Thermal deformations in typical maglev guideway structures

Thermal gradients and related deformations induced in elevated Maglev guideways by temperature variations in their environment have been predicted by a mathematical model. The deflections induced by thermal gradients in typical guideways are found to exceed specified limits for acceptable operation of an electromagnetic suspension system vehicle unless measures are taken to reduce the thermal gradients and related deflections by suitable treatment of the guideway surfaces.     

Determining the effects of scheduling on automated automobile guideway utilization

This paper develops an analytic approach for measuring the effect of vehicle scheduling and of metering methods required to balance entrance rates among stations on lane capacity utilization of automated automobile guideways. The scheduling process at each entrance is represented by a probabilistic model which generates a system of nonlinear equations. The solution of this system yields the maximum steady state input rates at the entrances to the guideway system. The method developed is applicable to network configurations in which a small number of merges must be scheduled for each vehicle before it enters the guideway. It is demonstrated by application to a corridor guideway serving a major activity center during peak inbound demand, and also it is shown how the approach may be extended to more complex networks.     

Measuring community reaction to urban transportation impacts using Von Neumann‐Morgenstern utility theory

This paper attempts to measure the impacts of urban transportation system improvements or changes on the community. The community's perceptions of the impacts are represented by its utilities (or disutilities) over various ranges of values of the multiple attributes representing these impacts. The utility technique used in the evaluation is based upon von Neumann‐Morgenstern (vN‐M, 1947) Utility Theory, and is applied using Raiffa's (1970) Fractile Method.

The paper specifically applies the technique to model the perceptions of five subgroups within a community to the impact of a new light rail transit system that is being incorporated in the transportation system of the City of Calgary.

Results of the modeling indicate explicitly how the community changes its perception over ranges of values of the attributes evaluated. Biases of various subgroups within the community over these attributes are also shown. Statistical tests indicate that aggregated utility perceptions can represent the utility perceptions of the individual subgroups quite reasonably.     

Vehicle aesthetics and their impact on the pedestrian environment

Cars are designed to appeal to the buyer’s self-image, many of them evoking an impression of speed and power. Such an impression conflicts both with the aesthetic language of suburban architecture, and the needs of pedestrians. The research described in this report was conceived as a preliminary investigation of how members of the public view the aesthetic impact of cars in the residential street environment, particularly from the pedestrian’s point of view. The results suggested that people use two distinct sets of criteria when evaluating the motor car and the residential environment in visual terms. When asked to ‘match’ different models of car with different street scenes, respondents avoided referring to abstract visual qualities such as shape, colour and texture, but concentrated instead on the owners: the imagined driver and the imagined householder. The problem of visual harmony was reduced to one of social and cultural harmony. Could the imagined householder be expected to drive this or that car? However, SUVs were singled out as visually intrusive because they blocked the pedestrian’s view. Members of one of the groups, boys aged 11–12, found it difficult to visualise the impact of cars on pedestrians at all, or even to question vehicle design from the pedestrian’s point of view. They just wanted to be in the driving seat.     

Measuring the completeness of complete streets

A tool for measuring the “completeness” of a complete street has applications in developing policy, prioritising areas for infrastructure investment for a network, and solving the right-of-way allocation problem for individual streets. A literature review was conducted on the state-of-art in the assessment complete street designs. Complete streets assessment requires a context-sensitive approach, thus context-sensitive standards of “completeness” must first be established by combining a street classification system with sets of priorities and target performance levels for the different types of streets. Performance standards should address a street’s fulfilment of the movement, environmental, and place functions, and be flexible enough to account for the many ways that these functions of a street can be fulfilled. Most frameworks reviewed are unsuitable for evaluating complete streets because, with few exceptions, they guide street design by specifying the design elements for inclusion on the street. Secondly, the performance of a street can be assessed according to transportation, environmental, and place criteria, and compared to the target performance levels specified by the street’s classification. As there are many different impacts to consider on a street, additional work is required to define the priorities and performance objectives for different types of streets.     

Encouraging environmentally sustainable holiday travel

Holiday travel behavior, individual characteristics of holiday travelers and strategies to change holiday travel behavior are the subjects of this article. From the environmental perspective, the journey to the destinations is the most critical aspect of traveling. Based on a 2003 survey of 1991 German inhabitants, the kilometers traveled and the choice of transportation mode for holiday purposes have been quantified. According to the number of trips and kilometers traveled, four travel groups have been identified. The groups vary according to socio-demographics, psychological factors, number of holiday trips, and travel mode choice. Persons who traveled to more distant destinations also traveled more often and used air travel for more than 60% of their trips. For the other groups, car travel was more important. Correlating the four travel groups with greenhouse gas emissions reveals that the smallest group—the long-haul travelers—was responsible for 80% of the emissions of the whole sample. Income, education, and openness to change were main indicators of individual greenhouse gas emissions. Target group oriented strategies to reduce the environmental impact of holiday mobility are discussed against the background of 84 in-depth interviews conducted with selected representatives of the first survey.     

Correlations between industrial demands (direct and total) for communications and transportation in the U.S. economy 1947–1997

Using input–output (I–O) accounts provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce, this study investigates the aggregate relationships between the transportation and communications inputs demanded (directly and in total) by all industries in the U.S., and compares the results across time. We analyzed five pairs of Spearman correlations of transportation and communications demands (utilities, manufacturing, and overall) using the direct and total coefficient tables from the ten benchmark input–output years spanning 1947 to 1997. To correctly represent the overall economy-wide relationship, each industry (direct table) or commodity (total table) in the correlation was weighted proportionately to the monetary value of its contribution to the U.S. economy. In the analysis using direct I–O coefficients, we found a pattern of predominant complementarity between transportation and communications manufacturing, and substitution between transportation and communications utilities. There are intriguing indications, however, of a shift from substitution to complementarity in the latter case, beginning around 1987. In the analysis using total I–O coefficients, we found a pattern of complementarity for all years between transportation and communications manufacturing, and a pattern changing from substitution to complementarity for the remaining four pairs (transportation manufacturing and communications utilities; transportation utilities and communications manufacturing; the utilities pair; and the overall pair). Thus, from the industrial perspective (which constitutes a sizable proportion of the total demand for communications and transportation), it is not realistic in modern times to expect telecommunications to substitute for travel. Nevertheless, further research is needed into the specific causes of the observed shift from substitution to complementarity, and current trends should continue to be monitored for any changes.

Sustainability: A vital concept for transportation planning and development

The current pattern of metropolitan transportation and land development in the majority of countries around the world appears to be increasingly unsustainable from both an economical and environmental perspective. Many factors point to the need for adoption of a new paradigm for sustainable transportation and development in both high and low income countries—burgeoning populations, growing air pollution, limits on global petroleum reserves, limited physical and economic capacity to expand automobile-based transportation systems without community destruction, and the urgent need to limit global CO₂ emissions to slow the pace of global warming. This paper outlines some of the conceptual differences between the current paradigm for transportation planning and an emerging paradigm for sustainable transportation and land development. It compares the US and European patterns of transport and land development, which often inspire transportation decision-makers and planners in developing countries. The paper reviews the patterns of development in the cities of several developing countries, identifying policies than can enhance sustainability.     

Cybertran: A systems analysis solution to the high cost and low passenger appeal of conventional rail transportation systems

A new transportation system is described. CyberTran is a steel wheel on rail system designed to travel on elevated guideways, utilizing large numbers of 6 to 20 passenger automated vehicles weighing less than 10,000 pounds. The benefits from these light weight vehicles include dramatically reduced system cost and increased passenger appeal. The system described has been prototyped and tested at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, a U. S. Department of Energy Research and Development Laboratory.     

Incorporating sustainability assessment in transportation planning: an urban transportation vehicle-based approach

Environmental assessments are on the critical path for the development of land, infrastructure and transportation systems. These assessments are based on planning methods which, in turn, are subject to continuous enhancement. The substantial impacts of transportation on environment, society and economy strongly urge the incorporation of sustainability into transportation planning. Two major developments that enhance transportation sustainability are new fuels and vehicle power systems. Traditional planning ignores technology including the large differences among conventional, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles and buses. The introduction of alternative fuel vehicles is likely to change the traditional transportation planning process because different characteristics need to be taken into account. In this study a sustainability framework is developed that enables assessment of transportation vehicle characteristics. Identified indicators are grouped in five sustainability dimensions (Environment, Technology, Energy, Economy and Users). Our methodology joins life cycle impacts and a set of quantified indicators to assess the sustainability performance of seven popular light-duty vehicles and two types of transit buses. Bus Rapid Transit receives the highest sustainability index and the pickup truck the lowest. Hybrid electric vehicles are found to have the highest sustainability index among all other passenger vehicles. A sensitivity analysis shows the proposed sustainability dimensions produce robust sustainability assessment for several weighting scenarios. The results are both technology and policy sensitive, thus useful for both short- and long-term planning.     

Social Impacts of Transport: Literature Review and the State of the Practice of Transport Appraisal in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Transport appraisals in European countries increasingly address three dimensions of sustainability—economic, ecological and social. However, social impacts of transport have been underexposed in (ex‐ante) transport project appraisal, at least in the Netherlands. Firstly, this article presents a theoretical framework describing the relationships between determinants of social impacts of transport; it also provides a definition and categorization of those impacts. Secondly, the article reviews the state of the practice of national transport project appraisal in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The article shows that social impacts of transport investments can take on many forms and their levels of importance may vary widely, in project appraisal. The UK transport appraisal guidance includes a spectrum of social impacts through quantitative and qualitative assessments that is broader than the Dutch appraisal guidance. However, it does not cover the full range as identified in the literature. This holds, in particular, for the temporary impacts of transport investments, health impacts, social cohesion, the distribution and accumulation of impacts across population groups and social justice. All in all, it can be concluded that there is a long way to go before social impacts of transport projects are completely included in appraisals, in a way that allows us to compare them to economic and ecological effects.     

The evaluation of transportation energy efficiency: An application of three-stage virtual frontier DEA

In this paper, transportation energy efficiency is newly defined and its inputs and outputs are obtained through literature review. Labor input, capital input and energy input are selected as the inputs, passenger turnover volume and freight turnover volume are defined as the outputs. A new model—three-stage virtual frontier DEA (three-stage virtual frontier Data Envelopment Analysis) is proposed to evaluate transportation energy efficiencies. The case of thirty Chinese PARs (provincial administrative regions) from 2003 to 2012 is applied to verify its rationality. In the three-stage virtual frontier DEA, the reference DMU (decision-making unit) set and the evaluated DMU set are two different sets so that it can distinguish the DEA efficient DMUs. And in the evaluating process, the reference DMU set remains unchanged to assure its results more reasonable than Super DEA model. The results show that transport structure and management measures have important impacts on transportation energy efficiency.     

Quantitative analysis of passenger and baggage security screening at airports

The terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 opened a new era in air transportation. The realization that civil aircraft can be used as powerful weapons of mass destruction by a small group of people has drastically increased the need for security screening procedures to protect civil flights. Serving as the interface between the air and land transportation modes, airports have become the main focus in the implementation of those procedures. The need to more thoroughly screen passengers and baggage, and the consequent increase in processing time, has created the need for more space for security checkpoints and baggage screening inside passenger terminal buildings—space that is costly and very difficult to find in existing buildings. This paper evaluates the impact those measures have had on the planning and operation of airport passenger terminals. Quantification of those impacts is performed with the use of discrete‐event simulation and spreadsheet models.     

Urban transportation and decision making — A comparison of three case studies in Britain

In spite of the impacts that new transportation facilities have upon the economic, social and political structures of established urban areas, the decision process leading to policy formation and plan implementation has received little, if any, attention. Case studies of three County Boroughs in Britain having different urban transport policies suggest that the decision making process is dominated by groups and individuals who attempt to implement policies which benefit the sectional interests which they represent. Within a changing relevant environment, local technicians, politicians and community groups compete and form coalitions in order to acquire authority and implement their own notions of justice and equity in the adaptation of the built environment.     

State-of-the-practice assessment of climate change adaptation practices across metropolitan planning organizations pre- and post-Hurricane Sandy

Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) throughout the United States are identifying goals and implementation strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change through transportation adaptation initiatives. Using vulnerability assessments as well as adaptation practices that support mitigation, MPOs are beginning to integrate climate change planning into the long range planning process. Evaluating the state-of-the-practice of adaptation planning and adaptation in support of mitigation is useful in that it helps identify gaps and areas of improvement. Therefore, this research investigates the state-of-the-practice of MPO adaptation planning using the Mid-Atlantic region as a case study. Surveys, administered in 2012 and 2014, are used to identify the level of progress of MPOs with regard to climate change adaptation practices as well as barriers before and after Hurricane Sandy. A cross-sectional analysis using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) maps the results of the surveys and spatially compares regional trends. The results of the case study suggest growing interest in adaptation efforts such as floodplain area designations and efforts to enhance coordination and collaboration as transportation jurisdictions respond to the potential climate change impacts. In addition, MPOs with dense, smaller geographic areas prioritize inter-jurisdictional collaboration as high, suggesting that they are more reliant on other agencies to maintain inter-connectivity of transportation networks and further implement adaptation planning practices.     

Social and political implications of new transport technologies

The mechanism of change in society is discussed in terms of power and interest groups, and some of the past changes in transport technology are examined in terms of the degree of threat posed to the established order and the interest groups benefiting from change. On the basis of such a power/benefit model, three of the new transport technologies which have been proposed — “guideway”, “dial‐a‐bus” and “network cab”, are discussed as to their likely social and political acceptability.     

Life cycle emissions and cost model for urban light duty vehicles

The growth of vehicle sales and use internationally requires the consumption of significant quantities of energy and materials, and contributes to the deterioration of air-quality and climate conditions. Advanced propulsion systems and electric drive vehicles have substantially different characteristics and impacts. They require life cycle assessments and detailed comparisons with gasoline powered vehicles which, in turn, should lead to critical updates of traditional models and assumptions. For a comprehensive comparison of advanced and traditional light duty vehicles, a model is developed that integrates external costs, including emissions and time losses, with societal and consumer life cycle costs. Life cycle emissions and time losses are converted into costs for seven urban light duty vehicles. The results, which are based on vehicle technology characteristics and transportation impacts on environment, facilitate vehicle comparisons and support policy making in transportation. Substantially, more sustainable urban transportation can be achieved in the short-term by promoting policies that increase vehicle occupancy; in the intermediate-term by increasing the share of hybrid vehicles in the car market and in the long-term by the widespread use of electric vehicles. A sensitivity-analysis of life cost results revealed that vehicle costs change significantly for different geographical areas depending on vehicle taxation, pricing of gasoline, electric power and pollution. Current practices in carbon and air quality pricing favor oil and coal based technologies. However, increasing the cost of electricity from coal and other fossil fuels would increase the variable cost for electric vehicles, and tend to favor the variable cost of hybrid vehicles.     

Why new technologies cannot radically improve the quality of urban transportation

In recent years a great deal of time and effort has been expended on the development of new modes of transport for cities. It is argued in this paper that this work is unlikely to be very productive because the major remaining flaw in the provision of transportation services—the inability of one mode to provide a good service to concentrated and dispersed trip ends—seems unavoidable. To make the required breakthrough a new mode must be frugal in its demands for space, flexible in its operation and fast. But an analysis of the performance of existing and prototype modes suggest that there is a fundamental technological barrier that precludes any one mode from performing well in more than two out of these three ways. This implies that any further improvements in travel for the urbanite must be made through existing modes and their derivatives and will be quite limited. It also suggests that the only possible way of substantially improving urban transportation is to build or rebuild towns so that one of the important mode attributes mentioned above is rendered superfluous.     

Measuring foregone output under industry emission reduction target in the transportation sector

Numerous countries have implemented or are considering a range of policies to lower emissions from transportation. An analysis of the impacts of environmental regulation is a crucial issue, which has not been properly highlighted in the transportation literature, particularly in terms of the foregone output by such regulation. This study develops a novel DEA model that measures the foregone output when the industry emissions target is imposed. This model reflects the real regulatory process more appropriately than other models in that the authority in charge sets the emission reduction target first, and the transport operators respond to it. In addition, the model can test the industrywide impacts over a wide range of emission target values, which can help policy makers determine the optimal emission target. Finally, the proposed model was applied to the port industry in Korea. The results suggest that Korean ports can reduce their emissions by a maximum of 239,850 tons of CO₂, which accounts for 13% of the total emissions in 2010. The 13% reduction in emission, however, would result in $ 91,109,000 of foregone cargo traffic to the Korean economy. In addition, the foregone cargo traffic increases at much faster rate than the emission reduction rate. For example, the shadow price of emission differs by 2.25 times between the most moderate and strictest emission targets. This suggests that the government needs to impose moderate emission targets at the initial stages if it decides to minimize the regulatory impacts on the industry.