Conceptual framework for Comparing University baccalaureate programmes in shipping management

For a long time, a maritime education meant the education of a mariner where technical knowledge of seafaring was taught. However, shipping has evolved into a global and sophisticated business where two kinds of managers are required: one that deals with the operation of the vessel and the other that deals with the shore-side business. The education landscape for shipping has also evolved with time. A mariner’s education has evolved from apprenticeship on a ship to a professional certificate from maritime academies. The shore-side business is traditionally staffed by master mariners that made the career transition from sea to shore but the current staffing trend is to employ graduates schooled in business and/or management. It has been long recognised that shore-side business personnel should ideally be also knowledgeable in vessel operations. Under this scenario, several maritime degree programmes have cropped up around the world to bridge the knowledge gap of shore-side business personnel. This paper provides an overview of the evolution of maritime education and selected maritime degree programmes around the world and proposes a conceptual framework for comparing the programmes. The conceptual framework serves as a guide for evaluating maritime education and an aid to curriculum design where choices of courses need to be made to fit into a 3-year or 4-year study programme.     

Macroscopic modeling of lane‐changing for two‐lane traffic flow

We propose a macroscopic model of lane‐changing that is consistent with car‐following behavior on a two‐lane highway. Using linear stability theory, we find that lane‐changing affects the stable region and the propagation speeds of the first‐order and second‐order waves. In analyzing a small disturbance, our model effectively reproduces certain non‐equilibrium traffic‐flow phenomena—small disturbance instability, stop‐and‐go waves, and local clusters that are affected by lane‐changing. The model also gives the flow‐density relationships in terms of the actual flow rate, the lane‐changing rate, and the difference between the potential flow rate (the flow rate that would have occurred without lane‐changing) and the actual flow rate. The relationships between the actual flow rate and traffic density and between the lane‐changing rate and traffic density follow a reverse‐lambda shape, which is largely consistent with observed traffic phenomena.     

Evaluating economic and environmental value of liner vessel sharing along the maritime silk road

The Belt and Road initiative is a novel exploration of China towards strategic collaboration with Eurasia countries to an extent of a larger scale with higher and deeper level of cooperation. To meet the growing global demand of transportation, increasing numbers of liner shipping companies collaborate and form alliances to share vessel capacity and reduce capital costs. Effective liner shipping vessel sharing is essential for the Belt and Road initiative in terms of building efficient maritime transport networks. In promoting environmental development, shipping companies are required to attain higher environmental standards. However, limited literature relates vessel sharing to environmental performance. This paper studies the impacts of liner vessel sharing from the economic and environmental perspectives. Two container allocation models are developed for the two scenarios: with and without vessel sharing. The carbon emissions in transportation are calculated under both scenarios. Numerical studies are carried out using services along the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic (CIPE) Corridor. Liner shipping companies could benefit from vessel sharing in terms of significant profit improvement. Vessel sharing could also benefit the environment by reducing the CO₂ emissions dramatically.     

An activity-based approach for scheduling multimodal transit services

This paper proposes a new activity-based transit assignment model for investigating the scheduling (or timetabling) problem of transit services in multi-modal transit networks. The proposed model can be used to generate the short-term and long-term timetables of multimodal transit lines for transit operations and service planning purposes. The interaction between transit timetables and passenger activity-travel scheduling behaviors is captured by the proposed model, as the activity and travel choices of transit passengers are considered explicitly in terms of departure time choice, activity/trip chain choices, activity duration choice, transit line and mode choices. A heuristic solution algorithm which combines the Hooke–Jeeves method and an iterative supply–demand equilibrium approach is developed to solve the proposed model. Two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the differences between the activity-based approach and the traditional trip-based method, together with comparison on the effects of optimal timetables with even and uneven headways. It is shown that the passenger travel scheduling pattern derived from the activity-based approach is significantly different from that obtained by the trip-based method, and that a demand-sensitive (with uneven headway) timetable is more efficient than an even-headway timetable.     

Modeling the bilateral micro‐searching behavior for urban taxi services using the absorbing markov chain approach

This paper develops a mathematical model that is based on the absorbing Markov chain approach to describe taxi movements, taking into account the stochastic searching processes of taxis in a network. The local searching behavior of taxis is specified by a logit form, and the O‐D demand of passengers is estimated as a logit model with a choice of taxi meeting point. The relationship between customer and taxi waiting times is modeled by a double‐ended queuing system. The problem is solved with a set of non‐linear equations, and some interesting results are presented. The research provides a novel and potentially useful formulation for describing the urban taxi services in a network.     

Some Design Aspects of Anti-Lock Brake Systems for Commercial Vehicles

In this paper a simulation model of tractor-semitrailers suitable for design and performance analysis of anti-lock systems is presented. The model is used to evaluate the effects of various methods of prediction and reselection of the anti-lock system on the braking performance of tractor-semitrailers. The characteristics and the equivalent control logic of a commercially available anti-lock system are examined and its deficiencies are identified. To rectify these deficiencies, improved methods of prediction and reselection are proposed. A comparison of the slip characteristics and braking effectiveness between the proposed and the commercially available systems is made. The effects of various types of control logic on the steerability and directional stability of tractor-semitrailers and on the air consumption of the brake systems will be examined in a separate paper.     

A review of the road safety strategy in hong kong

Since the mid-1990s, the effectiveness of road safety measures in Hong Kong has been weakening. Six administrations in Australia, California, Great Britain (GB), Japan, New Zealand and Sweden are selected to help review the road safety activities in Hong Kong. Nine main components of the road safety strategy, including vision, objectives, targets, action plan, evaluation and monitoring, research and development, quantitative modeling, institutional framework and funding are summarized from the road safety strategies of these overseas administrations and compared to that of Hong Kong. It is found that Hong Kong's road safety activities have to be restructured to make significant improvement. In the future, a new approach structured by the nine different road safety components is recommended. The lessons learnt can be generalized to smooth the progress of other administrations at the Intermediate Stage towards the Advanced Stage of road safety development by using the short-, medium- and long-term approaches.     

Optimization of a feeder-bus route design by using a multiobjective programming approach

This paper presents a feeder-bus route design model, capable of minimizing route length, minimizing maximum route travel time of planned routes, and maximizing service coverage for trip generation. The proposed model considers constraints of route connectivity, subtour prevention, travel time upper bound of a route, relationships between route layout and service coverage, and value ranges of decision variables. Parameter uncertainties are dealt with using fuzzy numbers, and the model is developed as a multiobjective programming problem. A case study of a metro station in Taichung City, Taiwan is then conducted. Next, the programming problem in the case study is solved, based on the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution approach to obtain the compromise route design. Results of the case study confirm that the routes of the proposed model perform better than existing routes in terms of network length and service coverage. Additionally, increasing the number of feeder-bus routes decreases maximum route travel time, increases service coverage, and increases network length. To our knowledge, the proposed model is the first bus route design model in the literature to consider simultaneously various stakeholder needs and support for bus route planners in developing alternatives for further evaluation efficiently and systematically.     

Microscopic decision model for pedestrian route choice at signalized crosswalks

In this paper, two‐tier mathematical models were developed to simulate the microscopic pedestrian decision‐making process of route choice at signalized crosswalks. In the first tier, a discrete choice model was proposed to predict the choices of walking direction. In the second tier, an exponential model was calibrated to determine the step size in the chosen direction. First, a utility function was defined in the first‐tier model to describe the change of utility in response to deviation from a pedestrian's target direction and the conflicting effects of neighboring pedestrians. A mixed logit model was adopted to estimate the effects of the explanatory variables on the pedestrians' decisions. Compared with the standard multinomial logit model, it was shown that the mixed logit model could accommodate the heterogeneity. The repeated observations for each pedestrian were grouped as panel data to ensure that the parameters remained constant for individual pedestrians but varied among the pedestrians. The mixed logit model with panel data was found to effectively address inter‐pedestrian heterogeneity and resulted in a better fit than the standard multinomial logit model. Second, an exponential model in the second tier was proposed to further determine the step size of individual pedestrians in the chosen direction; it indicates the change in walking speed in response to the presence of other pedestrians. Finally, validation was conducted on an independent set of observation data in Hong Kong. The pedestrians' routes and destinations were predicted with the two‐tier models. Compared with the tracked trajectories, the average error between the predicted destinations and the observed destinations was within an acceptable margin. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.