A new approach for improving the performance of freight train timetabling for single-track railways is proposed. Using the idea of a fixed-block signaling system, we develop a matrix representation to express the occupation of inter- and intra-station tracks by trains illustrating the train blocking time diagram in its entirety. Train departure times, dwell times, and unnecessary stopping are adjusted to reduce average train travel time and single train travel time. Conflicts between successive stations and within stations are identified and solved. A fuzzy logic system is further used to adjust the range of train departure times and checks are made to determine whether dwell times and time intervals can be adjusted for passenger and freight trains at congested stations to minimize train waiting times. By combining manual scheduling expertise with the fuzzy inference method, timetable efficiency is significantly improved and becomes more flexible. 相似文献
This paper studies the impact of removing the level crossing, which constitutes traffic hazard to the society, on house prices by conducting a quasi-natural experiment using the Level Crossing Removal Project (LXRP) implemented by the Victoria state government in Australia since 2015. Using a difference-in-differences method, we analyzed the changes in housing prices due to the improvement of transportation infrastructure, gauging the LXRP’s impact on house and unit submarkets separately. We found that the prices for house and unit markets increased significantly after the removal of level crossings, with the value uplift decreasing with distance from the removal site. This paper contributes to the existing literature by adding an empirical study related to the enhancement of infrastructure aiming to improve the traffic safety in the urban context. Unlike previous studies, this study examines the effect of improvement projects for existing infrastructure and provides relevant implications to improve the efficiency of investing public resources in infrastructure improvement.
With the recent increase in the deployment of ITS technologies in urban areas throughout the world, traffic management centers
have the ability to obtain and archive large amounts of data on the traffic system. These data can be used to estimate current
conditions and predict future conditions on the roadway network. A general solution methodology for identifying the optimal
aggregation interval sizes for four scenarios is proposed in this article: (1) link travel time estimation, (2) corridor/route
travel time estimation, (3) link travel time forecasting, and (4) corridor/route travel time forecasting. The methodology
explicitly considers traffic dynamics and frequency of observations. A formulation based on mean square error (MSE) is developed
for each of the scenarios and interpreted from a traffic flow perspective. The methodology for estimating the optimal aggregation
size is based on (1) the tradeoff between the estimated mean square error of prediction and the variance of the predictor,
(2) the differences between estimation and forecasting, and (3) the direct consideration of the correlation between link travel
time for corridor/route estimation and forecasting. The proposed methods are demonstrated using travel time data from Houston,
Texas, that were collected as part of the automatic vehicle identification (AVI) system of the Houston Transtar system. It
was found that the optimal aggregation size is a function of the application and traffic condition.
To assess the vulnerability of congested road networks, the commonly used full network scan approach is to evaluate all possible scenarios of link closure using a form of traffic assignment. This approach can be computationally burdensome and may not be viable for identifying the most critical links in large-scale networks. In this study, an “impact area” vulnerability analysis approach is proposed to evaluate the consequences of a link closure within its impact area instead of the whole network. The proposed approach can significantly reduce the search space for determining the most critical links in large-scale networks. In addition, a new vulnerability index is introduced to examine properly the consequences of a link closure. The effects of demand uncertainty and heterogeneous travellers’ risk-taking behaviour are explicitly considered. Numerical results for two different road networks show that in practice the proposed approach is more efficient than traditional full scan approach for identifying the same set of critical links. Numerical results also demonstrate that both stochastic demand and travellers’ risk-taking behaviour have significant impacts on network vulnerability analysis, especially under high network congestion and large demand variations. Ignoring their impacts can underestimate the consequences of link closures and misidentify the most critical links. 相似文献