Meet the winners of the TM 2.0 Student Paper Awards at ISFO 2023: Chintaman Bari

Chintaman Bari is the second winner of the TM 2.0 sponsored Student Paper Awards, which rewarded the work of student researchers in the field of traffic management. The competition was organised during the ISFO Symposium 2023, which was held on 26-30 June in Vienna, Austria, co-organised by TM 2.0 in collaboration with the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and AustriaTech. This key event brought together close to 400 traffic management experts from both the public and the private sector in Europe and the United States, including US Departments of Transport (DoTs) and the US academic community, to discuss the future of traffic management. The papers submitted as part of the competition were reviewed by the Student Paper Awards Committee, which comprises Panos D. Prevedouros (University of Hawaii/TRB), Martin Russ (AustriaTech/TM 2.0), Jop Spoelstra (Technolution/TM 2.0), Dr Johanna Tzanidaki (ERTICO/TM 2.0/TRB), Haizhong Wang (Oregon State University/TRB), and Yinhai Wang (University of Washington/TRB).

Chintaman Santosh Bari is currently a Research Scholar at Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT), Surat, India. He completed his Master’s in the field of Transportation Engineering from G. H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur, India, in collaboration with Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT), Surat, India. He was the gold medalist in his Master’s and was awarded the Best Thesis award in his section. He has completed his Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering with honors from Matoshri College of Engineering and Research Centre, Nashik, India (2017). As an active transportation research scholar, Chintaman Bari has published 12 research papers in SCI, more than 10 in Scopus Indexed Journals, and more than 45 research papers in National and International Conferences in the last three years. He is actively working in the research area of toll plaza operations, and emission analysis with empirical and simulation data. He received the best paper award in renowned conferences such as the 4th ISFO, 2nd TIPCE, and many more.

His paper, which won the second place in the Student Paper Awards competition at ISFO, examines the optimisation of the distribution between manual and electronic toll collection (ETC) lanes to maximise throughput. Factors like approach volume, ETC penetration rate, and toll lane delays were taken into consideration to develop various scenarios and a delay equation to estimate delays. Chintaman Bari also set up delay-based Level of Service (LOS) thresholds for ETC lanes, which will be valuable for field practitioners to determine the appropriate number of lanes to be operated.

© AustriaTech / Huger

In the interview below, Chintaman Bari shared with TM 2.0 what the award means to him and why he chose to study traffic engineering.

1. Why are you studying traffic engineering?

 “Traffic in developing nations creates a lot of problems in terms of operation and safety. These lead to congestion, environmental impacts, and so on. Further, these problems are getting worse due to the increasing human and vehicular populations, which needs to be addressed and thus has a lot of scope in research. With this motivation, I choose traffic engineering for my research.”

2. What is your vision for the future of mobility?

“The future of mobility should be a sustainable solution for society. The best one is the use of public transit vehicles and nonmotorized transport. Even though society is more leaning towards electric vehicles, introducing EVs may not lead to hassle-free roads.”

3. What does the award mean to you?

“The award is surely going to encourage me to work harder and excel in this field of research. It is a positive sign for my research. Thank you ISFO and TM 2.0 for recognising my work and giving me this opportunity to meet all the intellectual people in Vienna which has further inspired me to keep working with higher aspirations in the field of research.”

The TM 2.0 Innovation Platform on interactive Traffic Management wishes Chintaman Bari the best of success and looks forward to hearing more about his future work!