Professor Huizhao Tu
Prepared by Qiqian Du, Hokkaido University
Professor Huizhao Tu’s research field is about transportation emergency management, network reliability and traffic simulation models. He gave a lecture about challenges and solution of sustainable transport in China.
Firstly, he introduced the background of transport in China, addressing the traffic congestion situation, CO2 emissions, traffic safety and behaviour. He showed severe congestion problems in China’s big cities, which is one of the most emergent problems, Chinese transport agencies face. As car purchases increase, the CO2 emission from transport has become serious in China, representing 22% of all human activities as regards to CO2 emission. He also showed that the fatal accidents and fatal rate in transport of China is much severe compared to other countries. Most accidents are caused by violation behaviour, and Professor Tu provided many examples of typical transport behaviour in China.
Then he explained transport planning utilizing simple concepts, examples, and some comparisons. He showed us what transport planning is, but also how to evaluate planning using different measurements. He especially explained the capacity of a transport network and gave an interesting example of Breass’s Paradox, introducing how to build a transport model with some examples.
Finally, he talked about transport model shift stream in recent research. Changes can be noticed in terms of high energy consuming patterns, or heavy polluted transport models to cleaner and lower energy consuming ones such as shifting from private vehicles to public transport. Sustainable transport planning is more and more emphasized in this research area. And sustainable transport planning will contribute a lot to society’s sustainable development.
With his interactive approach, Professor Tu’s lecture broadened the participants’ view about sustainable transport planning while also providing knowledge about transport in general in China.