Packing and Revising My Optimal Route to the INFORMS Analytics Conference in Boston

I  am blogging the INFORMS Analytics Conference in Boston and below I am reposting my first submitted official post.

It is a beautiful sunny day in Massachusetts and we are very excited about the INFORMS Analytics Conference which kicks off tomorrow in Boston at the Westin Waterfront hotel!

My talk on cybersecurity and financial services, which I am presenting there on Tuesday is all set, and I have begun to pack. There is no need for printing a boarding pass and making a seat assignment, unlike for my trip of just over a week ago when I flew back from Amsterdam to Boston Logan. 

Since I work on network systems, from transportation and logistical ones to the Internet, I have  always been  interested in optimal  routing of flows.

I had settled on a route from Amherst, where I live, to Boston, which I am very familiar with, and then the email arrived from EZPass last evening, which stated:

MassDOT has planned 3 significant weekend lane restrictions on Interstate 90 (Massachusetts Turnpike) in Boston to remove the Prudential Tunnel ceiling over the roadway. The ceiling remains safe and secure, but has deteriorated beyond the point of repair and must be removed. The tunnel ceiling is owned and maintained by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA).

The restrictions will reduce traffic to one lane eastbound and one lane westbound inside the Prudential Center Tunnel on the following weekends:
March 28-30!!! (I added the exclamation points.)

Last Saturday,  my shuttle driver from Logan made a quick maneuver when he saw the stream of glowing car backlights in the same tunnel, which is just outside of Logan. This necessitated a diversion through Arlington and added about 40 minutes to the last leg of my journey back to Amherst, which had originated in Gothenburg, Sweden, 14 hours before!

But now I was forewarned, thanks to MassDOT!

So, since we are educated as operations researchers, my revised route to Boston is below:

This INFORMS conference should be very energizing with exciting interactions between academics and practitioners plus I am even bringing one of my doctoral students, who is the President of our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. This will be an outstanding venue for introducing her to my favorite professional society and community!

Go INFORMS, Boston, and, always, Boston Strong!

Safe travels, everyone, and see you soon!

Terrific Talk on Transportation Science + Economics

Today we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Eric Gonzales of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UMass Amherst in our INFORMS Speakers Series. Dr. Gonzales, who received his PhD from UC Berkeley, and then spent 2 and a half years at Rutgers, recently joined the UMass faculty.

His talk, "Coordinating Traffic and Transit Systems: Linking Transportation Science and Economics," was fabulous. He discussed system optimization and user equilibrium with tipping points of switching to transit. I especially liked his use of numerous images and graphs to display trade-offs as well as his discussions of different cities around the world. He emphasized how to capture congestion in cities in an aggregated way. Several of the students in the audience had taken my Logistics and Transportation class as well as my graduate class on Networks, Game Theory, and Variational Inequalities, so they could very much appreciate his perspective.

Below are several photos that I took today at Dr. Gonzales' presentation at the Isenberg School, which attracted an audience also from the College of Engineering.

We are very lucky that Dr. Gonzales has joined the faculty at UMass Amherst! His dissertation advisor at UC Berkeley was Professor Carlos Daganzo, who was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Most Influential Articles on the Economics of Traffic Congestion and Our Translation of the Braess Paradox Article is Included

I had not even realized until this past week that the edited volume, The Economics of Traffic Congestion, containing

the most influential articles written over the past eight decades that contribute to an understanding of the economics of traffic congestion

had been published by Edward Elgar Publishing in its series: the International Library of Critical Writings in Economics.

When I saw the list of articles that had been reprinted, I was struck by the names of the authors, many of whom I cite very regularly in my papers and books since their works are, indeed, classics in transportation.

And then I saw my name on the paper with Braess and Wakolbinger in the first volume; see the contents of Part I of the first volume below, taken from the Edward Elgar page on this book.

Contents:

Volume I

Acknowledgements

Introduction Erik T. Verhoef

PART I CONGESTION AND ROAD PRICING: CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS
1. A.C. Pigou (1920), 'Divergences between Marginal Trade Net Product and Marginal Individual Net Product'
2. F. H. Knight (1924), 'Some Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost'
3. John Glen Wardrop (1952), 'Some Theoretical Aspects of Road Traffic Research'
4. Martin Beckmann, C.B. McGuire and Christopher B. Winsten (1956), 'Equilibrium' and 'Efficiency'
5. M.J. Lighthill and G.B. Whitham (1955), 'On Kinematic Waves. II: A Theory of Traffic Flow on Long Crowded Roads'
6. Paul I. Richards (1956), 'Shock Waves on the Highway'
7. A.A. Walters (1961), 'The Theory and Measurement of Private and Social Cost of Highway Congestion'
8. William S. Vickrey (1963), 'Pricing in Urban and Suburban Transport'
9. Dietrich Braess, Anna Nagurney and Tina Wakolbinger (2005), 'On a Paradox of Traffic Planning' [Translated from the German: D. Braess (1968), 'Über ein Paradoxon aus der Verkehrsplanung']

To be in a volume with Pigou, Knight, Wardrop, Beckmann, McGuire, and Winsten, Lighthill, and even the Nobel Laureate Vickrey, is humbling, to say the least.

The full contents of volumes I and II are available here and what a wonderful list of "classics." Plus, I can say that in this group there are even quite a few still with us that I consider my friends.

We had been approached by the editor of this two volume edition, Eric Verhoef, a while back, and Dietrich Braess, Tina Wakolbinger, and I had given permission to have our article, published originally in 2005, in the journal, Transportation Science (which is an INFORMS journal), reprinted and had gotten the necessary permissions. The article is unusual since it is a translation of the famous Braess (1968) paradox paper from German to English, that was accompanied by a preface written by David E. Boyce and me.

According to the publisher: The first volume explores the classic contributions on congestion and road pricing and includes papers in dynamic models and second-best congestion pricing. The second volume analyses ownership arrangements such as private roads, investment and financing, urban land use, social acceptability and distributional aspects of road pricing.

Professor Dietrich Braess visited the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst shortly after our translation was published. Tina Wakolbinger, who, at the time,was one of my doctoral students at UMass Amherst, and I, along with others had a wonderful time hosting him and he spoke in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers series. Some photos and other information can be found here. Tina is now a Full Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

This volume also brings forth some of the amazing synergies between economics and operations research, a theme that has always been very dear to me and my research. But then again, Martin Beckmann was on my doctoral dissertation committee at Brown University, with Stella Dafermos as my dissertation chair. George Majda, who, like Stella, died much too young, was my other committee member. Beckmann is still with us and continues to amaze with his mind and love of life.

The Cross Bronx Expressway, Traffic Congestion as Entertainment

Sam Dolnick writes in today's New York Times about the congested Cross Bronx Expressway, which is considered one of the most congested roadways in the US, with 184,000 cars traveling on it daily, according to the New York State Department of Transportation. What is particularly interesting about the article is that for many (not those stuck in traffic) but those who can watch (or hear) the traffic flow, the patterns and sounds are rather captivating and, sometimes, even soothing. For local residents, the traffic with multiple modes of vehicles from trucks to cars, provides entertainment and distraction. Some even gawk whenever the sounds of screeching wheels and brakes greet them (but it seems that accidents are rather rare).

Some drivers, on the other hand, will do anything possible to avoid the Cross Bronx Expressway, traveling dozens of miles via alternative routes. One of these, quoted in the article is Mr. Nolan, a traffic reporter for WPLJ-FM, who has watched the Cross Bronx Expressway for 30 years: I absolutely, positively, completely, totally believe that that is the worst road in the metropolitan New York area. I can’t imagine there being a worse road anywhere. He proceeds in the article to commiserate about relatives being stuck there for hours and holidays ruined, as a result.

Flows on networks fascinate and captivate. What I enjoy is modeling and studying the phenomena that traffic represents from transportation networks and logistical networks to bits and bytes on the Internet. Swarms of drivers, acting independently, ultimately converge and end up at their destinations, following the pathways of roads and byways. Transportation networks are complex organisms through which vehicles circulate. Flying in an airplane at night and seeing the lights of vehicles moving (especially over New York City) is a wondrous experience that I never tire of (but then again, I am not stuck in traffic but flying over it).

Also, I wonder what the pollution emissions are around the Cross Bronx Expressway and what kinds of particles the neighboring residents are breathing as the cars idle.

E-Z Pass and Infant Health -- Keep the Traffic Moving and Improve Health!

I have devoted years of research and teaching to transportation, logistics, and networks, and the associated methodologies that can help in forecasting traffic flows and, what economists call negative externalities, which, in the case of traffic, include both congestion as well as pollution.

My two books that focus specifically on environmental issues are: Sustainable Transportation Networks and Environmental Networks: A Framework for Economic Decision-Making and Policy Analysis, the latter co-authored with K. K. Dhanda and P. Ramanujam. These two books develop a spectrum of models and associated analytics that can be applied to identify a priori the impacts (both cost-wise and environmental-wise) of changes to networks in the form of design changes or policies. These books also discuss paradoxes that arise in transportation and emphasize how important it is to capture the actual behavior of drivers, firms, etc.

A National Bureau of Economic Research study, Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-Z Pass, by Janet Currie and Reed Walker, which was just released, concludes that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-Z Pass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 10.8% and 11.8% respectively. This is a terrific example of transportation technology in the form of electronic tolls having a direct, positive impact on community health.

Our most recent paper on transportation and environmental issues shows the impacts of road condition deterioration on environmental pollution. The paper, Environmental Impact Assessment of Transportation Networks with Degradable Links in an Era of Climate Change, is forthcoming in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation.