Continuum theory for pedestrian traffic flow: Local route choice modelling and its implications

This contribution puts forward a novel multi-class continuum model that captures some of the key dynamic features of pedestrian flows. It considers route choice behaviour on both the strategic (pre-trip) and tactical (en-route) level. To achieve this, we put forward a class-specific equilibrium direction relation of the pedestrians, which is governed by two parts: one part describing the global route choice, which is pre-determined based on the expectations of the pedestrians, and one part describing the local route choice, which is a density-gradient dependent term that reflects local adaptations based on prevailing flow conditions.Including the local route choice term in the multi-class model causes first of all dispersion of the flow: pedestrians will move away from high density areas in order to reduce their overall walking costs. Second of all, for the crossing flow and bi-directional flow cases, local route choice causes well known self-organised patterns to emerge (i.e. diagonal stripes and bi-directional lanes). We study under which demand conditions self-organisation occurs and fails, as well as what the impact is of the choices of the different model parameters. In particular, the differences in the weights reflecting the impact of the own and the other classes appear to have a very strong impact on the self-organisation process.     

多车道高速公路出口开口段安全特性分析

为研究不同断面形式下的多车道高速公路出口影响区开口长度及流量与交通安全的关系，针对2种断面形式的高速公路出口，分别设计了3种不同的开口长度，结合3种不同流量条件设计了18个不同的驾驶模拟场景。实验招募30名被试者开展模拟驾驶实验，提取不同开口长度及流量条件下各断面形式高速公路出口的车辆行驶轨迹、换道间隙的选择、减速度、最小 TTC (Time to Collision)等驾驶行为特性参数，综合分析基于驾驶行为数据对不同开口长度的行车风险。结果表明：两种断面形式下，开口长度对于车辆在开口段上的换道点选择存在显著影响；两种断面形式下，1500 m的开口长度能够满足绝大多数驾驶人的换道需求；在换道间隙选择中，大都集中在5~6 s，分离式断面下的开口长度对于低于临界间隙的换道间隙出现的频次具有显著影响；流量及开口长度对于最大减速度及TTC最小值和分布位置均不存在显著性影响，但分离式断面下的最大减速度和最小TTC相较于整体式断面更小；此外，整体式断面中内侧3车道的行车风险低于分离式断面，分离式断面中外侧车道的行车风险低于整体式断面。     

Daily activity and travel sequences of students,faculty and staff at a large Canadian university

This paper examines the activity engagement, sequencing and timing of activities for student, faculty and staff commuter groups at the largest university in the Maritime Provinces of Canada. The daily activity patterns of all university community groups are modeled using the classification and regression tree classifier algorithm. The data used for this study are derived from the Environmentally Aware Travel Diary Survey (EnACT) conducted in spring 2016 at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. Results show that there are significant differences in activity and travel behavior between university population segments and the general population in the region, and between campus groups. For example, students participate in more recreation activities compared to faculty and staff. They also take more trips to and from campus, and are more flexible in their scheduling of trips. The insights gained from this study will provide helpful information for promoting sustainability across university campuses, and for development of campus-based travel demand management strategies.     

Development and calibration of a long-distance passenger traffic assignment model

This paper studies the assignment of long-distance passenger traffic on a highway corridor network. First, we propose a traditional model for the long-distance traffic assignment considering interactions with local commuter traffic. It addresses the effect of local networks on highway corridors. An iterative algorithm is developed to solve for the exact solution. Then, to address the potential computational issues that arise therein, a decomposition method is proposed by introducing a new concept of corridor elasticity. An assignment procedure for long-distance passenger traffic is developed accordingly. Numerical tests show that the proposed decomposition method makes significant improvements in computational performance at a small loss of optimality. This decomposition method well approximates the exact assignment from the traditional formulation, especially when the highway corridors are near-saturation. The proposed decomposition method appears practical for application.     

Vehicle kilometers traveled reduction impacts of Transit-Oriented Development: Evidence from Shanghai City

The role of residential self-selection has become a major subject in the debate over the relationships between the built environment and travel behavior. Numerous previous empirical studies on this subject have provided valuable insights into the associations between the built environment and travel behavior. However, the vast majority of the studies were conducted in North American and European cities; yet this research is still in its infancy in most developing countries, including China, where residential and transport choices are likely to be more constrained and travel-related attitudes quite different from those in the developed world. Using the data collected from 2038 residents currently living in TOD neighborhoods and non-TOD neighborhoods in Shanghai City, this paper aims to partly fill the gaps by investigating the causal relationship between the built environment and travel behavior in the Chinese context. More specifically, this paper employs Heckman’s sample selection model to examine the reduction impacts of TOD on personal vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT), controlling for self-selection. The results show that whilst the effects of residential self-selection are apparent; the built environment exhibits the most significant impacts on travel behavior, playing the dominant role. These findings produce a sound basis for local policymakers to better understand the nature and magnitude toward the impacts of the built environment on travel behavior. Providing the government department with reassurance that effective interventions and policies on land use aimed toward altering the built environment would actually lead to meaningful changes in travel behavior.     

Potentials of using social media to infer the longitudinal travel behavior: A sequential model-based clustering method

This study explores the possibility of employing social media data to infer the longitudinal travel behavior. The geo-tagged social media data show some unique features including location-aggregated features, distance-separated features, and Gaussian distributed features. Compared to conventional household travel survey, social media data is less expensive, easier to obtain and the most importantly can monitor the individual’s longitudinal travel behavior features over a much longer observation period. This paper proposes a sequential model-based clustering method to group the high-resolution Twitter locations and extract the Twitter displacements. Further, this study details the unique features of displacements extracted from Twitter including the demographics of Twitter user, as well as the advantages and limitations. The results are even compared with those from traditional household travel survey, showing promises in using displacement distribution, length, duration and start time to infer individual’s travel behavior. On this basis, one can also see the potential of employing social media to infer longitudinal travel behavior, as well as a large quantity of short-distance Twitter displacements. The results will supplement the traditional travel survey and support travel behavior modeling in a metropolitan area.     

城市轨道交通常态与非常态短期客流预测方法研究

城市轨道交通客流特征除表现为常态的周期性、季节性及高峰性外,还会因节假日、体育赛事、城市大型活动、突发事件、特殊天气等因素表现出差异性和特殊性,本文对较为成熟的常态及研究较少的非常态客流预测方法进行了实验.首先利用通用的ARIMA时间序列预测算法分析样本历史数据实现常态日客流预测;其次针对客流特殊因素提出时间序列及回归分析的组合模型,同时引进虚拟变量和结合相似日样本数据进一步改进,实现非常态预测问题的高精度求解.仿真计算结果表明,本文方法对解决短期客流预测具有良好的适用度,尤其同样本同预测周期条件下的非常态组合改进模型和常用单一时间序列模型的对比,证明改进模型可以很好地应用在客流特征既包括随时间固有不变的性质又表现出特殊因素的研究中,具有较强的自适应性和更好的预测精度.     

基于混合选择模型的汽车共享选择行为研究

为了深入分析出行者的汽车共享选择行为,首先以技术接受模型和计划行为理论为框架,将对汽车共享选择行为具有影响的心理因素整合到传统的离散选择模型之中,形成混合选择模型.然后,基于南京市的实证调查数据,运用混合选择模型对出行者的汽车共享选择行为进行研究.结果表明,出行者对于汽车共享的感知有用性、感知易用性、行为态度、知觉行为控制等心理态度潜变量对其选择行为产生显著的正向影响,混合选择模型比传统不带潜变量MNL模型对实证数据具有更高的拟合度.     

Identifying tourists and analyzing spatial patterns of their destinations from location-based social media data

Reliable travel behavior data is a prerequisite for transportation planning process. In large tourism dependent cities, tourists are the most dynamic population group whose size and travel choices remain unknown to planners. Traditional travel surveys generally observe resident travel behavior and rarely target tourists. Ubiquitous uses of social media platforms in smartphones have created a tremendous opportunity to gather digital traces of tourists at a large scale. In this paper, we present a framework on how to use location-based data from social media to gather and analyze travel behavior of tourists. We have collected data of about 67,000 users from Twitter using its search interface for Florida. We first propose several filtering steps to create a reliable sample from the collected Twitter data. An ensemble classification technique is proposed to classify tourists and residents from user coordinates. The accuracy of the proposed classifier has been compared against the state-of-the-art classification methods. Finally, different clustering methods have been used to find the spatial patterns of destination choices of tourists. Promising results have been found from the output clusters as they reveal most popular tourist spots as well as some of the emerging tourist attractions in Florida. Performance of the proposed clustering techniques has been assessed using internal clustering validation indices. We have analyzed temporal patterns of tourist and resident activities to validate the classification of the users in two separate groups of tourists and residents. Proposed filtering, identification, and clustering techniques will be significantly useful for building individual-level tourist travel demand models from social media data.     

Impact of regional population density on walking behavior

Land use can influence walking (measured by the number of steps) and so the health of people. This paper presents the result of empirical research on the impact of regional population densities (inhabitants per inhabitable area) on the number of steps (all steps, both outdoors and indoors). With data collected from almost 11,000 respondents in 148 Japanese regions, we estimate polynomial regression models, the total number of steps being the dependent variable and densities being the main independent variable. Regional population density significantly affects the number of steps after controlling for individual and household attributes. The estimated population density that maximizes the number of steps is around 11,000?persons/km². Increasing densities, up to levels of around 11,000?inhabitants/km², could increase walking and consequently the health of inhabitants. The population density elasticity of the number of steps is 0.046–0.049 in a simple log linear regression model without a peak.