TRANSIT LABORATORY

TRANSIT LABORATORY

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The Transit Laboratory at The Ohio State University is engaged in several areas of research relating to the planning, service, design, and operations of public transportation. The focus is on using data collected from in‑service systems to enhance the understanding of complex transit related phenomena and develop means to improve policy-making, planning, and service provision.

Examples of Transit Laboratory studies include:

  • improved estimation of origin-destination passenger flows using automatically collected passenger data
  • identification of recurrent congestion patterns on urban street networks using automatically collected transit vehicle location data
  • quantification of the role operations control measures have in improving service reliability using automatically collected transit vehicle location data
  • investigation of the impact passenger information systems have on service quality and travel behavior using web-based and intercept survey data
  • investigation of the role transit use plays in influencing transportation related greenhouse gas emissions in urban areas using transportation, urban geography, and demographic data integrated from multiple national databases.

An integral part of OSU’s Transit Laboratory is the Campus Transit Lab (CTL), a living lab for research, education, and outreach developed as a unique means of gathering in-situ data in an operational setting that strikes a balance between realism and manageability. Methods developed and tested using the CTL are extended to studies, applications, and implementations at transit properties across the country. Planning agencies are engaged in discussions to scale up some of the finding to support decision-making capabilities. In addition, CTL and it’s associated developments are attracting the interest of industry, namely technology providers focusing on the automatic sensing of transit passenger and vehicle flows and associated products and services of interest to public sector planners and operators.

This website provides an overview of the various recent and ongoing activities of the Transit Laboratory at The Ohio State University.

For additional information, please contact Rabi Mishalani (mishalani.1@osu.edu) and Mark McCord  (mccord.2@osu.edu).

Research Spotlight

Using cameras already installed on Ohio State's Campus Area Bus Service (CABS) vehicles, CEGE transportation engineering professors Mark McCord, Rabi Mishalani and Benn Coifman, with their colleagues, are developing methods that could make current traffic systems safer and more efficient.