Weidmann, Ulrich, Prof.

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.

Additional subjects of interest to Professor Weidmann are:

• Transport and public policy, transport regulation
• Organization and financing of public transport, public transport business models
• Infrastructure development, infrastructure organization
• Technical standards, regulations, innovation management