University of Massachusetts Assistant Professor Eric J. Gonzales Lecture at NTUA, May 2016
Dr. Eric J. Gonzales Assistant Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Amherst gave an invited lecture titled: “Modeling taxis and demand responsive transit systems” which took place with great success on May 30th 2016, at the Amphitheater of Railways and Transport of the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of NTUA”.
The content of his Lecture is highlighted below:
Demand-responsive transportation systems provide service to users that is responsive to the time and location that they want to travel. A variety of modeling approaches are useful for understanding the demand and supply for these types of services. This talk will explore two related projects. First, Recent efforts to model demand for taxis in New York City with count regression models explored the factors that drive yellow taxi demand and how these patterns vary over space and time. These models provide a method to understand the imbalance between taxi demand and supply in various neighborhoods and at certain times of day by controlling for all other factors. Second, a continuous approximation method is used to model operations of paratransit systems that can carry multiple passengers in shared vehicles. These models have been calibrated to services in New Jersey to provide estimates of operating parameters that are related to cost (e.g., required number of vehicles, vehicle-distance traveled, and vehicle-hours operated). The resulting models are useful for understanding the effects of changes in service area, demand density, and peaks in daily travel volumes. The model is useful for designing optimal demand management policies
E. J. Gonzales Abstract & CV 
Lecture Poster 
