Program for catenary–pantograph analysis,PrOSA statement of methods and validation according EN 50318

DB Systemtechnik is a high-performing, customer-driven service provider that, as well as authoritatively serving the Deutsche Bahn Group by dint of its specialist knowledge is also increasingly active on the global railway market. Development and testing of pantograph models and catenary systems have been part of the company's essential activity fields from the beginning. Therefore, an efficient and high-performing simulation tool is indispensable. That is why DB Systemtechnik spent high efforts to develop the program PrOSA in cooperation with the Heinz–Nixdorf–Institut (HNI) of the university Paderborn to simulate the interaction of pantograph and catenary. This article gives an overview of the most relevant properties of PrOSA. Furthermore, it is described how the benchmark requirements were implemented and processed.     

Quantifying the impact of road lighting on road safety — A New Zealand Study

It is well known from the literature that road lighting has significant safety benefits. The NZTA Economic Evaluation Manual (EEM) quotes a 35% reduction in crashes as the effect of upgrading or improving lighting where lighting is poor.     

Warming Seas in the Coral Triangle: Coral Reef Vulnerability and Management Implications

The highest diversity coral reefs in the world, located in the Coral Triangle, are threatened by a variety of local stresses including pollution, overfishing, and destructive fishing in addition to climate change impacts, such as increasing sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and ocean acidification. As climate change impacts increase, coral reef vulnerability at the ecoregional scale will have an increasingly important influence on conservation management decisions. This project provides the first detailed assessment of past and future climatic stress, thermal variability, and anthropogenic impacts in the Coral Triangle at the ecoregional level, thus incorporating both local (e.g., pollution, development, and overfishing) and global threats (increasing SSTs). The development of marine protected area (MPA) networks across the Coral Triangle is critical for the region to address these threats. Specific management recommendations are defined for MPA networks based on the levels of vulnerability to thermal and local stress. For example, coral reef regions with potentially low vulnerability to thermal stress may be priorities for establishment of MPA networks, whereas high vulnerability regions may require selection and design principles aimed at building resilience to climate change. The identification of climate and other human threats to coral reef systems and ecoregions can help conservation practitioners prioritize management responses to address these threats and identify gaps in MPA networks or other management mechanisms (e.g., integrated coastal management).     

Gap metering for active traffic control at freeway merging sections

Freeway merging sections are critical segments that can recurrently activate peak-hour traffic congestion. This article proposes a novel vehicular gap control method as a new Active Traffic Management (ATM) strategy to be added to the existing Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) toolboxes for freeway merge control. The proposed strategy, “Gap Metering,” can be considered a non-stopping mainline version of ramp metering. It utilizes signals advising mainline through vehicles to yield sufficient gaps for merging vehicles. Detailed system design and control methods are proposed and implemented in VISSIM (please spell out the abbreviation of VISSIM for this first instance), a microsimulation software package. Different driver behavior sets with different standstill headway values are created to allow switching between gap-metered vehicles and regular vehicles. We evaluate the proposed system through two VISSIM models built and calibrated, respectively, for both the I-894 corridor in Milwaukee, WI, and the Riverside Drive segment on I-35 northbound in Austin, TX. Both corridors experience severe morning peak-hour congestion. We use the I-894 corridor for testing the system design parameters and use the I-35 corridor to conduct a comparison with the ramp metering strategies. The I-894 results indicate an average of 10–20% network delay reduction among all scenarios. We then tested the scenario on the I-35 corridor and compared with the ALINEAR ramp metering. Gap metering strategies alone or combined with ramp metering can, respectively, reduce 17% and 27% more total delay than ramp metering only control at 20% compliance rate.     

Comparison of In-Vehicle Auditory Public Traffic Information With Roadside Dynamic Message Signs

Dynamic message signs (DMS) have been widely used by transportation agencies to disseminate traffic information (referred to in this article as “public traffic information”) for decades. Unfortunately, their effectiveness is limited, based on the following reasons: they are costly, can only present a limited amount of information, and typically only display information in one language. The wide availability of smart devices and the development of connected vehicles offer the possibility to create “virtual” DMS (VDMS), utilizing geofencing and audible messages to convey public traffic information. This research compares the ability of VDMS to convey public traffic information with existing DMS. A mixed repeated-measure experiment using a driving simulator was designed that examined the impacts of driver age, information transmission mode, amount of information, and driving complexity on message comprehension. Forty-two participants were recruited and each of them was tested under different combinations of the three within-subject factors. Participant performance was measured in terms of message comprehension, distraction, and self-reported overall difficulty level in receiving messages. Results revealed that VDMS generally performs better than DMS as information content increases and driving condition complexity increases, regardless of driver age. VDMS increased message comprehension by 16% under relatively complex driving conditions, reduced driver reaction time to unexpected stimuli (as measured with a reduced time-to-brake of 0.39 s), and made the same messages easier to process and retain for drivers than DMS. Based on these results, it is recommended that transportation agencies give careful consideration to VDMS as a future strategy for delivering public traffic information in a connected vehicle environment.     

An investigation into the isolation performance of mono-and bi-stable systems

Motivated by the need for improving the isolation performance, many research studies have been performed on isolators with nonlinear characteristics. Based on the shape of their phase portrait, such devices can be configured as either a mono-or bi-stable isolator. This paper focuses on investigating the relative performance of these two classes under the same excitations. Force transmissibility is used to measure the isolation performance, which is defined in terms of the RMS of the ratio of the transmitted force to the excitation force. When the system is subjected to harmonic excitation, it is found that the maximum reduction of the force transmissibility in the isolation range using Quasi-Zero stiffness is achieved. When the system is subjected to random excitation, it has the same effect of Quasi-Zero stiffness. Further, optimum damping can be changed with stiffness and has minimum value.     

New evidence on walking distances to transit stops: identifying redundancies and gaps using variable service areas

The percentage of the population being served by a transit system in a metropolitan region is a key system performance measure but depends heavily on the definition of service area. Observing existing service areas can help identify transit system gaps and redundancies. In the public transit industry, buffers at 400 m (0.25 miles) around bus stops and 800 m (0.5 miles) around rail stations are commonly used to identify the area from which most transit users will access the system by foot. This study uses detailed OD survey information to generate service areas that define walking catchment areas around transit services in Montreal, Canada. The 85th percentile walking distance to bus transit service is found to be around 524 m for home-based trip origins, 1,259 m for home-based commuter rail trip origins. Yet these values are found to vary based on our analysis using two statistical models. Walking distances vary based on route and trip qualities (such as type of transit service, transfers and wait time), as well as personal, household, and neighbourhood characteristics. Accordingly, service areas around transit stations should vary based on the service offered and attributes of the people and places served. The generated service areas derived from the generalized statistical model are then used to identify gaps and redundancies at the system and route level using Montreal region as an example. This study can be of benefit to transport engineers and planners trying to maximize transit service coverage in a region while avoiding oversupply of service.     

Some observed details of freeway traffic evolution

Certain details of traffic evolution were studied along a 2 km, homogenous freeway segment located upstream of a bottleneck. By comparing (transformed) cumulative curves constructed from the vehicle counts measured at neighboring loop detectors, it was found that waves propagated through queued traffic like a random walk with predictable statistical variation. There was no observed dependency of wave speed on flow. As such, these waves neither focused nor fanned outward and shocks arose only at the interfaces between free-flowing traffic and the back of queues. Although these traffic features may have long been suspected, actual observations of this kind have hitherto not been documented. Also of note, the shocks separating queued and unqueued traffic sometimes exhibited unexpectedly long transitions between these two states. Finally, some observations presented here corroborate earlier reports that, in unqueued traffic, vehicle velocity is insensitive to flows and that forward-moving changes in traffic states therefore travel with vehicles. Taken together, these findings suggest that certain rather simple models suffice for describing traffic on homogeneous freeway segments; brief discussion of this is offered in Section 5.     

Non-commitment bias in public opinion on transit usage

Estimation of ridership on a new transit system in an area where no comparable service existed before is a difficult task of transit planning. Traditional modal split models cannot be used in these cases, because no data or basis for developing a new model or adjusting a “borrowed” model are available. One of the techniques which can be used in this type of situation, is to perform a “concept test” based on public opinion. This approach, however, is plagued with the phenomenon of non-commitment bias of interviewees, and tends to overestimate the ridership. A new fixed route and fixed schedule transit service in Johnson City in Tennessee provided a rare opportunity to perform an investigation on the non-commitment bias through “before” and “after” surveys. The analysis of the non-commitment and actual responses of a sample of residents revealed substantial bias. Overall, the non-commitment ridership estimate was about twice (100% greater than) the actual ridership.:It was also observed that the bias was higher for persons owning automobiles, and for work and shopping trips.