Prof. David Levinson

Professor David Levinson is a US civil engineer and transportation analyst who has been a professor at Sydney University since 2017.
He has written and edited several books on transportation - including Spontaneous Access, The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport - produced numerous peer reviewed articles, and is editor of the Journal of Transport and Land Use.
David teaches at the University of Sydney’s School of Civil Engineering, where he leads TransportLab and the Transport Engineering research group, and directs the Master of Transport. He is an honorary affiliate of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, where he is also a member of the Board of Advice.
He held the RP Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation at the University of Minnesota from 2006 to 2016.
David’s research interests span transport, from engineering and design, through policy and planning, to geography and economics. His most recent research emphasises transport-land use interactions, accessibility, and transport system evolution.
In 2006-07, he was a visiting academic at Imperial College in London. In January 2005 he was awarded the CUTC/ARTBA New Faculty Award.
He earned a Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. His dissertation ‘On Whom the Toll Falls’ argues that local decision making about managing and financing roads will most likely lead to direct road pricing, which will allow the efficient allocation of scarce road resources and therefore reduce congestion. He has also conducted research into travel behaviour.
He received the 1995 Tiebout Prize in Regional Science for the paper ‘Location, Relocation, and the Journey to Work’.