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.     

Cost and time damping: evidence from aggregate rail direct demand models

There is a significant body of evidence from both disaggregate choice modelling literature and practical travel demand forecasting that the responsiveness to cost and possibly to time diminishes with journey length. This has, in Britain at least, been termed ‘Cost Damping’, and is recognised in guidance issued by the UK Department for Transport. However, the consistency of the effect across modes and data types has not been established. Cost damping, if it exists, affects both the forecasting of demand and our understanding of behaviour. This paper aims to investigate the evidence for cost and time damping in rail demand using aggregate rail ticket sales data. The rail ticket sales data in Britain has, for many years, formed the basis of analysis of a wide range of impacts of rail demand. It records the number of tickets sold between station pairs, and it is generally felt to provide a reasonably accurate reflection of travel demand. However, the consistency of these direct demand models with choice modelling and highway demand model structures has not been investigated. Rail direct demand models estimated by ticket sales data indicate only slight variation in the fare elasticity with distance, as is evidenced in the largest meta-analysis of price elasticities conducted to date (Wardman in J Transp Econ Policy 48(3):367–384, 2014). This study of UK elasticities shows strong variation between urban and inter-urban trips, presumably a segmentation at least in part by purpose, but less remaining variation by trip length. A lack of variation by length supports the hypothesis of cost damping, because constant cost sensitivity would imply that fare elasticity would increase strongly with distance, because of the increasing impact of higher fares at longer distances. In this paper we indicate that rail direct demand models have some consistency of behavioural paradigm with utility based choice models used in highway planning. We go on to use rail demand data to estimate time and fare elasticities in the context of various cost damping functions. Our empirical contribution is to estimate time elasticities on a basis directly comparable with cost elasticities and to show that the phenomenon of cost damping is strongly present in ticket sales data. This finding implies that cost damping should be included in models intended for multimodal analysis, which may otherwise give incorrect predictions.     

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.     

焊接残余应力对深潜器耐压球壳承载能力的影响

耐压球壳通常采用焊接方式将两个半球壳连接成整球,在焊缝处产生的接近材料屈服强度的焊接残余应力对球壳的承载能力有多大的影响,是否需要做焊后消除残余应力处理,将直接影响球壳的安全性和生产成本。而现有对球壳极限强度计算,无论是理论计算还是数值计算,均只考虑了球壳初始缺陷中的几何缺陷对球壳极限强度的影响。该文将在现有的耐压壳极限强度设计公式基础上,采用数值计算的方法对耐压球壳的焊接过程进行数值模拟,得到焊后球壳的焊接残余应力分布,并在此基础上考虑残余应力对球壳极限强度的影响,结果表明,对于大潜深厚球壳,焊接残余应力对耐压球壳承载能力影响不显著,为大深度潜器耐压球罐是否需做焊后消除残余应力处理提供了一定的参考依据。     

全海深双球连接耐压舱的结构设计探索

钛合金耐压球壳被广泛地应用于大深度载人潜水器.但是,由于受到材料强度的限制,若采用成熟的Ti-6Al-4VELI来设计3人型的全海深载人舱,其壁厚将超出很多国家的现有制造能力.为了解决这一矛盾,该文提出了一种新的双球连接的方案,并以中国船级社最新的强度标准作为优化约束条件,用有限元分析法对这种结构形式进行了优化设计.最后,对双球结构方案与传统单球方案作了比较.     

冰载荷下的船舶运动建模

随着极地航道的开辟以及极地海洋能源开发的需要,海冰与船体的相互作用以及极地船舶航行与作业安全越来越受到关注。本文主要针对破冰过程的几个典型阶段,对冰载荷对船舶的作用力进行了分析与计算,并考察了破冰船在不同的海冰密集度、冰厚以及船舶不同航速情况下的不同影响。     

水线面大开口深拖母船的阻力性能研究

采用CFD方法对某一深拖母船的阻力性能进行分析比较,计算一组航速下深拖母船的阻力,比较不同开口方式的阻力性能,分析其流场和压力分布,研究其阻力增加的原因,并探索减小阻力的方法。计算方法及所得出的结论可以为母船的设计以及开口船舶的阻力性能研究提供参考。     

实船舵空化现象试验观察

空化是高航速下水面舰船螺旋桨及舵等附体上常见的现象,空化的产生会带来振动、噪声和空蚀等一系列问题,直接影响舰船的舒适性和局部结构的安全性.而由于国内有关实尺度舵空化数据的缺乏,导致人们对于实船舵空化的状况仍知之甚少.本文通过试验方法观察了某一实船舵在一定航速、一定舵角下的空化状况,获得了实船舵空化出现的位置及程度,为实尺度舵空化问题的认识和优化提供了一定参考.