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Prof. John Polak Prof.JohnPolak
Professor of Transport Demand, Head of Centre for Transport Studies, Director of MSc Course
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Contact Information
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E-mail:
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j.polak@imperial.ac.uk
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Address:
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Room 616, Skempton Bldg. Imperial College London SW7 2AZ |
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Telephone:
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+44(0)20 7594-6089 |
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Fax:
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+44(0)20 7594-6102 |
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Related Webpage:
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Academic Information
| Teaching Activities |
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Research Interests |
| Please check the MSc
website. |
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- Transport data collection methods
- Analysis and modelling of travel behaviour
- Behavioural dynamics and traveller learning
- Trip scheduling and activity based modelling
- Microsimulation modelling
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CV:
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Home, Top of page and photo, Publications, Projects, news items
Summary of Publications 
This is not necessarily a complete list of publications by the staff member.Publications before 1999 are not included.Please download the CV for full details.
Publication Format: Working Paper
Publication Format: Journal - In press
Publication Format: Journal
North, R.J., Cohen, J. Wilkins, S.,. Richards, M., Hoose, N., Polak, J.W., Bell. M., Blythe, P.,
Sharif, B., Neasham, Visalakshmi, S., Galatioto, F., Hill,. G, 2010, Field deployments of the MESSAGE system for environmental monitoring
, Forthcoming in Traffic Engineering and Control
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Cohen, J., North, R.J., Wilkins, S., Darlington, J., Guo, Y., Hoose, N., Ma, Y., Polak, J.W., 2009, Creating the MESASAGE infrastructure, Forthcoming in Traffic Engineering and Control
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Publication Format: Book
AXHAUSEN, K.W., MADRE, J-L., POLAK, J.W. and TOINT, P. (Eds), 2004, Long Distance Travel: Current Measurement Approaches and Issues, Research Science Press, London.
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Publication Format: Book Chapters - In press
Publication Format: Book Chapters
Polak, J.W., Madre, J-L, Herry, M. and Armguum, J., 2004, Weighting and correction methods for surveys of long-distance travel behaviour, Edited by Axhausen, K.W., Madre, J-L., Polak, J.W. and Toint, P., Long Distance Travel: Current Measurement Approaches and Issues, Research Science Press, London
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Polak, J.W., Han, X-L., and Armguum, J., 2004, Imputation techniques for surveys of long-distance travel behaviour, Edited by Axhausen, K.W., Madre, J-L., Polak, J.W. and Toint, P., Long Distance Travel: Current Measurement Approaches and Issues, Research Science Press, London
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Plaxton, J.M. and Polak, J.W., 2004, The design and evaluation of a Web based interviewing tools for travel surveys, Edited by Axhausen, K.W., Madre, J- L., Polak, J.W. and Toint, P., Long Distance Travel: Current Measurement Approaches and Issues, Research Science Press, London
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Publication Format: Conference Proceedings (Published)
Publication Format: Conference Proceedings (unpublished)
Han, J., Polak, J.W., Barria, J. and Krishnan, R., 2009, On the estimation of space mean speed from inductive loop detector data, Presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Universities Transport Study Group, London, UK, 5-7 January 2009.
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Lee, T.-C., Polak, J.W. and Bell, M.G.H., 2009, A new approach to modelling mixed traffic containing motorcycles in urban area, presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., USA
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Publication Format: PhD Thesis
Publication Format: Research Report
Lucas, K., Jones, P., Polak, J., Gilliard, E., Le Vine, S., 2009, The Car in British Society, The Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring
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Evans, R., Crookell, A., Ochieng, W.Y., Sheridan, K., Walker, M., Randolph, W., Polak, JW., Noland, R.B and Briggs, D., 2004, The Vehicle Performance and Emissions Monitoring System Design Document, Final Report to the DTI, Centre for Transport Studies, Imperial College London
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Ochieng, W.Y., Polak, J.W., Noland, R.B., Elliott, P. and Briggs, D., 2004, The Development and Demonstration of a Vehicle Performance and Emissions Monitoring System (VPEMS), Final Report to the EPSRC
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Home, Top of page and photo, Publications, Projects, news items
Summary of Projects
Discrete choice modeling with an inter-temporal resource constraint
J Polak, F Bastin, J-D Schmöcker
The recent projects on mode choice behaviour of older and disabled paper led to this follow-on work. In the London Borough of Newham elderly were given a trip budget for special transport services. The users were given 40 “Saver trips” per month which could be used for local services booked in advance and 6 “Standard trips” per month which could be used for immediate travel needs. A simple choice model has been developed in the precursor project. The research question in this work is broadened and the objective is to develop a dynamic discrete choice model that explains user choice when inter-temporal budget constraints exist. Such problems arise also in other contexts such as with certain forms of pre-paid public transport ticket products. The salient characteristic of such problems is that, over some relevant time horizon, there exists a constraint (direct or indirect) on the frequency with which certain choices can be made. Such constraints induce complex inter-dependencies amongst decisions in different time periods.
Utility theoretic models of activity timing and duration
O. Ashiru, J.W. Polak and D. Ettema (Utrecht University)
The objective of this project is to develop a utility theoretic model to describe how travellers select the timing and duration of activities. The model assumes that marginal utility derived from activities encompasses two distinct components; one derived from duration of activity involvement and the other derived from activity participation at a particular time-of-day. An operational model is developed, which is calibrated on a stated preference data set collected in London as part of a study, to test travellers’ responses to road pricing schemes. The estimation results suggest that utility derived from work is partly duration dependent and partly time-of-day dependent. The inclusion of both components has implications for the prediction of potential responses to travel demand management policies, such as road user charging.
The scheduling of commuter tours in congested networks with pricing
J.W. Polak and B. G. Heydecker (UCL)
An extensive literature exists on the equilibrium scheduling of peak period trips in idealised networks and the welfare impacts of alternative forms of pricing. Such models are useful in that they provide insights into the underlying structure of more complex systems. However, they are limited because they consider the scheduling only of single trips, rather than complete tours. The aim of this project is to extend these existing models to accommodate tours and to explore the welfare impact of alternative pricing regimes.
An informatics grid for e-science at Imperial College London
J.W. Polak with J. Darlington (Department of Computing), S. Richardson, J. Scott, C. Higgens and B. Robertson (Medical School)
The aim of this project, which is supported under the Research Council’s Joint Research Infrastructure Initiative, is to provide facilities for the storage and analysis of very large scale datasets, of the sort that arise in many scientific, engineering and medical disciplines. The Centre for Transport Studies will use the facility to undertake the analysis of a range of very large spatio-temporal datasets arising in a number of areas of its activity, including data from instrumented vehicle fleets, the simulation traces of highly detailed microsimulation models of traffic systems and large Monte Carlo simulation work.
Modelling travel time variability with applications to the monitoring of transport network performance
S. Robinson (supervisor: J.W. Polak)
Network models have traditionally characterised network performance in terms of an average travel time associated with each link in the network, which varies according to the level of traffic using the link. However, this characterisation ignores the influence of both recurrent and non-recurrent network events, which give rise to significant variability in link travel times. This variability in turn, leads to unreliability in system performance, which is typically identified as amongst the most important factors influencing travellers’ behaviour and satisfaction. The objective of this research is to develop methods to enable data from automatic sources such as loop detectors, ANPR cameras and GPS traces to be used to estimate network performance and reliability. An application of the methods developed to the London network will be undertaken.
Home, Top of page and photo, Publications, Projects, news items
Summary of News Items
May 2008
Congratulations to Piyapong "Joey" Jiwattanakulpaisarn who successfully defended his PhD dissertation on the 1st of May. His dissertation was entitled "The Impact of Transport Infrastructure Investment on Regional Employment: An Empirical Investigation" which was supervised by Bob Noland, Daniel Graham and John Polak. Joey will be working on various research projects at CTS over the next few months before returning to Thailand.
February 2008
Congratulations to Rajesh Krishnan who successfully defended his PhD dissertation on 26 February. His research was entitled "Travel Time Estimation and Forecasting on Urban Networks" and was supervised by Prof. John Polak and Prof. Washington Ochieng. Rajesh will continue his research at CTS as a post-doc, working on the Freeflow project.
January 2008
Congratulations to Tzu-Chang "Joe" Lee who successfully defended his PhD dissertation on 9 January. His research was entitled "An Agent-Based Model to Simulate Motorcycle Behaviour in Mixed Traffic Flow" and was supervised by Prof. John Polak and Prof. Michael Bell. Joe will continue his research at CTS as a post-doc, working on the Freeflow project.
An article in the 9 January 2008 edition of the New York Times covering proposals to restructure New Jersey's toll road agencies featured analysis from CTS researcher Scott Le Vine. Referring to plans to quintuple the toll schedule over the next 15 years, extend tolling onto a section of NJ Route 440, and create a new public benefit corporation to manage the state's portfolio of toll facilities, he said "It lets them start tabula rasa with this new organization." The full article can be accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/nyregion/09toll.html
Congratulations to Mr Rajesh Krishnan who has won the Smeed Prize at the 40th UTSG Annual Conference for his paper entitled "A Deductive Travel Time Estimation Method for Signalised Corridors using Single Loop Detector Data", based on his PhD research. The Smeed Prize is awarded to "recognise the best student paper and presentation at each annual conference of the UTSG". This is the second time in 3 years that a CTS research student has won the prize -- Jan-Dirk Schmöcker won in January 2006.Home, Top of page and photo, Publications, Projects, news items
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