Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

RESEARCH NEWS
Transportation modeling
Systems analysis is crucial to future safety and planning
Toni Trani
Do you plan to catch a plane, a
train, or a bus, or will you drive
your own car on your next trip,
whether it is business or pleasure
The likelihood that you will decide
commercial air is the optimal choice is
not as insignificant as you might think.
In fact, “we are building a schedule
for the future. Demand and supply go
hand-in-hand,” said Toni Trani of the Via
Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering at Virginia Tech.
For the past 12 years, Trani has
played a lead role in the Federal Aviation
Administration’s (FAA) Air Transportation
Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations
Research (NEXTOR).
One of the many projects he has researched
for the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration and the FAA is
a Transportation Systems Analysis Model
(TSAM) to predict such choices.
Such information is critical to air carriers
as they plan schedules for the future,
currently looking as far ahead as the
year 2040.
TSAM was initially conceived to quantify
demand for NASA’s Small Aircraft
Transportation System (SATS). The SATS
program, aimed at improving reliability
of general aviation aircraft, has inspired
several new aircraft designs and air taxi
companies.
“NASA Langley develops new aerospace
engineering vehicles technology
that a Boeing or a Lockheed Martin may
use to make the technology cheaper and/
or more reliable to operate,” Trani said. If
airline travel costs can be reduced, then
predictive models might suggest more
people will opt for flying when traveling.
“No one has a crystal ball,” Trani admitted,
but “we do need to make the best
guess possible.” Recent global events,
such as the worldwide downturn in the
economy, the rise and fall of the price of
gasoline, and any terrorism threat, can
play havoc with the predictive modeling,
he acknowledged.
The SATS program extended over a
five year period from 2001 until 2006 and
was administered by the National Consortium
for Aviation Mobility, a public-private
partnership. In conjunction with the SATS
report, “Virginia Tech recommended that
a transportation systems analysis be conducted
to develop some understanding of
the performance of the new transportation
paradigm.” Trani said.
The completed models and simulation
will offer the transportation industry
greater insight on automobile traffic, fuel
consumption and emissions for cars, airlines
and air taxis, airline route structures
and schedules, and highway fatalities
estimation.
“A lot of improvements are related to
flying smarter. The Next Generation Air
Transportation System which has developed
more efficient routing, means
passengers spend less time in airports,”
Trani said. Such improvements increase
air traffic.
Working with Trani on this forecasting
Continued on next page
8 | VIA REPORT | 2009
8 | VIA REPORT | 2009