Urban travel time reliability at different traffic conditions

The decision making of travelers for route choice and departure time choice depends on the expected travel time and its reliability. A common understanding of reliability is that it is related to several statistical properties of the travel time distribution, especially to the standard deviation of the travel time and also to the skewness. For an important corridor in Changsha (P.R. China) the travel time reliability has been evaluated and a linear model is proposed for the relationship between travel time, standard deviation, skewness, and some other traffic characteristics. Statistical analysis is done for both simulation data from a delay distribution model and for real life data from automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. ANPR data give unbiased travel time data, which is more representative than probe vehicles. The relationship between the mean travel time and its standard deviation is verified with an analytical model for travel time distributions as well as with the ANPR travel times. Average travel time and the standard deviation are linearly correlated for single links as well as corridors. Other influence factors are related to skewness and travel time standard deviations, such as vehicle density and degree of saturation. Skewness appears to be less well to explain from traffic characteristics than the standard deviation is.     

Development of analytical procedure for selection of control measures to reduce congestions at various freeway bottlenecks

Variable speed limit (VSL) and ramp metering (RM) affect freeway traffic operations in different ways and, accordingly, result in different effects on system travel time. The primary objective of this study is to propose an analytical procedure to help determine which control measure should be selected given different freeway bottlenecks and traffic conditions. The bottlenecks considered included an isolated merge bottleneck, a merge bottleneck with a closely spaced upstream off-ramp, and a diverge bottleneck with a closely spaced upstream on-ramp. Two RM and a VSL control strategies were considered, including the ALINEA, ALINEA/Q and feedback based VSL. The maximum achievable improvements in system efficiency by various control measures were calculated and the results were tested using modified cell transmission models. A coordinated control strategy that combined ALINEA/Q and VSL control was also proposed. The effects of VSL and RM control on system travel time at different freeway bottleneck areas were compared to identify the applicable conditions of different control measures. The analytical procedure was proposed for the selection of control measures at different bottlenecks and the ex-ante estimation of control effects were also discussed.     

基于价值函数的城市绿色交通规划评价

为了评价城市绿色交通,建立了城市绿色交通评价体系,包括环保性指标等3个评价项目和道路绿化率等8个评价指标,文章通过案例分析发现,价值函数法适用于城市绿色交通评价。采用专家打分法确定指标权重系数,并对指标进行无量纲化、同趋向化等处理,采用价值函数法计算评价体系得分。     

The identification and empirical characterization of vehicular (Lagrangian) fundamental diagrams in multilane traffic flow

Traditional macroscopic traffic flow modeling framework adopts the spatial–temporal coordinate system to analyze traffic flow dynamics. With such modeling and analysis paradigm, complications arise for traffic flow data collected from mobile sensors such as probe vehicles equipped with mobile phones, Bluetooth, and Global Positioning System devices. The vehicle‐based measurement technologies call for new modeling thoughts that address the unique features of moving measurements and explore their full potential. In this paper, we look into the concept of vehicular fundamental diagram (VFD) and discuss its engineering implications. VFD corresponds to a conventional fundamental diagram (FD) in the kinematic wave (KW) theory that adopts space–time coordinates. Similar to the regular FD in the KW theory, VFD encapsulates all traffic flow dynamics. In this paper, to demonstrate the full potential of VFD in interpreting multilane traffic flow dynamics, we generalize the classical Edie's formula and propose a direct approach of reconstructing VFD from traffic measurements in the vehicular coordinates. A smoothing algorithm is proposed to effectively reduce the nonphysical fluctuation of traffic states calculated from multilane vehicle trajectories. As an example, we apply the proposed methodology to explore the next‐generation simulation datasets and identify the existence and forms of shock waves in different coordinate systems. Our findings provide empirical justifications and further insight for the Lagrangian traffic flow theory and models when applied in practice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of pedestrian crosswalk level of service (LOS) in perspective of type of land-use

In India pedestrians usually cross the road at mid-block crosswalks due to ease of access to their destination or the development of adjacent land use types such as shopping, business areas, school and residential areas. The behaviour of pedestrian will change with respect to different land use type and this change in behaviour of pedestrian further reflects change in perceived level of service (LOS). So, it is important to evaluate the quality of service of such crossing facilities with respect to different land-use type under mixed traffic conditions. In this framework, pedestrian perceived LOS were collected with respect to different land-use type such as shopping, residential and business areas. The ordered probit (OP) model was developed by using NLOGIT software package, with number of vehicles encountered, road crossing difficulty as well as safety considered as primary factors along with pedestrian individual factors (gender and age), land-use type and roadway geometry. From the model results, it has been concluded that perceived safety, crossing difficulty, land-use condition, number of vehicles encountered, median width and number of lanes have significant effect on pedestrian perceived LOS at unprotected (un-signalized) mid-block crosswalks in mixed traffic scenario. The inferences of these results highlights the importance of land use planning in designing a new set of pedestrian access facilities for unprotected mid-block crosswalks under mixed traffic conditions. Also the study results would be useful for evaluating pedestrian accessibility taking into account different land-use type and planning required degree of segregation with vehicular movement at unprotected mid-block crosswalk locations.     

Compromising system and user interests in shelter location and evacuation planning

Traffic management during an evacuation and the decision of where to locate the shelters are of critical importance to the performance of an evacuation plan. From the evacuation management authority’s point of view, the desirable goal is to minimize the total evacuation time by computing a system optimum (SO). However, evacuees may not be willing to take long routes enforced on them by a SO solution; but they may consent to taking routes with lengths not longer than the shortest path to the nearest shelter site by more than a tolerable factor. We develop a model that optimally locates shelters and assigns evacuees to the nearest shelter sites by assigning them to shortest paths, shortest and nearest with a given degree of tolerance, so that the total evacuation time is minimized. As the travel time on a road segment is often modeled as a nonlinear function of the flow on the segment, the resulting model is a nonlinear mixed integer programming model. We develop a solution method that can handle practical size problems using second order cone programming techniques. Using our model, we investigate the importance of the number and locations of shelter sites and the trade-off between efficiency and fairness.     

Categorizing bicycling environments using GPS-based public bicycle speed data

A promising alternative transportation mode to address growing transportation and environmental issues is bicycle transportation, which is human-powered and emission-free. To increase the use of bicycles, it is fundamental to provide bicycle-friendly environments. The scientific assessment of a bicyclist’s perception of roadway environment, safety and comfort is of great interest. This study developed a methodology for categorizing bicycling environments defined by the bicyclist’s perceived level of safety and comfort. Second-by-second bicycle speed data were collected using global positioning systems (GPS) on public bicycles. A set of features representing the level of bicycling environments was extracted from the GPS-based bicycle speed and acceleration data. These data were used as inputs for the proposed categorization algorithm. A support vector machine (SVM), which is a well-known heuristic classifier, was adopted in this study. A promising rate of 81.6% for correct classification demonstrated the technical feasibility of the proposed algorithm. In addition, a framework for bicycle traffic monitoring based on data and outcomes derived from this study was discussed, which is a novel feature for traffic surveillance and monitoring.     

Location selection of city logistics centers under sustainability

City Logistics Centers (CLC) are an important part of the modern urban logistics system, and the selection of the location of a CLC has become a key problem in logistics and supply chain management. Integrating the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainable development, this paper presents a new evaluation system for the location selection of a CLC from a sustainability perspective. A fuzzy multi-attribute group decision making (FMAGDM) technique based on a linguistic 2-tuple is used to evaluate potential alternative CLC locations. In this method, the linguistic evaluation values of all the evaluation criteria are transformed into linguistic 2-tuples. A new 2-tuple hybrid ordered weighted averaging (THOWA) operator is presented to aggregate the overall evaluation values of all experts into a collective evaluation value for each alternative, which is then used to rank and select alternative CLC locations. An application example is provided to validate the method developed and to highlight the implementation, practicality, and effectiveness by comparing with the fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method.     

航空物流与区域经济高质量发展协同性——基于重庆的实证研究

自2017年十九大提出经济高质量发展以来,重庆根据中央部署,经济高质量发展取得了初步成功。在这一过程中,发现航空物流产业与区域经济高质量发展间存在正相关关系。为了研究重庆航空物流与区域经济高质量发展的协同性,采用数据包络分析(DEA)模型,对重庆市2008年至2018年GDP、航空货邮吞吐量等指标进行代入计算。结果表明,重庆航空物流与区域经济高质量发展存在较高的协同性,且呈现上升趋势,但由于航空物流和区域经济发展内部资源分配不合理,导致有效协同发展程度波动较大。结合重庆市实际情况,以资源配置优化为侧重点,提出提高二者协同性的建议。     

货车轨迹数据在公路货运系统中应用研究综述

随着轨迹数据可获取性及精度的持续提高，货车轨迹数据被广泛应用于公路货运系统的 规划与管理中，同时，人工智能和大数据分析技术的快速发展也为公路货运系统研究带来新的机 遇与挑战。本文全面梳理并总结了公路货运轨迹数据应用领域的相关研究，从基于轨迹数据的 货运出行信息辨识、货运系统关键特征预测、货运轨迹数据进一步应用3个方面回顾现有文献的 研究目标、主要内容和研究方法。通过文献分析发现：货运出行信息辨识研究聚焦于货运停留 点、车辆和货物、活动出行模式等热点主题，但现有辨识方法多移植于旅客出行研究，需要更多地 考虑货运出行的独特特征。在货运系统关键特征预测方面，研究者主要针对货运行程时间、空间 位置、出行需求等主题展开研究，并证明了基于轨迹数据预测货运特征的可行性，但预测时空范 围较为局限，需要根据具体的货运任务、货车司机特征和货运政策进行深入研究。此外，轨迹数 据也被应用于货运出行路径选择行为、货运停车休息行为、行驶安全、货运排放和能耗分析、货运 政策评估等研究。最后，在总结现有研究不足的基础上，本文认为未来研究应重点将货运轨迹数 据与其他多源数据相结合，从3个关键技术进行突破：一是针对货运实践个体，重点探索高效货车 驾驶员的出行特征和出行模式，并在货运系统中进行推广应用；二是针对交通运输新技术和新形 势，重点开发和优化自动驾驶技术和重大应急事件影响下的货运组织模式与策略；三是针对货运 供需关系及匹配机制，重点研究货运全流程供需状态辨识与预测，并结合深度学习等方法训练和 开发智能供需匹配模型，从而优化货运系统调度，助力社会散乱运力资源整合，提高货运系统的 综合效率。