A hybrid model of fuzzy and AHP for handling public assessments on transportation projects

Having an effective public participation in transportation planning and project development processes has been a major concern for developed countries. In the United States, for instance, all state Departments of Transportation are subject to the Transportation Equity Act (TEA-21) that formally requires public involvement in transportation planning. Since transportation planning involves public resources and values, judgments by the public should play a key role in determining final decisions. Therefore, all these agencies are required not only to disseminate information to the public, but also to solicit and consider public opinion in forming transportation policy. This work presents a decision support model, with public involvement and public oversight, to help policy makers select appropriate transportation projects for implementation. Since focus groups will face multiple objectives and inexact information in the process, a hybrid model of fuzzy logic and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed. A set of ‘if–then’ rules based on Weber’s psycho-physical law of 1834 is presented to reason from fuzzy numbers to capture essential subjective preferences, pairwise, among the alternatives. The AHP is then incorporated to estimate preference allotments among alternatives. An example application of the suggested method is provided seeking public approval of an appropriate public bus transportation system choosing between one run by municipal authorities and one run by private agencies to show how this procedure works.

Improvements and rationalizations of bus service in rural areas of Denmark

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the effects of marginal changes in public bus transport in rural areas. It is based on a larger study of bus services in rural areas of Denmark (Hansen, 1986). At the beginning of the 1980s, politicians suddenly demanded reductions in public expenditures. Therefore, the Regional Transportation Corporations reduced services and increased fares. However, this article shows that it is possible to meet the demand for reduced subsidy and the passengers' wishes for better service simultaneously. Where the empirical investigations show fare elasticities of about -0.2, the service elasticities seem to be numerically above 1. In the last part of the paper these findings are applied to an alternative saving policy.     

A standalone-cost costing methodology for a multiservice transit firm

Every multiservice transit firm faces the problem of determining the share of the firm's costs to be borne by each service. A standalone-cost costing methodology for determining such cost shares is proposed. This costing methodology may also be used to investigate the cost efficiency or inefficiency of a multiservice transit firm. The applicability of the methodology is demonstrated in applying it to a multiservice public transit firm, the Tidewater Transportation District Commission, by estimating standalone costs using a statistical cost function for the organization. In addition to multiservice transit firms, the methodology may also be applied to any type of multiservice transportation firm.     

Effects of intersection field of view on emergent collision avoidance performance at unsignalized intersections: analysis based on driving simulator experiments

Proper intersection sight distance can effectively lower the possibility of intersection accidents. American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (2011) provide a series of recommended dimensions of intersection sight triangles for uncontrolled and stop/yield‐controlled intersections. However, in reality, although the actual intersection design for unsignalized intersections satisfies the requirements of sight distance and clear sight triangle in American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' guideline, there are still a large number of crashes occurring at unsignalized intersections for drivers running stop/yield signs or failing to slow down. This paper presents a driving simulator study on pre‐crash at intersections under three intersection field of view (IFOV) conditions. The aim was to explore whether better IFOVs at unsignalized intersections improve their emergent collision avoidance performance under an assumption of valid intersection sight distance design. The experimental results show drivers' ability to identify potential hazards to be significantly affected by their IFOVs. As drivers' IFOV improved, drivers were more likely to choose braking actions to avoid collisions. Better IFOVs were also associated with significant increases in brake time to intersection and significant reductions in deceleration rate and crash rate, thus leading to a lower risk of traffic crash involvement. The results indicate that providing a better IFOV for drivers at intersections should be encouraged in practical applications in order to improve drivers' crash avoidance capabilities. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Demand management of congested public transport systems: a conceptual framework and application using smart card data

Transportation - Transportation demand management, long used to reduce car traffic, is receiving attention among public transport operators as a means to reduce congestion in crowded public...     

A copula-based joint multinomial discrete–continuous model of vehicle type choice and miles of travel

In this paper, a joint model of vehicle type choice and utilization is formulated and estimated on a data set of vehicles drawn from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey. The joint discrete–continuous model system formulated in this study explicitly accounts for common unobserved factors that may affect the choice and utilization of a certain vehicle type (i.e., self-selection effects). A new copula-based methodology is adopted to facilitate model estimation without imposing restrictive distribution assumptions on the dependency structures between the errors in the discrete and continuous choice components. The copula-based methodology is found to provide statistically superior goodness-of-fit when compared with previous estimation approaches for joint discrete–continuous model systems. The model system, when applied to simulate the impacts of a doubling in fuel price, shows that individuals are more likely to shift vehicle type choices than vehicle usage patterns.

Canadian transportation regulation: Trends and issues

Transportation - In Canada, transportation regulation has evolved in response to the country's unique economic and demographic conditions—a land mass larger than that of the U.S.A. with...     

Development and Deployment of Public Transport Policy and Planning in Taiwan

Over the past decade, the escalating roadway congestion and environmental deterioration due to heavy use of private vehicles have provoked the Taiwan government to realize the importance of public transport systems. Under the “carrot-and-stick” rationales, the government has formulated public transport policies and exercised a series of related initiatives by providing sufficient and higher quality of public transport services so as to attract more private vehicle users. In this paper, the planning philosophy and policy formulation of Taiwan’s public transport development are highlighted. The most important initiatives, including the Five-year Enhancement of Mass Transportation Program and the upgrading public transport schemes in the National Development Plan are examined. Based on previous experience and lessons, we point out the most challenging issues that the government will encounter. Suggestions for the future of public transport planning are also addressed.     

Validation of automatic passenger counting: introducing the t-test-induced equivalence test

Transportation - Automatic passenger counting (APC) in public transport has been introduced in the 1970s and has been rapidly emerging in recent years. Still, real-world applications continue to...     

Is it expensive to be poor? Public transport in Sweden

Transportation - One of the reasons to subsidise public transport is to improve the mobility of low-income groups by providing affordable public transport; however, the literature describes a...     

My way or the highway? Framing transportation planners’ attitudes in negotiating professional expertise and public insight

Transportation planning continues to expand beyond traditional engineering and economic performance measures toward a broader scope of impacts across space and society. However, the attitudes of transportation planners as they balance their expert knowledge against public insights are not well-understood. We test a two-dimensional attitudinal framework using survey data from 311 U.S. and Canadian transportation planners. We reveal four attitudinal categories using principal component analysis, and hypothesis testing shows significant differences in personal and institutional attributes across these categories. We discuss what our results mean for training and regulatory measures striving to influence planner attitudes before proposing future directions for research.

     

An analysis of weekly out-of-home discretionary activity participation and time-use behavior

Activity-travel behavior research has hitherto focused on the modeling and understanding of daily time use and activity patterns and resulting travel demand. In this particular paper, an analysis and modeling of weekly activity-travel behavior is presented using a unique multi-week activity-travel behavior data set collected in and around Zurich, Switzerland. The paper focuses on six categories of discretionary activity participation to understand the determinants of, and the inter-personal and intra-personal variability in, weekly activity engagement at a detailed level. A panel version of the Mixed Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value model (MMDCEV) that explicitly accounts for the panel (or repeated-observations) nature of the multi-week activity-travel behavior data set is developed and estimated on the data set. The model also controls for individual-level unobserved factors that lead to correlations in activity engagement preferences across different activity types. To our knowledge, this is the first formulation and application of a panel MMDCEV structure in the econometric literature. The analysis suggests the high prevalence of intra-personal variability in discretionary activity engagement over a multi-week period along with inter-personal variability that is typically considered in activity-travel modeling. In addition, the panel MMDCEV model helped identify the observed socio-economic factors and unobserved individual specific factors that contribute to variability in multi-week discretionary activity participation.

Would Americans pay more in taxes for better transportation? Answers from seven years of national survey data

Transportation - This paper explores U.S. public opinion about raising new federal transportation revenues, using the results from a national, random-digit-dial phone survey that was conducted for...     

Do transportation network companies increase or decrease transit ridership? Empirical evidence from San Francisco

Transportation - Transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, have been hypothesized to both complement and compete with public transit. Existing research on the topic is limited...     

Taxicab deregulation: Economic consequences and regulatory choices

The regulation of taxicab services is receiving an increasing amount of attention by city governments. At issue are the questions of whether local regulations should limit the supply of taxicabs and whether the regulations should control taxi fares.Recently, deregulation has become a popular suggestion; however, little empirical or theoretical evidence has existed to indicate the effects of taxi deregulations. This paper discusses these effects within a framework of eight regulatory scenarios involving different price, entry, and industry concentration factors. The analysis provides support for a public brokerage function.The preparation of this paper was supported, in part, by a contract from the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC.     

Understanding urban mobility patterns from a spatiotemporal perspective: daily ridership profiles of metro stations

Transportation - Smart card data derived from automatic fare collection (AFC) systems of public transit enable us to study resident movement from a macro perspective. The rhythms of traffic...     

Demand responsive transit and the integration of D/R systems with traditional transit

This paper provides a background of the development of demand-responsive transit in small communities in the U.S.A. It also backgrounds traditional transit in metropolitan areas of the United States and outlines its deficiencies in terms of today's urban sprawl and in terms of today's society in metropolitan areas. Urban sprawl has developed city-like areas around big cities, but with lower population densities. Highways and roads were built. Cars were mass-produced. These new populations have never had an alternative to the private car. Today's society includes an ever-increasing number of senior citizens and handicapped persons. Senior citizens find it difficult to get to fixed-route bus stops; handicapped persons have difficulty in boarding regular buses and wheelchair persons cannot even get on board. Particular emphasis is placed upon the examination of the development of demand-responsive transit in metropolitan Rochester, U.S.A. and a Demonstration Project, sponsored by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration of the United States Department of Transportation. The paper also examines and makes reference to the results of integrated transit in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Demonstration Project has several key objectives, the principal one of which is the integration of demand-responsive transit with the fixed-route element of traditional transit. Other important objectives of the demonstration are the balancing of peak and off-peak service so as to improve the overall utilization of resources, increase transit coverage, regular (not special) service for the elderly and the handicapped, the utilization of a computer in dispatching, digital communications, and marketing and promotional techniques.     

Bicycle in Shanghai: Movement patterns,cyclist attitudes and the impact of traffic separation

Transportation demand continues to grow at an even faster rate than the economies of Chinese cities, placing increasing pressure on a limited road network. In certain cities of the more highly developed coastal plains, the bicycle assumed a dominant role in urban transport in the 1980s, a position maintained in the 1990s. In Shanghai, the bicycle continues to play a dominant role, although policies favour a switch to public transport. In the present paper, cyclist attitudes toward public transport policies were probed with a pilot questionnaire at two important central destinations. An important example of current policies with regard to bicycles involves the creation of separate networks for motorized and non-motorized modes. A pilot scheme for eventual application over a very large area was recently introduced in the central area. We report on the traffic volumes by mode and street before and after its implementation in 1999. Both bicycle and car volumes diminished in the central area, although the decrease was greater for bicycles. On the other hand, interviewed cyclists expressed resistance to various incentives to use public transport. The question raised here is whether the planned increase in public transport share of total intracity travel can be achieved without disincentives to use the bicycle.     

Perceived importance of inclusive street dimensions: a public questionnaire survey from a vision(ing) perspective

Transportation - The increasingly prevalent concept of inclusiveness in the public discourse is gaining a foothold in the paradigm shift of street design from a predominance of vehicular traffic...     

Citizen participation through communicative action: Towards a new framework and synthesis

The record of public involvement in the transportation planning process in the United States has been uneven and, at times, disappointing. It is therefore a matter of some satisfaction that the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), recognizes that public involvement and input is essential in transportation plan-making. However, little guidance is available to planners as to how participatory democracy could possibly be enhanced and improved in the existing transportation planning process. As matters stand today, the predominant use of technical rationality in the planning process, to the exclusion of communicative action, has probably been the biggest problem. This paper introduces the concepts of communicative action to buttress and complement technical rationality, currently used in the transportation planning process. A real-life case-study is presented to demonstrate how communicative action was successfully used in a problem-ridden planning situation. Validity claims as suggested by Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action are used in this case-study. It is concluded that academic institutions as well as planning agencies will have to make a concerted effort to educate and train planners not only to be involved with the engineering of our infrastructure, but also to be equally concerned with coping with the social, economic and political dimensions of planning.