Transportation Systems

Professorship for Transportation Systems

Society and economy require efficient, safe, financially viable and environmentally friendly mobility. Public transportation should provide a special contribution for that purpose.

Designing, implementing and operating public transport systems are challenging activities: New focal points with high traffic volumes often establish distant from historically developed infrastructures. Rebuilding and expanding infrastructure requires long periods of time, as well as substantial investments.

Therefore, public transportation systems must anticipate such unfoldments as well as proactively consider future market requirements. At the same time, efficiency, punctuality, availability and safety are to be further increased. Finally, the scarce resources available have to be used optimally, resulting in a need to constantly increase efficiency and effectiveness.

The chair of transportation systems identified in this context four main research areas and related long-term questions, which lead his investigation activities:

Passenger transportation system evaluation and decision support:

Decisions on transport systems are often taken without holistic considerations. How can transportation systems be adequately evaluated, including economical, technical, operational, social and environmental aspects?

Integration of rail freight transport systems in logistic chains:

The coming logistic concepts are decisive for the future of rail freight. How should rail freight systems be improved on the conceptual, operational, technical and organisational level in order to best meet the new requirements?

System performance and stability:

Dispatching systems as well as novel algorithms for the generation of timetables provide new perspectives for railway operation. How can the performance of a public transport infrastructure network be exhausted while remaining reliable and stable?

Rail infrastructure management:

Network costs are the result of many decisions along the supply chain, from network strategies to technological innovation and organisation. How can the financial needs for the railway infrastructure be minimized in all phases of the life cycle?

Furthermore, the chair is committed to questions dealing with regulatory changes and liberalization in the transport sector. The chair offers lectures for the BSc courses in Civil Engineering and for MSc courses in Spatial Development and Infrastructure Systems as well as in Civil Engineering. Their structure is based on the life cycle of systems: System and Network Planning; Freight Transport and Logistics; Slow modes; System Dimensioning and Capacity; Railway Infrastructure; Systems Management, Marketing, Quality Control; and Safety and Reliability of Railway Operations.

In addition, the chair is involved in the MSc-lectures «Transport Systems» and «Simulation of Transport Systems.» It supervises selected topics in MAS planning and in the CAS Risk & Safety at ETH Zurich.