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.     

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.     

船用质谱仪电磁兼容结构设计

船用质谱仪作为舰艇舱室气体测量的主要设备,其电磁兼容性能的好坏直接关系到舰艇舱室环境检测的准确性,对艇员的正常生活和工作,甚至舰艇的作战能力都会产生很大的影响.本文依据电磁兼容的基本原理,从屏蔽和线缆敷设2个方面对船用质谱仪进行电磁兼容结构设计,使仪器满足GJB151B《军用设备和分系统电磁发射和敏感度要求》的相关规定,从而保证仪器在复杂的电磁环境下测量的准确度、可靠性和稳定性.     

基于LQR限宽水域中KVLCC2操纵运动控制研究

在航道宽度受限制的水域中,船舶会受到岸壁效应的影响,横向力与首摇力矩将发生变化,这会对船舶的航行安全产生不利的影响.鉴于此问题,本文应用现代控制理论最优控制LQR方法,对在限制水域中航行的超大型油轮KVLCC2的操纵运动进行控制研究.为便于LQR控制器的设计,采用线性状态空间形式的操纵运动方程,基于数值模拟获取的相应线性水动力系数,计算出使目标函数值最小的增益矩阵K,从而得到满足最优控制规律的时域舵角变化,实现对不同宽度水域中船舶运动的最优控制,并与极点配置控制法作比较,验证LQR控制器的优越性.结果表明,当船岸距离d/L≥1.2时,船舶基本不受岸壁效应的影响,控制幅度极小;当岸壁距离d/L=0.25时,摆舵角度将超过6°,同时船舶前进速度也将下降,下降幅度将超过前进速度的10%,岸壁效应明显.     

Evaluating air emission inventories and indicators from cruise vessels at ports

This paper provides an estimation of air emissions (CO₂, NO_X, SO_X and PM) released by cruise vessels at the port level. The methodology is based on the “full bottom-up” approach and starts by evaluating the fuel consumed by each vessel on the basis of its individual port activities (manoeuvring, berthing and hoteling). The Port of Barcelona was selected as the site at which to perform the analysis, in which 125 calls of 30 cruise vessels were monitored. Real-time data from the automatic identification system (AIS), factor emissions from engine certificates and vessel characteristics from IHS Sea-web database were also collected for the analysis. The research findings show that the most appropriate indicators are inventory emissions per “port-time gross tonnage”, “port-time passenger” and “port time”. These emission indicators improve our understanding of cruise emissions and will facilitate the work that aims to estimate reliably and quickly the in-port ship emission inventories of cruise ports.     

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.     

Isolating high-priority metro and feeder bus transfers using smart card data

Fixed-rail metro (or ‘subway’) infrastructure is generally unable to provide access to all parts of the city grid. Consequently, feeder bus lines are an integral component of urban mass transit systems. While passengers prefer a seamless transfer between these two distinct transportation services, each service’s operations are subject to a different set of factors that contribute to metro-bus transfer delay. Previous attempts to understand transfer delay were limited by the availability of tools to measure the time and cost associated with passengers’ transfer experience. This paper uses data from smart card systems, an emerging technology that automatically collects passenger trip data, to understand transfer delay. The primary objective of this study is to use smart card data to derive a reproducible methodology that isolates high priority transfer points between the metro system and its feeder-bus systems. The paper outlines a methodology to identify transfer transactions in the smart card dataset, estimate bus headways without the aid of geographic location information, estimate three components of the total transfer time (walking time, waiting time, and delay time), and isolate high-priority transfer pairs. The paper uses smart card data from Nanjing, China as a case study. The results isolate eight high priority metro-bus transfer pairs in the Nanjing metro system and finally, offers several targeted measures to improve transfer efficiency.     

深海极限波浪运动特性的简便算法(英文)

本文基于五阶Stokes规则波理论,提出了一种快速求解深海极限波浪运动特性的数学模型.研究中,按照上跨零点和下跨零点的方法由计算或实测的极限波浪波面时间历程确定包含极限波峰或波谷的相邻两个周期的平均值为五阶Stokes规则波的波浪周期,然后根据极限波峰或波谷值反推确定波浪入射波幅.通过与已有的数值结果和实验数据对比,验证了本文所建立的数值模型可以快速准确的计算出极限波浪下的速度场,相比其他模型,更适合于工程应用.     

声相关计程仪的工作原理与适用性

声相关计程仪是一种利用波形不变性原理制成的自主式测速导航设备。即便在GPS导航高速发展、INS系统已提高到很高精度的今天,声相关计程仪仍然有其不可替代的导航作用,尤其在军事领域更是如此。通过介绍船用声相关计程仪的基本原理及其应用范围,阐明声相计程仪的组成各部分作用特点及其适用性。