November 17, 2022 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM (ET)
About the Webinar:
As new transportation alternatives emerge and existing services are redesigned, communities and decision makers are often required to identify transportation service areas within which the services can operate. The selection of service areas can have significant implications on the level of accessibility, economic sustainability, and congestion reduction potential of a transportation service. In this presentation, spatial optimization methods are proposed to explicitly incorporate the service area selection problem in the design of transit services. A service area design problem is proposed that simultaneously accounts for the goals of system operators and users, with particular emphasis on the objectives of reducing congestion and enhancing equity in access to transportation services. The models consider spatial coverage constraints that are part of real-world regulations designed to ensure equitable access to transportation services. In addition, heuristics to solve the proposed design problems will be discussed. The results from an illustrative application of the proposed methodology will be presented. In the application, the methodology was used to design a bus fixed-route network, and its accompanying paratransit service area, in the San Juan Metropolitan Area.
About the Presenter:
Daniel Rodríguez Román, Ph.D., is an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. His main research interests are in the areas of transportation network design and travel demand management. He is currently working on projects related to parking management strategies, transit network design, the accessibility of micromobility services, and demand forecasting in dockless e-scooter systems. He has previously worked on models for the design of road pricing schemes and on freight travel demand forecasting. He obtained his B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, his M.S. in transportation engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and his doctorate in transportation systems engineering from the University of California at Irvine.