads
• Ramezani. NSW Premier’s Innovation Initiative 2019 Sponsor: DATA61, CSIRO
• Sarkar, Levinson, Moylan et al (2019) New housing supply, population growth, and access to social infrastructure. Sponsored by AHURI

Attended Events

TransportLab Members and Students attended the following conferences in 2019

• TRB Jan 2019
• WCTR May 2019
• TRISTAN June 2019
• CICTP/COTA July 2019
• AITPM July 2019
• ICMC Aug 2019
• ATRF Oct 2019
• Transport Knowledge Conference, Wellington Nov 2019
• TRANSW Dec 2019

Note

Many of you are also subscribed to the Transportist Newsletter, which this replaces this month, as David only has so much time. They are two independent mailing lists, so subscribing (or unsubscribing) to one does not affect the other.