Griffith Transport Research Group
The Griffith Transport Research team includes some of Australia’s leading transport researchers. We work closely with a wide range of industry partners to help plan, build and manage transport systems and give people access to the jobs, goods and services they need in daily life. We also work to minimise the negative effects that transport systems often create. Increasingly influential, we are supported by funding agreements with key transport agencies, including in Queensland Government. Our university is today ranked in the top 200 universities in the world in the field of transportation science and technology.
Our research covers all modes including walking, bicycles, public transport, roads, freight, aviation, and shipping as well as the smart technology that is increasingly influential in moving people and goods. We have won six large Australian Research Council grants in transport in the last decade exploring questions as diverse as children’s walking to school, the effects of oil price increases and exploring new ways to fund public transport. Current projects include world leading research on how public transport systems change property values and on how blockchain technology can be used in supply-chain logistics.
- Professor Matthew Burke, Transport Research Team Leader
Transport Research Group
Professor Matthew Burke
Principal Research Fellow, CRI Deputy Director, Transport Lead
Dr Kelly Bertolaccini
Lecturer, School of Engineering and Built Environment
Dr Abraham Leung
Research Fellow, Cities Research Institute
Daniel Clarke
Research Assistant, Cities Research Institute
Professor Tim Ryley
Professor of Aviation, School of Engineering and Built Environment
Dr Tingting Liu
Lecturer, School of Engineering and Built Environment
Dr Yong Wu
Snr Lecturer, Dept of Business Strategy and Innovation
Our HDR Candidates
Our PhD, MPhil and Honours candidates are essential team members and many are doing award-winning research. Students come from Australia and overseas and are funded by a mix of university, Australian Government and international scholarships.
Current PhD and MPhil candidates include:
- Xueyan Zhang - building information modelling for road projects
- Sheida Abdoli - cashless fares
- Sophie Gadaloff - using movement and place approaches in contemporary transport planning
- Chris Johnson - roadside ecology
- Madison Bland - planning for active transport
- Xuna Zhu - tourist dispersal
- David Freer - work-from-home, study-from-home and future travel behaviour
Our Adjunct Members
We also have outstanding Adjunct Professors and Industry Research Fellows including:
- Anthony Perl (Simon Fraser University)
- Barbara Yen (National Chiao Tung University)
- Bruce James
- Min Zhang
- Stuart Donovan
- Lex Brown
Liveable Urban Areas
The Cities Research Institute has been engaged by the Department of Transport and Main Roads to better understand how transport agencies, nationally and internationally, have sought to resolve key barriers to ensure access to sustainable Passenger Transport services and infrastructure in expanding urbanised areas of Queensland. The study is part of the Transport Academic Partnership agreement between TMR and Griffith University.
The study is in two stages. First, a best practice review of existing programs nationally and globally will provide a Terms of Reference for an evidenced based program to deliver effective, equitable and financially sustainable PT services and infrastructure in targeted areas. It is intended that a second stage (currently unfunded) could implement the TOR to support a pilot program in a targeted local area with small scale PT program integrated with an evaluation program.
Mobility as a Service - Regional Research
The Department of Transport and Main Roads commissioned the Cities Research Institute at Griffith University to investigate the key barriers and success factors to enable MaaS in regional centres across Queensland. Dr Abraham Leung, Professor Matthew Burke, Associate Professor Delwar Akbar and Benjamin Kaufman undertook the research.
micro transport research
Micromobility and tourist dispersal in Townsville: Do e-scooters help tourists spread out, visit more sites and spend more?
- This summary outlines the findings of the independent research undertaken by Griffith
University. - The Neuron E-Scooters and Tourist Dispersal (Research Ethics Ref No: GU 2020/905)
survey seeks to evaluate the impact of Neuron e-scooters on visitor travel behaviour in
Townsville. - This research was fully funded internally through a grant from the Griffith University Cities
Research Institute. - The research team is extremely grateful to Neuron Mobility for their support and their
willingness to share de-identified data. - The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of any
institution. All errors and omissions are the authors' alone.
Innovative Funding Models for Cycling Infrastructure
The Department of Transport and Main Roads commissioned the Cities Research Institute at Griffith University to investigate innovative and alternative funding models to contribute additional funds and to expedite cycling infrastructure delivery in Queensland. Dr Abraham Leung, Professor Matthew Burke, Bruce James and Aidan Brotherton undertook the research.
FUNDING ON THE LINE: PUBLIC TRANSPORT FINANCING AND PROPERTY VALUE CAPTURE
This project, led by Professor Matthew Burke, Professor Corrine Mulley and Professor Neil Sipe, with Assistant Professor Barbara Yen, Gui Lohmann and postdoctoral researcher Abraham Leung, was funded through the Australian Research Council (LP150100078) with contributions from City of Gold Coast, Department of Transport and Main Roads Queensland, Transport for New South Wales and Queensland Airports Limited.
Research highlight
New research by our PhD student Ms Yiping Yan has for the first time revealed the scale of the transport problems caused by high rates of private schooling in Australia. Though differences between state and private school travel behaviours are more modest at the primary school level, there are striking differences at the secondary school level. Not only are around 60% of private secondary school children travelling to school by car in South East Queensland, over half of them travel over 8km to do so, twice as far as those driven to state schools. As this is happening in peak hour, on the arterial road network, private schooling is disproportionately adding to travel congestion. This short paper (pdf 598 KB), soon to be published in the proceedings of the 2019 Australasian Transport Research Forum explains Jackie's ground-breaking research findings. We are especially grateful to the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads for providing data and assistance for Jackie's broader PhD research efforts.
Research highlight
Recent research on the “Funding on the Line" Australian Research Council Linkage Project has found significant gains in property values around the stations on the first 13 km stage of the Gold Coast light rail. Though there were only modest effects after opening, significant gains occurred earlier in the planning and construction phases of the light rail project. Many researchers have previously failed to look for effects in these earlier periods, underplaying the uplift that occurs in many public transport projects. In total, these effects pushed up property values within 800 m of the light rail stations by as much as 30% from 1996 to 2016. For more on the research findings, see Professor Matthew Burke’s article published in The Conversation.
Transport YouTube video
Ben Kaufman's PhD Project: On-Demand Transit
Doing a PhD with the Transport team
Are you interested in undertaking a PhD in transport? We have supervisors available in areas such as transportation science, transport planning, transport engineering, transport economics, transport geography, transport & land use, travel behaviour, transport logistics, transport law or transport psychology. The Institute offers an excellent PhD program offering peer-support and the transport research team can provide you with industry contacts and access to data and models. We were awarded the Griffith Sciences group’s Excellence in a Research Team award in 2015 and our graduates are gaining positions in leading universities, transport agencies, operators and consultancies.
Please contact the researcher most aligned with your research interests, above, in the first instance. If you are uncertain who might be best placed as a possible supervisor, feel free to contact Prof Burke directly.
Connect and collaborate
If you would like to work, study or collaborate with us, get in touch