Assistant Professor and CTECH co-Principal Investigator (PI), Samitha Samaranayake, is a co-PI on the recently awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) project titled, “TRIPODS+X:RES: Collaborative Research: The Future of the Road – A Data-Driven Redesign of the Urban Transit Ecosystem”. The Stanford/Cornell project, led by Stanford’s Ramesh Johari, will explore the role of data in designing the future of multi-modal transit systems. Professors Banerjee, Henderson, Samaranayake and Shmoys will work together, as well as with partners at the Tompkins County Area Transit (public transit provider for Ithaca and Tompkins County), Motivate (a bike sharing firm), and others toward providing efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable transportation solutions, addressing a longstanding challenge for urban planners. On-demand transit modes – bike sharing, ride sharing, and micro-transit –  have the potential to solve many of the challenges faced by cities, but are currently not designed to work in synergy with existing urban transit modes. The team plans to address this challenge using a combination of operational and market-design approaches, built around a data-driven stochastic-network model for transit system operations, and the view of a transit authority acting as a meta-platform mediating between commuters and transit providers. The team will also work to facilitate conversation between academics and representatives of public and private transit platforms by organizing a workshop in 2019 on the Future of Urban Transit.