UT-ITE Seminar
Eric MacNaughton presents “The City of Calgary Transportation COVID Recovery Scenarios”
Online via ZoomAs the COVID pandemic began to take hold in Canada in March of 2020, the City of Calgary’s transportation department initiated several streams of work to manage the short- and longer-term impacts. One of these streams involved the use of strategic foresight to create a set of plausible scenarios for Calgary after the pandemic. Based […]
Seyed Mehdi Meshkani presents “A dynamic many-to-one ride-matching algorithm for shared mobility services on congested networks”
Online via ZoomOn-demand shared mobility is a promising and sustainable transportation approach that can mitigate vehicle externalities, such as traffic congestion and emission. On-demand shared mobility systems require matching of one (one-to-one) or multiple riders (many-to-one) to a vehicle based on real-time information. We propose a novel Graph-based Many-to-One ride-Matching (GMOMatch) algorithm for the dynamic many-to-one matching […]
Joseph Chow presents “Microtransit deployment portfolio management using simulation-based scenario data upscaling”
Online via ZoomDue to transportation technologies having such heterogeneous impacts on different communities, there needs to be better tools to evaluate the deployment of emerging technologies with limited data. Microtransit is one such technology. We propose a novel methodology to “upscale” the limited data available so that further decision-support analysis and forecast modelling can be achieved where […]
Ana Patricia Ayala presents “An overview of knowledge syntheses methods”
Online via ZoomLearn about the different types of knowledge syntheses: systematic reviews, scoping reviews, rapid reviews, and more. The similarities and differences between these study types, the different steps in the process, and key aspects critical for ensuring their successful completion. Patricia Ayala Patricia Ayala is Research Services Librarian at University of Toronto Libraries. She has worked on […]
Nico Malfara and Yunfei Zhang present “Applications of Transportation Planning in Practice”
Online via ZoomThis presentation will demonstrate how concepts of transportation planning are applied in practice. Areas of transportation planning such as travel demand modelling, master planning, multi-modal planning, complete streets, transit planning and functional planning will be featured through real-world case studies, such as the City of Mississauga Lakeshore Transportation Studies, City of Brampton LRT Extension, City […]
Dr. Rick Donnelly presents “Rediscovering the lost art of travel forecasting”
Online via ZoomThe point of travel forecasting is to inform decision-makers about the likely impacts of transport policies and investments that will irrevocably shape our cities and regions. In the past we've assumed that tomorrow will simply be a more crowded, prosperous, and congested version of our existing world. But today assuming a "business as usual" progression towards 20-30 […]
Kevin Wong presents “Developing a generative design framework for optimising public transit network design”
Online via ZoomDespite the plethora of tools and data available to transit planners, transit network design has remained mostly a manual task. Nevertheless, there have been many attempts to use algorithms and computing to optimise transit network design based on geography, demand and operating resources. However, the Transit Network Design Problem (TNDP) and Transit Network Design and […]
Dr. Eric Miller presents “Everything you wanted to know about report writing but were afraid to ask”
Online via ZoomThis presentation discusses various elements of report writing as a guide to graduate students preparing term project reports, journal articles, theses, etc. It is intended to address some typical issues that graduate students encounter in their writing. Topics discussed include: report organization; report style; treatment of tables, figures, exhibits and appendices; grammar and syntax; spelling […]
Kanchan Maharaj presents “Equity in active transportation planning, design, and delivery”
Online via ZoomThe City of Toronto's Cycling Network Plan (CNP) serves as a roadmap and work plan outlining the City’s planned investments in cycling infrastructure in the near-term and intentions for the long-term. The CNP is grounded in many city policies and strategies including the Official Plan, the Road to Health, Vision Zero Road Safety Plan, TransformTO […]
Raphael Dumas presents “Analyzing the transportation impacts of Toronto’s vehicle-for-hire industry 2019-2021”
Online via ZoomIn 2019 the Big Data Innovation Team, in partnership with Municipal Licensing and Standards, prepared an analysis of the impacts of Vehicles for Hire and Private Transportation Companies on the City of Toronto’s Transportation Network including on congestion, equity, transit, and curb utilization. Following that report Council required further datasets of the Vehicle-for-Hire industry starting […]
Willem Klumpenhouwer and Diego Silva present “Living on a fare: Dashboarding fare-sensitive access and equity in major U.S. urban areas”
Online via ZoomWhile premium transit modes such as commuter rail can improve access to opportunities, the higher fares that accompany these services create barriers to their use. Fare-sensitive access measures require accurate estimation of fare costs between origins and destinations. They are not often included in public transit access analyses because of data limitations and computational complexity. […]
Lama Alfaseeh presents “Tips to land a job quickly and your to-do-list before you graduate”
Online via ZoomPlease join us for a seminar by Dr. Lama Alfaseeh on Friday, February 18 from 11 am-12pm. Dr. Lama Alfaseeh Lama started her PhD in 2016 at Ryerson University and joined the Laboratory of Innovations in Transportation (LiTrans) in 2017. Lama was supervised by Dr. Bilal Farooq and defended her dissertation in 2020. Lama’s research […]
Daniel Haufschild presents “Managing planning and engineering consulting assignments: tips for success in the public and private sector”
Online via ZoomUniversity planning and engineering curricula are centered around the technical skills and knowledge needed to be successful in the industry. Increasingly, project management training specific to the industry has also been offered. What remains a gap is how to effectively manage consulting assignments and the procurement process, with new graduates expected to learn on the […]
Equity, diversity and inclusion in freight transportation: A panel discussion
Online EventInspired by the desire to create an equal and inclusive work environment where individual differences are valued, many government and private sector organizations have initiated practices to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. To provide examples of such initiatives in practice, Sophia Sniegowski Begidzhanov (The Musket Transport Ltd. and CHET), Melissa Magder (Region of Peel), and […]
José Holguín-Veras presents “Freight transportation policy and planning in the fight against climate change: The role of connected trucks, land use, and other tools nobody talks about”
Online via ZoomThe obvious changes in the climate—exemplified by former “hundred year weather events” taking place every other year—are adding tremendous urgency to efforts to reduce the emissions produced by mobile sources. In this context, reducing the freight transportation’s environmental footprint is an essential, though extremely hard to achieve, component of sustainability efforts. To a great extent, this […]
Daniel Olejarz presents ‘Transportation planning in unfamiliar environments’
Online via ZoomTransportation planners often undertake projects outside their home cities or regions. Working in unfamiliar geographies brings a unique set of challenges that can impact project success if not considered early and often. This presentation will identify some of the key challenges faced by planners when contributing to projects in unfamiliar locations and, informed by personal […]
Saeed Shakib presents ‘A new choice experiment design method to capture post-pandemic residential relocation behaviour in Greater Toronto Area’
Online EventIn this presentation, I will discuss the progress and our most recent findings on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on households' long-term residential mobility and relocation choice, on behalf of the Transportation Demand Modelling Group. The data used in the study is from a two-stage survey we collected in July 2020 and 2021. The […]
Sk. Md. Mashrur & Brenden Lavoie present ‘Development of a multimodal network microsimulation model for a regional agent-based travel demand modelling for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA)’
Online via ZoomInnovative mobility solutions are constantly emerging with the advent of information and communication technologies, offering travellers multidimensional choices including, but not limited to, modes, routes, and locations. Without a fully agent-based and dynamic travel demand microsimulation modelling system, it is impossible to evaluate such emerging mobility solutions/options realistically. The network modelling component is the most […]
Antonio Gittens & Peter Stokes of StreetLight Data present ‘Big Data for transportation: applications in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area’
Online via ZoomAntonio Gittens Antonio Gittens, Solutions Manager at StreetLight Data, has 10 years’ experience in multimodal planning, transportation policy, and software implementation. His experience spans urban and rural, from helping Transport Canada bring emerging mobility to rural Canada, to helping Metrolinx—one of Canada’s largest transit agencies—assess the feasibility of on-demand transit. Peter Stokes Peter Stokes, Regional […]
Professor Carolina Osorio presents ‘Efficient search in high-dimensional spaces: the case of Bayesian optimization for large-scale urban traffic control’
Online via ZoomIn this talk, we consider high-dimensional traffic signal control problems that arise in congested metropolitan areas. We focus on the use of high-resolution urban mobility stochastic simulators and formulate the control problems as high-dimensional continuous simulation-based optimization (SO) problems. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of designing SO algorithms for these problems. An important component in […]