Consumer preferences and willingness to pay for advanced vehicle technology options and fuel types

The automotive industry is witnessing a revolution with the advent of advanced vehicular technologies, smart vehicle options, and fuel alternatives. However, there is very limited research on consumer preferences for such advanced vehicular technologies. The deployment and penetration of advanced vehicular technologies in the marketplace, and planning for possible market adoption scenarios, calls for the collection and analysis of consumer preference data related to these emerging technologies. This study aims to address this need, offering a detailed analysis of consumer preference for alternative fuel types and technology options using data collected in stated choice experiments conducted on a sample of consumers from six metropolitan cities in South Korea. The results indicate that there is considerable heterogeneity in consumer preferences for various smart technology options such as wireless internet, vehicle connectivity, and voice command features, but relatively less heterogeneity in the preference for smart vehicle applications such as real-time traveler information on parking and traffic conditions.     

Are we ready to embrace connected and self-driving vehicles? A case study of Texans

While connected, highly automated, and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) will eventually hit the roads, their success and market penetration rates depend largely on public opinions regarding benefits, concerns, and adoption of these technologies. Additionally, the introduction of these technologies is accompanied by uncertainties in their effects on the carsharing market and land use patterns, and raises the need for tolling policies to appease the travel demand induced due to the increased convenience. To these ends, this study surveyed 1088 respondents across Texas to understand their opinions about smart vehicle technologies and related decisions. The key summary statistics indicate that Texans are willing to pay (WTP) $2910, $4607, $7589, and $127 for Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4 automation and connectivity, respectively, on average. Moreover, affordability and equipment failure are Texans’ top two concerns regarding AVs. This study also estimates interval regression and ordered probit models to understand the multivariate correlation between explanatory variables, such as demographics, built-environment attributes, travel patterns, and crash histories, and response variables, including willingness to pay for CAV technologies, adoption rates of shared AVs at different pricing points, home location shift decisions, adoption timing of automation technologies, and opinions about various tolling policies. The practically significant relationships indicate that more experienced licensed drivers and older people associate lower WTP values with all new vehicle technologies. Such parameter estimates help not only in forecasting long-term adoption of CAV technologies, but also help transportation planners in understanding the characteristics of regions with high or low future-year CAV adoption levels, and subsequently, develop smart strategies in respective regions.     

基于分布式计算机的智能相机在城市交通中的研究与应用

我国逐步开始将城市建设与互联网技术进行高度融合以打造智能城市。智能城市建设过程中,智能交通是重要一环,当前我国交通视频监控系统普遍是通过道路两旁的摄像头拍摄获得路况图像信息,这种方式虽然是解决了一些问题,但是不能满足智能城市的建设需求。本文总结和研究了分布式智能相机的一些关键技术,得出嵌入式设备高效率、低耗能的优点使其在交通监控领域得到了越来越广泛的应用,基于分布式计算机设计了智能相机的分布式智能城市交通系统,提出了一系列有益于提升系统运行的具有应用前景的算法,用来解决使用重叠视野进行跟踪和稀疏相机网络中的有效跟踪。     

Big data in public transportation: a review of sources and methods

ABSTRACT

The collection of big data, as an alternative to traditional resource-intensive manual data collection approaches, has become significantly more feasible over the past decade. The availability of such data, coupled with more sophisticated predictive statistical techniques, has contributed to an increase in attention towards the application of these data, particularly for transportation analysis. Within the transportation literature, there is a growing emphasis on developing sources of commonly collected public transportation data into more powerful analytical tools. A commonly held belief is that application of big data to transportation problems will yield new insights previously unattainable through traditional transportation data sets. However, there exist many ambiguities related to what constitutes big data, the ethical implications of big data collection and application, and how to best utilize the emerging data sets. The existing literature exploring big data provides no clear and consistent definition. While the collection of big data has grown and its application in both research and practice continues to expand, there is a significant disparity between methods of analysis applied to such data. This paper summarizes the recent literature on sources of big data and commonly applied methods used in its application to public transportation problems. We assess predominant big data sources, most frequently studied topics, and methodologies employed. The literature suggests smart card and automated data are the two big data sources most frequently used by researchers to conduct public transit analyses. The studies reviewed indicate that big data has largely been used to understand transit users’ travel behavior and to assess public transit service quality. The techniques reported in the literature largely mirror those used with smaller data sets. The application of more advanced statistical methods, commonly associated with big data, has been limited to a small number of studies. In order to fully capture the value of big data, new approaches to analysis will be necessary.     

Measuring risk aversion to guide transportation policy: Contexts,incentives, and respondents

Road pricing may provide a solution to increasing traffic congestion in metropolitan areas. Route, departure time and travel mode choices depend on risk attitudes as commuters perceive the options as having uncertain effects on travel times. We propose that Experimental Economics methods can deliver data that uses real consequences and where the context can be varied by the researcher. The approach relies on the controlled manipulation of contexts, similar to what is done in the Stated Choice approach, but builds in actual consequences, similar to the Revealed Preference approach. This paper investigates some of the trade-offs between the cost of conducting Experimental Economics studies and the behavioral responses elicited. In particular, we compare responses to traditional lottery choice tasks to the route choice tasks in simulated driving environments. We also compare students (a low cost convenient participant pool) to field participants recruited from the driving population. While we see initial differences across our treatment groups, we find that their risk taking behavior converge with minimal repetition.     

Designing computable general equilibrium models for transportation applications

This paper presents a review of Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model applications for spatial economic and transport interaction modelling. This paper has three objectives (1) To deliver an up to date and comprehensive literature review on applications of CGE models in transportation, (2) To analyze the different methodological approaches and their theoretical and practical advantages and disadvantages, and (3) To ultimately provide guidance on designing CGE models for various transportation analyses. The content of the paper is as follows: first, a brief introduction to CGE models is provided. The history of CGE models is traced, ranging from their origins and seminal applications in economics, to their eventual adoption in transportation research. This is followed by a comprehensive review of the application of CGE models to transport projects and policies. Various applications in transportation are reviewed in terms of their intended application, as well as their treatment of space and time. Finally, these applications are contrasted with respect to their methodological approaches, with a close examination of various influential model choices. Here, the essential design choices made within these model applications are explained and debated, to clearly elaborate on the workings of the models and the design choices facing CGE model developers.     

Geographic information systems for transportation in perspective

The late 1980s saw the first widespread use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in transportation research and management. Due to the specific requirements of transportation applications and of the rather late adoption of this information technology in transportation, research has been directed toward enhancing existing GIS approaches to enable the full range of capabilities needed in transportation research and management. This paper places the concept of transportation GIS in the broader perspective of research in GIS and Geographic Information Science. The emphasis is placed on the requirements specific of the transportation domain of application of this emerging information technology as well as on core research challenges.     

Resilience in transportation systems: a systematic review and future directions

ABSTRACT

The Belt and Road (B&R) initiative was introduced by the Chinese government to promote the worldwide economic development and multilateral cooperation between China and the associated countries. As a crucial part of global supply chains, transportation plays a key role to ensure the implementation of the B&R. Safety is one of the issues with great importance in transportation research. However, its foci have been expanded from traditional risk through security to resilience and sustainability. Resilience has attracted considerable interests from both researchers and practitioners across different research domains in recent years. Various studies have been conducted on transportation resilience from different perspectives. Consequently, different definitions have been developed to define and describe resilience. This paper presents a systematic review on transportation resilience with emphasis on its definitions, characteristics, and research methods applied in different transportation systems/contexts. It aims to figure out what transportation resilience is and what kind of essential characters it usually has. More importantly, research challenges are analysed and a future research agenda on the resilience of transportation systems is proposed. This paper will provide comprehensive insights into understanding the transportation resilience, as well as establish new horizons for relevant research topics within the context of the B&R.     

The crisis for transportation planning modelling

The paper considers the performance of land‐use transportation study techniques over the past ten years. Although primarily viewed from a U.K. perspective the paper reviews matters of principle which are of international relevance. The changing context and tasks for modelling are reviewed and the current role and applications of such models considered. The capability of established models to meet these changing requirements is examined. Attention is drawn to model specification and the ability of models both to represent new policies and to predict traveller responses to them. Also relevant is the ‘behavioural’ theme and the way in which survey technique conditions the data obtained.

Particular emphasis is placed on the accuracy of modelling, both in the representation of base year travel patterns and in the forecast mode. The inherent uncertainty concerning input data is discussed and the frequent failures to establish model validity are noted.

Three crises for U.K. transportation planning practice are identified: the ageing of data bases, the accuracy and validity of models and the current changes to the institutional context of transport planning in the U.K. Some potential remedies for the first two difficulties are proposed. It is concluded that only the last ‘crisis’ represents a real threat to the application of rational methods in transportation planning.     

智慧高速公路设计案例分析

本文以某智慧高速的设计案例为依托,首先对国内外智慧高速发展和应用现状进行归纳总结,分析认为电动化、智能化的新型运载工具,信息化和功能专业化的基础设施,开放、共享、协同的管理与服务将是未来高速公路三大发展趋势。通过对高速公路使用者和管理者的需求针对性地精准分析,构建面向高速公路使用者和管理者的创新型应用服务。结合新技术的发展趋势,以服务需求为导向,建设"三网合一"智慧高速基础设施和智慧云控平台构成、数据流为驱动的、"开放、包容、创新"的智慧高速公路。基于案例分析的智慧高速规划设计全过程,对于国内智慧高速的整体设计和建设规划具有重要参考价值,探索开辟全新的高速公路智能化建设方向和思路。     

New highways and land use change: Results from a quasi-experimental research design

Understanding links from new highway construction or capacity expansion to regional growth patterns is crucial for transportation planners and policy makers. In this paper, we incorporate a lagged adjustment regional growth model into a quasi-experimental research design to examine the association between new highway investments and land use change in three California counties. Our study areas provide a mix of urban, small town, and exurban highway projects in order to explore the different effects across project types and geographic contexts. The central finding of this research is that while improvements in surface transportation infrastructure can have large impacts on growth patterns, the nature of the effect depends on the context of the highway investment.     

Incorporating e-Technology to Advantage in a Greener Taxi Industry and its Impact on Driving Performance and Safety

Abstract

New technologies, especially advances in telecommunications, have had profound impacts on everyday life and brought even greater changes to some business models. Taxis represent one of the major modes of transportation in urban areas but they face a number of problems, including their environmental impacts. The status of the taxi industry in Taiwan is revealed and analyzed in this study. A new business model for the extensive and popular use of smart phones is proposed. However, it is important to know whether their use is both effective and safe. Two field experiments were executed to examine the effects on taxi drivers of using a navigation system installed in a GPS PDA phone. The results revealed that the efficiency of drivers using such a portable navigation system was better than those relying on paper maps in unfamiliar urban areas. Furthermore, performance in terms of safety was also better than those who used an on-board navigation system. In summary, incorporating e-technology can promote a taxi company's competitiveness and a driver's performance and safety as well as offer environmental benefits.     

Combinatorial programming,statistical optimization and the optimal transportation network problem

This paper presents and evaluates a branch and bound algorithm and two heuristic hill-climbing techniques to solve a discrete formulation of the optimal transportation network design problem. For practical applications it is proposed to combine a hill-climbing algorithm with a uniform random generation of the initial solutions, thereby inducing a statistical distribution of local optima. In order to determine when to stop sampling local optima and in order to provide an estimate of the exact optimum based on the whole distribution of local optima, we follow previous work and fit a Weibull distribution to the empirical distribution of local optima. Several extensions are made over previous work: in particular, a new confidence interval and a new stopping rule are proposed. The numerical application of the statistical optimization methodology to the network design algorithms consolidates the empirical validity of fitting a Weibull distribution to the empirical distribution of local optima. Numerical experiments with hill-climbing techniques of varying power suggest that the method is best applied with heuristics of intermediate quality: such heuristics provide many distinct sample points for statistical estimation while keeping the confidence intervals sufficiently narrow.     

Modelling media choices in business organizations: Implications for analyzing telecommunications-transportation interactions

A framework to analyze the impact of the new electronic communication technologies on transportation systems in the business setting has been proposed. A component of the framework that focuses on the media choice processes of individuals was empirically tested using scenarios in which the physical mail media, courier services, the telephone, voice mail, and electronic mail were alternatives to complete information communication tasks. The media choice model developed in this research emphasizes the influence of the context of the communication activity on media choice. Individual and organizational characteristics are explicitly considered, along with variables describing the communication activity itself, and the relationship between the initiator and the recipient of the communication. These characteristics determine the relative importance of a set of communication attributes and personal needs which are then matched against the individual's perceptions and feelings about the media to form preferences and choices in specific contexts. Empirical results are presented using preference logit models for a series of information communication situations. Significant variations in preferences and the levels of significance of the independent variables provided evidence of the strong influence the context of the communication activity has on media choice. Implications of these results are discussed in terms of other types of business meetings which may involve choices between telecommunications media and transportation modes. The primary contribution of this research is a methodology that can be extended to rigorously analyze telecommunications-transportation interactions. The paper discusses some of the issues that need to be addressed in modelling telecommunications-transportation interactions.     

Planning for economic and environmental resilience

Climate protection will require major reductions in GHG emissions from all sectors of the economy, including the transportation sector. Slowing growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) will be necessary for reducing transportation GHG emissions, even with major breakthroughs in vehicle technologies and low-carbon fuels (Winkelman et al., 2009). The Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP) supports market-based policy approaches that minimize costs and maximize benefits. Our research indicates that significant GHG reductions can be achieved through smart growth and travel efficiency measures that increase accessibility, improve travel choices and make optimum use of existing infrastructure. Moreover, we find such measures can deliver compelling economic benefits, including avoided infrastructure costs, leveraged private investment, increased local tax revenues and consumer vehicle ownership and operating cost savings (Winkelman et al., 2009).As a society, what we build – where and how – has a tremendous impact on our carbon footprint, from building design to transportation infrastructure and land-use patterns. The empirical and modeling evidence is clear – people drive less in locations with efficient land use patterns, high quality travel choices and reinforcing policies and incentives (Ewing et al., 2008). It is also clear that there is growing and unmet market demand for walkable communities, reinforced by demographic shifts and higher fuel prices (Leinberger, 2006, Nelson, 2007). Transportation policy in the United States must rise to meet this demand for more travel choices and more livable communities.The academic, ideological and political debates about the level of GHG reductions and penetration rates that can or should be achieved via smart growth and pricing on the one hand, or measures such as ‘eco-driving’ and signal optimization on the other, have served their purpose: we know which policies are ‘directionally correct’ – policies that reduce GHG emissions even though we may not know the scope of those reductions. Now is the time to implement directionally correct policies, assess what works best where, and refine policy based on the results. It is a framework that CCAP calls “Do. Measure. Learn.”The Federal government is poised to spend $500 billion on transportation (Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 2009). CCAP encourages Congress to “Ask the Climate Question” – will our transportation investments help reduce GHG emissions or exacerbate the problem? Will they help increase our resilience to climate change impacts or increase our vulnerability? And, while we’re at it, will our investment foster energy security, livable communities and a vibrant economy? Federal transportation and climate policies should empower communities to implement locally-determined travel efficiency solutions by providing appropriate funding, tools and technical support.     

Comparison of emerging ground propulsion systems for electrified aircraft taxi operations

Aviation is a mode with high fuel consumption per passenger mile and has significant environmental impacts. It is important to seek ways to reduce fuel consumption by the aviation sector, but it is difficult to improve fuel efficiency during the en-route cruise phase of flight because of technology barriers, safety requirements, and the mode of operations of air transportation. Recent efforts have emphasized the development of innovative Aircraft Ground Propulsion Systems (AGPS) for electrified aircraft taxi operations. These new technologies are expected to significantly reduce aircraft ground-movement-related fuel burn and emissions. This study compares various emerging AGPS systems and presents a comprehensive review on the merits and demerits of each system, followed with the local environmental impacts assessment of these systems. Using operational data for the 10 busiest U.S. airports, a comparison of environmental impacts is performed for four kinds of AGPS: conventional, single engine-on, external, and on-board systems. The results show that there are tradeoffs in fuel and emissions among these emerging technologies. On-board system shows the best performance in the emission reduction, while external system shows the least fuel burn. Compared to single-engine scenario, external AGPS shows the reduction of HC and CO emissions but the increase of NO_x emission. When a general indicator is considered, on-board AGPS shows the best potential of reducing local environmental impacts. The benefit-cost analysis shows that both external and on-board systems are worth being implemented and the on-board system appeals to be more beneficial.     

Learning from Los Angeles: transport,urban form,and air quality

Los Angeles is well known around the world as an automobile-oriented low density community, yet recent transportation policies have emphasized greater capital investment in rail transportation than in highways, and recent policies have attempted to discourage automobile usage through transportation demand management. While these policies have accomplished small shifts toward public transport and somewhat lower dependence upon singly occupied automobilies for work commuting, the financial costs of these policy changes has been very large in relation to their benefits. Proper pricing of transportation alternatives, more creative use of new and emerging transportation technologies, and the provision of many more opportunities for simpler private sector transport services, would all appear to be more promising as cost-effective approaches to coping with congestion in Los Angeles than the current regional transportation policies.     

我国西部交通运输开发建设对策

西部大开发的首要问题是加强地区交通运输基础设施建设,目前西部交通运输存在如基础设施布局、交通技术结构、交通区域结构等方面的问题。文章通过对现状、资金、环境、人才因素的考虑,提出了以“强化技术改造,提高运输能力,拓展内外通,适应发展需要”为基本思路的一系列西部交通开发建设对策。