The 2008 New Zealand public transport management act: Rationale, key provisions, and parallels with the United Kingdom

In January 2009, following a lengthy industry review and consultation process, the New Zealand Public Transport Management Act (PTMA) came into force. The Act allows Regional Transport Authorities, as the primary procurers of public transport services, to place either a control or a contracting requirement upon services that are registered as commercial requiring no subsidy. The imposition of either the control or the contracting requirement is designed to facilitate greater system integration, improve service continuity and enhance services to the customer, andallow the Authority to invest in key strategic projects, such as integrated fares and ticketing, so as to grow patronage.The PTMA’s other objective is to ensure improved value for public subsidies. Recent years have seen significant subsidy inflation for seemingly little commensurate benefits. The Act will allow the Regional Transport Authority to achieve greater value for money through improved farebox, a shift to longer, larger contracts to increase competition in the market, a more appropriate allocation of risk, and the removal of the ability of operators to ‘game’ the current system by using strategically placed commercial services as barriers to competition.Similar concerns have also stimulated new legislation in the UK and this paper illustrates the parallels in the environment and proposed response.     

混合动力是唯一的选择吗?--高燃油税对欧洲动力技术发展的影响

“欧洲人已经学会了如何面对昂贵的燃油价格 (主要是指燃油税)。数十年来,欧洲社会一直努力去适应较高的燃油价格,而且已经建立了许多有效的机制     

Forecasting road traffic conditions using a context-based random forest algorithm

With the ability to accurately forecast road traffic conditions several hours, days and even months ahead of time, both travellers and network managers can take pro-active measures to minimise congestion, saving time, money and emissions. This study evaluates a previously developed random forest algorithm, RoadCast, which was designed to achieve this task. RoadCast incorporates contexts using machine learning to forecast more accurately contexts such as public holidays, sporting events and school term dates. This paper evaluates the potential of RoadCast as a traffic forecasting algorithm for use in Intelligent Transport System applications. Tests are undertaken using a number of different forecast horizons and varying amounts of training data, and an implementation procedure is recommended.     

Allowing for heterogeneous decision rules in discrete choice models: an approach and four case studies

The study of respondent heterogeneity is one of the main areas of research in the field of choice modelling. The general emphasis is on variations across respondents in relative taste parameters while maintaining the assumption of homogeneous utility maximising decision rules. While recent work has allowed for differences in the utility specification across respondents in the context of looking at heterogeneous information processing strategies, the underlying assumption that all respondents employ the same choice paradigm remains. This is despite evidence in the literature that different paradigms work differently well on given datasets. In this article, we argue that such differences may in fact extend to respondents within a single dataset. We accommodate these differences in a latent class model, where individual classes make use of different underlying paradigms. We present four applications using three different datasets, showing mixtures between “standard” random utility maximisation models and lexicography based models, models with multiple reference points, elimination by aspects models and random regret minimisation models. In each of the case studies, the behavioural mixing model obtains significant gains in fit over the base structure where all respondents are hypothesised to use the same rule. The findings offer important further insights into the behavioural patterns of respondents. There is also evidence that what is retrieved as taste heterogeneity in standard models may in fact be heterogeneity in decision rules.     

Non-commitment bias in public opinion on transit usage

Estimation of ridership on a new transit system in an area where no comparable service existed before is a difficult task of transit planning. Traditional modal split models cannot be used in these cases, because no data or basis for developing a new model or adjusting a “borrowed” model are available. One of the techniques which can be used in this type of situation, is to perform a “concept test” based on public opinion. This approach, however, is plagued with the phenomenon of non-commitment bias of interviewees, and tends to overestimate the ridership. A new fixed route and fixed schedule transit service in Johnson City in Tennessee provided a rare opportunity to perform an investigation on the non-commitment bias through “before” and “after” surveys. The analysis of the non-commitment and actual responses of a sample of residents revealed substantial bias. Overall, the non-commitment ridership estimate was about twice (100% greater than) the actual ridership.:It was also observed that the bias was higher for persons owning automobiles, and for work and shopping trips.     

A multi-instrumented approach to observing the activity rescheduling decision process

Activity scheduling simulation models represent an emerging and proposing approach to forecasting travel demand. The most significant developmental challenge is the lack of empirical data on how people actually proceed through the scheduling and conflict resolution process. This paper develops a new methodology to collect data about the rescheduling decision process. The data collection involves six stages: preplanned schedule interview, coding of the preplanned schedule, second-by-second Global Positioning System tracking, internet-based prompted recall diary, detection of rescheduling decisions (via comparison of planned versus executed activities), and a final in-depth interview probing the how and why of rescheduling decisions. Each stage of the methodology is described in detail with example results drawn from a pilot study. Key discoveries include: elicitation of multiple preplanned schedule reporting methods (verbal, point-form, calendar); discovery that activity attributes (time, location, involved persons) are planned on significantly different time horizons and include partial elaboration; and provision of new insights into how and why rescheduling decisions are made. A method for automatically tracking rescheduling decisions was also discovered. Overall, the new methodology has potential to contribute to the development of more realistic models of the entire scheduling process, especially rescheduling and conflict resolution sub-models.     

New appraisal values of travel time saving and reliability in Great Britain

Transportation - This paper provides an overview of the study ‘Provision of market research for value of time savings and reliability’ undertaken by the Arup/ITS Leeds/Accent consortium...     

Climate change projections for variables affecting road networks in Europe

Global climate change will affect road networks during this century. The effects will be different in various parts of the world due to differences in local climate change and in the structure and properties of roads. In this paper, climate change projections are presented for climate variables that are most likely to affect the long-term performance of road networks in Europe. We apply four regional climate simulations up to the year 2100 using two plausible future emission scenarios. The results show that the changing climate will require significant adaptation measures in the near future in order to maintain the operability of the European road network.     

Procurement methods for automated guideway transit systems

Procurement of an Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) system is a relatively new process for many procuring agencies worldwide. Outside of large airports, no single transit market sector has enough experience to establish well proven procurement methodologies for innovative transit technologies. Several methods, however, have emerged recently which, together with more conventional approaches, make the decision making process quite complex. The objective of this article is to review currently used and recently considered procurement methods and recommend a methodology for their selection depending on specific project requirements.     

大型集装箱船和新巴拿马型船舶（NPX）

集装箱贸易显著的增长不仅表现在集装箱船队的总箱数已超过1100万箱，还表现在船的大小上。今天使用中的最大的集装箱船已超过1万箱。