I guess I should talk a little about my actual work here in Barcelona. Yes, I am working... from time to time. I'm working at a transportation research center called CENIT - Center for Innovation in Transport. My photo is even on the website as proof: http://www.cenit.es/eng/cv_nf_eng.htm. The center has different focuses including public transportation, highways, rail, and ports. I'm working in the public transportation section and hoping to learn ways to make public transportation more efficient and sustainable.
My main project is to develop a model to design an efficient bus network that takes both user and operator costs into consideration. Reducing user costs would basically mean reducing travel time and providing more direct connections. Operator costs include costs to purchase and maintain buses. The model takes as inputs a street network and a demand matrix (passenger origins and destinations) and produces a bus network with bus routes and frequencies as an output. Ultimately it would be possible to enter the current bus network of a city into the model and adjust the network to see if it's possible to serve the same number of passengers more directly but with fewer buses. That is the type of situation in which everyone would benefit. The model is still in the more theoretical phase and not completely applicable yet to a real city. But it's interesting to study and think about where improvements can be made.
However, since the center also works with the regional bus company on projects, I've been able to work on some applied projects as well. For example, the bus company, TMB, wants to improve speeds on a certain bus line. One way to do so could be to apply transit signal priority, in which stop lights are adjusted when a bus is approaching to stay green a few seconds longer in order to let the bus pass. Of course, this means the light in the cross direction remains red a few seconds longer which could adversely affect traffic in that direction. My task was to study the benefits such a system would have for the bus line and the impact on other vehicles in order to give advice on how to best implement such a system. TMB has a monthly magazine and in the March issue they actually wrote an article about some projects our center is working on, including the traffic signal priority project. The article mentions me and there is even a picture of me and some of my coworkers. Check out Hora Punta (which means rush hour in Spanish) number 89, page 9: http://www.tmb.net/es_ES/tmb/queestmb/revistahorapunta.jsp. The article is in Catalan, so if you can't read it, I'll just let you know that it mainly just talks about all the great work I'm doing. ;-)
I've also been able to work on a few other projects, which has been really exciting. Basically I'm trying to learn as much as I can while I'm here and I'm always thinking of ways that these strategies can be applied in other places, like California! With the growing worries about global warming and focus on reduction of carbon emissions, I think improving sustainability of transportation systems is a very important topic. I'm interested in learning anything I can about ways to make it easier for people to use more sustainable forms of transportation (walking, biking, transit) instead of driving cars. And also in how to make the public transportation systems themselves more efficient. There is a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully we can start making the changes that are needed.
