Epilogue: the new frontiers of behavioral research on the interrelationships between ICT,activities, time use and mobility

This special issue is a product of the international symposium on “ICT, Activities, Time Use and Travel” that was hosted by Nanjing University from 16 to 18 July 2016. The symposium brought together leading scholars from all over the world to congregate with Chinese scholars and students and to share and discuss the research frontiers at this nexus. It was motivated by a recognition of the changing goals and scope of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) research in conjunction with the development of new ICTs and the emergence of new ICT-enabled behaviors. Consequently, the symposium and later this special issue have drawn together significant scholarly contributions that provide new behavioral insights as well as new theoretical and methodological advances. The symposium culminated in three roundtable panel discussions addressing the following cross-cutting themes: (1) time use while travelling (led by Glenn Lyons); (2) ICT and travel behavior (led by Pat Mokhtarian); and (3) Big Data, activities and urban space (led by Eran Ben-Elia). In this epilogue to the special issue we offer a distillation of these discussions.     

Social networks,social influence and activity-travel behaviour: a review of models and empirical evidence

ABSTRACT

The study of social networks in activity-travel research has recently gained momentum because social activities and social influence were relatively poorly explained in activity-based models of travel demand. Over the last decade, many scholars have shown interest in identifying personal social networks that constitute an important source of explanation of activity-travel behaviour. This paper seeks to review two research streams: social networks and activity-travel behaviour, and social influence and travel decisions. We classify models, summarise empirical findings and discuss important issues that require further research.     

Experimental and Numerical Study on the Behaviors of Deep-Buried Water-Storage and Drainage Shield Tunnels北大核心CSCD

Deep-buried water-storage and drainage shield tunnels, which are different from road and subway shield tunnels in terms of computation theory, construction technology and operation maintenance, would bear high inner water pressure and large earth pressure. In view of the change of the bearing mode for the lining structure of water-storage and drainage shield tunnels, a full-ring test and numerical analysis are carried out to study the influence of inner water pressure, staggered joint assembly and bolt installation types on the behaviors of water-storage and drainage shield tunnels. The results show that the deformation of the straight-jointed water-storage and drainage shield tunnel varies greatly from the state of empty water to that of full water; and the vertical and horizontal convergence deformations of the tunnel with inner water pressure of 0.6 MPa are 2.2 times and 3.2 times of that without inner water pressure, respectively. The convergence deformation, and the maximum joint opening and bolt tension of stagger-jointed lining structure decrease by 15%-25% and 25%- 40%, respectively, compared with that of the straight-jointed water-storage and drainage shield tunnel. The bolts at the segmental joints will yield because of the increase of inner water pressure and the first occurrence of bolt yield phenomenon is located near the position on the lining structure which is under the action of maximum negative bending moment; because the failure of shield tunnel is always caused by the yield of joint bolts, this position is the weak point for the deep-buried water-storage and drainage shield tunnel. For the water-storage and drainage shield tunnel based on the connection with double rows of bolts, the bolts near the outer arc surface of segmental joints in the area of 90 degree in the vault and arch bottom can be removed; the bolts near the inner arc surface of the segmental joints within the 90 degree of the haunch must be installed, otherwise, the tensile force of the bolts at the segmental joint near the maximum negative bending moment will increase by 5%-14%. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Study on the Stress and Deformation Behaviors of a Deep and Irregular Foundation Pit as the Shield Launching Shaft in a Sea Reclaimed Cofferdam北大核心CSCD

With the development of the tunnel technology in China, the shield tunnel will become an important way to build the Sea-crossing channel. Taking the current largest diameter Shantou Bay shield tunnel in China as the engineering background, this paper introduces the challenges faced by the construction of the shield launching shaft in the reclamation cofferdam: e.g. deep, irregular excavation, deep silt layer and great influence of the seawater. Based on the practical conditions, a top-down construction technique of large ring beam considering two working conditions of foundation pit excavation and shield launching is proposed. Based on three-dimensional finite element analysis and field measurement, the stress characteristics and soil deformation of foundation pit are studied. The results show that the top-down construction technique of large ring beam can effectively control the deformation of the foundation pit and save construction time. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Study on Reinforcing Technology System for the Overlapped Running Shield Tunnels underneath the Track Group of High Speed Railways北大核心CSCD

The large settlements of tracks will emerge due to multiple disturbances in the construction of over- lapped shield tunnels, which affects the running safety of trains. Based on the overlapped Sungang station-Honghu station shield running tunnels of Shenzhen Metro line 7 passing underneath 26 tracks of high speed railways, a rein- forcement technology system consisting of”track support + subgrade reinforcement + interlayer soil consolidation + internal support of the lower tunnel”was developed. The settlements of tracks were mainly monitored automatically with manual monitoring as an auxiliary one. The results show that the maximum settlement of main track caused by constructing overlapped shield tunnels is -5.9 mm which is less than the control value of 10 mm, ensuring the opera- tion safety and verifying the reliability and practicability of the reinforcement technology system. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Children’s travel to school: satisfaction,current mood,and cognitive performance

We investigate whether travel mode, travel time, and activities during travel influence children’s satisfaction with their travel to school, their current mood, and their cognitive performance after arriving at school. A sample of 344 children (165 girls) between the ages of 10 and 15 years were recruited at five public schools in Värmland County, Sweden. Directly after arriving at school, the children rated how they felt on two scales ranging from very sad to very happy and from very tired to very alert, filled out the Satisfaction with Travel Scale adapted for children (STS-C), reported details about their journeys, and took a word-fluency test. The results for STS-C showed that traveling by school bus and walking or cycling was experienced as having a higher quality than traveling by car. Children who engaged in conversation during their journeys reported a higher quality and more positive feelings than children who were engaged in solitary activities during their journeys. A shorter journey was experienced as having a higher quality and resulting in more positive feelings. Children traveling for longer durations performed better in the word-fluency test if using their smartphones or doing a combination of activities during their journeys.     

Low temperature premixed combustion within a small bore high speed direct injection (HSDI) optically accessible diesel engine using a retarded single injection

An optically accessible single-cylinder high speed direct-injection (HSDI) Diesel engine equipped with a Bosch common rail injection system was used to study low temperature Modulated Kinetics (MK) combustion with a retarded single main injection. High-speed liquid fuel Mie-scattering was employed to investigate the liquid distribution and evolution. By carefully setting up the optics, three-dimensional images of fuel spray were obtained from both the bottom of the piston and the side window. The NOx emissions were measured in the exhaust pipe. The influence of injection pressure and injection timing on liquid fuel evolution and combustion characteristics was studied under similar fuel quantities. Interesting spray development was seen from the side window images. Liquid impingement was found for all of the cases due to the small diameter of the piston bowl. The liquid fuel tip hits the bowl wall obliquely and spreads as a wall jet in the radial direction of the spray. Due to the bowl geometry, the fuel film moves back into the central part of the bowl, which enhances the air-fuel mixing process and prepares a more homogeneous air-fuel mixture. Stronger impingement was seen for high injection pressures. Injection timing had little effect on fuel impingement. No liquid fuel was seen before ignition, indicating premixed combustion for all the cases. High-speed combustion video was taken using the same frame rate. Ignition was seen to occur on or near the bowl wall in the vicinity of the spray tip, with the ignition delay being noticeably longer for lower injection pressure and later injection timing. The majority of the flame was confined to the bowl region throughout the combustion event. A more homogeneous and weaker flame was observed for higher injection pressures and later injection timing. The combustion structure also proves the mixing enhancement effect of the liquid fuel impingement. The results show that ultra-low sooting combustion is feasible in an HSDI diesel engine with a higher injection pressure, a higher EGR rate, or later injection timing, with little penalty on power output. It was also found that injection timing has more influence on HCCI-like combustion using a single main injection than the other two factors studied. Compared with the base cases, simultaneous reductions of soot and NOx were obtained by increasing EGR rate and retarding injection timing. By increasing injection pressure, NOx emissions were increased due to leaner and faster combustion with better air-fuel mixing. However, smoke emissions were significantly reduced with increased injection pressure.     

Network reliability‐based optimal toll design

Optimal toll design from a network reliability point of view is addressed in this paper. Improving network reliability is proposed as a policy objective of road pricing. A reliability‐based optimal toll design model, where on the upper level network performance including travel time reliability is optimized, while on the lower level a dynamic user‐equilibrium is achieved, is presented. Road authorities aim to optimize network travel time reliability by setting tolls in a network design problem. Travelers are influenced by these tolls and make route and trip decisions by considering travel times and tolls. Network performance reliability is analyzed for a degradable network with elastic and fluctuated travel demand, which integrates reliability and uncertainty, dynamic network equilibrium models, and Monte Carlo methods. The proposed model is applied to a small hypothesized network for which optimal tolls are derived. The network travel time reliability is indeed improved after implementing optimal tolling system. Trips may have a somewhat higher, but more reliable, travel time.     

A joint flexible econometric model system of household residential location and vehicle fleet composition/usage choices

Modeling the interaction between the built environment and travel behavior is of much interest to transportation planning professionals due to the desire to curb vehicular travel demand through modifications to built environment attributes. However, such models need to take into account self-selection effects in residential location choice, wherein households choose to reside in neighborhoods and built environments that are conducive to their lifestyle preferences and attitudes. This phenomenon, well-recognized in the literature, calls for the specification and estimation of joint models of multi-dimensional land use and travel choice processes. However, the estimation of such model systems that explicitly account for the presence of unobserved factors that jointly impact multiple choice dimensions is extremely complex and computationally intensive. This paper presents a joint GEV-based logit regression model of residential location choice, vehicle count by type choice, and vehicle usage (vehicle miles of travel) using a copula-based framework that facilitates the estimation of joint equations systems with error dependence structures within a simple and flexible closed-form analytic framework. The model system is estimated on a sample derived from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Household Travel Survey. Estimation results show that there is significant dependency among the choice dimensions and that self-selection effects cannot be ignored when modeling land use-travel behavior interactions.