It's All About Transportation

The media has had extensive coverage of transportation news and research, which is very gratifying (and which is getting me really psyched to teach my Transportation & Logistics class).

News about Professor Arnie Barnett's study, "Cross-National Differences in Aviation Safety Records," which appears in the August issue of the INFORMS journal Transportation Science, has now gone viral with articles on it from The Washington Post to The Sydney Morning Herald, with the latter with the attention-grabbing headline of "Your Chances of Dying in a Plane Crash? It Depends Upon Where You Fly."

As those of us who have had the privilege of interacting with Professor Barnett of MIT's Sloan School of Management know, Professor Barnett has a fear of flying. We hosted Professor Barnett in our Speaker Series several Falls ago and he was fantastic! Coincidentally, as a frequent flier, this summer, I was trolling the Internet for safety stats on several airlines since I had a heavy travel schedule for speaking engagements that took me to South America and Eastern Europe. My intuition told me to be careful in deciding which airlines (and which routes) to fly and now Barnett's paper confirms that caution should, indeed, be taken.

Plus, who could have missed the news about the South Korean female, Ms. Cha, a 69-year-old widow with four children, who on her 950th attempt passed her written driver's test and then on her 10th attempt received her driver's license! She has been lauded as a national hero for her determination and for never giving up. She actually said that she enjoyed taking busses to her driver's ed classes since she had only a minimal elementary school education and minimal literacy and craved learning! Her goal was to be able to get a license so that she could take her grandchildren to the zoo.

As for another transportation news story, Michael Grynbaum, writing in The New York Times, has further coverage on the closure of Broadway in NYC, as well as on the history of the design on the street grid dating back to the early 1800s! My most recent paper, just published in Europhysics Letters, was on the related topic of network topology, traffic, the Braess paradox, and the wisdom of crowds.