Step-tolling with price-sensitive demand: Why more steps in the toll make the consumer better off

Most dynamic models of congestion pricing use fully time-variant tolls. However, in practice, tolls are uniform over the day, or at most have just a few steps. Such uniform and step tolls have received surprisingly little attention from the literature. Moreover, most models that do study them assume that demand is insensitive to the price. This seems an empirically questionable assumption that, as this paper finds, strongly affects the implications of step tolling for the consumer. In the bottleneck model, first-best tolling has no effect on the generalised price, and thus consumer surplus remains the same as without tolling. Conversely, under price-sensitive demand, step tolling increases the price, making the consumer worse off. The more steps the toll has, the closer it approximates the first-best toll, thereby increasing the welfare gain and making consumers better off. This indicates the importance for real-world tolls to have as many steps as possible: this not only raises welfare, but may also increase the political acceptability of the scheme by making consumers better off.     

Impacts of urban built environment on empty taxi trips using limited geolocation data

This study identifies the determinants of the empty taxi trip duration (ETTD) by combining three high-resolution databases—geolocation data in New York City, geodatabase of urban planning data, and transportation facilities data. Considering the nature of duration data, hazard-based duration model is proposed to explore the relationships between causal factors and ETTD, coupling with three variations of baseline hazard distribution, i.e., Weibull distribution with heterogeneity, Weibull distribution, and log-logistic. Furthermore, the likelihood ratio test is presented to implement comparisons of three baseline hazard distributions, as well as spatial and temporal transferability of causal factors. The results show significant complementary effects by subway system and competitive effects by city bus and bicycling system, as well as significant impacts of trip length, airport trip, average annual income, and employment rate. Urban built environment, for instance, density of road, public facilities, and recreational sites and ratio of green space, has various impacts on ETTD. The elasticity estimations confirm significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity in impacts on ETTD. In addition, the analysis on elasticity also reveals the considerable impacts of severe traffic congestion on ETTD within Manhattan. The modeling can assist stakeholders in understanding empty taxi movements and measuring taxi system efficiency in urban areas.     

Reliability Modeling and Maintenance Policy Optimization for Deteriorating System Under Random Shock

Performance degradation and random shock are commonly regarded as two dependent competing risks for system failures. One method based on effective service age is proposed to jointly model the cumulative effect of random shock and system degradation, and the reliability model of degradation system under Nonhomogeneous Poisson processes (NHPP) shocks is derived. Under the assumption that preventive maintenance (PM) is imperfective and the corrective maintenance (CM) is minimal repair, one maintenance policy which combines PM and CM is presented. Moreover, the two decision variables, PM interval and the number of PMs before replacement, are determined by a multi-objective maintenance optimization method which simultaneously maximizes the system availability and minimizes the system long-run expect cost rate. Finally, the performance of the proposed maintenance optimization policy is demonstrated via a numerical example.     

Effect of nozzle orifice diameter on diesel spray tip penetration according to various spray models for CFD simulation with widely varying back pressure

CFD simulations of spray tip penetration with the standard KIVA3V, ‘original gas jet’ and ‘Normal gas jet profile with breakup length formula’ (NGJBL) spray models were performed to investigate the effects of nozzle orifice size and ambient gas density combinations on the spray penetration. The accuracy of the CFD simulation results was estimated by comparing them with available experimental data. The ambient gas density was varied in 12 kg/m³ intervals from 12 to 69 kg/m³ for each nozzle orifice diameter. The nozzle orifice diameters used were 119, 140, 183 and 206 mm. A total of 20 cases in the CFD simulations were considered with combinations of the 4 nozzle orifice diameters and 5 ambient gas densities. CFD simulations with the NGJBL spray model were more accurate than those with either the standard KIVA3V or gas jet spray models as the nozzle orifice diameter and ambient gas density was increased. The NGJBL and original gas jet model is more effective in predicting the spray tip penetration near the nozzle tip region.     

Vibration reduction of H/Shaft using an electromagnetic damper with mode change

The objective of this study is to develop a damper that can reduce the amplitude of vibration in various frequency ranges. Previous H/Shaft vibration reduction methods work in a passive way. A dynamic damper reduces the amplitude of vibration at its first mode, but vibration still appears at the second mode. A mass damper or hollow shaft can shift the natural frequency to a lower or higher region. The fixed operating frequency prevents vibration from being reduced outside the operating frequency range. The proposed damper uses electromagnets as either masses or actuators to change the damper mode between dynamic damper mode and mass damper mode. The electromagnetic damper (EMD) can change its mode to respond to the vibration excitation at both low and high frequencies. The vibration reduction performance was evaluated by FRF tests in laboratory and vehicle conditions. The results were compared with those of a dynamic damper and indicate that the amplitude of vibration is reduced by 95.6 % when the EMD is implemented on an H/Shaft, whereas only 61.9 % vibration reduction is achieved by the dynamic damper.     

浅谈工程设计对公路建设投资的影响和相应对策

通过工程设计对公路建设投资影响的分析,阐明了工程设计是影响建设投资的主要因素之一,并通过实例证明了合理选择设计方案和采用技术标准等办法是控制投资的一条有效途径,而合理选择设计方案和技术标准又受到各种因素的影响和限制,对影响合理选择设计方案的原因进行了具体分析,并就此提出了几点相应对策,供同行们参考.     

彩色多普勒超声在动态监测移植肝及其并发症中的应用

目的探讨彩色多普勒超声在动态监测肝移植术后血流动力学变化及并发症诊治中的应用价值。方法回顾我中心107例原位肝移植术后应用彩色多普勒超声资料,汇总后行统计学分析。结果肝移植术后早期门脉流速较正常对照组升高,而肝动脉流速降低,后逐渐恢复正常。107例中发现肝动脉血栓形成2例(1.87%),肝动脉狭窄5例(4.67%),门脉血栓形成3例(2.80%),肿瘤复发7例(6.54%),诊断为急性排斥反应18例次(16.82%),慢性排斥反应10例次(9.34%),胸腔积液105例(98.13%),腹腔积液65例(60.74%),假性动脉瘤1例,胰漏1例,胆道感染4例(3.74%),胆道狭窄4例(3.74%),胆漏5例(4.67%),胆总管结石1例。结论彩色多普勒超声在动态监测肝移植术后血流动力学变化及并发症诊治中具有重要的临床意义。     

关于船舶UPS的容量估算

伴随着不间断电源(UPS)技术在船舶以及海洋工程项目中的使用日益广泛,人们对不间断电源技术的了解也日益增加。该文通过实船案例结合理论知识详细介绍UPS的工作方式以及UPS的容量确定、蓄电池容量确认等内容。     

基于LabVIEW的“海院1号”波浪发电平台浮筒取能效率数据采集系统设计

浮筒取能效率测试是波浪发电平台研究的重要组成部分。传统的测试系统不但测量精度低,而且自动化程度低、操作复杂。为此,该文基于“海院1号”波浪发电平台,采用虚拟仪器LabVIEW软件开发了浮筒取能效率数据采集系统。文中介绍了“海院1号”波浪发电平台及其浮筒,进行了测试系统的设计,实现了浮筒取能效率测试的数据采集、数据管理、曲线拟合及绘制、生成报表、信号分析以及数据处理等工程。对实际运行效果进行分析,结果表明该系统具有精度高、运行稳定可靠、自动化程度高、人机界面友好以及操作简单等特点,具有重要的工程实践意义。     

Home-to-work commuting,urban form and potential energy savings: A local scale approach to regional statistics

The link between transport energy consumption and land use patterns has been the focus of a considerable amount of academic works over the past decades. While many empirical researches are backed up with solid statistical techniques, most of them do not fully consider the influence of scale underlying empirical quantitative investigations. Using fine-scale home-to-work commuting data for Wallonia (Belgium), this paper re-evaluates Breheny’s (1995) assertion that urban structure should hold the characteristics of major cities if substantial energy savings are to be achieved. A local scale approach highlights efficient settlements in terms of transport energy consumption not only within major towns, but also within remote rural areas. Furthermore, results suggest that influencing the urban form following local energy efficient examples rather than regional ones could also yield significant gains, without an extreme policy stance of re-urbanisation in major cities.