Sustainable Transportation Planning

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The road-transportation economy has been identified as a major cause of the rise of Green-House Gas (GHG) emissions. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that vehicle traffic on roads is constantly increasing. On the other, the large majority of vehicles are still powered by traditional fossil fuels. In the last years, many international agreements have been signed, committing governments to decrease GHG emission trends. As a result, several strategies have been adopted at local and national levels, including improvements in the performance of public transit, the promotion of alternative mobility and freight distribution paradigms, and the adoption of non-fossil fueled vehicles.******This research program is axed on two main themes. The first contributes to improving the public transit system by focusing on the planning of a new transit paradigm called Semi-flexible Transit System (STS). STSs aim to provide demand-responsive service within the framework of regularly-scheduled transit. Combining characteristics of traditional and on-demand systems, STSs require an extremely complex planning activity. There is a considerable gap, however, in the current methodology, preventing generalized successful implementations of such systems. The first objective of this proposal is to close such a gap by improving STS planning methods to cope with real-size applications, data uncertainty, and more suitable operational policies.******The second theme considers the challenges of operating vehicles powered by alternative fuels, and focuses on routing problems for Battery Equipped Vehicles (BEVs). BEVs are vehicles powered by a pure electric engine and a battery. At the moment, they present two main drawbacks: 1) the battery allows a limited driving range and 2) the recharging infrastructure is sparse and unevenly distributed. The second objective of this proposal is to build tools to efficiently schedule battery--recharging operations along vehicle routes, thus reducing the impact of BEVs limited driving range. In particular, several real-life situations will be addressed, such as the limited capacity of the recharging facilities, the existing differences in recharging speed and prices, as well as new promising technologies, such as Inductive Charging.******This research program is expected to stimulate and facilitate the transition of the road-transportation economy towards new paradigms and technologies, with the anticipation of significantly contributing to the reduction of GHG emissions.**