Total cost analysis: An alternative to benefit-cost analysis in evaluating transportation alternatives

This paper explains the theory in support of total cost analysis (TCA) to compare transportation system alternatives. The full costs of each alternative are first aggregated, including travel time costs and monetizable environmental and social costs. Many costs which are considered on the benefits side of the equation in benefit-cost analysis (BCA) as "cost savings" are brought over to the costs side. Total cost differences among alternatives are then traded off against their estimated non-monetized benefits or impacts, just as a consumer trades off product quality against cost before deciding which product he or she will buy. One advantage of TCA over traditional BCA is that the concept of "total cost" is more easily understood by the public and by political decision-makers than BCA concepts such as "net present worth", "benefit-cost ratio" and "internal rate of return". A second advantage is that there is no suggestion that all "benefits" have been considered; decision-makers are free to use their own value judgements to trade off total cost against non-monetizable social, environmental and economic impacts, just as they trade off quality and convenience against cost when purchasing goods and services in their roles as consumers. The TCA approach is demonstrated in this paper through a case study of two systemwide alternatives for the Baltimore, MD urban area.     

Regulatory reform and freight mode choice

Reform of trucking Vehicle Weights and Dimensions (VWD) regulations in Canada is now underway. The effect these reforms will have on the freight transportation industry are only recently the subject of research. This paper is part of this new research effort, aimed at understanding how regulatory reform in the trucking sector will affect the existing competitive relationship between trucks and the railways. The paper presents the results of study and research into modelling the relationship between mode choice and the service characteristics that are affected by VWD reform.Using several periods of data, a series of econometric models are developed which help to elucidate the relative relationships between the mode service characteristics for both of the principal interprovincial freight modes. A technique is developed and presented to model railway user costs in order to overcome the complex and often unrepresentable pricing activities of Canadian railways.The strength of the developed econometric models is presented, including their significance and statistical reliability. This is further reinforced by the similarities exhibited by all the models in the series. The selected model is applied to predict market service responses required of the railway industry in order to compete with the trucking sector now adapting to the new regulations.The impact of the newly implemented vehicle weight and dimension reform on the rail transportation industry is analyzed and railway industry improvements aimed at maintaining its market share are presented. The results predicted by the model show that railway user cost reductions should be moderate, and likely less than the level of inflation over the period of time when trucking converts its fleet to take advantage of the new regulations.Abbreviations AASHTO American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials - CCMTA Canadian Conference of Motor Transport Administrators - EPI End products, inedible commodity classification - GVW Gross Vehicle Weight - NA 1988 VWD National Agreement - RTAC Roads and Transportation Association of Canada - VWD Vehicle Weight(s) and Dimension(s) - WA 1988 VWD Western Agreement     

Teleworking in the Netherlands: an evaluation of changes in travel behaviour

This article describes the first experiment on teleworking in the Netherlands, and presents the results of an analysis of the impact of teleworking on the travel behaviour of the participants in the experiment and their household members. It was concluded that teleworking has resulted in a significant decrease in the total number of trips by teleworkers (–17%). Peak-hour traffic by car has been reduced even more (–26%). An unexpected result was that the household members of the teleworkers also appeared to travel less than before the experiment.     

基于ITS的汽车主动避撞性关键技术研究(一)

利用信息感知、动态辨识、控制等技术与方法提高汽车的主动安全性，是智能交通系统（ITS）的主要研发内容之一。介绍了基于ITS的汽车主动避撞关键技术的研究工作，主要包括：车辆运动中对周围障碍物的感知技术方法；危险或安全状态的动态辨识；具有主动避撞性能的ACC（Adaptive Cruise Control）技术等；给出了相关技术研究的仿真及实验结果，并对该技术在我国的实用化前景进行了展望。     

交通信息服务条件下的出行选择分析

首先 ,探讨了出行者的出行心理、行为以及信息之间的相互关系 ,在此基础上 ,简要分析了出行者的出行选择。其次 ,考虑在交通信息服务条件下 ,由于出行者本身以及信息方面的原因 ,出行选择可能出现过激反应、集聚反应等问题。最后 ,针对上述问题 ,提出应该加以重视的或有待进一步研究的几个问题。     

多货物品种集装化运输的优化调度问题

用数学模型描述了供应商根据某一用户在各个不同时间段内对不同货物的需求量情况,利用各种不同型号的箱体进行分时段货物发送的问题。其最终目的是为了求得能够使运输成本和存储成本达到最小的货物发送方案,该问题是一个由批量问题和拼箱问题所组成的复合问题。就此问题,提出了一种三阶段算法。通过理论分析,该算法可以有效地解决此类问题。     

我国道路客运业的现状及发展对客车制造业的影响

本文对我国道路客运业的现状和特点进行了分析介绍,指出道路客运业向集约化、规模化发展,客运经营主体的资质、经营管理水平等需要进一步的提高。道路客运业的发展对客车制造企业提出了更多要求,但二者又是相互融合、共同发展的。     

Neighborhood services,trip purpose,and tour-based travel

Communities are increasingly looking to land use planning strategies to reduce drive-alone travel. Many planning efforts aim to develop neighborhoods with higher levels of accessibility that will allow residents to shop closer to home and drive fewer miles. To better understand how accessible land use patterns relate to household travel behavior, this paper is divided into three sections. The first section describes the typical range of services available in areas with high neighborhood accessibility. It explains how trip-based travel analysis is limited because it does not consider the linked (chained) nature of most travel. The second section describes a framework that provides a more behavioral understanding of household travel. This framework highlights travel tours, the sequence of trips that begin and end at home, as the basic unit of analysis. The paper offers a typology of travel tours to account for different travel purposes; by doing so, this typology helps understand tours relative to the range of services typically offered in accessible neighborhoods. The final section empirically analyzes relationships between tour type and neighborhood access using detailed travel data from the Central Puget Sound region (Seattle, Washington). Households living in areas with higher levels of neighborhood access are found to complete more tours and make fewer stops per tour. They make more simple tours (out and back) for work and maintenance (personal, appointment, and shopping) trip purposes but there is no difference in the frequency of other types of tours. While they travel shorter distances for maintenance-type errands, a large portion of their maintenance travel is still pursued outside the neighborhood. These findings suggest that while higher levels of neighborhood access influences travel tours, it does not spur households to complete the bulk of their errands close to home.     

Introduction: Habitual travel choice

In this introduction to the special issue on habitual travel choice, we provide a brief account of the role of habit in travel behaviour, discuss more generally what habitual choice is, and briefly review the issues addressed in the solicited papers. These issues include how habitual travel behaviour should be measured, how to model the learning process that makes travel choice habitual, and how to break and replace car-use habits.     

Habitual travel behaviour: Evidence from a six-week travel diary

This paper introduces different methods to measure similarity of travel behaviour addressing the question of how repetitious travel behaviour actually is. It compares empirical results of the different methods based on the data from a six-week travel diary. In general, the results show that the day-to-day behaviour is more variable if measured with trip-based methods instead of methods based on time budgets. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the similarity declines if the method captures more of the complexity of the travel pattern. It is also shown that travel behaviour is neither totally repetitious nor totally variable. Even for the whole observation period, it is demonstrated that two days always have some common elements. Additionally, it is found that the different methods yield the same pattern of variability for different types of day. Travel behaviour is clearly more stable on work days. Similar results for all methods are also obtained concerning the question of how long the minimum period of observation should be. All measures show that the period should not be less than two weeks if one aims at measuring variability.