Stated preferences for investigating commuters' diversion propensity

A reasonable response to increasing traffic congestion may come from the rapidly developing traveler information systems. Such systems may be successful if they effectively influence drivers' enroute decisions; in this regard, a critical factor may be commuters' willingness to divert from their regular route in response to information about traffic congestion. This study evaluates the effects of real-time traffic information along with driver attributes, roadway characteristics and situational factors on drivers' willingness to divert.The empirical portion of this study is based on a survey of downtown Chicago automobile commuters. The stated preference approach was used to study commuters' diversion propensity. Drivers expressed a higher willingness to divert if expected delays on their usual route increased, if the congestion was incident-induced as opposed to recurring, if delay information was received from radio traffic reports compared with observing congestion, and if trip direction was home-to-work rather than work-to-home. Respondents were less willing to divert if their alternate route was unfamiliar, unsafe or had several traffic stops. Socioeconomic characteristics were also significant in predicting willingness to divert.     

The market for ship demolition

Little has been written about the ship demolition market, an essential element in the supply/demand balance for shipping. Either technical or economic obsolescence may be the cause for scrapping a ship, where the latter is strongly influenced not only by anticipated freight market levels, but the rate at which more efficient ships are being introduced. The scrap value of a ship is a function both of the realizable value of the materials within the ship and cost of demolition. Both are strongly influenced by the cost structures prevailing in the likely country of demolition. The paper explores not only the fundamentals of the ship demolition market, but the trends from the 1960s to the present. The shipbreaking market has moved in that time from being West European-centred to Asian-centred, concentrating for some years in Taiwan, but now shifting to the Indian subcontinent.     

Semi-Active Heave and Pitch Control for Ground Vehicles

A model is presented which includes both the heave and pitch motions of a vehicle traversing a roadway. Provision is made for testing totally passive, totally active, and semi-active secondary suspensions. Control strategies are developed for the totally active case and vehicle isolation is demonstrated. These active controllers are then modified to be semi-active, i.e., no power is provided from the controller to the vehicle. The semi-active isolation is shown to be comparable to the totally active system and much superior to the passive suspension.     

超大型浮船坞压载系统分析

文章以韩国三星重工12万t举力级超大型浮船坞为依托,主要论述了超大型浮船坞压载系统原理和管系布置的分析及设计方法。通过调研国内外浮船坞技术现状,并吸收韩国先进的设计经验,我们对浮船坞压载系统原理进行分析和研究,掌握浮船坞压载系统的设计方法,并针对超大型浮船坞压载系统的调载能力和使用安全性进一步攻关研究。     

Dynamic user equilibrium with side constraints for a traffic network: Theoretical development and numerical solution algorithm

This paper investigates a traffic volume control scheme for a dynamic traffic network model which aims to ensure that traffic volumes on specified links do not exceed preferred levels. The problem is formulated as a dynamic user equilibrium problem with side constraints (DUE-SC) in which the side constraints represent the restrictions on the traffic volumes. Travelers choose their departure times and routes to minimize their generalized travel costs, which include early/late arrival penalties. An infinite-dimensional variational inequality (VI) is formulated to model the DUE-SC. Based on this VI formulation, we establish an existence result for the DUE-SC by showing that the VI admits at least one solution. To analyze the necessary condition for the DUE-SC, we restate the VI as an equivalent optimal control problem. The Lagrange multipliers associated with the side constraints as derived from the optimality condition of the DUE-SC provide the traffic volume control scheme. The control scheme can be interpreted as additional travel delays (either tolls or access delays) imposed upon drivers for using the controlled links. This additional delay term derived from the Lagrange multiplier is compared with its counterpart in a static user equilibrium assignment model. If the side constraint is chosen as the storage capacity of a link, the additional delay can be viewed as the effort needed to prevent the link from spillback. Under this circumstance, it is found that the flow is incompressible when the link traffic volume is equal to its storage capacity. An algorithm based on Euler’s discretization scheme and nonlinear programming is proposed to solve the DUE-SC. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the mechanism of the proposed traffic volume control scheme.     

Latent temporal preferences: An application to airline travel

An essential element of demand modeling in the airline industry is the representation of time of day demand—the demand for a given itinerary as a function of its departure or arrival times. It is an important datum that drives successful scheduling and fleet decisions. There are two key components to this problem: the distribution of the time of day demand and how preferred travel time influences itinerary choice. This paper focuses on estimating the time of day distribution. Our objective is to estimate it in a manner that is not confounded with air travel supply; is a function of the characteristics of the traveler, the trip, and the market; and accounts for potential measurement errors in self-reported travel time preferences. We employ a stated preference dataset collected by intercepting people who were booking continental US trips via an internet booking service. Respondents reported preferred travel times as well as choices from a hypothetical set of itineraries. We parameterize the time of day distribution as a mixture of normal distributions (due to the strong peaking nature of travel time preferences) and allow the mixing function to vary by individual characteristics and trip attributes. We estimate the time of day distribution and the itinerary choice model jointly in a manner that accounts for measurement error in the self-reported travel time preferences. We find that the mixture of normal distributions fits the time of day distribution well and is behaviorally intuitive. The strongest covariates of travel time preferences are party size and time zone change. The methodology employed to treat self-reported travel time preferences as potentially having error contributes to the broader transportation time of day demand literature, which either assumes that the desired travel times are known with certainty or that they are unknown. We find that the error in self-reported travel time preferences is statistically significant and impacts the inferred time of day demand distribution.     

公路建设项目经济效益审计的内容与方法

加强对公路建设单位建设项目的效益审计具有重要意义,应从各个环节深入探讨对工程项目进行效益审计的内容和方法。     

磁浮轨道无线短波测量系统设计

在对磁浮轨道特有的短波测量进行研究的基础上,详细描述磁浮轨道无线短波测量系统的原理、构成和软件硬件设计。该系统拥有成熟的技术思路,在提高可靠性和测量效率的前提下,可同时使用多种形式进行测量,其原理和方法也可供其他测量环境借鉴。     

可持续发展交通规划之合理的交通成本模式

伴随着中国城市化进程的加快,城市交通问题日益严重,构建可持续的交通发展模式要求日益紧迫。可持续发展交通规划是全方位的,要考虑多方面因素,而建立合理的交通成本模式是其中很关键的一个环节。鉴于此,介绍当前的交通成本模式,通过分析该种模式的不足之处,提出更完善的交通成本模式,可资借鉴参考。