Yoram Shiftan

Yoram Shiftan (; born 1958) is a professor in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he holds the Joseph Meyerhoff Chair in Urban and Regional Planning.

Shiftan's research focuses on travel behavior and transportation system analysis. He is the head of the Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center and a consultant to major strategic transportation projects in Israel and abroad.

Early life and education Yoram Shiftan was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and studied at Leyada, the Hebrew University high school. He studied civil engineering at the Technion and earned a BSc (cum laude) in 1986. He continued his studies at the Technion and received his MSc in civil engineering in 1988. He earned his PhD in 1991 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with the thesis "Transportation Workforce Planning in the Transit Industry: Incorporating Absence, Overtime, and Reliability Relationships” under the supervision of Prof. Nigel Wilson.

During his career, Shiftan was a visiting professor at the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.; the University of IL Chicago; Ohio State University; the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT), ETH, Zurich; Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan; and School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, VA. and taught courses on demand modeling and transport project evaluation. Shiftan has supervised 20 PhD and 50 MSc students.

Research Shiftan's research focuses on travel behavior and demand and their implications for policy and investment decision-making. He develops models to predict, plan and analyze the demand for travel, using theories in economics, psychology, and engineering. The models analyze transportation systems to improve efficiency and equity and examine their economic, environmental, social, and safety impacts.

He developed the Activity-Based Models (ABM). Instead of just forecasting the trips people will undertake, it estimates the activities they will perform, and derives from that the trips they'll take to execute them. These models significantly increase the understanding of travel behavior and provide better tools for transportation planning. Shiftan developed the methods for implementing these models and designed the Tel Aviv AMB.

In recent years his research has focused on the activity and travel behavior implication of smart transportation and driverless cars and their potential impact on cities.

Professional activities Professor Shiftan has been the head of the Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center since 2019. He was president of the Israel Association for Transportation Research from 2004 to 2007. He is also a member of the editorial board of a dozen scientific journals in the field of transportation.

Shiftan has been a consultant on major transportation projects in the US and Israel on travel demand, transport policy, and environmental impact. Among others, he developed the travel demand models for the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area as well as the Second Avenue Subway in New York City. In Israel, he was the academic advisor for the Israeli guide for Transport Project Evaluation and advised on the demand models, planning, and cost benefits of major investments. These include the Tel-Aviv Metro System, the Israel Railways Strategic Plan, and the Jerusalem Light Rail. His clients include the Israel Ministry of Transport and the Israel Ministry of Finance, the United States Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and several states and major metropolitan areas in the US.

Publications Shiftan has authored some 150 articles and edited five books.

Books

Shiftan Y., K. Button and P. Nijkamp (Eds.), Transportation Planning, as part of the Button K. and Nijkamp P. (Ed.) "Classics in Planning" series, 642 pages, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2007 Geerlings, H., Shiftan, Y., and Stead, D., (Eds.) Transition towards Sustainable Mobility: the Role of Instruments, Individuals and Institutions, 406 pages, Ashgate, Surrey, England, 2012 Attard, M., and Shiftan, Y., (Eds.), Sustainable Urban Transport, Volume 7 of the Transport and Sustainability series, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2015 Hakim, S., Albert, G., and Shiftan, Y., (Eds.), Securing Transportation Systems, John Wiley & Sons Inc., NJ, 2015 Shiftan, Y. and Kamargianni, M., (Eds.) Preparing for the New Era of Transportation Policies: Learning from Experience. The first book of the Van Wee (Ed.) “Advances in Transport Policy and Planning” series, Elsevier, Academic Press, 2018

Selected articles

Kogus, A., Brůhová Foltýnová, H., Gal-Tzur, A., Shiftan, Y., Vejchodská, E., Shiftan, Y., Will COVID-19 accelerate telecommuting? A cross-country evaluation for Israel and Czechia, Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice Vol. 164, pp. 291–309, 2022 Cohen-Blankshtain, G., Bar-Gera, H., Shiftan, Y., "Congestion pricing and positive incentives: conceptual analysis and empirical findings from Israel” Transportation, on-line 2022 Tenenboim E., Munichor, N., Shiftan, Y., “Justifying toll payment with biased travel time estimates: Behavioral findings and route choice modeling, Transportation, 2022 Etzioni, S., Daziano, R., Ben-Elia, E, & Shiftan, Y., “Preferences for Shared Automated Vehicles: A Hybrid Latent Class Modeling Approach” Transportation Research C, 125, 2021 Harb, M., Stathopoulos, A., Shiftan, Y., & Walker, J., “What Do We (Not) Know About Our Future with Automated Vehicles”, Transportation Research C, 123, 2021 Etzioni, S., Hamadneh, J., Elvarsson, A.B., Esztergár-Kiss, D., Djukanovic, M., Neophytou, S.N., Sodnik, J., Polydoropoulou, A., Tsouros, I., Pronello, C., Thomopoulos, N., and Shiftan, Y., “Modeling Cross-National Differences in Automated Vehicle Acceptance” Sustainability, 12(22), 2020 DiCiommo, F., and Shiftan, Y., Transport Equity Analysis, Transport Reviews, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp 139–151, 2017 Haboucha, C. J., Ishaq, R., Shiftan, Y., “User preferences regarding autonomous vehicles, Transportation Research C No. 78, pp. 37–49, 2017 Ben-Elia, E2., Di Pace, R., Bifulco, G.N., and Shiftan, Y., “The impact of travel information’s accuracy on route-choice.” Transportation Research C, Vol. 26, pp. 146–159, 2013 Sharaby, N.3, and Shiftan, Y., “The impact of fare integration on travel behavior and transit ridership.” Transport Policy, Vol. 21, pp. 63–70, 2012 Shiftan, Y., and Ben-Akiva, M., “A practical policy-sensitive, activity-based, travel-demand model.” The Annals of Regional Science, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 517–541, 2011 Ben Elia, E.1, and Shiftan Y., “Which road do I take? A learning-based model of route-choice behavior with real-time information.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 249–264, 2010 Shiftan Y., Outwater, M.L3., and Zhou, Y.3, "Transit market research using structural equation modeling and attitudinal market segmentation.” Transport Policy, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 186–195, 2008 Shiftan Y., Kaplan S1., and Hakkert S., “Scenario building as a tool for planning a sustainable transportation system.” Transportation Research D: Transport and Environment, No 8, pp. 323–342, 2003

Personal life Shiftan is married to Alona Nitzan-Shiftan. They have two children and live in Haifa.