Introduction to Transportation Systems Engineering Professor Megan S. Ryerson Puzzle One • Assume there are three people going from Philadelphia to Wilmington • However, they.
Download ReportTranscript Introduction to Transportation Systems Engineering Professor Megan S. Ryerson Puzzle One • Assume there are three people going from Philadelphia to Wilmington • However, they.
Introduction to Transportation Systems Engineering Professor Megan S. Ryerson Puzzle One • Assume there are three people going from Philadelphia to Wilmington • However, they only have ONE tandem bike (only two people can ride it at a time) – Riders (solo or tandem) travel at 20 km/hr – Any person who doesn’t ride the bike can run at 4 km/hr • In order to get to Wilmington as fast as possible, two of the three people start riding the bike, and the third starts jogging in the same direction. After a while, one of the riders gets off and starts jogging. The other one rides back to pick up the original jogger. Then they jointly ride in the Wilmington direction until catching up with the one that got off some time before. At that point they are together again (with the bike) and they repeat the process. • How fast do they go? (average speed?) Puzzle Two • Consider San Francisco Int’l Airport, which is subject to morning fog. Because of the fog, the arrival capacity of the airport is low (30 aircraft/hr) at the beginning of the day (t=0), and then increases to 80 aircraft/hr once the fog has burned off. Aircraft arrive to the terminal airspace to land at a constant rate of 50 aircraft/hour. • Because the capacity in the morning is lower than the arrival rate of aircraft to the terminal airspace, you will have some aircraft holding in the sky. • On this day, the fog persists for 2 hours and then clears immediately. • The FAA calls you, the airport director to ask how long aircraft were “holding” in the sky – how long did it take the queue to dissipate? Puzzle Three • People make decisions to minimize their own personal travel time (along with many other factors – we can model those too!) • Could building new transportation infrastructure – a new road or a new transit line – ever make the entire system worse? 4 Puzzle Four • The United Kingdom wants to “maintain its status as an international hub for aviation” – Economic growth – Global competition • London Heathrow is a high demand, over capacity international airport • It’s up to the Davies Commission to lay out a few alternatives that can meet the forecast demand among other criteria • Engineers and planners estimated future demand levels and designed three alternatives for airport expansion to be fully considered. Which one should be picked? Critical Concepts: Hubbing • Vehicles exhibit economies of scale (cost, fuel), so hubbing has economic and environmental benefits • Transfer time has a disutility to passengers – but freight doesn’t care how much it transfers as long as it arrives on time • Hubbing requires a concentration of infrastructure London Heathrow Today Extension to the North 8 Extension to the Northwest Extension to the Southwest 10 Variables in the decision making process 11 12 Which alternative should we pick? 13 Which alternative should we pick? • We could do a benefit/cost analysis (stay tuned for Engineering Economics!). How do we value all these components? 14 Which alternative should we pick? • If you know the answer, you have a job at the Daves Commission waiting for you! 15 Models serve as critical inputs to planning processes • Where should we put bike share stations? • Should we improve Septa’s operations, or build new roads? Or just improve information flow about Septa? 16 Transportation engineering: “The application of technological and scientific principles to the planning, functional design, operation and management of facilities for any mode of transportation....” What transportation systems engineers do is complex, interdisciplinary, and downright fun: and it requires critical thinking and an underlying knowledge of how transportation systems work Environment Policy Technology, vehicles, and data Transportation Systems Engineers Logistics and business Hard engineering and infrastructure Planning Operations 17 Behavior Human factors and safety Transportation Planning and Engineering at UPENN • People • Courses – CPLN 505: Planning by Numbers – CPLN 550: Introduction to Transportation Planning – CPLN 655: Comparative International Topics and Case Studies in Multimodal Transportation – CPLN 650/ESE 548: Transportation Planning Methods – CPLN 750/ESE 550: Advanced Transportation Seminar: Air Transportation 18 Megan S. Ryerson Assistant Professor Department of City and Regional Planning Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering University of Pennsylvania [email protected] • Research questions that drive me – How do we plan airports? How do we balance the negative externalities from airport expansions with possible benefits to passengers/airlines? – How do airlines optimize their fuel loads per operations, considering the probability of a weather event or delay? – How will climate change affect airline network operations? Can we establish a network of ad-hoc hubs that could serve as back-up hubs if outages become routine? – How do we plan the door-to-door intercity transportation network? 19 Critical Concepts: Multimodal trips 20 Erick Guerra Assistant Professor Department of City and Regional Planning University of Pennsylvania [email protected] • Research questions that drive Erick – How do we provide accessibility in fast-growing developing world cities? – How much transportation infrastructure is too much infrastructure? – How do urban form and infrastructure influence our collective travel behavior? How does this vary across types of cities? 21 Planning for Sustainable Growth 22 Technology Environment Infrastructure Economy Incentives Equity Marketing Quality of Life Planning for this! 23 Interdisciplinary example: The rise of autonomous vehicles • What is the timeline to move AVs to market? – What is the technology progress being made? How does this affect price points? How does price and being a radically new technology affect adoption? • How will AVs change the way drivers behave? – How will this change our infrastructure needs? – How will this change urban form? Interdisciplinary example: The rise of autonomous vehicles • What is the timeline to move AVs to market? – What is the technology progress being made? How does this affect price points? How does price and being a radically new technology affect adoption? • How will AVs change the way drivers behave? – How will this change our infrastructure needs? – How will this change urban form? • How will modified travel patterns with AVs affect safety? Environmental emissions? • What policies are necessary to ensure that the benefits of AVs are realized? What can you do in this dynamic field? • Anything from public sector to private sector, highly detailed and rigorous engineering to public advocacy, implementing bike-share to designing runways – it’s a huge, growing, and always crucial field (until we figure out teleportation) • Experience child-like wonder on a regular basis! 26 Megan S. Ryerson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of City and Regional Planning Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering University of Pennsylvania [email protected] meganryerson.com 27 • Backup Slides 28 Interdisciplinary example: Getting parking right 29 Interdisciplinary example: Getting parking right 30 Critical Concepts: The relationship between flow, density, and speed • Fundamental diagrams that explain traffic conditions on a facility q – Speed, u, mi/hr (u) – Density, k, veh/mile (k) – Capacity, q, veh/hr u k q