This page contains a selection of projects conducted by TRAM. A detailed listing of all TRAM's projects can be found on Ahmed El-Geneidy's CV.

Funding agencies: Société de transport de Montréal (STM), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)

Funding period: 2012 – 2013

Abstract: The time that buses spend waiting for passengers to board can be a significant portion of a bus route’s overall running time. A key determinant of boarding time is the number of doors that passengers are permitted to board through. Transit agencies that allow boarding through all doors, instead of just through the front door, typically enjoy decreased boarding times, and as such, decreased running times. This paper studies the feasibility of an all-door boarding policy for La Société de transport de Montréal (STM), Montréal’s public transit agency. The potential benefits of such a policy are assessed through three main steps: first, a selection methodology is developed to determine which of STM’s bus routes would benefit most from different all-door boarding strategies; second, a multi-variate regression analysis, using STM’s AVL/APC data, is used to estimate the dwell- and running-times savings that would result under different implementation scenarios; and third, a sensitivity analysis is developed to demonstrate the savings associated with implementing such policy. Our findings show that all-door boardings could yield substantial savings in running time, with morning-peak savings of up to 15.8% on the best routes. In many cases, these running time savings are enough to remove a bus from a route while still maintaining existing frequencies. The findings from this research can be beneficial to transit planners and operators, since the presented methodologies show substantial savings from all-door boarding and can be adopted by other transit agencies.

Funding agency: National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant program

Funding period: 2008 – 2013

Abstract: Accessibility is a comprehensive measure of land use and transportation planning performance. Accordingly predicting changes in land use and transportation systems over time is essential in generating accurate accessibility measures in the future. In this research grant I offer the generation of a detailed land use and transportation change models that enables predicting changes in the system over time. In addition, generation of various accessibility measures will accompany the production of the land use and transportation infrastructure models. These accessibility measures will be generated for transit and bicycling. The measures will be used to generate models that predict changes in the levels of accessibility in the Montreal region. The changes in accessibility models and the land use and transportation change models will be used at the end of the project to generate a sensitivity analysis to test various scenarios being introduced by the Montreal Transportation plan. The goal of this project is to highlight accessibility as a measure for land use and transportation performance and show how it can be used in evaluating various transportation plans and policies.

Funding agency: Ministère des Transports du Québec (MTQ)

Funding period: 2008 – 2009

Abstract: Transportation systems are designed to help people participate in activities distributed over space and time. Accessibility indicates the collective performance of land use and transportation systems and determines how well that complex system serves its residents. Mapping accessibility over time can be used as a key performance indicator in land use and transportation planning in any region around the World. Also generating estimates of future levels of accessibility is helpful in evaluating land use and transportation plans and investments. In this research project we propose to generate various accessibility measures for the Montreal metropolitan region, with the goal of generating a reliable land use and transportation performance measure to be used in the future by the Ministry of Transport in Quebec and other Canadian agencies. Currently accessibility is gaining a great attention in the transportation planning field as a more comprehensive performance measure compared to mobility, which mainly concentrates on generating measures of congestion and delay. This project will enable measuring the effects of various land use and transportation projects and policies being conducted, or under their way in the Montreal region (for example the Highway 25 project). The research project will utilize the Origin Destination survey to generate accurate distance decay functions and historical ones. Having historical Origin and Destination survey data will enable the generation of accessibility measures over time that will enable the production of prediction models. Accessibility will be mainly measured to jobs and residents. Yet other destinations will be tested as well. The main modes of concentration in this research study are auto and transit. The goal of this project is to highlight accessibility as a measure for land use and transportation performance in the Montreal region and show how it can be used in evaluating various transportation plans and policies. This goal is achievable through the generation of various accessibility measures and organizing workshops and seminars to introduce these measures.

Funding agencies: Société de Transport de Montréal (STM), National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) CRD program

Funding period: 2009 – 2011

Abstract: Hazardous materials (hazmats), such as gasses, flammables, explosives and radioactive materials are an integral part of our industrial lifestyle. In most cases, the points of production and consumption for these materials are different and hence they need to be transported in significant volumes. For example, oil extracted from oil fields is sent to refineries, which ship their products (such as heating oil and gasoline) to storage tanks at different locations within a country. As another example, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are collected at many industrial installations, such as old power generation and transfer stations and shipped to special waste management facilities for incineration. Accidental release of hazmats during transportation can be harmful to people, property and the environment. Despite deregulation of transportation industry around the globe, governments at federal, provincial and municipal levels remain involved in assessing and mitigating the public and environmental risks of dangerous goods shipments. During the period of this grant, we will focus on developing methodologies for designing policies to regulate the transportation of hazmats in urban centers. The policy tools that are available to a government agency in this domain include restrictions on the use of road segments by hazmat carriers, establishment of inspection stations and emergency response centers, and insurance requirements. Although these policy alternatives have recently attracted some attention in the research community, none of the published work incorporates the distinguishing characteristics of urban areas. Past research on hazmat logistics, including our own, have focused on highway transportation rather than shipments through congested city streets. In an effort to close this important gap, we will develop analytical models that incorporate (i) the existing traffic on the streets and (ii) the dynamic patterns of population distribution within urban centers. In addition, we plan to study alternative strategies regarding the construction of multimodal transport yards, which are becoming increasingly common for dangerous goods shipments. Many of these yards are being built near (or within) urban centers and, given their significant impact on the spatial distribution of transport risk, these fixed facilities will be a significant element of our research program. From a methodology perspective, our basic modeling infrastructure will be electronic maps of major Canadian cities that are now available via geographical information systems (GIS). We will embed the GIS-based representation of traffic flow and population data in a risk assessment model, which in turn will be incorporated in an optimization model to assess alternative policy options. We will work with provincial and city officials to ensure the relevance of the regulatory schemes to be studied.

Funding agency: Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT)

Funding period: 2009

Abstract: Accessibility measures, comparison of travel times between different transportation modes, and designation of service areas are three important tools to evaluate transportation networks in terms of performance, efficiency, and equity. This report uses those three tools to analyze the transit situation in the Montréal Metropolitan Region, in particular with data from the 2003 AMT origin-destination survey, and with geographic information systems. Many explanatory maps as well as tables of regression results present the analysis. Conclusions include the fact that the central region of the Island of Montréal enjoys a higher level of accessibility than the regional average thanks to major transit infrastructures, namely the metro and commuter trains. In addition, accessibility by public transit is better in the north-south axis than in the east-west axis. Also, when comparing travel times by public transit and by car, public transit appears to be competitive with the car nearly everywhere when downtown is the trip destination. However, it is necessary to draw attention to the important employment sector of Saint-Laurent, where, even in adjacent zones, the automobile outperforms transit in terms of efficiency. Finally, the analysis of variable service areas according to household, neighbourhood, route, and type of transit characteristics for transit stops and stations yields a more precise evaluation of transit service coverage. It is thus possible to identify gaps or redundancies in the service, and to optimize the location of stops or stations.

Funding agency: City of Montreal

Funding period: 2008

Abstract: The 2008 Montréal Transportation Plan aims at reinventing the city through its overarching goal: increasing mobility while making Montréal a good place to live and a prosperous and sustainable economic centre. The plan contains 21 strategic projects, including several initiatives favouring transit and active transportation over auto usage. This research examines the potential impacts of the Transportation Plan on urban development to ascertain how the City of Montréal can maximise positive effects and minimise negative ones, based on the idea that transport and land-use planning must go hand in hand. Transportation decisions should also be concerned with land use and the spatial distribution of destinations, and not only transport modes and the design of routes and lines. Furthermore, the performance of a transportation system cannot be evaluated solely in terms of mobility (travel speed) and must include accessibility (possible destinations). We classify the strategic projects contained in the Transportation Plan into eleven categories and review the research conducted on the experience of other cities worldwide in implementing these types of projects. Three major projects – the airport rail-link to the CBD, the extension of the metro Blue line and of the commuter rail towards the east- are then examined in more detail in order to evaluate their potential to generate real estate development and restructure the urban landscape.