A tool to aid redesign of flexible transport services to increase efficiency in rural transport service provision

Rural areas generally have lower and more dispersed demands for travel which cannot sustain conventional public transport services and consequently have a greater number of flexible and demand responsive transport services operating. These services usually operate on a stand-alone basis, are often subsidized and are typically only accessible by certain passenger types or for specific trip purposes. This generally results in uncoordinated and inefficient transport provision overall. The Flexible integrated transport services (FITS) system featured in this paper has been designed to address this problem. FITS can be used as a planning tool to assess potential benefits from relaxing operating constraints (e.g., a service's operating boundaries), which can potentially suggest service redesign. It also includes the capacity to assign subsidy payments on a trip by trip basis to increase cost efficiency whilst meeting a greater proportion of transport needs. The case study in the paper focusses on transport to health in the Aberdeenshire and Morayshire areas of Scotland in the UK. Despite flexible transport operators receiving public funds to meet passenger needs, this is currently being supplemented by public bodies paying large amounts in taxi fares in instances where there is a statutory obligation to provide travel but where no other suitable transport service exists. The results demonstrate the potential substantial savings which could be realized by allowing transport operators to redesign their services by relaxing constraints and by the reassignment of subsidies: resulting in more passenger demands being met and a reduction in public spending on taxi fares.     

基于Internet地籍信息系统的建立方法

探讨了在AutoCADMap2 0 0 0平台下 ,建立网络地籍信息系统的关键技术和整体开发方案 ,以及系统中各种图形数据与属性数据处理的问题     

Public/private-sector cooperation in urban transportation: Lessons from ridesharing experiences in Connecticut

An important characteristic of urban transportation policy and planning today is the increasing role that the private sector is playing in identifying and implementing transportation projects. For example, a recent examination of the possible forms of such involvement found that there were four major categories of action that could be used to classify recent private-sector efforts in urban transportation: (1) aid to and/or provision of transportation services; (2) formation of advocacy or advisory groups whose purpose is to influence public policy; (3) sponsorship of transportation studies; and (4) provision of management assistance to public agencies (Gordon, 1982). In many of these efforts, the successful implementation of a project or program required close cooperation between public and private-sector officials. The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of this interaction and explore the implications for transportation planning and policy.Examples of public/private-sector interaction in two Connecticut cities, Hartford and Stamford, are used to illustrate the characteristics of successful transportation program implementation. Although the examples are limited to two cities, and are mainly concerned with one major category of action (ridesharing), the characteristics of the process used and of the results can be applied to other situations where public/privatesector interaction is desired.     

Studies on the optimization of stern hull form based on a potential flow solver

A hypothesis of the minimum energy of secondary flow, suggested by Bessho, is introduced here. According to this hypothesis, it can be expected that hull forms having frame lines with a minimum energy of secondary flow show less form drag. In the first part of this article, secondary flow energy is evaluated for the cases with and without a free-surface effect, and Bessho’s hypothesis is confirmed for practical hull forms. Then optimization methods for the stern hull form are suggested, in which a nonlinear optimization technique is introduced. Numerical examples are given for a practical tanker hull form and a practical container hull form. From these studies, the suggested optimization method can be confirmed as a simplified and practical design method to the select frame lines of stern hull forms.     

Modeling household interactions in daily in-home and out-of-home maintenance activity participation

The activity travel patterns of individuals in a household are inter-related, and the realistic modeling of activity-travel behavior requires that these interdependencies be explicitly accommodated. This paper examines household interactions impacting weekday in-home and out-of-home maintenance activity generation in active, nuclear family, households. The in-home maintenance activity generation is modeled by examining the duration invested by the male and female household heads in household chores using a seemingly unrelated regression modeling system. The out-of-home maintenance activity generation is modeled in terms of the decision of the household to undertake shopping, allocation of the task to one or both household heads, and the duration of shopping for the person(s) allocated the responsibility. A joint mixed-logit hazard-duration model structure is developed and applied to the modeling of out-of-home maintenance activity generation. The results indicate that traditional gender roles continue to exist and, in particular, non-working women are more likely to share a large burden of the household maintenance tasks. The model for out-of-home maintenance activity generation indicates that joint activity participation in the case of shopping is motivated by resource (automobiles) constraints. Finally, women who have a higher propensity to shop are also found to be inherently more efficient shoppers.     

Trucking industry demand for urban shared use freight terminals

The issue of shared use urban freight facilities first received attention during the 1970s when it was observed that, while inter-urban freight movements were becoming increasingly efficient, there were significant diseconomies in the movement of freight via truck within urban areas. Early research suggested that shared urban freight facilities should be constructed so that trucking companies could consolidate smaller shipments into larger ones. In the past few years, the concept of Urban Ports has gained increasing attention, not just for carriers who need to load and unload freight, but to provide a place near the urban center for truckers to wait out peak traffic periods. In this paper, using recently developed survey data, we examine trucking company interest in such facilities by examining the results of an ordered probit demand model.     

Linking land use and transportation in a rapidly urbanizing context: A study in Delhi,India

Cities in developing countries like India are facing some of the same concerns that North American cities are: congestion and urban growth. However, there is a sense of urgency in cities like Delhi, India in that this growth is far more rapid as both urbanization and motorization are ongoing processes that have not yet peaked. In this paper, we examine land use change and its relationship with transportation infrastructure and other planning related variables in a spatial context. We estimate land use change models at two different scales from separate data. Cellular automation and Markov models were used to understand change at the regional scale and discrete choice models to predict change at the local level. The results suggest that land use in the Delhi metropolitan area is rapidly intensifying while losing variety. These changes are affected by industrial, commercial and infrastructure location and planners and policy-makers need to better understand the implications of location decisions. We also examine these results in the context of a policy framework for data-based planning that links land use and transportation models for Delhi.     

Improvement of efficiency and flexibility in multi-slice helical CT

One of the main aspects in computed tomography (CT) development is to make CT rapidly scan a large longitudinal volume with high z-axis resolution. The combination of helical scanning with multi-slice CT is a promising approach. Image reconstruction in multi-slice CT becomes, therefore, the major challenge. Known algorithms need to derive the complementary data or work only for certain range of pitches. A reconstruction algorithm was presented that works with the direct data as well as arbitrary pitches. Filter interpolation based on the proposed method was implemented easy. The results of computer simulations under kinds of conditions for four-slice CT were presented. The proposed method can obtain higher efficiency than the conventional method.     

Energy-saving reputation method for wireless sensor networks

Reputation mechanism has been recently introduced into wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to overcome the deficiencies incurred by cryptography alone. Unlike most current reputation mechanisms that are based on binomial distribution and to some extent, do not give due attention to the aspect of energy constraint of WSNs, this research deduces and proves the feasibility that negative binomial distribution can well be used in the reputation update with distinctive energy-saving features. Comparison tests with respect to the energy consumption in terms of reputation computing frequencies are done between the traditional reputation method and the one in this study. Results show that our method can save more energy for the reputation update and thus can better meet the power constraints of WSNs.     

Simulation of temperature distribution in hot filament chemical vapor deposition diamond films growth on SiC seals

In this study, the temperature and gas velocity distributions in hot filament chemical vapor deposition(HFCVD) diamond film growth on the end surfaces of seals are simulated by the finite volume method. The influence of filament diameter, filament separation and rotational speed of the substrates is considered. Firstly,the simulation model is established by simplifying operating conditions to simulate the temperature and gas velocity distributions. Thereafter, the deposition parameters are optimized as 0.6 mm filament diameter, 18 mm filament separation and 5 r/min rotational speed to get the uniform temperature distribution. Under the influence of the rotational speed, the difference between temperature gradients along the directions perpendicular to the filament and parallel to the filament becomes narrow, it is consistent with the actual condition, and the maximum temperature difference on the substrates decreases to 7.4?C. Furthermore, the effect of the rotational speed on the gas velocity distribution is studied. Finally, diamond films are deposited on the end surfaces of Si C seals with the optimized deposition parameters. The characterizations by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) and Raman spectroscopy exhibit a layer of homogeneous diamond films with fine-faceted crystals and uniform thickness. The results validate the simulation model.