Department of Transportation Engineering University of Naples Federico II, Italy.
November 04, 2010, 17:30, Room MXF1 (click here for the map)
<p>Transportation systems engineering can be defined as a discipline aimed at the functional design of physical and/or organizational components of transportation systems. A set of coordinated, internally consistent actions on a transportation system are referred to as a project or plan. Transportation system modelling allows the prediction of the relevant impacts of possible projects in order to design them , assess their technical suitability and to support intermediate and final decision-makers through the process of projects evaluation. </p> <p> The range of transportation system projects is very diverse, and so are the points of view from which their consequences can be evaluated. Projects might involve transportation infrastructures, control systems, services, fares. Similarly, projects can be designed and evaluated from the perspective of the community they will serve, from the perspective of the service and/or facility operators, or from the perspective of potential investors (i.e. project financing). Decision-making for transportation systems is often more complex than for systems in other sectors of engineering. This is especially true when the decision-maker must consider, either directly or indirectly, the effects of proposed actions on the larger community .These effects include variations in travellers generalised costs, investment and operating costs for different companies; effects on land-use and activity location; effects on economic levels, variation on air pollution; number of accidents, energy consumption, etc. </p> <p> Over the last 50 years a wide body of models and computational tools have been developed and applied to solve countless problems ranging from large investments plans at national and international levels to traffic control schemes of urban intersections. </p> <p> Two applications of these principles are discussed in some detail. The first is related to the Campania Regional Metro System project, which is an example of integrated land-use, infrastructure and operational planning. The whole project is based on the idea of integrating the existing railway lines into a single physical network by building some new links, new stations and new modal interchange facilities. The RMS project integrates also operational components such as service lines, timetables and integrated pricing. In addition to the transit ''supply-side'' elements, the project includes relevant''demand-side'' aspects, including town planning based on the rail network, urban renewal around rail stations and upgraded and new stations with high architectural standards and a new symbolic value. The overall project is worth approximately 9 billion Euros and is currently in an advanced realization phase . Approximately 50 kms of new tracks and 40 new stations were opened to operation in the last ten years (3 billions worth) and investments for 3 more billions are currently underway. </p> <p> The second application of the principles of transportation systems engineering deals with the recent High Speed Rail investments in Italy. The recent opening of new sections and the oncoming entrance in the High Speed Rail market of a new private operator, competing with the national railways operator, create the conditions for a unique case study to investigate the behavior of long- distance passengers. The framework developed to forecast the national passenger demand for different Italian macroeconomic, transport supply, and High Speed Rail marketing scenarios is presented and the main results are discussed.</p>
<p>Ennio Cascetta, born in Naples in 1953, is full professor Transportation Systems Planning at the University of Naples Federico II. He is the author of several books, including ''Transportation system engineering: theory and methods'' (Kluwer, 2001) and ''Transportation Systems Analysis: Models and Applications'' (Springer, 2009) and of more than one hundred papers published in International journals and proceedings. Main research areas include analysis, modelling and estimation of transport demand, static and dynamic models for traffic assignment, railway network planning and pricing, supply design models for transit and traffic light systems, traffic theory and the quality of circulation on motorways, analysis and control of traffic congestion in urban areas. He has taught in several international courses. Since 1995 teaches the yearly course on Modeling and Simulation of Transportation Networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology </p> <p> He has been director of the Second Special Project on Transportation Research of the Italian National Research Council (seven years duration, 150 million EURO value) from 1997 to 1999. He is editor of a series of books on Transportation published by Franco Angeli in Italian. He acted in the scientific committees of a number of international journals such as Transportation Research ,Transportation Science and Transportation Policy. He acted as scientific committee member of several international conferences such as World Conference on Transportation Research (Vice-Chairman) , Conference of the International Association of Travel Behaviour Research, Tristan. </p> <p> He is an appointed member of the Transport Research Board of National Research Council (USA). He has been the scientific responsible of research units in the context of several UE research programmes in DGXIII and DGVII such as DYNA, AIUTO and TRACE. Took part as on expert to the international committee for the design of the EURET 2 Project and 4th Framework program appointed by DGVII. </p> <p> Concerning his professional and political role, from 2000 till 2010, he was Ministry of Transport for the Campania Region. In the years 1999 and 2000, he was coordinator of the experts board of the Italian Ministry of Transport for the National General Transportation Plan. In the 1998, he was the coordinator of the experts board of the Italian Ministry for Public Works for the project about the main road infrastructures. From 1995 till 1997, he was the scientific coordinator of the Transportation Master Plan of Naples. In the 1997, he took part, in quality of expert of Italian Ministry of Transport, to the joint Transport - Environment commission for the Italian high-speed rail lines. From 1994 to 1995, he was a member of the board of the main Naples Public Transport Company (A.T.A.N.). From 1993 to 1999, he was president of the commission of the Italian Ministry of Transport for the project: ''The Italian Decision Support System for transportation policies and investments''. He acted as a professional consultant on various aspects of transport planning and management at urban and inter-city level and on technical-economic feasibility studies of transport infrastructures (i.e. Transport Plans of Genoa, Naples, Palermo, Verona) </p>