Forecasting Chicago traffic behavior

Deciding his future career was an easy choice for Abolfazl (Kouros) Mohammadian, who has been a civil and materials engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2003.

“It’s in my blood,” he laughed. “I knew when I was a kid that I wanted to be a civil engineer. That’s the only program I applied for — nothing else.”

He went on to do just that, receiving his master’s from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, and his doctorate from the University of Toronto — both in civil engineering.

Afterwards, Mohammadian landed a faculty position at California State University, Sacramento before moving on to UIC.

At UIC, Mohammadian got involved with Illinois Center for Transportation, where he’s worked as a principal investigator on six Chicagoland projects.

Three of his projects, listed below, explore Chicago’s transit system and its efficiency for the elderly:

• “R27-017: Effectiveness of Transit Strategies Targeting Elderly People: Survey Results and Preliminary Data Analysis”
• “R27-050: Senior Travelers’ Trip Chaining Behavior: Survey Results and Data Analysis”
• “R27-113: Modeling Seniors’ Activity-Travel Data”

Mohammadian is excited about the impact of his research.

“I had people following up from different agencies, including the state legislature,” he said. “They called to ask what the result was. They wanted to use it to help society.”

Currently, Mohammadian oversees two ICT projects involving Chicago’s expressways.

In the first project, “R27-177: Dynamic Travel Time Estimation for Northeast Illinois Expressways,” researchers are developing a model to better predict travel times that are presented to travelers.

“When you travel, the sign on the highway shows you the travel time from one point to the next. Usually, you see something, and your experience is totally different,” Mohammadian said. “Here in Chicago that’s a serious problem. That’s why we’re coming up with a better algorithm to improve travel time estimation.”

He’s also investigating reversible express lanes in project “R27-195: Best Practice Operation of Reversible Express Lanes for Kennedy Expressway.”

Here researchers are developing models to predict optimum times to switch the Kennedy Expressway reversible lanes to “maximize the throughput.”

The models will help account for abnormal traffic patterns, such as poor weather conditions or special events.

As principal investigator, Mohammadian is excited for the opportunity to work directly with ICT to meet Illinois Department of Transportation’s immediate needs.

“The beauty of ICT is the practical aspects of the projects that it sponsors,” he said. “The Illinois Department of Transportation takes it, implements it and you see the result.”