Transport Engineering and Planning at the University of Sydney

Emily Moylan

Jan 8

Welcome to the start-of-year update from TransportLab at the University of Sydney.

We’re looking forward to meeting people face-to-face again, but in the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Events

The TransportLab Seminar started up again in the second half of 2020. In addition to student presentations, the virtual format allowed us to host several academic and industry speakers, including:

• Meead Saberi (UNSW) on Strategic Modelling for Walking Infrastructure
• Jonathan Busch (SCT Consulting) on a practitioner’s perspective on transport innovation
• Emilie Gunaratnam and Matthew Jones (TfNSW) on Cost-Benefit Analysis at TfNSW
• Sue McNeil (University of Delaware) on using real-time time data to provide situational awareness to first responders in emergencies. 
• Gabriel Metcalfe (Committee for Sydney) on Advocacy for Change in Mobility Systems

TransportLab participated in the annual Transport Research Association for NSW (TraNSW) Symposium on 17-19 November. Six TransportLab students presented their work, and Linji Chen (fourth from left) received an award for Best Research Demonstration.

Together with the UC Berkeley Institute for Data Science, University of Sydney organised a virtual symposium on Big Data and Neighborhood Change. Somwrita Sarkar was a project lead on the event. 

People

Teck Kean Chin has started his PhD on Smart City Applications in Land Use and Transport

Yang Gao will start a PhD in early 2021.

Mengyuan (Derek) Zhu has started his MPhil on Optimising Space-time Matching in Ridesharing through Predictive Modelling

Former post-doc Mengying Cui started as an Associate Professor at Chang-An University

Jing Chen and Louise Aoustin finished as a visiting scholars with TransportLab at Sydney. 

• Louise graduated from EPFL and is currently working at Keolis Downer in Sydney. 
• Jing Chen will finish her PhD at Southeast University in Nanjing, China

Awards, Accolades and Memberships

Jennifer Kent’s book “Planning Australia’s Healthy Built Environments” was awarded a Commendation Award for Planning Excellence in the category of Cutting Edge Research and Teaching by the Planning Institute of Australia, NSW.

The University of Sydney has the most influential academics of any university in Australia. This includes David Levinson who is in the top 2% of citations. 

Emily Moylan received the 2020 Dean’s (Faculty) Award for Teaching Innovation in 2019 for her work incorporating informatics into the transport curriculum.

Mohsen Ramezani was promoted to Senior Lecturer.

Mohsen Ramezani has received an ARC DECRA on Market Design of Next Generation of Shared and Automated Transport Services

PhD student Linji Chen won the Best Research Demonstration Award at the TraNSW 2020 Symposium for his presentation on Decentralised Cooperative Cruising of Autonomous Fleet.

Honours student April Alcock is the 2020 University of Sydney winner of the ITE-ANZ Trafficworks Student Award.

Articles, books and chapters

Davis, Blake, Ji, Ang,  Liu, Bichen, and Levinson, D. (2020) Moving Array Traffic Probes. Frontiers in Future Transportation. doi: 10.3389/ffutr.2020.602356 [doi]

Ji, Ang and Levinson, D. (2020) Injury severity prediction from two-vehicle crash mechanisms with machine learning and ensemble models. IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems. [doi]

Ji, Ang and Levinson, D. (2020) An energy loss-based vehicular injury severity model. Accident Analysis and Prevention. 146 October 2020, 105730. [doi]

Kamal, M. A. S., Ramezani, M., Wu, G., Roncoli, C., Rios-Torres, J., & Orfila, O. (2020). Partially Connected and Automated Traffic Operations in Road Transportation. Journal of Advanced Transportation. [doi]

Kent, J.L. (2020). The role of car-sharing in sustainable transport. In Curtis, C. (Ed.) Handbook for Sustainable Transport. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham

Kent, J.L. and Thompson, S. (2020) Healthy Cities. In Rogers, D., Keane, A., Nelson, J. and Alizadeh, T. (Eds.) Introduction to Urbanism: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Palgrave McMillan, Camden

Kent, J.L. (2020) Transport, access and health. In Mulley, C. (Ed.) Urban Form and Accessibility. Elsevier, London

Levinson, D. (2020) Logistic Curve Models of CO2 Accumulation. Transport Findings. [doi]

Levinson, D. (2020) A Timeline of Future Transport in Sydney as Revealed in Tablet Form. In Derrible, S. & Chester, M. (Ed.) Urban Infrastructure: Reflections For 2100: An Edited Volume Imagining Infrastructure Transitions And Goals At End-Of-Century. Independently published.

Paine, G., Thompson, S., Prior, J., Connon, I., & Kent, J. L. (2020). Bringing History Forward: Learning from Historical Context when Translating Contemporary Health Evidence into Planning Practice. Journal of Planning History. [doi]

Sarkar S., Farid R. (2020) Data, Science and Cities. In: Rogers D., Keane A., Alizadeh T., Nelson J. (eds) Understanding Urbanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. [doi]

Reports and Projects

Liverpool Sustainable Urban Mobility Study. iMOVE CRC/Liverpool City Council

The Transport Access Manual was published by the Committee for the Transport Access Manual, chaired by David Levinson 

Opportunities to build capability in traffic management for Austroads. Dissemination webinar is on the 21st January. 

New housing supply, population growth, and access to social infrastructurefor Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)

Journals

Transport Findings has been renamed Findings, and a new section Urban Findings, will launch in 2021

Mohsen Ramezani is editing a special issue of Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics on Advanced Modeling and Control for AI-enabled Multimodal and Automated Transport Systems.

Mohsen Ramezani is editing a special issue of Frontiers in Future Transportation on Integration of Real-Time Information in Transport Planning and Operations.

Appearances

Jennifer Kent presented at the Sydney Environment Institute’s Critical Companion Series on Sustainable Urban Mobility

David Levinson keynoted at IARAI  Traffic4cast 2020 Special Session: The End of Traffic and Future of Access

David Levinson guest lectured at UBC: The New, New Normal

David Levinson presented at Australia Build Week: 30-Minute City

David Levinson presented at Festival of Urbanism: The New New Normal: Mobility and Activity in the After Times. The article was originally published in The Fifth Estate, November 2, 2020.

David Levinson was a panelist at Transport Australia Society webinar: The Role of Walking in the Movement and Place Framework

David Levinson was quoted by the Daily Telegraph: Outer Sydney Orbital: M9 to be Built Next to Airport Metro, Freight Line

David Levinson was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald: “Sydney’s bike network stuck in the slow lane“.

Emily Moylan was an invited speaker at the CSIRO Symposium Future of Meetings

Emily Moylan spoke at the Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference about civil engineering students coding to learn.

Mohsen Ramezani was invited to be a speaker in the full-day online workshop “Emerging Control of Vehicular Traffic for Improving Sustainability and Energy Efficiency” for SICE Annual Conference 2020