Frontiers in Built Environment is delighted to reveal the winners of the third Joseph M. Sussman Prize celebrating the best articles published in the Transportation and Transit Systems section of the journal:

Sania E. Seilabi, Mahmood T. Tabesh, Amir Davatgari, Mohammad Miralinaghi and Samuel Labifor for their article: “Promoting Autonomous Vehicles Using Travel Demand and Lane Management Strategies”

The award-winning study selected this year provides valuable insights into increasing travel efficiency and equity among transportation users through an innovative travel demand management and lane management scheme.

“The main challenges faced by transportation systems today include growth in travel demand, need for enhanced travel efficiency, and the resolution of transport inequity among transportation users. In the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) transition era, the dedication of lanes at specific links of a road network can help reduce traffic congestion because AVs require a relatively smaller headway compared to Human-driven vehicles (HDVs). However, such appropriation of existing lanes for AV use will reduce available road capacities for HDV users, causing an increase in their travel times and therefore, travel inequity between the two modes. This paper demonstrated that it is feasible to address this issue by designing a lane management scheme to manage travel demand with due consideration of equity. This could yield reduced travel and total travel time, and decreased Human-driven vehicles (HDVs') travelers' cost."

Sania E. Seilabi, Purdue University

The Joseph M. Sussman award was created to commemorate the legacy of late Specialty Chief Editor of the section, Professor Joseph M Sussman from Massachusetts Institute of Technology JR East. The prize recognizes contributions that have high potential to significantly improve the sustainability of our modern transit systems. The winners this year were selected in collaboration with the current section Specialty Chief Editors Sakdirat Kaewunruen from the University of Birmingham and Akira Matsumoto from Nihon University.