This 1-hour session will take place online on November 19th 2020, from 11a.m. to 12 noon. Two Ph.D. students of the Transport Systems Doctoral Program from FEUP will share their ongoing research work, in an informal and friendly environment. The titles and short abstracts for their research works can be found below.

Link to Zoom meeting: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/81371702737?pwd=MHZERHVseUpEemhLUHcvU3UzZzVnZz09

Juliana Carvalho – Policy Roadmaps for Sustainable Urban mobility: a Collaborative Design Framework

Mudassar Shafiq – Optimal Design and Evaluation of more Sustainable and Equitable Public Transport Networks

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Juliana Carvalho – Policy Roadmaps for Sustainable Urban mobility: a Collaborative Design Framework

This research project aims to contribute to sustainable urban mobility from an interdisciplinary perspective. With a focus on the specific challenges of local authorities in metropolitan areas, such as promoting intermunicipal coordination, we propose an experimental research design based on participatory backcasting and institutional design analysis to develop a collaborative design framework for assessing adaptive policy roadmaps in sustainable urban mobility. This approach values stakeholder engagement and recognizes the need for more flexibility in policymaking in order to promote long-term sustainability goals in a landscape of increasing uncertainty. The underlying assumption is that scenario-based participatory processes can contribute to consensus building, providing opportunities for effective learning among participants. The Metropolitan Area of Porto, Portugal, will provide an empirical environment for the research, and Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, the reference planning tool.

Mudassar Shafiq – Optimal Design and Evaluation of more Sustainable and Equitable Public Transport Networks

The world’s population and the number of people living in and migrating to the urban areas for better opportunities has increased rapidly over the last two decades. This has resulted in greater levels of car ownership in urban areas, congestion, higher emissions and environmental pollution, overburdened road infrastructure and insufficient alternate transport facilities. These trends have led to many social disparities among the societies and people while accessing the services and opportunities available in the area.

Efforts are being made all over the world to plan and design public transport networks which are more efficient, equitable and sustainable, so that they emerge as a preferred mode of transport and serve the needs of all the groups of the society.

This doctoral project targets the design of efficient, equitable and sustainable public transportation networks using multi-objective optimization models. In a first step, the model will minimize the total user cost and maximize the accessibility to the services, using horizontal and vertical equity constraints. Then, the model will consider the modal share for the public transportation (demand effect) that serves as an indicator of sustainability, along with efficiency and equity.

These network design models will be applied and validated to a real-world case study that will lead to an optimized network with equity and greater modal share and maximized accessibility, in comparison to the existing transit route network.