Dr. Omer Verbas 
Technical Lead
Argonne National Laboratory
Friday, November 12, 2021
3:30-4:30pm
https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/93444409930
Abstract:
Transit service design consists of four consecutive steps 1) Route design, 2) Frequency setting and timetabling, 3) Vehicle assignment, 4) Crew assignment. Each of these steps require a mix of optimization algorithms and engineering judgement. Moreover, there are multiple feedback loops between these steps as one imposes constraints on the others. While large-scale transit agencies such as Chicago Transit Authority rarely change their route design, every few years they do major updates to their schedules, and every quarter they do minor updates. The major drawback of most transit optimization frameworks in the literature and in practice is in demand response. A transportation system with all its modes (car, transit, taxi, TNC, walking and other active modes etc. in traffic) and human decision making (activity planning, location, timing, mode, route choices) is a complex adaptive system. As a result, it is not an easy undertaking to capture the potential impact of a service change such as changing route frequencies, adding Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines etc. To this end, we are using POLARIS, a high-performance agent-based modeling framework developed at Argonne National Laboratory to simulate large-scale transportation systems and estimate impacts on mobility at the regional level. Several scenario results will be presented that were developed through collaborations with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Regional Transportation Authority (RTA).
Bio:
Dr. Ömer Verbas is the Technical Lead for Network Modeling and Simulation at the Transportation Systems & Mobility Group at Argonne National Laboratory. His primary research areas are in transportation network modeling; multi-modal routing, assignment, and simulation; transit network design and scheduling; and charging and routing behavior of drivers with electric vehicles (EV). He was the Principal Investigator of the Department of Energy (DOE) High Performance Computing for Mobility (HPC4Mobility) project entitled “Chicago Transit Authority Transit Network Efficiency and the Changing Mobility Landscape”. Throughout his career at Argonne, Dr. Verbas has been working on several transit and EV-related tasks under the SMART Mobility Consortium, an effort led by the Department of Energy (DOE) and multiple National Laboratories that aims to deliver new data, analysis, and modeling tools, and create new knowledge to support smarter mobility systems. He has won the “Pacesetter Award” at Argonne for his work on transit models, the “Impact Argonne Award” once for his work for the SMART Mobility Consortium and another time for his work related to COVID impact.
Prior to joining Argonne, Dr. Verbas completed his doctoral studies at Northwestern University in 2014, where he also worked as a postdoctoral fellow until 2016. In 2012, he was the lead student researcher for the project entitled “Design of Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Network”. The project focused on optimizing CTA schedules to reduce crowding and waiting times. Ömer Verbas has several publications in high-impact transportation journals. He also serves as a reviewer for these journals. He is actively working in the Transportation Network Modeling Committee (ADB30) on the Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council.