Assessment of product debundling trends in the US airline industry: Customer service and public policy implications

This paper reviews product debundling trends that have occurred in the US airline industry. Multiple sources of ancillary fees related to ticketing refunds and exchanges, checked baggage, on-board pets, preferred and/or advanced seating assignments, frequent flyer ticket redemptions, and day of departure standby policies are reviewed. Despite the fact that both low cost and network carriers stress the importance of future ancillary fees in their investor reports, our assessment suggests that these fees will be more broadly adopted by low cost carriers. We anticipate that many network carriers will eliminate ancillary fees, particularly as they begin to recognize how these fees can impact other system performance objectives such as minimizing the number of misconnecting passengers. We estimate that the debundling phenomenon has diluted revenues to the US Airport and Airways Trust Fund by at least 5%.     

Automated shunting of rail container wagons in ports and terminal areas

The development of intermodal container transport is hampered in part by the cost associated with the shunting of trains in marshalling yards, inland and port railway terminals. Many new technologies have been developed in the past decade, but have still not been applied because of high capital investment costs, lack of sufficient market demand and uncertain rates of return. The key for increasing the competitiveness of intermodal container transport by rail is the operation of heavy haul container trains between port and inland railway terminals more frequently with fast, flexible and automatic transhipment, shunting and coupling of container wagons. The operation of self-driven railcars equipped with automatic centre coupling on terminal tracks, which can also be train-hauled on conventional hinterland railway lines, would enable a reduction of shunting and transhipment time and costs in intermodal container terminals by more than 30%.     

The influence of attitude towards individuals’ choice for a remotely piloted commercial flight: A latent class logit approach

The Remotely Piloted Commercial Passenger Aircraft Attitude Scale (RPCPAAS) was created to measure positive and negative attitudes towards a new and plausible form of air travel. This information was then used, in combination with a latent class logit model built on data generated from a stated choice experiment to gain insight into the choice behaviour between conventionally piloted aircraft (CPA) with a pilot on-board and remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) with a pilot on the ground. The results revealed that individuals, on-average, if presented a choice between a CPA and a RPA of equivalent attributes, would elect for the CPA option. However, there is variability in the passengers’ sensitivity to various flight attributes, and these sensitivities were influenced by individuals’ attitude towards the new technology (i.e., RPA). From an operational perspective, and assuming that one day passengers of commercial airlines are offered the choice between CPA and RPA, the strategies employed by airlines to encourage the use of the new technology need to be different, based on individuals’ attitude towards RPA.     

What drives people to accept automated vehicles? Findings from a field experiment

This field study aims at understanding the influence of direct experience of an automated vehicle (AV, Level 3) and explaining and predicting public acceptance of AVs through a psychological model. The model includes behavioral intention (BI) to use self-driving vehicles (SDVs, Level 5), willingness to re-ride (WTR) in our AV (Level 3), and their four potential determinants, namely perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU), trust related to SDVs, and perceived safety (PS) while riding in our AV. The last two determinants are largely ignored, but we consider them critical in the context of AVs. Three-hundred students were invited as participants (passengers) to experience the AV. The trust, PU, PEU, and BI of the participants were recorded prior to their experiencing the AV; after this experience, all the constructs of the psychological model were recorded. The participants’ experience with the AV was found to increase their trust, PU and PEU (but not BI), the consistency between PU/PEU and BI, and the explanatory power of BI. The model explained 55% of the variance in BI and 40% in WTR. PU, trust, and PS were found to be steady and direct predictors of both the acceptance measures; PEU predicted BI only after the participants’ AV experience. Mediation analysis showed that trust also can indirectly affect AV acceptance through other determinants. Out-of-sample prediction confirmed the model’s predictive capability for AV acceptance. The theoretical contributions and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

An empirical investigation on consumers’ intentions towards autonomous driving

Major steps towards implementation of autonomous and connected transport are being taken nowadays. The trend of automation technology being used in vehicles by the most important vehicle manufacturing industries is expected to move closer to high or fully Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) through technological advancements in sectors of robotics and artificial intelligence. Vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities are planning to be available on market, in full scale, in the next years. In the longer term substantial benefits are mainly expected for accessibility to transport, safety, traffic flow, emissions, fuel use and comfort. All these potential societal benefits will not be achieved unless AVs are accepted and used by a critical mass of people. Addressing these challenges, this paper: (a) proposes a technology acceptance modelling process by extending the original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explain and predict consumers’ intensions towards AVs, (b) based on the proposed TAM-extended framework, a 30-question survey was conducted in order to investigate the factors influencing consumers’ intensions to use and accept AVs. Results show that the constructs of perceived usefulness, perceived ease to use, perceived trust and social influence, are all useful predictors of behavioral intentions to have or use AVs, with perceived usefulness having the strongest impact. The insights derived from this study could significantly contribute to ongoing research related to technology acceptance of AVs and are expected to allow automobile industries to improve their design and technology.     

Increased productivity efforts yield few rewards in the knowledge economy

Population aging is reducing access to knowledge workers even as they are becoming more important to economic growth. Thus far, corporations and governments alike have made the intuitive yet untested assumption that working the existing workforce harder and longer can alleviate the economic fallout. This is based on the ‘success’ similar efforts have previously seen in production industries characterized by physical inputs. Our study provides evidence that these successes may not carry over to industries, such as transportation that are reliant on intellectual skill. It is shown that meeting productivity goals by increasing the job demands of knowledge workers, specifically air traffic controllers, compromises the provision of new kinds of value added. Furthermore, it is demonstrated for the first time that increasing job duration exacerbates the effects of job demand on human performance. Coping with staffing shortages by asking that knowledge workers simply ‘do more’ may impede rather than stimulate economic growth.     

What do people know about their public transport options?

This paper studies the memory representations of residents regarding the public transport system in their city. Telephone interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 204 inhabitants in a selected residential inner-city area in Stockholm. Route knowledge questions, recognition tasks, free-recall tasks and estimations of service frequency were used to explore memory representations. The results showed that, in general, residents in metropolitan areas have good knowledge of the public transport options along well-known transport corridors. The memory representation of lesser-known transport corridors tends to be of a poorer quality. In the results presented here, the variables gender, age, employment status, level of education and car availability had no correlation with the quality of the memory representation, but experience increased knowledge. Although frequent users of public transport had a more detailed representation of the system, the less frequent users also had a considerable- and good-memory representation. An explorative hierarchy for representation of public transport lines in the memory is proposed. It is hypothesised that memory representations of a transport line can be affected by the following three factors: the extent to which a line is visible in the urban area, the straightness of the routes and whether or not stops are labelled, for example, by destination area. Simply put, these factors determine how well a person knows a line. It was found that people first remember a commuter train and a trunk bus line, followed by metro lines and suburban buses and finally normal inner-city buses with the poorest anchorage in memory.

Strategic considerations behind the network–regional airline tie ups – A theoretical and empirical study

The paper examines the strategic vertical relationship between network and regional airlines. We develop a model to illustrate how network airlines can use the contractual relationship with regional airlines as an efficient tool to simultaneously drive out inefficient network airlines and also accommodate other cost efficient network airlines in any specific market. The model is tested on U.S. data using simultaneous and sequential choice models. We find that market size, cost differences between network airlines, as well as cost differences between network and regional airlines, are the chief determinants of the network airlines’ decisions on whether or not to serve a market with their own fleet, as well as how many regional airlines to contract with.     

并行管道风险因素与事故交互作用分析

随着能源需求的不断增加,国内管道建设处在一个新的高潮时期,受各种因素制约,近距离并行敷设管道越来越多,给管道的建设和运行安全带来了新的挑战。通过分析并行管道设计、建设和运行阶段所面临的风险因素以及现有研究状况,并着重对管道运行阶段事故交互影响的失效概率进行了讨论。最后提出,对于并行管道的安全问题,不仅要考虑失效后果的严重程度,也应考虑管道发生事故后产生交互影响的概率问题,有效降低管道失效概率是解决并行管道安全问题的主要途径。     

A GA-based household scheduler

One way of making activity-based travel analysis operational for transport planning is multi-agent micro-simulation. Modelling activity and trip generation based on individual and social characteristics are central steps in this method. The model presented here generates complete daily activity schedules based on the structure of a household and its members’ activity calendars. The model assumes that the household is another basic decision-making unit for travel demand aside from individual mobility needs. Results of the model are schedules containing complete information about activity type and sequence, locations, and means of transportation, as well as activity start times and durations. The generated schedules are the outcome of a probabilistic optimisation using genetic algorithms. This iterative method improves solutions found in a random search according to the specification of a fitness criterion, which equals utility here. It contains behavioural assumptions about individuals as well as the household level. Individual utility is derived from the number of activities and their respective durations. It is reduced by costs of travelling and penalties for late, respectively early arrival. The household level is represented directly by the utility of joint activities, and indirectly by allocation of activities and means of transportation to household members. The paper presents initial tests with a three-person household, detailing resulting schedules, and discussing run-time experiences. A sensitivity analysis of the joint utility parameter impact is also included.     

Motorcycle-based adolescents’ travel behaviour during the school morning commute and the effect of intra-household interaction on departure time and mode choice

We hypothesise that intra-household interaction influences home departure time and mode choice for the morning commute. In Indonesia, over 71% of vehicles on the road are motorcycles. This fact increases the significance of household interaction in influencing transport mode choice since the simplicity of the motorcycle allows a great degree of versatility in regard to multiple family member transport. To emphasise this point, our study focuses on the unique travel behaviour of adolescents during the school morning commute which, due to the use of the motorcycle, is a combination of the travel behaviour of accompanied children and escorting adults. Our study discovers that adolescents are likely to shift their school arrival time very early or close to the designated starting time in relation to motorcycle-based parental escort to school. In regard to mode choice, adolescent students prefer to be escorted by motorcycle rather than take public transport.     

地震时跨断层海底管道的屈曲分析

地震时,考虑海底管道与土介质的相互作用,对将跨断层海底管道作为薄壳结构时的断层位错反应进行分析计算.利用Ansys分析软件,将管道模型简化为四节点薄壳单元结构, 土介质简化为弹塑性弹簧,建立管土相互作用的有限元分析模型,进行分析计算.根据计算结果以及海底管道屈曲校核准则描绘出管道破坏等级范围分布图.最终得出结论:地震时在大位移断层运动作用下,海底管道存在明显的屈曲变形,在屈曲变形较大处,海底管道发生断裂.