Transportation

We identify new solutions to transportation problems, on the ground, in the air, or on the sea, transport of people or goods, whatever the mode. We focus on technical solutions, but also on their impact on the system as a whole. We are also interested in the interactions of the transportation systems with the land use, the economy, the environment, etc.

E-Bike City

This project has the following content: Transport policy is currently not finding a way out of its dilemma; the imminent need to decarbonize a sector fast which has barely moved in the recent past and the social requirement to maintain and increase accessibility across all modes, but not to encourage sprawl while still allowing further decreases in the generalised cost of travel by new technologies and business models. We propose to use a radical departure from previous proposed ideas to enable the policy and transport industry to begin thinking from a different starting point. The design idea is to reallocate 50% of the existing urban road space to e-bikes, bicycles, and other micromobility modes and to assess what this change could achieve in terms of accessibility, generalised costs of travel, changes in daily life and reductions in emissions and CO2. The project will integrate careful involvement of the various stakeholders from citizens, cities, firms to interest groups, but will also provide the materials needed to communicate the ideas and their equity impacts visually and verbally at the required levels of complexity.

Principal investigator

Michel Bierlaire

Project manager

Janody Pougala

Sponsor

Swiss Federal Office of Energy

Period

September 01, 2022-December 31, 2025

External collaboration

Prof. Axhausen (IVT - ETHZ)

LaTeX description

Multi-objective disruption management for robust railway operations

In passenger railway services, a timetable defines the scheduled arrival and departure times of trains at designated stations. When a disruption occurs, the railway operator must establish a disposition timetable, a complex task due to the intricacies of rail operations and the interactions in the network. This research aims to develop a decision-support tool that optimizes disruption management using a multi-objective optimization approach. The tool will account for system constraints while minimizing passenger inconvenience, operational costs, and deviations from the original timetable. Designed with practitioners' needs in mind, it will be integrated into the industrial software Viriato, enabling the use of real production data for algorithm evaluation and refinement.

Principal investigator

Michel Bierlaire

Project manager

Lea Ricard

Sponsor

Swiss Federal Railways (SBB)

Period

April 01, 2024-October 31, 2025

External collaboration

SBB

External collaboration

SMA

LaTeX description