Consumers as participants in transportation planning

Legal requirements for public participation in transportation planning increase the opportunity for transportation consumers to influence the design of systems they will use. However, the implementation of these requirements may also increase the possibility that system design will be dominated by the opinions of outspoken groups. This study postulates that public participation is biased, and seeks to test this proposition using data from an Oregon survey consisting of approximately 2,400 respondents. Using Automatic Interaction Detector and cross tabulation analyses, different participation rates were uncovered for groups identified by demographic, attitudinal and behavioral variables.The authors thank the Oregon Department of Transportation for making the original data for the study available.     

The risk of walking

Analysis of National Travel Survey data on the amount of walking done by 17,000 individuals has shown that people spend about twenty minutes per day travelling by foot, on average. This implies a pedestrian accident rate of about 500 accidents per hundred million miles walked, a greater rate than for car drivers but less than for motor cyclists. This paper also relates accident risk to age and sex of pedestrian, time of day, day of week, and month of year. It is further shown that, for daylight hours, the average number of pedestrian accidents is approximately proportional to the product of vehicle and pedestrian flows.The authors would like to thank the Department of the Environment and the Transport and Road Research Laboratory for making available NTS and accident data respectively, and C. E. Mollart for his able assistance.     

Special provisions for left turns at signalized intersections to increase capacity and safety

Heavy left-turns at intersections are not only difficult to accommodate but also often cause traffic accidents. Such problem can be reduced by adopting an exclusive left-turn signal phase, but in this case the cycle length needs to be extended and the overall intersection capacity reduced. This problem is particularly important in such countries as Korea where unprotected left turns are rarely used. Innovative intersection designs and operational methods for avoiding these problems are presented and their effects of increasing capacity and reducing vehicle delay are analyzed. They rule out the requirement for exclusive left-turn phase while accommodating a large volume of left-turns quite safely.     

Numerical simulation of transient bulk queues with general vehicle dispatching strategies

Relatively simple iterative procedures are developed for simulating the queue length distribution for transient bulk arrival, bulk service queues. The method allows the study of holding strategies where the length of time a vehicle is held can depend on both the length ofthe queue and how long the vehicle has been held. The system is modeled in discrete time, and a series of numerical experiments are presented that examine the errors introduced by this discretization.     

Characteristics of truck traffic in Singapore

This paper presents the results of a project conducted to study the characteristics of truck traffic in Singapore. Detailed traffic surveys recording counts of vehicles by axle-configuration were performed at 219 sites over a period of nearly two years. The surveys covered 5 different road classes, namely expressways, arterials, collectors, industrial roads and local roads. It was found that the time distribution of truck travel were not the same among the five road classes. The peaking characteristics of truck traffic were less pronounced compared to passenger car traffic. The peak hour truck volume varied from 67.0% to 9.7% of the daily truck traffic as compared to 13.8% for passenger car traffic. The lane distribution pattern of truck traffic was studied in detail by road class, and was found to be a function of total directional traffic volume, total directional truck volume and the number of traffic lanes. Composition analysis was also carried out to study the lane use characteristics of single- and multiple-unit trucks.     

Analysis of the Dynamic Response of a Rolling String-Type Tire Model to Lateral Wheel-Plane Vibrations

A theory has been developed for the analysis and prediction of the dynamic frequency response of lateral force and moment acting upon a pneumatic tire when the wheel is moved laterally and swivelled about the vertical axis. The theory establishes the force and moment response of a tire model which consists of a stretched circular string with mass, elastically supported to the wheel-center-plane. The analysis is confined to small deviations from rectilinear motion such that it is permissible to assume that sliding does not occur in the contact area. In this manner, the equations are kept linear.

The theory which gives an exact analysis of the dynamic response of the model adopted shows satisfactory qualitative agreement with experiments. The change in the moment response due to tire inertia reduces the tendency to shimmy at higher frequencies and higher speeds. The lateral force response, however, changes in an unfavorable fashion which, for castered wheels, may result in a decrease of the effective damping about the king-pin at higher speeds and frequencies.     

Time series for dissolved cadmium at a coastal station in the Western Baltic Sea

Concentrations of dissolved Cd, Cd(diss), were measured weekly from June 1991 to June 1994 at a coastal station in the western Baltic Sea. The mean concentration of 204 pmol/dm³ is about 50% higher than in open Baltic Sea surface waters. A distinct seasonal cycle was observed with elevated concentrations in winter and spring (272 pmol/dm³) and lower values in summer and autumn (131 pmol/dm³). Relating the seasonal changes in Cd(diss) to the nutrient cycle revealed ΔCd(diss)/ΔNO₃ and ΔCd(diss)/ΔPO₄ ratios which are consistent with other measurements and seem to confirm the concept of a nutrient-like biogeochemistry of Cd. However, a time shift of two to three months exists between the depletion of nutrients in spring and the depletion of Cd(diss). Possibly, this indicates a decoupling of Cd(diss) from nutrients during the spring plankton bloom. However, no final conclusions can be drawn yet.Cd(diss) concentrations decreased significantly during the three year measurement period, whereas nitrate concentrations increased. A possible linkage between eutrophication and the Cd budget of the Baltic Sea is discussed.