Modeling the effect of electric vehicle adoption on pedestrian traffic safety: An agent-based approach

When operated at low speeds, electric and hybrid vehicles have created pedestrian safety concerns in congested areas of various city centers, because these vehicles have relatively silent engines compared to those of internal combustion engine vehicles, resulting in safety issues for pedestrians and cyclists due to the lack of engine noise to warn them of an oncoming electric or hybrid vehicle. However, the driver behavior characteristics have also been considered in many studies, and the high end-prices of electric vehicles indicate that electric vehicle drivers tend to have a higher prosperity index and are more likely to receive a better education, making them more alert while driving and more likely to obey traffic rules. In this paper, the positive and negative factors associated with electric vehicle adoption and the subsequent effects on pedestrian traffic safety are investigated using an agent-based modeling approach, in which a traffic micro-simulation of a real intersection is simulated in 3D using AnyLogic software. First, the interacting agents and dynamic parameters are defined in the agent-based model. Next, a 3D intersection environment is created to integrate the agent-based model into a visual simulation, where the simulation records the number of near-crashes occurring in certain pedestrian crossings throughout the virtual time duration of a year. A sensitivity analysis is also carried out with 9000 subsequent simulations performed in a supercomputer to account for the variation in dynamic parameters (ambient sound level, vehicle sound level, and ambient illumination). According to the analysis, electric vehicles have a 30% higher pedestrian traffic safety risk than internal combustion engine vehicles under high ambient sound levels. At low ambient sound levels, however, electric vehicles have only a 10% higher safety risk for pedestrians. Low levels of ambient illumination also increase the number of pedestrians involved in near-crashes for both electric vehicles and combustion engine vehicles.     

A pedestrian flow model considering the impact of local density: Voronoi diagram based heuristics approach

Local density, which is an indicator for comfortable moving of a pedestrian, is rarely considered in traditional force based and heuristics based pedestrian flow models. However, comfortable moving is surely a demand of pedestrian in normal situations. Recently, Voronoi diagram had been successfully adopted to obtain the local density of a pedestrian in empirical studies. In this paper, Voronoi diagram is introduced into the heuristics based pedestrian flow model. It provides not only local density but also other information for determining moving velocity and direction. Those information include personal space, safe distance, neighbors, and three elementary characteristics directions. Several typical scenarios are set up to verify the proposed model. The simulation results show that the velocity-density relations and capacities of bottleneck are consistent with the empirical data, and many self-organization phenomena, i.e., arching phenomenon and lane formation, are also reproduced. The pedestrians are likely to be homogeneously distributed when they are sensitive to local density, otherwise pedestrians are non-uniformly distributed and the stop-and-go waves are likely to be reproduced. Such results indicate that the Voronoi diagram is a promising tool in modeling pedestrian dynamics.     

解决ZPW-2000A型无绝缘轨道电路对DX3型道口信号干扰问题

文章对叠加在ZPW-2000A型无绝缘轨道电路上的DX5型道口信号设备错误报警问题，提出了合理的解决方案。     

武九客运专线西南下行联络线特大桥主桥桥式方案比选

武九客运专线西南下行联络线特大桥主桥跨越3条既有铁路线路,桥梁与既有铁路线路夹角仅16°。为了选出主桥最合理的桥式方案,从安全、适用、经济、施工对既有铁路的影响等各方面进行计算及分析对比,比选结果表明,主跨148 m矮塔斜拉桥为本桥的最优桥式方案。     

东海大桥箱梁悬臂施工方案

介绍了东海大桥箱梁施工工艺,重点介绍了与内陆箱梁悬臂施工的不同之处,为以后海上箱梁施工提供可借鉴的施工经验。     

杭州湾跨海大桥VTS软科学研究

船舶交通管理系统(VTS)是一项牵涉面非常广、极复杂的系统工程，开展软科学研究，是合理规划和科学管理的前提和依据。杭州湾跨海大桥桥区水域建立船舶交通管理系统，条件、情况比较特殊复杂，应该更加重视和加强实现系统功能所必须依赖的软科学研究。     

Risk assessment based on driving behavior for preventing collisions with pedestrians when making across-traffic turns at intersections

Traffic accident statistics in Japan show the necessity of preventing vehicle-on-pedestrian accidents. If the risk of a vehicle colliding with pedestrians could be evaluated in advance, driver-assistance systems would be able to support drivers to avoid potential collisions. Here, features of driving behavior and methods for assessing the risk of collision were investigated for a right turn at an intersection in left-hand traffic, which is a typical vehicle-on-pedestrian accident scenario. The results showed that pedestrian-collision risk can be evaluated from how the driver slows the vehicle and where the driver looks while turning during the maneuver. Moreover, pedestrian-collision risk could be predicted based on driving behavior upon commencement of steering when making an across-traffic turn.     

Simulating pedestrian movements at signalized crosswalks in Hong Kong

This paper presents a new pedestrian simulation (PS) model for signalized crosswalks in Hong Kong. This PS model is capable of estimating the variations of walking speed particularly on the effects of bi-directional pedestrian flows so as to determine the minimum required duration of pedestrian crossing time. Video records taken from the observational surveys at the selected crosswalk in urban area were used to extract the required data for model calibration. It was found that the design walking speed for signalized crosswalks should be varied by the effects of the bi-directional pedestrian flows. It was also interesting to note that the negative impact of the bi-directional flow effects (ranging from uni-directional to bi-directional pedestrian flows) on the chance of pedestrian crossing the crosswalk is increasing from free-flow to at-capacity flow conditions. The new PS model is also validated using an independent data set so as to examine the reliability of the simulation results. The validation results show that the new PS model can provide an accurate evaluation on the changes of walking speed and its standard deviation under different scenarios with particular emphasis on the effects of the bi-directional pedestrian flows. The advancement of this PS model can be applied to assess the effects of each improvement measure and to evaluate the benefits of each scenario in practice.     

Amtrak,the attempt to renew U.S. rail service

The decline of railway passenger train patronage and the deterioration of service in the United States have led the U.S. Government to assume control over the operation of trains via a quasi‐federal corporation called “Amtrak,” but some basic causes of the decline remain and new problems will arise as a result of this action.

Two results of the neglect to assess external costs against the various transport modes is an unbalance in favor of those with the higher external costs and the continued, seemingly fundamental, unprofitability of railway passenger service, which exists even for equipment that operates at capacity!

Some way of collecting external costs will have to be found, and the problems created by the new intrusion of the U.S. Government into transport will have to be faced.