SMART’s Distinguished speakers

SMART Presentation Summary

The objective of this work is to study the path-dependent aspects of transportation systems by testing the hypothesis that during the development of a region, there is a "point of no return" beyond which any economically and/or politically feasible policies to halt or reverse the tide toward the auto-dominated transportation system becomes futile. In other words, public policies will affect mode share only when they are implemented at the right moment.

I am developing an agent-based simulation model (ABM) of an urban region that captures the essential dynamics of the interaction between the supply and demand of a transportation system and land use. It also simulates the effect of various policies on the mode share of a transit system. If my hypotheses are correct, the final outcome of the ABM simulations will show the effects of not only the difference in the policy tools, but also the timing of implementation. The simulation will also provide detailed information about the process of urban development in which the land use, transportation systems, and socioeconomic factors intertwine in a dynamic and unpredictable manner, providing insights into the complex relationships among public policies, individual choices, and social development.

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Biography

Yandan Lu is a PhD student in the Urban Planning and Policy Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her B.S. in Information Engineering and M.S. in Traffic Information Engineering and Control in 2002 from Northern Jiaotong University, Beijing, China. While at UIC, she has researched the feasibility and effectiveness of innovative freight strategies in U.S urban areas. Her dissertation is examining the path dependency of urban development and work trip modal balance using Agent-based Modeling.

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