Response-based analysis for Tension Leg Platform

The typical industry practice for Tension Leg Platform (TLP) design focuses on a conventional short-term design recipe, which assumes that an N-year design environment leads to an N-year response. In the response-based design method, the TLP is designed to withstand N-year responses rather than respond to N-year environmental conditions. In this paper, we present an overview and a general procedure for the response-based design method and use a case study to compare the critical TLP responses between the two methods. The results of our comparison show that the conventional short-term design method often contains an element of conservatism and that the response-based design method can reduce the design conditions and thereby achieve cost savings.     

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.     

The Dependency of People on the Great Barrier Reef,Australia

Understanding how people are dependent on Large Scale Marine Protected Areas (LSMPAs) is important for understanding how people might be sensitive to changes that affect these seascapes. We review how resource dependency is conceptualized and propose that it be broadened to include cultural values such as pride in resource status, scientific heritage, appreciation of aesthetics, biodiversity, and lifestyle opportunities. We provide an overview of how local residents (n = 3,181 face-to-face surveys), commercial fishers (n = 210, telephone surveys), and tourism operators (n = 119 telephone surveys) are potentially dependent on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a region currently experiencing significant environmental, social, and economic change. We found that commercial fishers and tourism operators were dependent not only financially on the GBR, but also because of their age, years in the industry and region, lack of education, and the number of dependents. These stakeholders lacked flexibility to secure alternative employment. All stakeholder groups, regardless of economic imperatives, were dependent on the GBR because of their cultural connections. We propose that resource dependency also provides an umbrella concept to describe the cultural services provided by an ecosystem, which can be described through place-based dependence and place-identity.     

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.     

Understanding the impacts of a combination of service improvement strategies on bus running time and passenger’s perception

Transit agencies implement many strategies in order to provide an attractive transportation service. This article aims to evaluate the impacts of implementing a combination of strategies, designed to improve the bus transit service, on running time and passenger satisfaction. These strategies include using smart card fare collection, introducing limited-stop bus service, implementing reserved bus lanes, using articulated buses, and implementing transit signal priority (TSP). This study uses stop-level data collected from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM)’s automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) systems, in Montréal, Canada. The combination of these strategies has lead to a 10.5% decline in running time along the limited stop service compared to the regular service. The regular route running time has increased by 1% on average compared to the initial time period. The study also shows that riders are generally satisfied with the service improvements. They tend to overestimate the savings associated with the implementation of this combination of strategies by 3.5-6.0 min and by 2.5-4.1 min for both the regular route and the limited stop service, respectively. This study helps transit planners and policy makers to better understand the effects of implementing a combination of strategies to improve running time and passenger’s perception of these changes in service.     

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.