People_
David Hensher
BCom(Hons) PhD UNSW; FASSA; FCIT; FAITPM; CompIEAust; MAPA
Professor of Management;
Founding Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies
Founding Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies
David Hensher is Professor of Management, and Founding Director of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS): The Australian Key Centre of Teaching and Research in Transport Management in The Business School at The University of Sydney. ITLS is ranked under Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) at level 5 (‘well above world standards’). Educated in Kenya (Parklands, Lord Delamere), England (Lindfield, Oxford) and Australia (UNSW), David is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA), Recipient of the 2009 IATBR (International Association of Travel Behaviour Research) Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition for his long-standing and exceptional contribution to IATBR as well as to the wider travel behaviour community, Recipient of the 2006 Engineers Australia Transport Medal for lifelong contribution to transportation, Recipient of the 2009 Bus NSW (Bus and Coach Association) Outstanding Contribution to Industry Award, and Recipient of the 2012 best paper released by the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME). David is also the recipient of the Smart 2013 Premier Award for Excellence in Supply Chain Management, and recipient of the 2014 Institute of Transportation Engineers (Australia and New Zealand) Transport Profession Award to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the development of the transport/traffic engineering profession over a sustained period; recipient of 2016 Award for Outstanding Research as part of the inaugural University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence. David is also the recipient of the 2019 John Shaw Medal which honours an industry champion who has made a lasting contribution to Australia's roads. Selected in 2018 by The University of Sydney as one of 25 research stars for the ARC Inaugural Engagement and Impact submission (ranked one of 12 with High Impact). A Director of Volvo Educational and Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Bus Rapid Transit (2010 onwards), Emeritus Member of Singapore Land Transport Authority International Advisory Panel 2007-2010 (Chaired by Minister of Transport), Honorary Fellow Singapore Land Transport Authority Academy, Past President of the International Association of Travel Behaviour Research and a Past Vice-Chair of the International Scientific Committee of the World Conference of Transport Research. David is the Executive Chair and Co-Founder of The International Conference in Competition and Ownership of Land Passenger Transport ( the Thredbo Series), now in its 30th year. David is on the editorial boards of 17 of the leading transport journals. David was appointed in 1999 by one of the world’s most prestigious academic publishing houses - Elsevier Science press - as series and volume co-editor of a handbook series Handbooks in Transport. In 2010 he was appointed by Routledge Publishers (UK) as Editor of a four-volume major works in Transport Economics as well as Edward Elgar Publishers as Series Editor for volumes on Transport and the Environment. He has published extensively (over 635 papers) in the leading international transport and economics journals (such as The Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Applied Economics, Empirical Economics, Transportation Research Parts A, B and E) as well as 16 books, and is Australia’s most cited transport academic. David has over 50,000 citations of his contributions in Google Scholar (8th most cited academic at the University of Sydney in all disciplines). David is ranked third in the world for economists in the field of discrete choice models, as of August 2019 (https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.dcm.html) and ITLS (and the Business School at Sydney) is ranked second. His books include the Demand for Automobiles, published by North-Holland, the Bus and Coach Business (with Ann Brewer published - Allen and Unwin), Transport: An Economics and Management Perspective (With Ann Brewer – Oxford University Press), Stated Choice Methods (with Jordan Louviere and Joffre Swait – Cambridge University Press), Applied Choice Analysis - a Primer (with John Rose and Bill Greene – Cambridge University Press, 1st and 2nd editions) and Ordered Choice Models (with Bill Greene – Cambridge University Press). His particular interests are transport economics, transport strategy, sustainable transport, productivity measurement, traveller behaviour analysis, choice analysis, stated choice experiments, process heuristics, and institutional reform (PPPs, privatisation tendering and contracting). David has advised numerous government and private sector organisations in many countries on matters related to transportation, especially matters related to forecasting demand for existing and new transportation services; for example the Speedrail high speed rail project, fast rail in regional NSW, the Fiji Travel Survey, the Liverpool-Parramatta Transitway, the North-West Rail project, West Connex, the Sydney Metro, public transport elasticities, and numerous toll road projects throughout Australia and internationally. David is regarded as Australia’s most eminent expert on matters relating to travel demand and valuation and transport reform. Appointments include: a member of the executive committee that reviewed bus transport bids for the Olympic Games, the NSW Government’s Peer Review Committee for the Sydney Strategic Transport Plan, Peer reviewer for Transfund (NZ) of the New Zealand project evaluation program, Peer reviewer of the NZ Land Passenger Transport Procurement Strategy for Land Transport NZ, member of the executive committee of ATEC, a consortium promoting a freight rail system between Melbourne and Darwin; economic adviser to Gilbert+Tobin Lawyers on valuation methods in IP context; panel member of Transport NSW benchmarking program; specialist toll road project adviser to Thiess, member of Infrastructure Australia’s reference panel on public transport, adviser to the West Connex toll road Project, adviser to Deloitte Access Economics, Transport for NSW and peer reviewer for Southern Water (UK) regulatory pricing reform, and member of Board of Advice of ITLS (Africa). In 2014 David was appointed as a Panel Member to Review The Faculty of Management at The University of Johannesburg and in 2016 to review the Department of Management Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. Member of Transport for NSW Connected and Automated Vehicle Stakeholder Reference Group (formed in 2017) and Infrastructure NSW Smart Cities Working Group.
David is recognised globally for his research in the areas of discrete choice analysis (including process heuristics, nonlinear choice models, group choice making and willingness to pay heterogeneity), stated choice and preference studies (applied to many disciplines), transport economics and transport strategy and policy. Within the transport field (including logistics and supply chain management), expertise is broad but generally focussed on theory and application that is related to project appraisal (both new infrastructure and management of existing infrastructure), development of integrated strategic transport and land use/location model systems, performance and productivity measurement in both the passenger and freight sectors, institutional and governance reforms (especially market vs government intervention), digital disruption in transport services (including mobility as a service, autonomous vehicles and drones), and road pricing reform (with a focus on buy in and practical implementation schemes and trials). In all areas there is a strong focus on data needs and how to design surveys to obtain appropriate data for choice and preference modelling or for empirical estimates of key performance indicators associated with specific transport modes and services. David has expertise in identifying the role of various modes such as bus based vs rail based systems in servicing metropolitan jurisdictions and especially how this debate contributes to the performance and liveability of cities. Commentary of most topical issues in transport is an area of expertise and in recent years examples have included the role of tolled roads, road pricing reform, how to change to a sharing culture in delivering multimodal transport mobility services, and how to level the playing field in the debate between bus rapid transit and light rail transit. David continues to contribute to the development of new ways of valuing key user benefits in the transport sector such as valuing travel time savings, travel time variability (reliability), crowding and safety. The Hensher equation developed to value business travel time savings has resurfaced as an important contribution with new ideas on how to capture relevant data to replace the simplistic cost savings approach.