Are urban bus services natural monopolies?

Although Britain's local bus services have been open to free competition for more than three years, most have continued to be operated as monopolies by the original incumbents. Some competition has occurred, but the incumbents have usually driven off entrants. This paper uses findings from case-studies of competition and from deregulation generally to consider whether monopoly operation has inherent advantages over competitive operation. If so, urban bus routes would be natural monopolies. The evidence suggests that they may be, because single-operator services are more convenient for users.     

荷兰铁路最新研究成果

荷兰铁路最新研究集中在开发用户友好工具以利用标准的列车检测数据对车站晚点列车进行实验分析、建立不同线路列车到发晚点时间分布的随机模型。根据位于荷兰车站Hague HS的轨道电路对近10000次列车运行自动检测可以证明，TNV－Prepare软件工具可以很好地记录列车占用和释放时间以及列车速度。若一条线路上晚点时间很短（1分钟以下）或晚点时间长（5分钟以上）的次数不是太大，发车晚点分布在很多情况下符合一种指数分布。用一种新的工具对大铁路网的时刻表以及在中转车站的相互连接的线路之间的晚点的扩散进行了分析，将列车描述成一个基于Max-Plus线性系统的间断事件系统（DES）。它有助于确定网络中的关键环路，交叉线路时刻表的剩余间隙以及网络中的晚点扩散。另一个铁路研究领域是线路基础设施养护维修与更新改造的寿命周期成本估算的决策支持系统，该系统经证明对不同线路上部结构设计的寿命周期成本的估算非常有效，对轨道和道岔养护维修与更新改造计划规则的修改也十分有效。     

Generalized magnetorheological (MR) damper model and its application in semi-active control of vehicle suspension system

In this paper, analytical characterization of the magneto-rheological (MR) damper is done using a new modified algebraic model. Algebraic model is also more preferable because of its low computational expenses compared to differential Bouc-Wen’s model which is highly computationally demanding. This model along with the obtained model parameters is used as a semi-active suspension device in a quarter car model and the stationary response of the vehicle traversing on a rough road is obtained. The control part consists of two nested controllers. One of them is the system controller which generates the desired damping force and the other is the damper controller which adjusts the voltage level to MR damper so as to track the desired damping force. For the system controller a model reference skyhook Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) is used and for the damper controller a continuous state algorithm is built to determine the input voltage so as to gain the desired damping force. The analytical model is subsequently used in the quarter car vehicle model and the vehicular responses are studied. A simulation study is performed to prove the effectiveness and robustness of the semi-active control approach. Results show that the semi-active controller can achieve compatible performance as that of active suspension controller except for a little deterioration.     

In-situ measurement of loading stresses with X-ray diffraction for yield locus determination

The application of the X-ray diffraction method is introduced to solve the problem of inhomogeneous deformation fields in the specimens used for sheet metal characterization. In this method, strains are measured on one side of a specimen with optical measurement systems. On the other side, loading stresses on a specimen are captured with an X-ray diffractometer mounted on a universal testing machine. By this way, the whole stress-strain history of a material point is tracked during testing. The method was first applied to uniaxial tension tests, whereby the applicability of the theory of stress factors and effective X-ray elastic constants were tested. The relaxation behavior of a sheet material which shows itself as stress drops during in-situ experimentation was characterized and compensated by a visco-plastic material model for different stress states. The proposed method was applied to characterize aluminum alloy AA5182 under plane strain tension and shear conditions and the results were compared with the conventionally obtained yield locus. Numerical analyses of a workpiece with the Vegter and Yld2000-2D material models show that the enriched yield locus definition with accurate plane strain tension and shear stresses captures the experimentally obtained surface strains more precisely.     

Co-operative control for regenerative braking and friction braking to increase energy recovery without wheel lock

This paper presents a regenerative braking co-operative control algorithm to increase energy recovery without wheel lock. Considering the magnitude of the braking force available between the tire and road surface, the control algorithm was designed for the regenerative braking force at the front wheel and friction braking force at the rear wheel to be increased following the friction coefficient line. The performance of the proposed regenerative braking co-operative control algorithm was evaluated by the hardware in the loop simulation (HILS) with an electronic wedge brake on its front wheels and an electronic mechanical brake on its rear wheels. The HILS results showed that a proper braking force on the front and rear wheels on a low μ road prevented the lock of the front wheels that was connected to the motor, and maintained the regenerative braking and increased energy recovery.     

Automatic parking of vehicles: A review of literatures

Collision accidents often occur during parking or reversing cars. In allusion to this point, this paper conducts a review of literatures on automatic parking. To begin with, a brief introduction of automatic parking including its background and significance is given. Then its commercial application, research status and latest progress are summarized which include visual perception, ultrasonic sensors and radar technology, path planning, control algorithms based on fuzzy theory, neural network, image processing and recognition technology, and digital signal processing technology, etc. On further analysis, some reasonable conclusions are drawn and the future work is suggested.     

Method for precise controlling of the at shift control system

The shift comfort and efficiency of Automatic Transmission in vehicle are highly influenced by the pressure of the clutch shift control system, especially by the electro-hydraulic clutch subsystem. In this paper, the new design principles of electro-hydraulic clutch systems developed and modeled in detail, the clutch-to-clutch control system is analyzed in three time intervals: oil filled phase, changing phase of clutch torque and synchronous phase of clutch speed. The demand pressures for the engaged clutches calculated in each phase and is precisely built up by using fuzzy slide mode control, the time of hydraulic pressure building-up is very sensitive to the dither current in simulation. All control parameters are optimized by Cosimulation between software Simulink and SimulationX. Finally, the optimal algorithm of the clutch shift control is written into the transmission control unit of a testing vehicle. The testing results show that the suggested control strategy is effective.     

Agent-based model for continuous activity planning with an open planning horizon

The paper proposes the microscopic travel demand model continuous target-based activity planning (C-TAP) that generates multi-week schedules by means of a continuous planning approach with an open planning horizon. C-TAP introduces behavioral targets to describe people’s motivation to perform activities, and it uses a planning heuristic to make on-the-fly decisions about upcoming activities. The planning heuristic bases its decisions on three aspects: a discomfort index derived from deviations from agents’ past performance with regard to their behavioral targets; the effectiveness of the immediate execution; and activity execution options available in the near future. The paper reports the results of a test scenario based on an existing 6-week continuous travel diary and validates C-TAP by comparing simulation results with observed behavioral patterns along several dimensions (weekday similarities, weekday execution probabilities of activities, transition probabilities between activities, duration distributions of activities, frequency distributions of activities, execution interval distributions of activities and weekly travel probability distributions). The results show that C-TAP has the capability to reproduce observed behavior and the flexibility to introduces new behavioral patterns.     

Tollroads are only part of the overall trip: the error of our ways in past willingness to pay studies

With rare exception, actual tollroad traffic in many countries has failed to reproduce forecast traffic levels, regardless of whether the assessment is made after an initial year of operation or as long as 10 years after opening. Pundits have offered many reasons for this divergence, including optimism bias, strategic misrepresentation, the promise to equity investors of early returns on investment, errors in land use forecasts, and specific assumptions underlying the traffic assignment models used to develop traffic forecasts. One such assumption is the selection of a behaviourally meaningful value of travel time savings (VTTS) for use in a generalised cost or generalised time user benefit expression that is the main behavioural feature of the traffic assignment (route choice) model. Numerous empirical studies using stated choice experiments have designed choice sets of alternatives as if users choose a tolled route or a free route under the (implied) assumption that the tolled route is tolled for the entire trip. Reality is often very different, with a high incidence of use of a non-tolled road leading into and connecting out of a tolled link. In this paper we recognise this feature of route choice and redesign the stated choice experiment to account for it. Furthermore, this study is a follow up to a previous study undertaken before a new toll road was in place, and it benefits from real exposure to the new toll road. We find that the VTTS is noticeably reduced, and if the VTTS is a significant contributing influence on errors on traffic forecasts, then the lower estimates make sense behaviourally.