纽约州交通局的桥梁检查计划

在过去20年里,纽约州交通运输部(NYSDOT)已对全州1.74万公路桥梁的桥梁状况的检查和评价计划进行了管理和监督.该计划的首要目标是确保纽约的桥梁保持结构和运营安全,数据收集和报告是为桥梁所有者提供评估桥梁的状态和维护需求的主要信息来源.本文概述了纽约州交通部的桥梁检查和评价计划,包括项目范围、主要要求和特点、资源和数据应用.     

Discussing the “positive utilities” of autonomous vehicles: will travellers really use their time productively?

ABSTRACT

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are expected to reshape travel behaviour and demand in part by enabling productive uses of travel time—a primary component of the “positive utility of travel” concept—thus reducing subjective values of travel time savings (VOT). Many studies from industry and academia have assumed significant increases in travel time use and reductions in VOT for AVs. In this position paper, I argue that AVs’ VOT impacts may be more modest than anticipated and derive from a different source. Vehicle designs and operations may limit activity engagement during travel, with AV users feeling more like car passengers than train riders. Furthermore, shared AVs may attenuate travel time use benefits, and productivity gains could be limited to long-distance trips. Although AV riders will likely have greater activity participation during travel, many in-vehicle activities today may be more about coping with commuting burdens than productively using travel time. Instead, VOT reductions may be more likely to arise from a different “positive utility”—subjective well-being improvements through reduced stresses of driving or the ability to relax and mentally transition. Given high uncertainty, further empirical research on the experiential, time use, and VOT impacts of AVs is needed.     

Sensitivity of the wheel–rail contact interactions and Dang Van Fatigue Index in the rail with respect to irregularities of the track geometry

This paper investigates the effects of the track geometry irregularities on the wheel–rail dynamic interactions and the rail fatigue initiation through the application of the Dang Van criterion, that supposes an elastic shakedown of the structure. The irregularities are modelled, using experimental data, as a stochastic field which is representative of the considered railway network. The tracks thus generated are introduced as the input of a railway dynamics software to characterise the stochastic contact patch and the parameters on which it depends: contact forces and wheelset–rail relative position. A variance-based global sensitivity analysis is performed on quantities of interest representative of the dynamic behaviour of the system, with respect to the stochastic geometry irregularities and for different curve radius classes and operating conditions. The estimation of the internal stresses and the fatigue index being more time-consuming than the dynamical simulations, the sensitivity analysis is performed through a metamodel, whose input parameters are the wheel–rail relative position and velocity. The coefficient of variation of the number of fatigue cycles, when the simulations are performed with random geometry irregularities, varies between 0.13 and 0.28. In a large radius curve, the most influent irregularity is the horizontal curvature, while, in a tight curve, the gauge becomes more important.