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.     

How household transportation expenditures have evolved in Canada: a long term perspective

In recent years, increasing recognition of the challenges associated with global climate change and inequity in developed countries have revived researcher’s interest towards analyzing transportation related expenditure of households. The current research contributes to travel behaviour literature by developing an econometric model of household budgetary allocations with a particular focus on transportation expenditure. Towards this end, we employ the public-use micro-data extracted from the Survey of Household Spending (SHS) for the years 1997–2009. The proposed econometric modeling approach is built on the multiple discrete continuous extreme value model (MDCEV) framework. Specifically, in our analysis, the scaled version of the MDCEV model outperformed its other counterparts. Broadly, the model results indicated that a host of household socio-economic and demographic attributes along with the residential location characteristics affect the apportioning of income to various expenditure categories and savings. We also observed a relatively stable transportation spending behaviour over time. Additionally, a policy analysis exercise is conducted where we observed that with increase in health expenses and reduction in savings results in adjustments in all expenditure categories.     

Robust network pricing and system optimization under combined long-term stochasticity and elasticity of travel demand

Network pricing serves as an instrument for congestion management, however, agencies and planners often encounter problems of estimating appropriate toll prices. Tolls are commonly estimated for a single-point deterministic travel demand, which may lead to imperfect policy decisions due to inherent uncertainties in future travel demand. Previous research has addressed the issue of demand uncertainty in the pricing context, but the elastic nature of demand along with its uncertainty has not been explicitly considered. Similarly, interactions between elasticity and uncertainty of demand have not been characterized. This study addresses these gaps and proposes a framework to estimate nearest optimal first-best tolls under long-term stochasticity in elastic demand. We show first that the optimal tolls under the deterministic-elastic and stochastic-elastic demand cases coincide when cost and demand functions are linear, and the set of equilibrium paths is constant. These assumptions are restrictive, so three larger networks are considered numerically, and the subsequent pricing decisions are assessed. The results of the numerical experiments suggest that in many cases, optimal pricing decisions under the combined stochastic-elastic demand scenario resemble those when demand is known exactly. The applications in this study thus suggest that inclusion of demand elasticity offsets the need of considering future demand uncertainties for first-best congestion pricing frameworks.     

A mixed Bayesian network for two-dimensional decision modeling of departure time and mode choice

The modeling of travel decision making has been a popular topic in transportation planning. Previous studies focused on random-utility discrete choice models and machine learning methods. This paper proposes a new modeling approach that utilizes a mixed Bayesian network (BN) for travel decision inference. The authors use a predetermined BN structure and calculate priori and posterior probability distributions of the decision alternatives based on the observed explanatory variables. As a “utility-free” decision inference method, the BN model releases the linear structure in the utility function but assumes the traffic level of service variables follow multivariate Gaussian distribution conditional on the choice variable. A real-world case study is conducted by using the regional travel survey data for a two-dimensional decision modeling of both departure time choice and travel mode choice. The results indicate that a two-dimensional mixed BN provides better accuracy than decision tree models and nested logit models. In addition, one can derive continuous elasticity with respect to each continuous explanatory variable for sensitivity analysis. This new approach addresses a research gap in probabilistic travel decision making modeling as well as two-dimensional travel decision modeling.     

Factors associated with home-based e-working and e-shopping in Nanjing,China

The widespread adoption of information and communication technology has facilitated frequent e-activities in people’s daily life. From the perspective of individual’s time use on e-working and e-shopping at home, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of the function of home beyond a living space for family life. Using a household survey of 608 full-time paid employees who conducted e-activities at home in Nanjing, China, we investigated the characteristics and patterns of home-based e-working and e-shopping. Only 7.9% of the respondents neither e-shopped nor e-worked at home. We find that the socio-demographic context, Internet use habits, attitudes towards e-working/e-shopping, and geographical accessibility have influenced the patterns of home-based e-working and e-shopping. The results indicate that the rich e-activities taking place at home have changed the time use at home and reinforced the function of home as a multifunctional hub.     

Relationship between well-being and daily time use of elderly: evidence from the disabilities and use of time survey

According to US Census Bureau, the number of individuals in the age group above 65 years is expected to increase by more than 100% from the year 2000 to 2030. It is anticipated that increasing elderly population will put unforeseen demands on the transportation infrastructure due to the atypical mobility and travel needs of the elderly. Consequently, transportation professionals have attempted to understand the travel behavior of the elderly including the trip frequency, trip distance and mode choice decisions. Majority of the research on elderly travel behavior have focused on the mobility outcomes with limited research into understanding the tradeoffs made by this population segment in terms of their in-home and out-of-home activity engagement choices. The goal of the current research is to contribute to this line of inquiry by simultaneously exploring the daily activity engagement choices of the elderly Americans including their in-home and out-of-home activity participation (what activities to pursue) and time alloocation (duration of each activity) decisions while accounting for the temporal constraints. Further, the study attempts to explore the relationship between physical and subjective well-being and daily activity engagement decisions of the elderly; where subjective well-being is derived from reported needs satisfaction with life and different domains of it. To this end, data from the Disabilities and Use of Time survey of Panel Study of Income Dynamics was used to estimate a panel version of MDCEV model. In addition to person- and household-level demographic variables, activity participation and time use choices of elderly were found to vary across different levels of reported physical and subjective well-being measures. The model estimation results were plausible and provide interesting insights into the activity engagement choices of the elderly with implications for transportation policy development. Among other socio-demographic variables, living arrangements (living with family versus in elderly homes) were found to have significant influence on how people participate into different in-home versus out-of-home activities. For example, elderly living in the elderly home were found to participate more into out-of-home activities compared to people living with families. Elderly with disabilities were found to compensate lower participation into out-of-home activities with more participation into in-home activities. Considerable heterogeneity was observed in time engagement behavior of the elderly across reported levels of satisfaction with finance, job and cognitive needs. For example, elderly expressing high satisfaction with job was found to spend less time in in-home social activities. Elderly reporting higher satisfaction with finance were found to spend more time into OH social and shopping activities.     

Analysis of unsteady flow over Offshore Wind Turbine in combination with different types of foundations

Environmental effects have an important influence on Offshore Wind Turbine (OWT) power generation efficiency and the structural stability of such turbines. In this study, we use an in-house Boundary Element (BEM)—panMARE code—to simulate the unsteady flow behavior of a full OWT with various combinations of aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads in the time domain. This code is implemented to simulate potential flows for different applications and is based on a three-dimensional first-order panel method. Three different OWT configurations consisting of a generic 5 MW NREL rotor with three different types of foundations (Monopile, Tripod, and Jacket) are investigated. These three configurations are analyzed using the RANSE solver which is carried out using ANSYS CFX for validating the corresponding results. The simulations are performed under the same environmental atmospheric wind shear and rotor angular velocity, and the wave properties are wave height of 4 m and wave period of 7.16 s. In the present work, wave environmental effects were investigated firstly for the two solvers, and good agreement is achieved. Moreover, pressure distribution in each OWT case is presented, including detailed information about local flow fields. The time history of the forces at inflow direction and its moments around the mudline at each OWT part are presented in a dimensionless form with respect to the mean value of the last three loads and the moment amplitudes obtained from the BEM code, where the contribution of rotor force is lower in the tripod case and higher in the jacket case and the calculated hydrodynamic load that effect on jacket foundation type is lower than other two cases.     

Users’ perceptions and willingness to pay in interurban toll roads: identifying differences across regions from a nationwide survey in Spain

Users’ acceptability is considered one of the key drivers for the successful implementation of transport policy measures. This is especially crucial in the case of toll roads since they are financed through drivers’ contributions. Previous literature in this field has mainly focused on measuring users’ attitudes towards urban congestion pricing strategies. However limited research has been developed concerning interurban toll roads. Previous research shows that socioeconomic variables are not conclusive to explain users’ perceptions towards tolls. By contrast, other drivers such as regional differences seem to play a more important role, especially when charging conditions within the same nation greatly vary across regions. This paper analyzes regional differences in users’ attitudes within an asymmetrical distribution of the toll road network across regions. Based on a nationwide survey conducted to road users in interurban toll roads in Spain, we develop both a binomial logit and a censored regression (tobit) model to explore drivers’ perceptions and willingness to pay. The research concludes that users from regions with a more extensive tolled network generally show a more negative attitude towards charges, but not necessarily a lower willingness to pay. The paper also points out that an asymmetrical distribution of toll roads across regions may result in negative perceptions among those users perceiving to be unfairly treated when compared to citizens in other regions.     

An activity-based approach of investigating travel behaviour of older people

The paper presents the results of an investigation on daily activity-travel scheduling behaviour of older people by using an advanced econometric model and a household travel survey, collected in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Canada in 2011. The activity-travel scheduling model considers a dynamic time–space constrained scheduling process. The key contribution of the paper is to reveal daily activity-travel scheduling behaviour through a comprehensive econometric framework. The resulting empirical model reveals many behavioural details. These include the role that income plays in moderating out-of-home time expenditure choices of older people. Older people in the highest and lowest income categories tend to have lower variations in time expenditure choices than those in middle-income categories. Overall, the time expenditure choices become more stable with increasing age, indicating that longer activity durations and lower activity frequency become more prevalent with increasing age. Daily activity type and location choices reveal a clear random utility-maximizing rational behaviour of older people. It is clear that increasing spatial accessibility to various activity locations is a crucial factor in defining daily out-of-home activity participation of older people. It is also clear that the diversity of out-of-home activity type choices reduces with increasing age and older people are more sensitive to auto travel time than to transit or non-motorized travel time.     

Bicycle mode share in China: a city-level analysis of long term trends

In the past 15 years, cities in China have experienced big changes in socioeconomic and traffic conditions, resulting in a long term change in bicycle use. This study aims to quantify the changes in bicycle mode share in Chinese cities and explore the potential causes. Based on data from 51 cities, it is found that bicycle mode share at the city level decreased gradually in the past. Conventional bicycle mode share decreased with a rate of 3 % per year, but electric bicycle mode share increased with a rate of 2 % per year. The correlations between city features such as demographics and built environments and bicycle mode share at different city sizes are compared. The generalized linear models are estimated to relate the changes in the share of different trip modes to various city-level factors. The results show that the bicycle mode share in a city is impacted by factors including city area size, population density, number of cars, percentage of local road mileage among all roads, and trip purpose. Possible reasons for the changes in bicycle uses in Chinese cities are explored and policy implications are discussed.