Principal Investigator Nigel Wilson
London's century-old public transport system is undergoing more than $40 billion worth of renovation and expansion while facing major financial and capacity pressures. Our collaborative research program with Transport for London (TfL) focuses on the use of automatically collected data systems in strategic decision-making. Origin-destination matrices estimated based on data collected from the Oyster smart card ticketing system, as well as path choice models estimated from onboard surveys, will yield drastically improved, cheaper and more timely estimates of volumes and crowding on the London Underground and bus networks. Estimation of interchange behavior and multimodal journey patterns will aid in integrated network design. Methods are being developed to use end-to-end journey times, also measured by the Oyster system, to quantify the delays and unreliability experienced by passengers on London's rail networks. Rail signaling information will be used to evaluate and improve day-to-day service control decisions. A parallel focus of our work with TfL is to examine the technology and policy requirements for using commercial contactless credit cards for ticketing, as well as the effects of such a system on fare policy. Finally, we are investigating the use of innovative strategies and structures for the finance and delivery of large rail infrastructure projects, including Crossrail.