Juan Carlos Muñoz

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

El desarrollo de drones de pequeño tamaño y equipados con una cámara de video ha abierto la puerta a nuevas formas de observar la movilidad. Además de la inspección visual de los videos tomados desde el aire, también se hace posible la recolección de datos de tráfico, como conteos, velocidades, tiempos de viaje, o la definición de pares origen-dest...

This research examines the economic viability of night shelf stocking in the retail industry. By analyzing real data on the costs and benefits of both night and day stocking, we propose a novel integer linear optimization model to determine the optimal structure of shelf stocker shifts for individual stores. The model is tested on a standard Chilea...

El desarrollo de drones de pequeño tamaño y equipados con una cámara de video ha abierto la puerta a nuevas formas de observar la movilidad. Además de la inspección visual de los videos tomados desde el aire, también se hace posible la recolección de datos de tráfico, como conteos, velocidades, tiempos de viaje, o la definición de pares origen-dest...

Latin America is a highly urbanized region characterized by remarkable inequality levels, also reflected in an uneven distribution of opportunities, making socioeconomic segregation quite visible. Since the individual possibility to travel and therefore access to urban opportunities strongly depends on socioeconomic status and the distances to over...

This research examines the economic viability of night shelf stocking in the retail industry. By analyzing real data on the costs and benefits of both night and day stocking, we propose a novel integer linear optimization model to determine the optimal structure of shelf stocker shifts for individual stores. The model is tested on a standard Chilea...

That the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in terms of its scale, spread and shocks can be evinced by the myriad of ever-changing responses cities all around the world have rolled out throughout the different waves of outbreaks. Although the threat is similar across the world, it took some time before its reach became global and the waves of outbr...

Reliability is understood in public transport as the certainty travellers have regarding the level of service they will experience when travelling. The travel time, waiting time, or the comfort level they will experience inside the vehicle are some of the most important reliability attributes. Reliability is usually neglected from travel behavioura...

Housing and transport affordability (H + TA) analysis has been receiving increasing attention among academics and practitioners worldwide, particularly in Global North settings. These studies usually overlook spatial and socioeconomic distributional considerations that potentially underestimate the simultaneous impact of transport and housing costs...

A sharp decrease in public transport demand has been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. In this context, it is relevant to understand how mode preferences have changed since the surge of COVID-19. In order to better understand how the pandemic changed mode choice, particularly regarding the impact of crowding and face mask use...

Transantiago, the public transport system of Santiago, Chile, has one of the highest fare evasion rates registered worldwide. The official statistics for late 2019 indicated that the evasion rate in bus legs was 26.6% while in metro it was almost 0%. This is a relevant issue due to the impacts of fare evasion on finances and quality of service, as...

The most relevant issues related to headway variability in public transport planning, operations and quality of service are reviewed in this paper. We discuss the causes and consequences of headway variability, the alternative metrics that have been proposed to measure it, the preventive and reactive strategies to control headway variability in bot...

Cities need a healthy public transport industry to attract users, so that they prefer sustainable mobility options. In a context with huge technological changes in all modes of transportation, it is critical that cities embrace new technologies to provide better and more efficient public transport services. In this chapter, we present an analysis o...

This paper explores on new methods for regression models to understand the evolution of headway irregularity of public transport services. In particular, this article analyses and models headway variability evolution in an urban bus service context. This is relevant as headway variability has an important effect on travel time reliability. To do so...

Public transport is affected by different types of randomness which impact the reliability they offer. The source of this randomness may come, for example, from casual uncertainty sources, such as accidents or protests, or from systematic uncertainty, related to service supply, such as dwelling time or travel time between consecutive stops. In addi...

In this paper a new methodology to estimate/update and forecast dynamic real time origin–destination travel matrices (OD) for a public transport corridor is presented. The main objective is to use available historical data, and combine it with online information regarding the entry and exit of each particular user (e.g. through the fare system, FS)...

Understanding how several street attributes influence the frequency of cycle commuting is relevant for policymaking in urban planning. However, to better understand the impact of the built environment on people's choices, we must understand the subjective experience of individuals while cycling. This study examines the relationship between perceive...

Fare-free public transportation has recently gained attention from policymakers and has been proposed as a measure to reduce pollution and road congestion in several cities around the world. We investigate the impact of fare-free public transport on travel behavior by randomly assigning a pass to workers in Santiago (Chile). The pass allowed them u...

Several cities around the world have changed their transportation planning paradigm, understanding that the prime goal is to provide access to opportunities for everyone. To address this goal, public transport plays a fundamental role and, therefore, it is key for developing a sustainable and equitable city. This paper proposes a methodology to ana...

Latin American cities show deep sociospatial inequalities and urban segregation. This unequal scenario raises key challenges regarding accessibility and affordability of transport and housing, especially for the most vulnerable population which usually experiences the consequences of spatial mismatch. In Santiago de Chile, 60% of households do not...

En este artículo se proponen, sobre la base de un análisis cualitativo y cuantitativo dos enfoques para recomendar la planificación de transporte masivo. A diferencia del documento 3167 del Consejo Nacional de Política Económica y Social (CONPES) que recomendó impulsar la planificación y construcción de sistemas de transporte masivo en ciudades de...

A work shift scheduling methodology is presented that can assign shifts incorporating multiple breaks, providing the flexibility vital to service sector firms for reducing staff surpluses and shortages and thereby improve staff demand coverage. The proposed approach differs from previous works in the literature because it attempts to minimize the l...

Public transport (PT) providers aim to offer services that meet users’ satisfaction, and for this, they can control some operational service attributes such as frequency, speed, crowdedness and reliability. Understanding how these objective attributes affect user satisfaction is essential to improve it cost-effectively, but these associations have...

The quantitative measurement of accessibility through public transport has become more complex and accurate over time. However, it lacks many of the deeper nuances of how people actually experience their travel environments. Our previous works have highlighted the importance of incorporating the lived travel experiences of passengers within accessi...

Choice of public transport technologies in cities is not straightforward: while the academy focuses on optimization models to determine which modes should a specific city have, policy makers rely on simple recommendations which are based on city population and income. We estimated six types of classification models that could allow for more precise...

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has proven to be an effective and affordable transportation option for large-sized cities. In these cities, BRT is usually considered an effective complement or substitute for rail-based systems, playing a key role in complex multimodal networks with several massive transport corridors. More recently, medium-sized cities of...

A control framework is developed that regulates a Metro-type rail line in the presence of disruptions while taking into account the tradeoff between user and operator (energy consumption) costs. Unlike approaches based solely on computational intensive optimization models, the proposed methodology is based on three eminently solvable analytical mod...

Concession contracts of operating companies of the public transport system of Santiago, consider important fines if companies fail to comply with the operating plan, regularity and other operational variables included in those contracts. On the other hand, drivers receive a fixed payment with no pecuniary incentive related with their performance. T...

The development and application of urban sustainability indicators has gained momentum in recent years, especially since the generation of specific urban indicators for the Agenda 2030. Urban sustainability is a broad concept involving many dimensions, therefore the generation of a short, but comprehensive list of indicators is a significant challe...

Background Physical inactivity is one of the main risk factors for death worldwide. There is a paucity of studies about the association between transport and objective health measures using nationally representative samples worldwide, especially from Latin American countries. The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between active tr...

In recent decades, the main focus in public transport operations has been increasing its speed. Increasing speed not only allows for faster trips, but also a higher frequency with the same fleet size, thus reducing waiting times and crowdedness inside the vehicles. This interest in speed has ignored a second key dimension in level of service: relia...

The center of activities of Santiago de Chile has been continuously evolving towards the eastern part of the city, where the most affluent residents live. This paper characterizes the direction and magnitude of this evolution through an indicator stating how much the built surface area for service purposes grows in different areas in the city. To i...

Fare-free public transportation has recently gained attention from policymakers and has been proposed as a measure to reduce pollution and road congestion in several cities around the world. We investigate the impact of fare-free public transport on travel behavior by randomly assigning a pass to workers in Santiago (Chile) that allowed them unlimi...

En el marco de las preparaciones del Gobierno de Chile frente a la COP25, y como parte de las actividades del Comité Científico COP25 establecido por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología, Conocimiento e Innovación, este documento tiene tres propósitos. El primero es reunir información de varios documentos de política pública relacionados con ciudad...

Fare evasion, in public transport (PT), is a major problem in certain countries and threatens the PT administrators’ funds directly. Hence, identifying the possible causes for this behaviour can be highly relevant. Governments and PT administrators aim to deliver first-class services to satisfy customers, who will then tend to reuse the services an...

In this chapter we review the situation of parking and mobility in general in Santiago, Chile. The rapid growth of the Chilean economy, particularly since the 1990's, along with other social and urban phenomena, has pushed car ownership in this city during the past years. Furthermore, and regardless of important efforts to improve public transport,...

Gran parte de los habitantes del Gran Santiago no cuentan con una estación de metro a una distancia caminable de sus hogares, lo que les exige usar el sistema de buses, sobre todo en comunas de menores ingresos. Esta situación se acentúa para las y los adultos mayores, que a menudo tienen bajos ingresos y reducida autonomía física, y para los cuale...

A central issue in urban inequity has to do with distributive justice in the costs and benefits associated with urban transport, and whether certain population groups are systematically disadvantaged about mobility, accessibility, affordability, and externalities, the preponderant factors in transport poverty. This article proposes a methodology fo...

RESUMEN En el marco de las Metas para el Desarrollo Sustentable (SGD), el presente trabajo cuantifica 5 aspectos de la movilidad y accesibilidad urbana sustentable para 6 ciudades chilenas: Copiapó, La Serena-Coquimbo, Santiago Metropolitano, Concepción Metropolitano, Temuco, y Valdivia. Estos indicadores se definieron desde una perspectiva espacia...

Service reliability has an important impact on the satisfaction stated by public transport users with the service they receive. The main source of unreliability is found in headway variance, which also affects waiting times and distributes passengers unevenly across vehicles. However, it is still unclear how headway irregularity, with its impact in...

Randomness affecting the operation of public transport systems generates significant increments in waiting times. A strategy to deal with this randomness is bus injection, in which buses are kept in specific points along the route ready to be dispatched when an event such as an extremely long headway occurs. In this work, a stochastic model based o...

Express bus services are services that skip some of the stops along their routes to provide a faster ride for particularly demanded trips on a corridor. There is a growing literature on express services that focuses on route design and performance evaluation. In this work, we study a simplified transit corridor where a regular service operates in t...

Synchronization of different transit lines is an important activity to increase the level of service in transportation systems. In particular, for passengers, transferring from one line to another, there may be low-frequency periods and transfer zones where walking is needed, or passengers are exposed to adverse weather conditions and uncomfortable...

A new methodology is presented for structuring the multiskilling characteristics of a set of initially single-skilled employees in the context of a multi-department service sector business, more specifically in the retail industry. Assuming stochastic demand under continuous modeling of the workforce, the methodology decomposes the multiskilling pr...

Randomness affecting the operation of public transport systems generates significant increments in waiting times. A strategy to deal with this randomness is bus injection, in which buses are kept in specific points along the route ready to be dispatched when an event such as an extremely long headway occurs. In this work, a stochastic model based o...

Express bus services are services that skip some of the stops along their routes to provide a faster ride for particularly demanded trips on a corridor. There is a growing literature on express services that focuses on route design and performance evaluation. In this work, we study a simplified transit corridor where a regular service operates in t...

Este documento aborda la distribución del uso del sistema de transporte, los recursos consumidos y los costos generados en relación a cinco grupos socioeconómicos (quintiles de ingreso por hogar) en la Región Metropolitana de Santiago.

Este documento aborda el concepto Calles Completas, cómo dicho enfoque ha sido adoptado en Londres y qué aspectos de esta experiencia podrían ser útiles para pensar las calles en Chile desde este paradigma, considerando la información disponible en el país. En tal sentido se propone una reclasificación de calles que integra las ideas de movilidad y...

This paper shows the results of an experiment in which a gate allowing only unidirectional flows was installed on the middle of a Metro platform. The results were very positive: operation of the Metro Line was improved, travel times were reduced, and both regularity and frequency of trains increased. Finally, the perception of the service by its ri...

A key planning consideration when designing transit services is the projected demand on each route, as this is a necessary input to determine frequencies and vehicle capacities. Predicting demand changes in complex networks requires a thorough modelling of the public transport system and its users’ decisions. Aiming to help in this process, a new t...

Service provider administrators need to identify which perceived service quality (PSQ) elements are more relevant for users. By doing this, specific tactical and operational policies can be implemented to retain and attract new customers. In the public transport (PT) arena, few PSQ studies account for both service encounter and global satisfaction....

Most studies of public transport accessibility have focused on proximity to stops, walking distances or time to reach them. This approach ignores other accessibility barriers, such as the quality of the urban environment of these walks. The aim of this research is to analyze both accessibility to public transport stops and the quality of the urban...

Chile es un país inseguro para transitar en sus calles, avenidas, caminos y carreteras. En nuestro país al año se producen cerca de 12 muertes en siniestros de tránsito por cada 100.000 habitantes, un valor muy superior al de los países con mejores prácticas en seguridad vial, según datos compilados por la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desa...

ESTA PUBLICACIÓN REÚNE 17 DOCUMENTOS PARA POLÍTICA PÚBLICA CON MIRADAS LOCALES SOBRE LA NUEVA AGENDA URBANA DE LA ONU QUE BUSCA SER UN APORTE A LA DISCUSIÓN DE LA CALIDAD DE VIDA EN LAS CIUDADES CHILENAS. CEDEUS es un centro interdisciplinario de investigación que busca la generación e intercambio de conocimiento con el fin de enfrentar los desafío...

Retailers must frequently deal with alterations in planned customer service levels due to unexpected demand variations or unscheduled employee absences. Although personnel scheduling techniques have been extensively studied and successfully applied, previous treatments of scheduling adjustments in response to demand and employee contingencies have...

Limited-stop services are a key element to the successful operation of bus rapid transit corridors. In this study, we present a framework for addressing the limited-stop service design problem over a corridor, and formally introduce a family of subproblems involved in its solution. Using a bi-level optimization approach, we introduce a method of de...

Background: Atherosclerotic plaque formation is characterized by recruitment of monocytes/macrophages, which contributes to its calcification by releasing pro-osteogenic cytokines. Chemotaxis-related proteins, including netrin-1, gremlin-1 and macrophage inflammatory protein-1β (MIP-1β), regulate immune cell migration. However, their relation with...

The recent trend towards open data and open science as well as a demand for holistic and interdisciplinary research requires platforms that allow the distribution and exchange of research data, including geographic information. While the requirements and benefits of data exchange are widely discussed, there are few proposals on how to implement dat...

A mathematical programming model is presented for controlling the operation of a line in a metro train system so as to minimize social cost in passenger trip times and energy consumption. The minimization is accomplished through three control strategies: speed control between stations, train holding and boarding limits. All three can be implemented...

There are some situations when it is necessary to weigh, with high accuracy and high precision, a required amount of material using heterogeneous and irregular pieces. As an example, in the laboratory, when preparing a liquid phase epitaxial growth, each of the materials that constitute the liquid phase must have an exact weight, within micrograms,...

This research proposes an equilibrium assignment model for congested public transport corridors in urban areas. In this model, journey times incorporate the effect of bus queuing on travel times and boarding and alighting passengers on dwell times at stops. The model also considers limited bus capacity leading to longer waiting times and more uncom...

To design and evaluate contractual arrangements for transit service delivery, it is crucial to understand the risks assumed by the actors involved. This understanding in turn clarifies the incentive structures of the contracts and their expected effects as well as explains the performance and development of public transport systems. This study exam...

Monitoring speeds and identifying problem areas are essential for any public transport system because of the direct impact on its operating costs and on users’ travel time. This study generated a tool that identified, quantified, and displayed operational bottlenecks of bus operation in a city. The model was applied to the public transport system i...

This paper aims to explain the factors that determine the dwell time of subway trains in Santiago, Chile. On the basis of morning rush-hour video recordings of Line 1’s most critically congested station, Baquedano, explanatory variables were selected to adjust a mathematical model. The purpose behind this model was to identify which factors could b...

This article presents a methodology that uses the continuum approximation approach to formulate the logistical problem of determining the number and location of recycling centers to which individuals in a region can deliver solid wastes to be recycled. To solve the proposed problem a two-stage approach is proposed. First, we solve an optimization p...

Fare evasion is a problem in many public transport systems around the world. Policies to reduce this problem are generally aimed at improving control systems and increasing fines for offenders. In this paper, we attempt to identify the joint impact of different variables explaining fare evasion using an econometric study. The variables found to be...

La inherente variabilidad y estacionalidad de la demanda genera un descalce natural entre la oferta planificada y la demanda observada en las empresas del sector servicios. El uso de personal polifuncional es una fuente de flexibilidad atractiva para minimizar tal descalce. Este trabajo presenta un modelo de programación lineal entera mixta y una h...

Este trabajo presenta una nueva metodología para estructurar las habilidades polifuncionales de un conjunto de empleados que inicialmente sólo cuentan con una función especialista. Asumiendo una demanda estocástica y una modelación continua de la fuerza laboral, la metodología descompone el problema de polifuncionalidad en tres etapas y lo resuelve...

Designing a BRT system is a complex process involving strategic and tactical decisions involving a wide variety of actors and interests. There are many possible ways to conceive a BRT system, with different levels of integration with other transport modes, different network configurations (such as trunk and feeder and point to point services), and...

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) can play a significant role as part of integrated public transport systems and is gaining support around the world in both developing and developed cities. The promise of BRT is that it can serve as a catalyst for reshaping urban space and restructure public transport, especially in developing cities. Implementation of succe...

To design a public transport system and effectively be able to promote its use, it is important to understand the traveller’s decision making process, which is based on their preferences and perceptions. This chapter presents an empirical analysis of the problem looking at different variables, both tangible and intangible, that help to explain mode...

Reducing the operating cost of public transport systems is a critical issue in order to provide an efficient service without increasing fares and/or subsidies. To achieve this, operational research techniques can be implemented, especially in regulated transit systems where there are policies to meet a specific level of service and operational stan...

Integration is one important element to advance higher quality service delivery, but advancing transit integration has proven difficult, especially in developing countries. BRT is one tool to use as a stepping stone to build citywide transit networks. Using the cases of Santiago and Bogotá, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages faced by two c...

When planning, designing and implementing a new BRT corridor, several decisions need to be made. Each decision taken will affect the corridor performance in a particular way. Understanding the relationship between the operation performance of a corridor and its design characteristics is crucial to achieve the corridor’s goals in terms of mobility....

BRT has risen as an alternative to rail potentially offering the same level of service at a reduced cost, providing fast and frequent services, thus reducing waiting time for passengers and improving comfort. However, operations are still affected by traffic signals and demand fluctuations affecting the regularity of bus headways inducing bus bunch...

Our goal for this book is to illustrate the larger context of BRT and its potential role in restructuring transportation and urban space to improve sustainability. Throughout these chapters we have highlighted the opportunities and challenges of meeting this potential. This larger vision is created by the interconnections between multiple research...

The promise of BRT is that it can serve as a catalyst for reshaping urban space and embedding sustainable transport into the fabric of the city. In developing cities with informal bus service sectors, BRT can be used as a method to restructure public transport provision by providing the physical infrastructure for the integrated network design and...

Variability and seasonality is an inherent characteristic in many service industries. This leads to the problem of mismatch between employee supply and demand. In this work we present a mixed integer linear programming model and a constructive heuristic to address this problem. The proposed methodology applies the concept of multiskilling, an attra...

This paper investigates the valuation of crowding in public transport trips and its implications in demand estimation and cost-benefit analysis. We use a choice-based stated preference survey where crowding levels are represented by means of specially designed pictures, and use these data to estimate flexible discrete choice models. We assume that...

Synchronizing different lines at common stops can increase the level of service in transit systems, particularly for different lines in overlapping route segments or common stops (e.g. branching lines and limited-stop lines). In this study, we propose a measure of synchronization that penalizes the deviation from proposed arrivals’ separation times...

Although limited-stop bus services around the world have proven to benefit users and operators alike, there are few published studies on design methodologies for such services and little clarity on when or where they are best applied to a given bus corridor. This article reports on an experiment in which a design algorithm for limited-stop services...

Introduction Network design usually refers to the stage in public transport planning where the routes and frequencies are defined for the services in a public transport system. However, network design can also consider more strategic decisions, such as which transport modes will be involved, and how they will interact in the system. Designing a net...

The potential benefits of using human resources efficiently in the service sector constitute an incentive for decision makers in this industry to intelligently manage the work shifts of their employees, especially those dealing directly with customers. In the long term, they should attempt to find the right balance between employing as few labor re...

Introduction The main goal of an urban transport system is to provide accessibility for the inhabitants of an urban region. As this book shows, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects can play an important role in urban mobility, but they cannot stand alone. A combination of different transport modes is needed to serve the demand which varies across diffe...

Introduction Public transport systems are increasingly aiming at providing an integrated service for the user. In these systems, BRT is a key component since it can provide a fast trip to users in congested urban setting. The promise of BRT is not just that it can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of a rail-based system and considerably faster...

Introduction To efficiently design and operate public transport (PT) systems it is important to understand the decision making process of users as well as their preferences and perceptions. The introduction of BRT corridors in a city, as any major PT system modification, can have significant impacts on the decision making processes of the traveller...

Introduction To achieve high satisfaction indicators, a public transport system needs to provide a high level of service to its users. A high level of service not only requires that users experience low waiting times, fast travel times, and a minimum comfort standard, but also that this service is reliable – that is, it does not change significantl...