Valuation of users’ benefits in transport systems

Transport projects involve costs and benefits. Benefits to users appear in the form of more and/or better trips. Once the neoclassical idea of demand is accepted, the variation of utility levels underlie the measurement of benefits. In the evaluation process, benefits have to be compared with costs, and this can be done converting utility into monetary units. This paper deals with the treatment of this problem, starting with the general relation among utility, demand and the various forms of consumers’ surplus, to move further into the particular forms that these relations take in the transport field. The rule‐of‐a‐half is followed from the intuitive initial justification to a strict (and general) analytical derivation. More rigorous forms of users’ surplus variation are then presented for fairly general cases, including both aggregate and disaggregate transport demand models, emphasizing the manner in which welfare measures are derived in each case. Discussion is centred around the comparative advantages and limitations of available approaches, searching for improvements in demand formulation and benefits measurement.     

Microscopic modeling of large‐scale pedestrian–vehicle conflicts in the city of Madinah,Saudi Arabia

This paper presents a micro‐simulation modeling framework for evaluating pedestrian–vehicle conflicts in crowded crossing areas. The framework adopts a simulation approach that models vehicles and pedestrians at the microscopic level while satisfying two sets of constraints: (1) flow constraints and (2) non‐collision constraints. Pedestrians move across two‐directional cells as opposed to one‐dimensional lanes as in the case of vehicles; therefore, extra caution is considered when modeling the shared space between vehicles and pedestrians. The framework is used to assess large‐scale pedestrian–vehicle conflicts in a highly congested ring road in the City of Madinah that carries 20 000 vehicles/hour and crossed by 140 000 pedestrians/hour after a major congregational prayer. The quantitative and visual results of the simulation exhibits serious conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles, resulting in considerable delays for pedestrians crossing the road (9 minutes average delay) and slow traffic conditions (average speed <10 km/hour). The model is then used to evaluate the following three mitigating strategies: (1) pedestrian‐only phase; (2) grade separation; and (3) pedestrian mall. A matrix of operational measures of effectiveness for network‐wide performance (e.g., average travel time, average speed) and for pedestrian‐specific performance (e.g., mean speed, mean density, mean delay, mean moving time) is used to assess the effectiveness of the proposed strategies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Critical Analysis of DEA Applications to Seaport Economic Efficiency Measurement

Abstract

The significant increase in the adoption of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for seaport efficiency measurement renders a literature synthesis and critical analysis of the application of the technique relevant and worthwhile. This paper provides a thorough review and critical analysis of the major studies undertaken to date, and highlights some problems and limitations in the application of the technique in the seaport context particularly in the specification of parameters, the sampling domain and the type of DEA to be applied. The paper informs the decision process as to the merits and limitations of DEA approaches for seaport efficiency measurement and makes a contribution towards methodological improvement by considering variations not yet applied to the port sector.     

Auction-Based Congestion Pricing

Abstract

Planners, engineers and economists have introduced various demand management methods in an attempt to reduce the fast growing traffic congestion. The basic idea behind various demand management strategies is to force drivers to travel and use transportation facilities more during off-peak hours and less during peak hours, as well as to increase the usage of underutilized routes. In this paper, a new demand management concept – Auction-based Congestion Pricing – is proposed and modeled.     

Model course to revalidate deck officers’ competences using simulators

In accordance with Part A, Chapter I, Section I/11 Revalidation of Certificates of the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) 2010 Convention, continued evaluation of professional competence shall be established, among others, by successfully completing an approved training course or courses. Every master, officer and radio operator holding a certificate issued or recognised under any chapter of the convention other than chapter VI, who is serving at sea or intends to return to sea after a period ashore, shall be required, at intervals not exceeding 5 years, to demonstrate continued professional competence, in order to continue to qualify for seagoing service. The main objective of this research is to design a model course using simulation technology to train and demonstrate seafarers’ competence in accordance with the provisions of STCW Code for existing seafarers who need to revalidate their professional maritime certificates also in accordance with the standards governing the use of simulators, Reg I/12 of 2010 STCW Code. The purpose of this revalidation simulation-based model course is to assist maritime training institutes and their teaching staff in organising and introducing specific training courses for revalidation of certificates of competence (CoCs) as well as enhancing, updating or supplementing existing training material where the quality and effectiveness of the training courses may thereby be improved. Only those STCW competences relating to ship bridge simulators will be considered for the model course scenario development and testing.     

Estimating vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in urban areas using regression kriging

The recent increase in demand for performance‐driven and outcome‐based transportation planning makes accurate and reliable performance measures essential. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT), the total miles traveled by all vehicles on roadways, has been utilized widely as a proxy for traffic impact assessment, vehicle emissions, gasoline consumption, and crashes. Accordingly, a number of studies estimate VMT using diverse data sources. This study estimates VMT in the urban area of Bucheon, South Korea, by predicting the annual average daily traffic for unmeasured locations using spatial interpolation techniques (i.e., regression kriging and linear regression). The predictive performance of this method is compared with that of the existing Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) method. The results show that regression kriging could provide more accurate VMT estimates than the HPMS method and linear regression, especially with a small sample size. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Airline flight scheduling for oligopolistic competition with direct flights and a point to point network

In this research, we consider a flight scheduling problem for oligopolistic competition with direct flights and a point to point network. In this type of market situation, passengers are sensitive to the departure time of a flight rather than the transfer time. The airline needs to carefully consider the departure times of their competitors when determining their own. Therefore, unlike past approaches which have only considered one departure time for a competitor's flight, a flight scheduling framework is developed which takes into consideration possible competitor departure times. The framework includes two dependent stages which are repeatedly solved during the solution process. In addition, an upper bound model is also designed to evaluate the solution quality. Numerical tests are performed using data for Taiwan's outlying island route which is characterized by the above market situation. Satisfactory results are obtained, showing the good performance of the framework. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A model‐based demand‐balancing control for dynamically divided multiple urban subnetworks

Traffic control is an effective and efficient method for the problem of traffic congestion. It is necessary to design a high‐level controller to regulate the network traffic demands, because traffic congestion is not only caused by the improper management of the traffic network but also to a great extent caused by excessive network traffic demands. Therefore, we design a demand‐balance model predictive controller based on the macroscopic fundamental diagram‐based multi‐subnetwork model, which can optimize the network traffic mobility and the network traffic throughput by regulating the input traffic flows of the subnetworks. Because the transferring traffic flows among subnetworks are indirectly controlled and coordinated by the demand‐balance model predictive controller, the subnetwork division can variate dynamically according to real traffic states, and a global optimality can be achieved for the entire traffic network. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller in improving the network traffic throughput. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating critical lines and stations considering the impact of the consequence using transit assignment model ‐case study of London's underground network

As the problem of full transit vehicles is encountered daily by passengers in most of the big cities, previous research evaluated the consequence of overcrowding in terms of on‐board crowding and passengers not being able to board with full vehicles. The impact of overcrowding in the real world is, however, not necessarily proportional to these numbers. This paper attempts to specify the critical lines and stations of a network by considering the number of passengers failing to board and attempting to evaluate its impact on service quality and safety risks. The hypothesis is that larger stations with wider platforms can often cope better with overcrowding than smaller stations. Therefore a station size dependent satisfaction function is proposed, which takes values from 0 to 1. The method is applied to London's underground network with a number of scenarios which show critical stations in the network if delays occur.     

Modeling the evolutions of day‐to‐day route choice and year‐to‐year ATIS adoption with stochastic user equilibrium

Suppose that in an urban transportation network there is a specific advanced traveler information system (ATIS) which acts for reducing the drivers' travel time uncertainty through provision of pre‐trip route information. Because of the imperfect information provided, some travelers are not in compliance with the ATIS advice although equipped with the device. We thus divide all travelers into three groups, one group unequipped with ATIS, another group equipped and in compliance with ATIS advice and the third group equipped but without compliance with the advice. Each traveler makes route choice in a logit‐based manner and a stochastic user equilibrium with multiple user classes is reached for every day. In this paper, we propose a model to investigate the evolutions of daily path travel time, daily ATIS compliance rate and yearly ATIS adoption, in which the equilibrium for every day's route choice is kept. The stability of the evolution model is initially analyzed. Numerical results obtained from a test network are presented for demonstrating the model's ability in depicting the day‐to‐day and year‐to‐year evolutions.