Transport Systems

Emphasis of the Chair

Both society and economy demand mobility that is efficient, safe and environmentally friendly. Especially public transportation systems are expected to play a vital role in this. Consequently, its design and operation are challenging tasks.

Settlement areas are in constant change and oftentimes their development leaves the historically grown patterns. Infrastructure investments however, are long term measures, making optimization of processes, as well as information and control systems crucial for capacity increases. At the same time, technical and operational availability are to be increased along with safety, efficiency and effectiveness of public transportation systems.

Support in dealing with these tasks is provided by the transportation systems group`s research focuses:

• Passenger Transportation Systems: Deployment of transportation systems according to their characteristics; Design of market and cost optimal supply systems, especially for agglomerations and cities; Interactions between transportation systems and urbanities; combined mobility; Design and evaluation methods for system wide approaches.
• Freight Transportation Systems: operational and technical alignment of freight rail according to logistics concepts; Production strategies and process optimization at freight railways; Capacity management impact of pricing models; Facility wear and environmental impacts; modal split models in freight transportation; sustainability of logistics chains.
• Production Processes: Operational processes in heavily loaded public transportation networks; Control cycles for high precision train control; Operational stability of road based public transportation systems; Methods in safety and availability analysis, RAMS-Methods; Fundamentals of passenger embarking and disembarking and pedestrian movements.

The chair is furthermore involved in questions regarding regulation and liberalization of the transportation sector, technical standardization and interoperability.

Courses are offered for the BSc track in civil engineering and in the MSc track of the spatial development & infrastructure systems and civil engineering programs of study

• Design: System and network design (MSc)
• Design and Dimensioning: Freight transportation and Logistics (MSc)
• Dimensioning: System dimensioning and capacity (MSc)
• Implementation: Infrastructures of guided systems (BSc)
• Operations: System operations, Marketing, Quality (MSc)
• Security: Safety and reliability within railway operation (MSc)

Furthermore, the chair is involved in the MSc courses in transportation systems and simulations of transportation systems. Selected topics in the Masters of applied science programs in spatial planning and post-graduate courses in Risk & Safety offered by the ETH Zürich are also supervised.