Adelaide bus service reform: Impacts, achievements and lessons

Adelaide's bus system has been transformed from a government monopoly operation to a competitively tendered system with services provided by private operators under contract. The ‘Adelaide model’ has unique features, and has been considered in several international reviews of urban bus service procurement. The paper reviews the experience in Adelaide up to 2006/07. It updates previous evidence that focused on technical efficiency impacts. It particularly examines the development of the system to address allocative efficiency, in terms of the quantity, quality and market orientation of the services provided, and the consequent effects on patronage.     

An application of the CUSUM algorithm to freeway incident detection based on two contiguous detectors

The CUSUM (cumulative sum of log‐likelihood ratio) algorithm is a detection algorithm that shows potential for the improvement of incident detection algorithms because it is designed to minimize the mean detect delay for a given false alarm constraint and it can also detect changes with different patterns. In this study, the CUSUM algorithm was applied to freeway incident detection by integrating traffic measurements from two contiguous loop detectors and the non‐stationarity of traffic flows. The developed algorithm was tested based on incident data from the PATH program, with consideration given to the impact of different geometric conditions on algorithm performance. It was also compared with two existing algorithms, in order to address the influence of traffic patterns. The evaluation results show that the CUSUM incident detection algorithm can perform equally well in comparison with the selected algorithms.     

Short‐term travel speed prediction models in car navigation systems

The objective of this study is the development of the short‐term prediction models to predict average spot speeds of the subject location in the short‐term periods of 5, 10 and 15 minutes respectively. In this study, field data were used to see the comparison of the predictability of Regression Analysis, ARIMA, Kalman Filtering and Neural Network models. These field data were collected from image processing detectors at the urban expressway for 17 hours including both peak and non‐peak hours. Most of the results were reliable, but the results of models using Kalman Filtering and Neural Networks are more accurate and realistic than those of the others.     

Abyssal seafloor waste isolation: the concept

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), with industry and university participation, conducted an assessment of the concept of isolating certain wastes (i.e., sewage sludge, fly ash from municipal incinerators, and contaminated dredged material) on the oceans' abyssal seafloor. In this assessment the advantages, disadvantages, and economic and environmental viability of potential engineering methods for achieving abyssal waste isolation were identified and compared. This paper presents background to the Abyssal Plains Waste Isolation (APWI) Project, describes the characteristics of the waste streams and quantities potentially available for disposal via the abyssal isolation concept, summarizes regulations affecting use of the abyssal seafloor for disposal of wastes, and introduces the technical and scientific premises underlying implementation of the concept.     

葡萄牙铁路电动车组的翻新改造

介绍了葡萄牙铁路对20世纪70年代生产的电动车组进行现代化改造和整修.     

WRC已经没有前途——莫斯利专访

一方面受到斯巴鲁和铃木退出的冲击，另一方面又面临“国际拉力挑战赛”（Intercontinental Rally Challenge）日益增长的威胁，WRC面对的是一个艰难的2009赛季，但是莫斯利却向我们说明什么才是锦标赛的未来，他又怎样使赛事更加稳固并且获得更多的利益。     

Characterizing Driver Stress Using Physiological and Operational Data from Real-World Electric Vehicle Driving Experiment

Electric Vehicle (EV) is becoming a viable and popular option, but the acceptance of the technology can be challenging and lead to an elevated driving stress. The existing studies on stress of vehicle driving has been mainly limited to the non-EVs or survey analysis. In this research, EV driving data of 40 subjects is analyzed, where each subject was asked to drive an EV over a 53 km course in a suburban city of South Korea. Physiological data including electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye-gazing were obtained along with vehicle operational data such as state of charge, altitude, and speed. The dataset was rich in information, but individual difference and nonlinear patterns made it extremely difficult to draw meaningful insights. As a solution, an information-theoretic framework is proposed to evaluate mutual information between physiological and operational data as well as the entropy of physiological data itself. The result shows two groups of subjects, one not showing much evidence of stress and the other exhibiting sufficient stress. Among the subjects who showed sufficient driving stress, 9 out of the top 10 high EEG-entropy drivers were female, one driver showed a strong pattern of range anxiety, and several showed patterns of uphill climbing anxiety.     

A note on costs per ton/mile at sea

This paper highlights the efect of several operating parameters that influence the short sea Ro-Ro transportation system. In view of the fact that many of the operating factors exhibit random variations a simulation model is constructed, the output of which is used for a simple economic model. The results for different alternatives are examined taking RFR as the basis of comparison.

Optimum solutions are found whenever possible. Some general conclusions on the relative economic superiority of the operating alternatives have been drawn. It is expected that the results and essentially the technique itself would be useful to designers, owners and operators of Ro-Ro ships and manufacturers of Ro-Ro equipment.     

Using risk analysis to determine the potential range of lifecycle costs for urban transit systems

Intense competition for limited public funding for urban transport projects can often result in proponents of individual schemes presenting minimized costs and maximized benefits to funding bodies to try to ensure that their scheme is chosen above others for funding. This presents public bodies with a problem, especially in an era when they are keen to attract private contributions for transit schemes. Risk modelling techniques can be of great assistance in ascertaining ranges of costs and benefits for individual submissions and deciding upon which projects should receive priority-not only those with greatest cost-benefit indices, but also those whose indices have low levels of associated risk to allay the fears of the traditionally risk averse private sector.