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.     

钢材货装卸工艺的综合开发与优化

为适应钢材货源结构的变化,提高钢材货装卸质量,秦皇岛港对钢材装卸工艺及工属具进行改进和优化。分别介绍了钢板、铜板、型钢、盘条和卷钢装卸改进后的工艺,并将新旧装卸工艺作了比较,可供同行借鉴。     

Effect of Explosion in a Gas Pipeline Compartment of a Utility Tunnel on Neighboring Metro Tunnels北大核心CSCD

In this paper the numerical simulation analysis of the effect of explosion in the gas pipeline compartment of a utility tunnel on neighboring metro tunnels was conducted using the software AUTODYN. The results show that the TNT equivalent in a fireproof partition with length of 200 m is 41.6 kg when the gas concentration in the gas pipeline compartment reaches 10%; the blast wave has much effect on the crown and arch waist of the round metro tunnel and it’s necessary to take some protective measures in both areas; when the surrounding soil is sand, the utili- ty tunnel is above the round metro tunnel and their alignments are in the same direction, the greater the vertical spacing between the utility tunnel and the metro tunnel, the smaller the effect of the blast wave on the metro tunnel; when the vertical spacing is 7.2 m, the maximum dynamic tensile stress is 1.86 MPa (including the static stress value of 1 MPa in the tunnel segment) and it is slightly smaller than the designed tensile strength of metro tunnel (about 1.89 MPa). The maximum vibration velocity and the maximum displacement meet the structural stability require- ments, so it is suggested the vertical spacing between the utility tunnel and metro tunnel shall not be less than 7.2 m. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

集中排烟隧道近火源顶板热参数理论预测

由于集中排烟模式能较好地控制上下游烟气的扩散范围,故被广泛应用于长大隧道设计中。文章针对小尺度火灾,建立了集中排烟隧道火源热烟羽受限发展理论模型,与已有火灾实验结果进行对比,完成了理论模型的验证,预测了顶板下方最高烟气温升、偏移距离等热参数。预测结果表明:火灾强度一定时,烟气最大温升随等效风速增加而急剧下降,且火灾强度对烟气温升的影响也较为显著;当等效风速超过1.5 m/s时,最大温升变化趋缓直至恒定;等效风速较小时,羽流未发生明显偏移,随着等效风速进一步增大,偏移距离明显增大,其变化速率随火灾强度的增大而减小。经回归整理得到了顶板下方烟气最大温升、偏移距离的无量纲准则关联式。     

Measuring quality of service in dial-a-ride operations: the case of a Canadian city

In many countries, dial-a-ride services are provided by public authorities to elderly and handicapped people who cannot use regular transit. Cost minimization is key to running these services, but one can observe a growing interest in quality measurement and improvement. A first step in improving quality is to define a quality measurement scale specific to dial-a-ride services. A second step is to incorporate quality measurements in mathematical models that serve as a basis for optimization algorithms. To this end, an extensive survey of dial-a-ride users was conducted in Longueuil, the largest suburb of Montreal, Canada. This paper describes the steps of the survey and presents its main conclusions: (1) 56 attributes were identified based on interviews, (2) the questionnaire developed has proved to be reliable and valid, (3) an exploratory factor analysis allowed us to determine 13 dimensions of quality in dial-a-ride services, (4) the most important criteria for users were identified, and (5) population segmenting variables by which subgroups of users can be categorized were also determined. Managerial implications of our results are also discussed.     

静态爆破法在深圳地铁施工中的应用

静态爆破是近年来发展起来的一种新型爆破施工技术,它可在无震动、无飞石,无噪音、无污染的条件下破碎或切割岩石或混凝土构筑物。深圳地铁2号线东延线土建工程安托山站—侨香站区间矿山法施工竖井系选用此工法在2 500 mm×3 000 mm雨水箱涵附近成功地进行了中、微风化花岗岩开挖施工,确保了雨水箱涵的安全性。     

Estimating the robustness of questionnaire results: lessons from a mixed-mode survey of expectations for tele-working and road-based business travel

The robustness of questionnaire results to various forms of bias are explored in the context of a dual-mode (web and hardcopy) survey of employers’ anticipations of levels of employee commuting and business travel activity under a range of future ICT scenarios. The questionnaire incorporated several innovative features which, together with the dual-mode format, allowed an unusually wide range of analyses. For example: the robustness of respondents’ opinions was tested by examining the effect of incorporating alternative versions of a briefing text, one being very positive and one very negative, about the role of ICT; instrument bias was identified via detailed comparison of the results from the two versions of the questionnaire; and the impact of exogenous factors which are often ignored or taken as constant was assessed via special supplementary questions. Analysis showed that the robustness of opinions and expectations varied and was influenced by respondent characteristics, and that results from the two versions of the questionnaire differed significantly. It is concluded that opinions and expectations are less robust, and questionnaire results are more subject to bias and myopic interpretation, than is generally recognised and that web-based surveys seem particularly vulnerable to sampling bias. Methods are suggested for measuring robustness, for reducing bias and for validating and contextualising results. The use of contrasting briefing texts is recommended as a means of establishing the robustness of opinions and expectations while supplementary questions are recommended for validating and contextualising SP and SE exercises.

Second best toll and capacity optimisation in networks: solution algorithm and policy implications

This paper looks at the first and second best jointly optimal toll and road capacity investment problems from both policy and technical oriented perspectives. On the technical side, the paper investigates the applicability of the constraint cutting algorithm for solving the second best problem under elastic demand which is formulated as a bilevel programming problem. The approach is shown to perform well despite several problems encountered by our previous work in Shepherd and Sumalee (Netw. Spat. Econ., 4(2): 161–179, 2004). The paper then applies the algorithm to a small sized network to investigate the policy implications of the first and second best cases. This policy analysis demonstrates that the joint first best structure is to invest in the most direct routes while reducing capacities elsewhere. Whilst unrealistic this acts as a useful benchmark. The results also show that certain second best policies can achieve a high proportion of the first best benefits while in general generating a revenue surplus. We also show that unless costs of capacity are known to be low then second best tolls will be affected and so should be analysed in conjunction with investments in the network.