Assessment of alternative ventilation schemes at public transport interchange

The provision of mechanical ventilation in a semi-confined public transport interchange is mandatory in Hong Kong. The authority recommends the general use of low-level-supply and high-level-exhaust airflow schemes that different from the traditional ventilation concept in that low-level emitted vehicle pollutants are best removed at source. Analyses of air quality at typical public transport interchange environments are conducted for the two airflow schemes. The CFD simulations are generalized by studying light and heavy traffic conditions with adjusted ventilation rates to match the change in vehicle emission levels to examine pollutant concentrations at passenger waiting areas and the elevated footbridges. While the conventional high-level-supply and low-level-exhaust scheme could perform better during light traffic loads, the difference diminishes with increased traffic loads during peak hours. On the other hand, the high-level exhaust scheme has an advantage of serving as a smoke extraction system during a fire outbreak.     

铁路公路信息管理系统的开发和应用

铁路公安信息系统的开发和对提高铁路公安快速反应能力，保卫铁路运输生产安全具有重要的意义。作者针对铁路公安信息系统的运行环境，信息传送模式以及系统功能和实现方案作了详细的介绍，该系统已于2000年投入使用并达到了预期的设计目标。     

“If I Walked on my Own at Night I Stuck to Well Lit Areas.” Gendered spaces and urban transport in 20th century Britain

Using photographs, this paper explores the gendered link between transport and the urban environment. It becomes apparent that moving around in urban spaces is an experience which is or can be fundamentally different for women and men. From pictures I conclude that a historical analysis of gender and urban transport ought to be a straightforward task to undertake: women are clearly visible in the visual record of the transport environment. However, a look at the historiography shows that research on gendering the city mostly deals with workplaces, women’s employment, class and race segregation in urban areas, welfare programmes specially designed to helped women, urban housing and marginalisation of women, housewives, healthcare, homeless women and politics. Gender and transport is hardly to be found: how women move and moved through urban space has not received sustained attention. Further, the main body of scholarly texts lacks in historical concern, stemming from such diverse disciplines as sociology, geography, economic and political sciences, women’s studies and planning.     

Measuring social effective speed to improve sustainable mobility policies in developing countries

Over the last few decades, many developing countries have experienced car fleet growth, which has contributed to congestion, increased travel times, and deteriorated public transport reliability and punctuality. However, alternatives to urban mobility can be found by creating policies to stimulate sustainable transportation modes with equal opportunities for all citizens. In this paper, measures of social effective speeds are presented to improve sustainable urban mobility policies in developing countries. Data from the 2018 Origin-Destination Survey of the Metropolitan Region of Recife (Brazil) were used to estimate social effective speeds. The results showed that motorized modes had lower effective speed than non-motorized modes. In addition, total external costs were $2 billion USD per year. The social effective speed will be valuable if inserted in sustainable urban mobility policies in developing countries.     

Identifying preferences for public transport investments under a constrained budget

As urban areas face increasing demands for new transport infrastructure to promote a sustainable future with an increasing reality of constrained government budgets, the debate on whether we should focus on rail or bus-based investments continues unabated in many jurisdictions. Associated with the debate is an emotional (or ideological) bias by communities in favour of one mode, especially rail, which carries much sway at the political level as if there is no budget constraint. This paper presents a stated choice experiment to investigate this context as two unlabelled options described by 20 potential drivers of community preferences for improved public transport, where each choice scenario is conditioned on an estimated construction cost and a total annual transport infrastructure budget for the relevant geographical jurisdiction. This is followed by a labelling of each alternative to reveal whether the option is bus rapid transit (BRT) or light rail (LRT) and to establish whether this additional information influences preference revision. Data is collected in all eight capital cities of Australia in mid 2014. Mixed logit models with heteroscedastic conditioning in terms of the cost of the project infrastructure and whether the alternative is labelled BRT or LRT, provide new evidence on the nature and extent of community modal bias in a budget-constrained choice setting. The conclusions are twofold. On the one hand, if a fully compensatory choice rule is assumed (as is common in all previous modal comparison studies), LRT is predominantly preferred over BRT despite budgetary constraints, similarities in quality of service attributes and the opportunity to choose a greater network coverage for a given construction cost. However, when we allow for attribute non-attendance (a semi-compensatory choice rule), the modal bias is no longer a significant driver of preferences.     

Factors affecting public transportation usage rate: Geographically weighted regression

As the number of private vehicles grows worldwide, so does air pollution and traffic congestion, which typically constrain economic development. To achieve transportation sustainability and continued economic development, the dependency on private vehicles must be decreased by increasing public transportation usage. However, without knowing the key factors that affect public transportation usage, developing strategies that effectively improve public transportation usage is impossible. Therefore, this study respectively applies global and local regression models to identify the key factors of usage rates for 348 regions (township or districts) in Taiwan. The global regression model, the Tobit regression model (TRM), is used to estimate one set of parameters that are associated with explanatory variables and explain regional differences in usage rates, while the local regression model, geographically weighted regression (GWR), estimates parameters differently depending on spatial correlations among neighbouring regions. By referencing related studies, 32 potential explanatory variables in four categories, social-economic, land use, public transportation, and private transportation, are chosen. Model performance is compared in terms of mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and spatial autocorrelation coefficient (Moran’ I). Estimation results show that the GWR model has better prediction accuracy and better accommodation of spatial autocorrelation. Seven variables are significantly tested, and most have parameters that differ across regions in Taiwan. Based on these findings, strategies are proposed that improve public transportation usage.     

Categorizing bicycling environments using GPS-based public bicycle speed data

A promising alternative transportation mode to address growing transportation and environmental issues is bicycle transportation, which is human-powered and emission-free. To increase the use of bicycles, it is fundamental to provide bicycle-friendly environments. The scientific assessment of a bicyclist’s perception of roadway environment, safety and comfort is of great interest. This study developed a methodology for categorizing bicycling environments defined by the bicyclist’s perceived level of safety and comfort. Second-by-second bicycle speed data were collected using global positioning systems (GPS) on public bicycles. A set of features representing the level of bicycling environments was extracted from the GPS-based bicycle speed and acceleration data. These data were used as inputs for the proposed categorization algorithm. A support vector machine (SVM), which is a well-known heuristic classifier, was adopted in this study. A promising rate of 81.6% for correct classification demonstrated the technical feasibility of the proposed algorithm. In addition, a framework for bicycle traffic monitoring based on data and outcomes derived from this study was discussed, which is a novel feature for traffic surveillance and monitoring.     

Demi-flexible operating policies to promote the performance of public transit in low-demand areas

The efforts of providing attractive transport service to residents in sparse communities have previously focused on operating flexible transit services. This paper identifies a new category of transit policies, called demi-flexible operating policies, to fill the gap between flexible transit services and conventional fixed-route systems. The passenger cost function is defined as the performance measure of transit systems and the analytic work is performed based on a real-world flag-stop transit service, in which we compare its system performance with another two comparable systems, the fixed-route and flex-route services, at expected and unexpected demand levels in order to be closer to reality. In addition, the dynamic-station policy is introduced to assist the flex-route service to better deal with unexpectedly high demand. Experiments demonstrate the unique advantages of demi-flexible operating policies in providing affordable, efficient, and reliable transport service in low-demand operating environments and this work is helpful to optimize the unifying framework for designing public transit in suburban and rural areas.     

Planning for the unexpected: The value of reserve capacity for public transport network robustness

Public transport networks (PTN) are subject to recurring service disruptions. Most studies of the robustness of PTN have focused on network topology and considered vulnerability in terms of connectivity reliability. While these studies provide insights on general design principles, there is lack of knowledge concerning the effectiveness of different strategies to reduce the impacts of disruptions. This paper proposes and demonstrates a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of a strategic increase in capacity on alternative PTN links to mitigate the impact of unexpected network disruptions. The evaluation approach consists of two stages: identifying a set of important links and then for each identified important link, a set of capacity enhancement schemes is evaluated. The proposed method integrates stochastic supply and demand models, dynamic route choice and limited operational capacity. This dynamic agent-based modelling of network performance enables to capture cascading network effects as well as the adaptive redistribution of passenger flows. An application for the rapid PTN of Stockholm, Sweden, demonstrates how the proposed method could be applied to sequentially designed scenarios based on their performance indicators. The method presented in this paper could support policy makers and operators in prioritizing measures to increase network robustness by improving system capacity to absorb unexpected disruptions.