Commuting times – The role of gender,children and part-time work

It has been widely established in the UK and other developed countries that men commute longer than women and that fathers travel furthest to work while mothers travel least. This paper models a wide variety of factors that affect commuting times including gender, presence of children and working hours (part- and full-time work). It finds that of particular importance to the length of commute are the worker’s age, having children, the age of their youngest child, occupation, weekly pay, and mode of transport (with public transport being associated with longer commutes). The region of residence was important for men and women working full-time but not for part timers (except for women in London), while ethnicity and owner occupation were associated with commuting length for full-time men only. The results suggest that while gender, working hours and childcare responsibility are often inter-related, it is useful to disaggregate their effects when modelling or developing policy.     

Inverse discrete choice modelling: theoretical and practical considerations for imputing respondent attributes from the patterns of observed choices

ABSTRACT

The growing availability of geotagged big data has stimulated substantial discussion regarding their usability in detailed travel behaviour analysis. Whilst providing a large amount of spatio-temporal information about travel behaviour, these data typically lack semantic content characterising travellers and choice alternatives. The inverse discrete choice modelling (IDCM) approach presented in this paper proposes that discrete choice models (DCMs) can be statistically inverted and used to attach additional variables from observations of travel choices. Suitability of the approach for inferring socioeconomic attributes of travellers is explored using mode choice decisions observed in London Travel Demand Survey. Performance of the IDCM is investigated with respect to the type of variable, the explanatory power of the imputed variable, and the type of estimator used. This method is a significant contribution towards establishing the extent to which DCMs can be credibly applied for semantic enrichment of passively collected big data sets while preserving privacy.     

Experimental Study on Health Detection of Operating Metro Tunnels with Vehicle-mounted GPR北大核心CSCD

The vehicle-mounted GPR technique, a non-contact and long-distance detection method with air-cou- pled antennas, is a fast nondestructive detecting technique in the field of structural health safety assessment of tunnels and underground engineering, which has changed the traditional measurement method of hand-held GPR antenna closely attached to the tunnel lining. This paper describes the detecting conditions and working principles of this technique used in health assessment of metro tunnels, and evaluates the feasibility of vehicle-mounted GPR to de- tect the metro tunnel in the basis of analyzing the test results. The experimental results show that this technique could detect the metro tunnel at normal operating speed within the vehicle gauge, providing a new method for the maintenance and safety inspection of operating metro tunnels. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

GIS-Based Grid Assessment Model of Shield Tunnel Conditions and Its Application北大核心CSCD

As the lack of guidancs for maintenance and repair of rail transit shield tunnels, this paper proposes a macroscopic method for grid assessment of shield tunnels. First, the tunnel serviceability index (TSI) is adopted as the tunnel condition assessment method and the results are compared with Chinese codes and the traditional fuzzy hierarchical comprehensive evaluation method. Second, based on the assumption that the factors affecting the conditions of the tunnels, such as the surrounding stratum environment, the structural overlying load and so on, are correlated spatially, the spatial variability theory is used for the grid assessment of shield tunnels. Finally, taking the Shanghai Rail Transit System as an example, the application results of the grid assessment method are described. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Study on Reinforcing Technology System for the Overlapped Running Shield Tunnels underneath the Track Group of High Speed Railways北大核心CSCD

The large settlements of tracks will emerge due to multiple disturbances in the construction of over- lapped shield tunnels, which affects the running safety of trains. Based on the overlapped Sungang station-Honghu station shield running tunnels of Shenzhen Metro line 7 passing underneath 26 tracks of high speed railways, a rein- forcement technology system consisting of”track support + subgrade reinforcement + interlayer soil consolidation + internal support of the lower tunnel”was developed. The settlements of tracks were mainly monitored automatically with manual monitoring as an auxiliary one. The results show that the maximum settlement of main track caused by constructing overlapped shield tunnels is -5.9 mm which is less than the control value of 10 mm, ensuring the opera- tion safety and verifying the reliability and practicability of the reinforcement technology system. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Axial Response of a Compression Pile to Nearby Excavation北大核心CSCD

One of the major concern in the excavation in soft soil areas is the effect of soil movement on adjacent pile foundations. In this paper, three-dimensional finite element models are established to study the axial response of the adjacent pile foundations close to an excavation in soft soil. The results show that, due to the nearby excavation, the axial bearing capacity of a single pile under compression decreases about 13.6%, and considerable additional settlements of a single pile subjected to the working compression load are generated. Therefore, the characteristics of load transfer mechanism between pile shaft and around soil, as well as the tip soil reaction are investigated extensively, which demonstrates that, as expected, the nearby excavation leads to a reduction of ultimate soil friction resistance. Furtherly, the widely employed load transfer method for pile foundation is modified to consider the effects of nearby excavation, which can be employed to predict the axial response of an axially loaded pile foundation beside an excavation. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Driver response to variable message signs: a stated preference investigation

This paper uses a Stated Preference approach to undertake a detailed assessment of the effect on drivers’ route choice of information provided by variable message signs (VMS). Although drivers’ response to VMS information will vary according to the availability of alternative routes and the extent to which they are close substitutes, our findings show that route choice can be strongly influenced by the provision of information about traffic conditions ahead. This has important implications for the use of VMS systems as part of comprehensive traffic management and control systems. The principal findings are that the impact of VMS information depends on: the content of the message, such as the cause of delay and its extent; local circumstances, such as relative journey times in normal conditions; and drivers’ characteristics, such as their age, sex and previous network knowledge. The impact of qualitative indicators, visible queues and delays were examined. It was found that not only is delay time more highly valued than normal travel time, which is to be expected, but that drivers become more sensitive to delay time as delay times increased across the range presented.     

Recent Results on Weakly Compact Operators on Banach Lattices

There have been many really positive results concerning the weakly compact operators on Banach lattices in terms of their order structure as well as in many respects. This paper will survey some known recent results in this area.     

A GIS-based planning approach to locating urban rail terminals

This paper develops a flexible GIS-based methodology for evaluating the potential locations of terminal park-and-ride facilities along urban rail lines. The methodology differs from political-based approaches and traditional travel demand modeling in its use of an objective measure of accessibility to gage the suitability of a site. The methodology begins by constructing an index of derived demand for rail usage based on the local demographics. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used as a means of constructing an index of derived demand consistent with other passenger surveys. Next, trade areas or commutersheds are calculated for each candidate park-and-ride location based on realistic measures of accessibility and network based drive times, taking into account competition among candidates for riders. Following the analysis, the candidate locations and their commutersheds are delineated and visualized in the GIS environment. In summary, application of this method produces a site-specific suitability index that may be used to rank and compare potential park-and-ride locations. We illustrate how our approach fits within the context of the larger-scale corridor study as a complimentary means of refining the location of urban rail stations. The analysis uses the proposed rail system for Columbus Ohio as a case study. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Changing ownership structures in the Dutch fleet

The new Dutch shipping policy has given rise to high expectation and curiosity in the world of shipping. This, together with the obvious difficulties of an ex-post study of the effectiveness of such innovative policy, has prompted the authors to take an interest in attempting to investigate changes in ownership of the Dutch fleet 2 years after the new policy has been introduced. To do this, a rather new concept of 'flagging out' has been adopted, which is interpreted as a process leading to different degrees of 'foreignness' in a shipping operation. In this paper, a method to structure is presented, and ownership information, and changes in it are presented, that are essentially based on the theory of stochastic processes. The data used is the Dutch fleet data, which includes information on the nationality of the flag, parent ownership and management over the period 1994-1998. The results yield interesting insights in the shifts in the ownership and operational structure of shipping companies induced by the new policy. In particular, they allow one to establish the origin of new vessels, in which stage of ownership/operation it is most likely that shifts occur, and to determine the relationship between the different stages of the 'flagging out' process. These results, thus, enable an evaluation of the areas in which the policy can be expected to yield results.