Niels van Oort works as an associate professor Public Transport at Delft University of Technology and is co-director of the Smart Public Transport Lab. He has been involved in public transport projects for over 15 years. His main fields of expertise are public transport planning and design, dealing with the passenger perspective, service reliability and Big Data. In addition to teaching, Niels often presents his work at conferences and he frequently publishes articles in (international) journals.
Niels studied traffic and transport at Delft University of Technology and finished his Master on Public Transport in 2003. He started to work as a researcher at HTM, the public transport company of The Hague. During this job, he started a PhD on service reliability in public transport. He performed his research part time at Delft University of Technology and in 2009 he joined the public transport research group of Professor Wilson at MIT. In 2010 he changed jobs to work as a public transport consultant at Goudappel Coffeng mobility consultants. He finished his PhD in 2011 and started to work at Delft university of Technology in 2012 as an (parttime) assistant professor. Since 2018, he is fulltime employed. He likes to do scientific research and applying his research insights into practice.
Niels is involved in several studies concerning network and timetable optimization, thereby applying his research into practice. His main fields of expertise are public transport planning, dealing with the passenger perspective, service reliability and Big Data. In addition to teaching, Niels often presents his work at conferences and he frequently publishes articles in (international) journals. He supervises PhD students doing research on railway planning optimization, synchronization and demand responsive public transport.