TransportLab: July 2025
Semi-annual News from TransportLab at the University of Sydney
Welcome to the mid-year update from TransportLab at the University of Sydney.
We would love to meet you face-to-face, or you can follow us on LinkedIn and Mastodon.
Events
The Travel Demand Management Symposium will be hosted in Sydney 9-11 December. TransportLab is assisting with local organising. Come and see us!
TransportLab Seminars
Prof Hai Yang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology). Mathematics, Economics and Artificial Intelligence for On-demand Mobility Services. 11/July/2025
Prof Ludovic Leclerq (Université Gustave Eiffel). Calibration of Multimodal MFD curves: all you should know. 1/July/2025
Prof Kevin Heaslip (University of Tennessee, Knoxville). Securing the Future of Mobility: Cybersecurity Challenges and Research at the Center for Transportation Research. 27/June/2025
Dr Carmen Cabrera (University of Liverpool). Exploring Urban Complexity across Spatial Scales and Approaches. 20/June/2025
Dr Francisco Rowe (University of Liverpool). Correcting Distorted Human Mobility Data from Mobile Phones. 20/June/2025
Dr Stephany Berrio (University of Sydney). Paving the Road to Autonomy: Research at the Australian Centre for Robotics. 16/May/2025
A/Prof Somwrita Sarkar (University of Sydney). What is a city? Examining the nature of urban growth patterns and boundaries for India, 1975-2025. 28/March/2025
Dr Kari Watkins (UC Davis). Sustainable transportation for a more resilient transportation system. 28/February/2025
Dr Riki Kawase (Institute of Science Tokyo). Multi-objective multi-stage stochastic linear programming for strategic planning of shared autonomous vehicle operation and infrastructure design with on-demand and pre-booked requests. 14/February/2025
TransportCamp
TransportLab hosted TransportCamp Sydney with sponsorship from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney 25 July 2025
People
Congratulations to Dr. Haotian Wang for “satisfying the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney.”
Thesis Title: An Ensemble Approach to Route Choice
Lead Supervisor: Professor David Levinson.
Co-Supervisor: Dr. Emily Moylan.
Congratulations to Dr Guipeng Jiao for “satisfying the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney”.
Thesis Title: The competitive e-hailing market: modelling and operation strategies
Lead Supervisor: A/Prof Mohsen Ramezani
TransportLab welcomes new PhD students:
• Wenhui Yang – Operations of electrified fleets
• Jingkun (Sylvia) Zhao – Congestion modeling and control
• Vidumini (Vidu) Pamuditha – Safe Speed Limits and Active Travel
• Siqi Wu - Resident Choices, UHI, and Sustainable Urban Design
• Valentina Gomez - The price of anarchy in public transport networks
Publications
DAI, Shian, Liqiang YU, Zhaoran LIU, Mengying CUI, David LEVINSON (2025) The Internal and External Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes. Scientific Reports. 15, 5441 [doi]
DAI, Zhe, Mengying CUI, Kong LI, Lijie YU, David LEVINSON (2025) High-speed rail impacts on intercity accessibility: A multi-modal, multi-scalar networking approach. Transportation Research Part C Volume 171, February 2025, 105006 [doi]
Fielbaum, A. (2025). Coordination Costs in Spatial Matching: Assigned vs Onsite Transport Modes. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, In Press.
Fielbaum, A., Salas, D., Zhang, R., & Castro, F. (2025). Idle wage as a tool to regulate the relationship between ride-hailing platforms and drivers. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 174, 105113.
Gao, Yang and Levinson, David (2025) The rise of trucks and the fall of throughput. Transportmetrica A: Transport Science, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/23249935.2025.2477817 [doi]
Jiao, Guipeng and Ramezani, Mohsen (2025) On the inefficiencies in the multi-platform e-hailing market with impatient customers. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 178, 105153
Kent, J. L. (2025). Car-free not care-free–the social practices of parents without cars. Mobilities, 1-19. [doi]
Kent, J. L. (2025). Car ownership through the parenting journey and beyond. Travel Behaviour and Society, 40, 101011. [doi]
Kent, J. L. (2025). The car-free journey to, and through, parenthood. Transportation, 52(4), 1569-1592. [doi]
Kent, J. L., & Harris, P. (2025). Positioning the private car as a political problem. Journal of the American Planning Association, 91(1), 126-132. [doi]
Kundu, D., Sarkar, S., & Moylan, E. (2025). Benefits from a new transit line: Exploring the impact of rare users and spatially heterogeneous variations in intensity of use. Journal of Public Transportation, 27, 100120. [doi]
Pellegrini, A., & Fielbaum, A. (2025). Are users ready to accept fully flexible walking in on-demand mobility?. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, In Press.
Rana, K., Kent, J. L., & Page, A. (2025). Housing inequalities and health outcomes among migrant and refugee populations in high-income countries: a mixed-methods systematic review. BMC Public Health, 25(1), 1098. [doi]
Rashidi, L. H., Kent, J. L., & Moylan, E. (2025). The impact of omitting key built environment factors on the potential health outcomes of active travel to school. Journal of Transport & Health, 43, 102083. [doi]
Roudnitski, A., & Sarkar, S. (2025). The effect of policy regulations in the short-term rental platform market on long-term rental prices: A case study of Airbnb in Sydney. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 23998083251350410. [doi]
Song, Changle, Dennis, M., Burns, B, Levinson, D. and Moylan, Emily (2025) Improved Spatial Equity in Healthcare Access from Novel Logistics Strategies. Journal of Transport Geography Volume 125, May 2025, 104178 [doi]
Xian, T. T., Nelson, J. D., & Moylan, E. (2025). High resolution bus lane performance evaluation from real time update data. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 32, 101473. [doi]
Zeng, Ruihao and Ramezani, Mohsen (2025) A dynamic-confidence 3D multi-object tracking method based on spatio-temporal association. Measurement, 117864
Zhang, K., Alonso-Mora, J., & Fielbaum, A. (2025). What do walking and e-hailing bring to scale economies in on-demand mobility?. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 192, 103156.
Zhang, Y., Nelson, J. D., Mulley, C., & Kent, J. (2025). Understanding shared e-scooters from a civic stakeholder perspective. Transportation, 1-23. [doi]
Zmudzki, F., Burns, B., Kruit, N., Song, C., Moylan, E., Vachharajani, H., ... & Dennis, M. (2025). Pre-hospital ECPR cost analysis and cost effectiveness modelling study. Resuscitation, 208, 110488. [doi]
Appearances
Conferences
David Levinson visited China (Xi’an, and then Shenzhen) at the end of June and beginning of July for the 3rd Symposium on Cities and Sustainable Transport
David Levinson will be keynoting the online conference: Bridging Transport Research
TRISTAN 2025
Valentina Gómez, Sergio Jara-Díaz, Andrés Fielbaum presented "The theoretical role of the pure transfer penalty when determining whether to split a public transport line"
Francisco Vilches, Cristián Cortés, Andrés Fielbaum presented "Selecting an optimal set of shared ridepooling stops"
Zhaohan Wang (with Mohsen Ramezani and David Levinson) presented “Autonomous vehicle control on lane-free roads: A level-k game approach”
Alireza Soltani (with David Levinson and Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Communication-free Distributed Model Predictive Control for Autonomous Vehicles at Lane-free and Signal-free Intersections”
Yue Yang (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “The intraday competition in a duopoly ride-hailing market”
Guipeng Jiao, Yue Yang and Mohsen Ramezani presented “On the Joint Effects of Supply and Demand Multi-homing in the e-hailing Market”
Changle Song (with Emily Moylan and David Levinson) presented “Aggregated Knowledge Learning for Dynamic Vehicle-Task Assignment in Emergency Medical Services”
CASPT 2025
"Optimal Vehicle Scheduling for Network-Based Modular Autonomous Public Transport Systems" Neema Nassir, Andrés Fielbaum, Sapan Tiwari, Avishai Ceder.
“Design evaluation of bus cross-traffic turn priority box” Tim Xian, John Nelson and Emily Moylan
"RL-Based Anticipatory Matching in Ride-pooling". Poster session. Xinyu Wang, Andrés Fielbaum.
"Scheduling an Electrified Public Transport Ferry System through a MILP". Poster session. Lin Lin, Orlando Rivera Letelier, Xinyu Wang, Andrés Fielbaum.
"A Hybrid Bus Design for Ridership Fluctuation". Poster session. Haoran Zhao, Andrés Fielbaum.
TFTC2025
Mohsen Ramezani delivered a lecture at the associated Winter School, Cairns, Australia.
Ruihao Zeng (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Social etiquette-aware navigation for distributed autonomous vehicles”
Wenhui Yang (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “optimal charging and scheduling strategies for demand-responsive electric shuttle services”
ITS Australia Mobility 2025
Tingsen (Tim) Xian presented on “Microscopic Bus Performance Analysis Using Real-time Data in Greater Sydney”
European Association for Research in Transportation
Hamidreza Babaeighazvini (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Decentralized trip-based traffic signal control”
Transportation Research Symposium
Elnaz Emami (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Aggregated modelling of dockless and docked shared micromobility systems”
Elnaz Emami (with Riki Kawase and Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Optimization of virtual parking locations for micromobility sharing systems”
Hamidreza Babaeighazvini (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Pressure-based traffic signal control based on remaining travel distance”
Ruihao Zeng (with Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Reactive-aware actor-critic model for socially acceptable autonomous driving at intersections”
Hamidreza Babaeighazvini (With Mohsen Ramezani) presented “Model predictive control for safe-efficient urban corridor traffic control”
Talks
Andrés Fielbaum delivered two seminars at Tongji University:
"Finding Modern Answers through a Classical Public Transport Model". 08/July, College of Transportation Engineering
"Temporal Friction in On-demand Assigned Mobility: Short-term decisions, long-term dynamics, and the limits of optimisation." 09/July, School of Economics and Management.
Emily Moylan spoke to the Asian Development Bank’s e-Mobility Webinar on 22 January 2025 on Accessibility as a tool for monitoring EV deployment
Media
David Levinson was interviewed by the Straits Times: Australian cities offer free public transport to fill empty seats, ease cost of living pain
David Levinson and Yang Gao’s research was mentioned by Laurie Winkless in Forbes: SUVs Make Traffic Worse And Are More Dangerous Than Cars
David Levinson was interviewed by Nina Moini and Aleesa Kuznetsov (MPR) regarding his Study: More SUVs on Minnesota roads are making traffic worse
David Levinson was mentioned by David Zipper (@BlueSky) in How SUVs Are Making Traffic Worse: As larger, taller sport utility vehicles took over US roads, they also aggravated highway congestion, according to a new study. It’s yet another ill effect of “car bloat.”
David Levinson was mentioned in a video by Road Guy Rob: Minnesota Drivers Hated Ramp Meters (Until They Were Gone)
Projects
Andrés Fielbaum is a partner investigator in the project "Design of Mixed Flexible-Fixed Public Transport Networks (FlexMobility)", funded by NWO (The Netherlands), under the Open Technology Program.