A cross-country study of fairness and infringement on freedom as determinants of car owners' acceptance of road pricing

Jakobsson et al. (2000) found that in Sweden public acceptance of road pricing decreases if it is perceived to be unfair and to infringe on freedom. The present study reports a survey investigating whether the same effects are found in the Asian countries of Japan and Taiwan. The results indicate that fairness plays the same role. However, income had a direct effect on acceptance in Taiwan but not in Japan or Sweden.     

Bus Priority Using pre-signals

The need to provide efficient public transport services in urban areas has led to the implementation of bus priority measures in many congested cities. Much interest has recently centred on priority at signal controlled junctions, including the concept of pre-signals, where traffic signals are installed at or near the end of a with-flow bus lane to provide buses with priority access to the downstream junction. Although a number of pre-signals have now been installed in the U.K., particularly in London, there has been very little published research into their design, operation and optimisation. This paper addresses these points through the development of analytical procedures which allow pre-implementation evaluation of specific categories of pre-signals. The paper initially sets out three categories of pre-signal, which have different operating characteristics, different requirements for signalling and different impacts on capacity and delay. Key issues concerning signalling arrangements for these categories are then discussed, together with a summary of the analytical approach adopted and the assumptions required. Equations are developed to allow appropriate signal timings to be calculated for pre-signalised intersections. Further equations are then developed to enable delays to priority and non-priority traffic, with and without pre-signals, to be estimated with delay being taken here as the key performance criterion. The paper concludes with three application examples illustrating how the equations are applied and the impacts of pre-signals in different situations.The analyses confirm the potential benefits of pre-signals, where these signals apply to non-priority traffic only. Where buses are also subject to a pre-signal, it is shown that disbenefits to buses can often occur, unless bus detectors are used to gain priority signalling.     

城市公交线网优化的线性模型

为了对现有公交线网进行优化,有效利用现有交通资源,解决城市交通问题,运用系统科学的思想,通过对城市公交线网优化的主要内容、优化原则、优化目标以及约束条件的分析,兼顾考虑乘客出行时间、公交线网密度和公交企业的利益以及公交线网的布局对整个城市的交通系统的影响,提出了优化目标的函数表达式及相应约束条件的数学表达式,建立了公交线网优化的线性模型,并给出了运用逐步筛选法对所提出的数学模型进行求解的方法。     

采用不同方法处理山区高速公路软基的效果分析

以GZ40勉宁高速公路为例,采用抛石挤淤法、粉喷桩法、孔内深层强夯挤密法和冲填法对不同路段软基进行了处理,通过现场的静荷载试验和面波剖面测试对不同方法的处理效果进行了分析,同时对4种方法进行了社会经济效益评价。分析表明以上4种方法均可适用于山区公路软基处理,而其中孔内深层强夯挤密法处理效果较好,且具有施工方便、速度快、无污染、对周围环境影响小和工程造价低等优点,具有广阔的应用前景和推广价值。     

基于多旅行商问题的应急设施服务区划分模型

基于多旅行商问题，增设集散中心需求及应急服务设施资源容量约束条件，以最小化遍历区域内全部集散中心的综合旅行时间成本为优化目标，构建一种应急设施服务区划分模型，确定各应急设施的服务区范围.设计一种复合算法求解模型，首先基于P-中值选址模型的优化理念，形成初始方案；继而加入禁忌搜索算法，结合LKH求解器对模型进行迭代优化求得最优解.基于宁波市北仑区实际拓扑网络进行案例分析，验证了模型和求解方法的有效性.     

Key beliefs and attitudes for sea-level rise policy

This article reviews key measures of public opinion on sea-level rise (SLR): beliefs, attitudes, issue prioritization, and policy support. To do so, we first assess the influence of SLR beliefs and attitudes on issue prioritization and policy support using state-level data. Then, we compare the state findings to other surveys conducted in a hot spot of rising coastal waters, the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, to better understand the landscape of public opinion. Our findings indicate that, as in studies of climate change public opinion, belief certainty that SLR is happening and attitudes about its consequences significantly influence issue prioritization and policy support. Compared to climate change, SLR demonstrates less salience, but is similarly a low public priority. Nevertheless, the public supports governmental policies that address the issue, preferring strategies that discourage new construction in high risk areas and employ “soft” protection through natural barriers. Among the least popular approaches are those that implement hard barriers to defend against encroaching seas. Communication programs and public consultation by governments can benefit from the use of survey data to support evidence-based decision-making.     

Influential vectors in fuel consumption by an urban bus operator: Bus route,driver behavior or vehicle type?

Energy costs account for an important share of the total costs of urban and suburban bus operators. The purpose of this paper is to expand empirical research on bus transit operation costs and identify the key factors that influence bus energy efficiency of the overall bus fleet of one operator and aid to the management of its resources.We estimate a set of multivariate regression models, using cross-section dataset of 488 bus drivers operating over 92 days in 2010, in 87 routes with different bus typologies, of a transit company operating in the Lisbon’s Metropolitan Area (LMA), Rodoviária de Lisboa, S.A.Our results confirm the existence of influential variables regarding energy efficiency and these are mainly: vehicle type, commercial speed, road grades over 5% and bus routes; and to a lesser extent driving events such as: sudden longitudinal decelerations and excessive engine rotation. The methodology proved to be useful for the bus operator as a decision-support tool for efficiency optimization purpose at the company level.     

采空区高速公路路基变形失稳的影响因素

矿体开采后会留下采空区.许多公路、铁路需要建在采空区之上或穿越这些采空区,面临因采空区塌陷所导致的路基失稳与破坏问题.了解采空区影响高速公路路基变形失稳的因素,对于有效避免此类病害发生具有重要指导意义.     

Conflict-free arrival and departure trajectory planning for parallel runway with advanced point-merge system

In this paper, an efficient trajectory planning system is proposed to solve the integration of arrivals and departures on parallel runways with a novel route network system. Our first effort is made in designing an advanced Point Merge (PM) route network named Multi-Level Point Merge (ML-PM) to meet the requirements of parallel runway operations. Then, more efforts are paid on finding a complete and efficient framework capable of dynamically modelling the integration of arrival and departure trajectories on parallel runways, modelling the conflict detection and resolution in presence of curved trajectory and radius-to-fix merging process. After that, a suitable mathematical optimization formulation is built up. Receding Horizon Control (RHC) and Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithms are proposed to search the near-optimal solution for the large scale trajectories in routine dense operations. Taking Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) as a study case, the experimental results show that our system shows good performances on the management of arrivals and departures. It can automatically solve all the potential conflicts in presence of dense traffic flows. With its unique ML-PM route network, it can realize a shorter flying time and a near-Continuous Descent Approach (CDA) descent for arrival aircraft, an economical climbing for departure aircraft, an easier runway allocation together with trajectory control solutions. It shows a good and dynamic sequencing efficiency in Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA). In mixed ML-PM mode, under tested conditions, our proposed system can increase throughput at BCIA around 26%, compared with baseline. The methodology defined here could be easily applied to airports worldwide.