Members of the NTA Transport Modelling team attended the 56th annual conference of the Universities’ Transport Studies Group ( UTSG) in Huddersfield UK from the 1st to the 3rd of July.
NTA Transport Modelling team present at 56th annual UTSG conference in Huddersfield
Brendan Meskell and Billy Brazil travelled to Huddersfield. They presented on research they had undertaken with Warren Whitney estimating time-based bus-to-bus interchange penalties in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA). This work estimated the time-equivalent penalty resulting from the inconvenience of having to make an additional interchange when making trips on a bus network.
Billy Brazil also presented on a study outlining levels of bicycle ownership and associated factors. This was based on data from the 2022 National Household Travel Survey.
One of the longest running transport conferences
The conference is one of the longest running transport conferences in these islands. It features a mixture of academics, transport professionals, and policy makers from Ireland, the UK, and further afield.
The papers presented outlined the results of analysis undertaken by the modelling team to better understand the factors that impact transport decisions, and to inform the continuing update and refinement of the NTA’s suite of strategic transport models.
One Estimation of Bus-to-Bus Interchange Penalties in an Irish Context
By Meskell, Brazil, and Whitney, as mentioned above, this paper presented the results of research undertaken to quantify a time-equivalent transfer penalty for bus-to-bus interchanges in the Greater Dublin Area.
Modelling Rates of Bicycle Ownership
Dr William Brazil also presented a paper on Modelling Rates of Bicycle Ownership.
Bicycle ownership is an often-overlooked aspect of transport modelling, and transport planning in general. While many, if not most, strategic transport models have well established sub-models to estimate access to private cars, there is an implicit assumption that all trip makers can consider cycling if the network is of a suitable quality.
Further information
Links to the papers can be found at the Transport Modelling team’s research and publications page:
Further details of the conference and UTSG can be found at the website of the Universities’ Transport Studies Group ( UTSG).