Effects of built environment and weather on bike sharing demand: a station level analysis of commercial bike sharing in Toronto

Bike Share Toronto is Canada’s second largest public bike share system. It provides a unique case study as it is one of the few bike share programs located in a relatively cold North American setting, yet operates throughout the entire year. Using year-round historical trip data, this study analyzes the factors affecting Toronto’s bike share ridership. A comprehensive spatial analysis provides meaningful insights on the influences of socio-demographic attributes, land use and built environment, as well as different weather measures on bike share ridership. Empirical models also reveal significant effects of road network configuration (intersection density and spatial dispersion of stations) on bike sharing demands. The effect of bike infrastructure (bike lane, paths etc.) is also found to be crucial in increasing bike sharing demand. Temporal changes in bike share trip making behavior were also investigated using a multilevel framework. The study reveals a significant correlation between temperature, land use and bike share trip activity. The findings of the paper can be translated to guidelines with the aim of increasing bike share activity in urban centers.     

Planning and Evaluation of Passenger Ferry Service in Hong Kong

A predominant observation in Hong Kong is the continuous loss in ferry patronage. There are two main reasons for this: poor level-of-service and better competitors. New roads, bridges, and tunnels are serving the buses, and to some extent the railways; whereas the investment in ferry terminals is relatively at a lower level. On the one hand, there is no need to promote the ferries in a free market environment; but on the other hand, the ferries have the best safety record, can only relieve some traffic congestion and need water access that is one of the characteristics of Hong Kong. The goal of this paper is to design a planning approach combined with an evaluation procedure on how to make the best use of the existing water and pier resources in Hong Kong through the provision of commercially viable ferry services. The approach used covers the impact of future developments planning up to 2006 comprising all public transport modes in Hong Kong (heavy rail, metro, bus, and ferry). The planning tool is based on a newly developed multi-objective evaluation method in order to assess the ferry routes with scientific, practical, and simplified analyses for future use. This assessment is applied to the existing ferry routes and candidate routes and can also be carried out on an individual route basis or on a given set of routes. The objective functions set forth analytically in the evaluation method take into account the interests of the three participants: the passengers, the operators and the government. The proposed ferry network design formulation and the suggested new ferry routes will have a positive impact on changing the ferry system’s image in Hong Kong.     

Dynamic response of offshore jacket structures under random loads

In this paper, the dynamic response of a scale model of a jacket offshore structure is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The experiments were conducted both in air and in water. The in-water experiments were done in the towing tank of Memorial University to simulate the realistic operating conditions. The model was subjected to random wave loads. Froude's law of modeling was used to obtain the dimensions of the scale model based on the dimensions of an existing structure. The effects of varying the structure's weight, and the characteristics of the wave loading were investigated. The structure's weight was changed by adding weights to the structure's deck. A finite element model was designed to determine the dynamic response of the model. Excellent agreement between the experimental and theoretical results was obtained.The reaction force at the foundation was estimated from strain measurements and compared with the finite element calculations. Fair agreement was obtained.This work is the first stage of a project whose objective is to develop a method for structural damage detection using the free vibration response of the structure. The free vibration response will be obtained from the stationary random response of the structure using the random decrement method. Having an accurate model to describe the dynamic response of the structure is the first step in this study.     

Damage detection in offshore structures using neural networks

This paper discusses the damage detection in offshore jacket platforms subjected to random loads using a combined method of random decrement signature and neural networks. The random decrement technique is used to extract the free decay of the structure from its online response while the structure is in service. The free decay and its time derivative are used as input for a neural network. The output of the neural network is used as an index for damage detection. It has been shown that function N is effective in damage detection in the members of an offshore structure. Experimental studies conducted on a reduced model for a real jacket structure with geometrical scale of 1:30 are used. The applied loads were random loads. Two different load spectra were used: White noise, and Pierson-Moskowitz.     

Mass transit systems of Beijing: governance evolution and analysis

Developing a more efficient mass transit system, in highly populated cities, improves the mobility, decreases the dependency of private cars, alleviates traffic congestion, and provides a more environmentally friendly means of travel. Recently, the city of Beijing decided to have a target of becoming as a ‘public-transport city’ with a fascinating mass transit system within a larger plan, of building humanistic, scientific and technological, and green public-transport systems. This work discusses the governance evolution of the mass transit system of Beijing between 1949–2008, comprised of two groups of transit systems, the road surface public-transport system (bus, tram, trolley, etc.), and the subway public-transport system. In addition, a time-series analysis is introduced in an attempt to examine the effect of governance evolution on the two transit systems, and of the impacts of the governance structural changes on the mass transit system. The time-series model is introduced using the annual statistics data of the period 1949–2008. The outcome of the analysis is viewed with precaution because of the incompleteness of the many endogenous and exogenous factors to affect the public-transport demand. Generally speaking it is concluded that the governance evolution provides beneficial effect of the Beijing mass transit activity; however, for satisfying the significant increase of the Beijing city’s travel demand and maintaining sustainable development, the governance-involvement pattern needs to be reformed.     

Trace metals in water, sediments and marine organisms from the northern part of the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea

Concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cu and Zn were determined in water, sediments, gastropod (Bulla umpulla) and green algae (Ulva lactuca) collected from five stations in the western side of the northern part of the Gulf of Suez during the period February 1993–January 1994. Sediments recorded the highest concentrations of Cd (2.26–4.40 μg/g) and Pb (13.90–28.34 μg/g), While the highest concentrations of the essential metals Cu and Zn were found in B. umpulla (28.19–72.04 and 60.24–108.74 μg/g, respectively). Water and sediments showed similar spatial distribution patterns for the highest mean values of the different metals. Highest values of the studied metals were found at stations influenced by various pollution sources such as harbours, and sewage and industrial drains. In contrast, the lowest concentrations were observed faraway from any pollution source. Calculations of concentration factors (C.F.) for gastropod and algae showed highest C.F. of Cd (4312.5–8705.9) and Pb (2103.3–8317.9) in algae, and highest C.F. of Cu (5288.9–42376.5) and Zn (3686.7–9631.5) in gastropod.     

Performance of Two Types of Mooring Systems in the Heave Motion of a Two-body Floating Wave Energy Converter

Journal of Marine Science and Application - This work investigated the influence of two types of mooring systems on the hydrodynamic performance of a two-body floating wave energy converter (WEC)....     

The planning and analysis of a new group rapid transit system: the SkyCabs monobeam system in Auckland

This paper examines a case study of the SkyCabs system as a way to alleviate some of the traffic problems of Auckland, New Zealand. SkyCabs is an elevated two-way monobeam carrying light eight-seater cabs on tracks on each side of the beam, available on demand, providing fast, pollution-free, unimpeded travel above the footpath with panoramic views of the city. The aim of this study is to investigate the attractiveness of implementing the SkyCabs system to and from Auckland central business district (CBD) and Auckland international airport by examining four variables: different routes, different number of stops/stations, different passenger demand levels, and different number of cabs in the system. The analysis utilizes geographical information system and simulation tools for the various scenarios considered. The results show that it is possible to assess the cost–benefit of alternative routes in terms of those four variables and rate of return on investment.     

Calibrating a transit assignment model using smart card data in a large-scale multi-modal transit network

This paper describes a practical automated procedure to calibrate and validate a transit assignment model. An optimization method based on particle swarm algorithm is adopted to minimize a defined error term. This error term which is based on the percentage of root mean square error and the mean absolute percent error encompasses deviation of model outputs from observations considering both segment level as well as the mode level and can be applied to a large scale network. This study is based on the frequency-based assignment model using the concept of optimal strategy while any transit assignment model can be used in the proposed methodological framework. Lastly, the model is validated using another weekday data. The proposed methodology uses automatic fare collection (AFC) data to estimate the origin–destination matrix. This study combines data from three sources: the general transit feed specification, AFC, and a strategic transport model from a large-scale multimodal public transport network. The South-East Queensland (SEQ) network in Australia is used as a case study. The AFC system in SEQ has voluminous and high quality data on passenger boardings and alightings across bus, rail and ferry modes. The results indicate that the proposed procedure can successfully develop a multi-modal transit assignment model at a large scale. Higher dispersions are seen for the bus mode, in contrast to rail and ferry modes. Furthermore, a comparison is made between the strategies used by passengers and the generated strategies by the model between each origin and destination to get more insights about the detailed behaviour of the model. Overall, the analysis indicates that the AFC data is a valuable and rich source in calibrating and validating a transit assignment model.

     

Measuring the influence of bus service quality on the perception of users

Encouraging the use of public transport is a key policy goal in many countries. Therefore, public transport should offer the level of quality that accommodates the demands of current users, and importantly, the desires of potential users. This study investigates the influence of the perceived quality of bus service on the perception of both current and potential users. The study draws upon data from 512 questionnaires distributed across Belfast City in the UK. The study utilises a binary logistic regression model to quantify the relationships between the perceived quality of 29 bus indicators (independent) and the perceptions of users towards the overall bus service (dependent). Eleven significant indicators are reported to have significant influence on the perception of users. These indicators are utilised to propose scenarios for optimising the quality of bus service with the perceptions of current and potential users.