Abstract:

The railroad track system and its components are a critical transportation asset that is responsible for transmitting rolling stock wheel loads to the roadbed. To ensure safe and efficient operations, railroads perform frequent track inspections, some of which generate substantial amounts of track health data. Furthermore, with the rise of data science tools and machine learning methods, the potential for these data to move maintenance and safety towards more robust analysis is possible. This presentation will provide an overview of track assessment tools and data requirements. Results from multiple track geometry and heath assessment systems will be presented to show the relationship between the change of track geometry and track component condition for different types of track locations, such as curved and tangent track segments. Results show non-intuitive correlations between track geometry, degradation of track component health, and the initial condition of the track within a given maintenance interval. Findings have the potential to improve maintenance effectiveness and prioritization and provide a method for quantifying track degradation rates under different operating conditions and maintenance scenarios. These outputs fill a criticalresearch need and encourage further development of a mechanistic-empirical approach to railway track system design and analysis.

Bio:

J. Riley Edwards, Ph.D., P.E., is an Assistant Professor in the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center (RailTEC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Heobtained his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Vanderbilt University, and his MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are railway infrastructure track system and component design and performance and failure modes associated with infrastructure components. Dr. Edwards has published over 100 conference proceedings and over 70 journal articles related to the design, analysis, performance, and failure modes of railway infrastructure and its components. Riley also serves as the Deputy Associate Director for the National University Rail Center of Excellence, a US DOT transportation center funded by the Federal Railroad Administration.

Dr. Elise Miller-Hooks holds the Bill and Eleanor Hazel Endowed Chair in Infrastructure Engineering in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University. She is also an advisor to the World Bank Group. Previously, Dr. Miller-Hooks served as Program Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Civil Infrastructure Systems Program in the Engineering (ENG) Directorate, lead Program Officer for the Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) solicitation, and a cognizant program officer on CMMI’s Smart and Connected Communities (i.e. Smart Cities) initiative (2014-2016). She served on the faculties of the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University and Duke University.

Dr. Miller-Hooks received her Ph.D. (1997) and M.S. (1994) degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas – Austin (UT) and B.S. in Civil Engineering from Lafayette College (1992). She has expertise in: disaster planning and response, e.g. urban search and rescue, building and regional evacuation and sheltering, and crowd modeling; multi-hazard civil infrastructure resilience quantification and infrastructure protection investment; sustainability, including carbon footprint estimation for construction and transportation and infrastructure investment strategies for climate change; stochastic and dynamic network algorithms; mathematical modeling and optimization; transportation systems engineering; intermodal passenger and freight transport; maritime transport, port operations, supply chains; real-time routing and fleet management; delivery, paratransit, ridesharing and bikeways; and collaborative and multi-objective decision-making.

Her research program has been funded by numerous agencies, including, for example, NSF, European Commission, Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, state departments of transportation, and various agencies and companies. She received a NSF CAREER award, Charley Wootan Award for Best Ph.D. Dissertation from the Council of UTCs, and several other national awards related to her dissertation and ongoing research, including two best paper awards, and was inducted into the UT Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni 2021. Dr. Miller-Hooks has authored approximately 175 articles and reports, and 325 conference presentations/seminars with over 110 invited lectures. She has served as principal investigator (PI) of ~ $14 million in externally funded research; co-PI on 5 additional externally funded centers with combined > $22 million in federal funds ($44M with match) and co-PI on a Mason $1.1 million center. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Sustainability Analytics and Modeling journal and serves on the editorial boards of Transportation Research Part C (Associate Editor), Operations Research (Associate Editor - Policy Modeling and Public Sector OR Section), Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, Big Data Analytics in Transportation, Communications in Transportation Research, and previously Transportation Science (Associate Editor over 15 years), Transportation Research - Part B (member/editor 10 years). She is past chair of the TRB Transportation Network Modeling Committee, founding Co-Chair of the TRB Task Force on Emergency Evacuation (now a full committee), and past president of the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Transportation Science and Logistics Society (TSL) and the Women in OR/MS Forum (WORMS).

Prof. Durango-Cohen's research activities involve developing and analyzing optimization and econometric models to support monitoring, management and operation of transportation infrastructure systems. He has also published in transportation economics and policy, as well as in environmental design and life-cycle assessment of transportation systems. Among others, his research has been recognized with a Faculty Early CAREER Development Award from the National Science Foundation in 2006, and with a Young Author Prize at the 2007 World Congress on Transport Research.

Description:

"Railroad Rolling Stock Leasing in North America"

About Paul Titterton

Paul Titterton was elected Executive Vice President and President, Rail North America in April 2022 after being elected Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Rail North America in August 2018 and Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer in June 2013. Since joining GATX in 1997, Mr. Titterton has served in a variety of roles within GATX in the areas of sales, customer experience, marketing, business development, government affairs, strategy, structured finance, investment analysis, and fleet management. Mr. Titterton holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Harvard College and is a CFA charterholder.

“Railroad Rolling Stock Leasing in North America”

About Paul F. Titterton

Mr. Titterton was elected Executive Vice President and President, Rail North America in April 2022 after being elected Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Rail North America in August 2018 and Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer in June 2013. Since joining GATX in 1997, Mr. Titterton has served in a variety of roles within GATX in the areas of sales, customer experience, marketing, business development, government affairs, strategy, structured finance, investment analysis, and fleet management. Mr. Titterton holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Harvard College and is a CFA charterholder.

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"Resource Planning and Dynamic Management of Demand-Responsive Mobility Services".

Yanfeng Ouyang holds a B.Eng. in civil engineering (summa cum laude, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 2000), M.S. in civil engineering (University of Washington, 2001), M.S. in industrial engineering and operations research (University of California at Berkeley, 2005), and Ph.D. in civil engineering (University of California at Berkeley, 2005). He has been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) since August 2005. At UIUC, he serves as the Director of the Chinese-American Railway Transportation Joint Research Center, and also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and the Computational Science and Engineering Program. He has also been a Changjiang Chair Professor by the China Ministry of Education via affiliation with Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China, since 2018, an Affiliated Professor and Adjunct Doctoral Supervisor in the School of Transportation Science and Engineering at HIT since 2011, and the International Director of the Department of Production and Operations Management and Logistics Management, School of Management, at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, 2015-2017. During the 2014-2015 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, as well as an Invited Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

Abstract:

During peak travel times traffic speeds often drop below the level at which flow is maximized. Transportation economists refer to such conditions as “hypercongested”. Hypercongestion has been studied using Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram models but these models typically rely on strong assumptions and abstract from details of the road network. The goal of this work is to examine the spatial and temporal evolution of hypercongestion during the morning peak on individual road links. Analysis is conducted using the traffic simulator METROPOLIS which was developed in the late 1990s to model travel mode, departure-time, and route-choice decisions on large-scale networks. METROPOLIS was recently upgraded to include individual point-to-point trips, trip chains, improved congestion modeling, and different vehicle types.

METROPOLIS is applied to a set of hypothetical road networks and regions of Ile-de-France to study two manifestations of hypercongestion. One is reduced speeds on upstream links that feed into downstream links with lower flow capacities. If prolonged, horizontal queuing on upstream links can lead to spillback that blocks intersections and access to links further upstream. A second manifestation of hypercongestion occurs when the aggregate outflow of vehicles from a study area drops below aggregate exit capacity due to conflicting movements at entrances, exits, and intersections.


Bio

Robin Lindsey is a professor emeritus at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. From 2010-2024 he held the CN Chair in Transportation and International Logistics. His research interests include traffic congestion, road pricing, urban public transportation, financing transportation infrastructure, and the environmental costs of road transportation. He has also worked on topics related to industrial organization including retail market competition, price discrimination, and predatory pricing.

Lindsey is a founding board member and past president of the International Transportation Economics Association, and an Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. He is also coauthor with Kenneth Small and Erik Verhoef of the third edition of The Economics of Urban Transportation, published in June 2024 by Routledge.

Fall classes end

The ceremony will take place on Saturday, December 14 in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Drive.

*No tickets required

The aim of the ITEA Annual School is to provide young researchers with a high-quality introduction to academic research on transportation economics, including many recent advances in the field. The School’s program consists of a series of lectures and tutorials conducted by some of the most prominent researchers in transportation economics. In addition, the students are given the possibility to present their own work at the Conference.

The aim of the ITEA Annual School is to provide young researchers with a high-quality introduction to academic research on transportation economics, including many recent advances in the field. The School’s program consists of a series of lectures and tutorials conducted by some of the most prominent researchers in transportation economics. In addition, the students are given the possibility to present their own work at the Conference.

The aim of the ITEA Annual School is to provide young researchers with a high-quality introduction to academic research on transportation economics, including many recent advances in the field. The School’s program consists of a series of lectures and tutorials conducted by some of the most prominent researchers in transportation economics. In addition, the students are given the possibility to present their own work at the Conference.

The aim of the ITEA Annual Conference is to promote scientific excellence in the field of transportation economics and to provide a forum for scientific exchange. Research presented at the conference covers both theory and empirical work, including all transport modes and a wide range of research methodologies.

The aim of the ITEA Annual Conference is to promote scientific excellence in the field of transportation economics and to provide a forum for scientific exchange. Research presented at the conference covers both theory and empirical work, including all transport modes and a wide range of research methodologies.

The aim of the ITEA Annual Conference is to promote scientific excellence in the field of transportation economics and to provide a forum for scientific exchange. Research presented at the conference covers both theory and empirical work, including all transport modes and a wide range of research methodologies.