Understanding the impacts of a combination of service improvement strategies on bus running time and passenger’s perception

Transit agencies implement many strategies in order to provide an attractive transportation service. This article aims to evaluate the impacts of implementing a combination of strategies, designed to improve the bus transit service, on running time and passenger satisfaction. These strategies include using smart card fare collection, introducing limited-stop bus service, implementing reserved bus lanes, using articulated buses, and implementing transit signal priority (TSP). This study uses stop-level data collected from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM)’s automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) systems, in Montréal, Canada. The combination of these strategies has lead to a 10.5% decline in running time along the limited stop service compared to the regular service. The regular route running time has increased by 1% on average compared to the initial time period. The study also shows that riders are generally satisfied with the service improvements. They tend to overestimate the savings associated with the implementation of this combination of strategies by 3.5-6.0 min and by 2.5-4.1 min for both the regular route and the limited stop service, respectively. This study helps transit planners and policy makers to better understand the effects of implementing a combination of strategies to improve running time and passenger’s perception of these changes in service.     

Augmented Reality Vehicle system: Left-turn maneuver study

Augmented Reality “AR” is a promising paradigm that can offer users with real-time, high-quality visualization of a wide variety of information. In AR, virtual objects are added to the real-world view in real time. The AR technology can offer a very realistic environment for enhancing drivers’ performance on the road and testing drivers’ ability to react to different road design and traffic operations scenarios. This can be achieved by adding virtual objects (people, vehicles, hazards, and other objects) to the normal view while driving an actual vehicle in a real environment. This paper explores a new Augmented Reality Vehicle “ARV” system and attempts to apply this new concept to a selected traffic engineering application namely the left-turn maneuver at two-way stop-controlled “TWSC” intersection. This TWSC intersection experiment, in addition to testing the feasibility of the application, tries to quantify the size of gaps accepted by different driver’s characteristics (age and gender). The ARV system can be installed in any vehicle where the driver can see the surrounding environment through a Head Mounted Display “HMD” and virtual objects are generated through a computer and added to the scene. These different environments are generated using a well defined set of scenarios. The results from this study supported the feasibility and validity of the proposed ARV system and they showed promise for this system to be used in the field-testing for the safety and operation aspects of transportation research. Results of the left-turn maneuver study revealed that participants accepted gaps in the range of 4.0-9.0 s. This finding implies that all gaps below 4 s are rejected and all gaps above 9 s are likely to be accepted. The mean value of the left-turn time was 4.67 s which is a little bit higher than reported values in the literature (4.0-4.3 s). Older drivers were found to select larger gaps to make left turns than younger drivers. The conservative driving attitude of older drivers indicates the potential presence of reduced driving ability of elderly. Drivers’ characteristics (age and gender) did not significantly affect the left-turn time. Based on the survey questions that were handed to participants, most participants indicated good level of comfort with none or small level of risk while driving the vehicle with the ARV system. None of the participants felt any kind of motion sickness and the participants’ answers indicated a good visibility and realism of the scene with overall good system fidelity.     

VMT, energy consumption, and GHG emissions forecasting for passenger transportation

Globalization, greenhouse gas emissions and energy concerns, emerging vehicle technologies, and improved statistical modeling capabilities make the present moment an opportune time to revisit aggregate vehicle miles traveled (VMT), energy consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions forecasting for passenger transportation. Using panel data for the 48 continental states during the period 1998-2008, the authors develop simultaneous equation models for predicting VMT on different road functional classes and examine how different technological solutions and changes in fuel prices can affect passenger VMT. Moreover, a random coefficient panel data model is developed to estimate the influence of various factors (such as demographics, socioeconomic variables, fuel tax, and capacity) on the total amount of passenger VMT in the United States. To assess the influence of each significant factor on VMT, elasticities are estimated. Further, the authors investigate the effect of different policies governing fuel tax and population density on future energy consumption and GHG emissions. The presented methodology and estimation results can assist transportation planners and policy-makers in determining future energy and transportation infrastructure investment needs.     

物联网平台下智能交通系统体系框架研究

文章以现有智能交通系统体系框架为基础,提出以结构化方法制定物联网平台下智能交通系统体系框架,并以结构化方法的基本步骤为主线,结合物联网工作原理和自主体系结构,从用户服务、逻辑框架、物理框架三方面探讨新体系框架与现有体系框架的差别。     

城市绿色交通建设与发展策略综述

绿色交通系统对改善城市交通拥堵,减少交通能耗、环境污染,提高城市的宜居性等方面有着积极的推动作用。文章从城市规划和土地利用开发、交通需求管理、交通基础设施建设等方面阐述了城市绿色交通的建设与发展策略,为发展、建设城市绿色交通提供思路。     

杭州公共自行车交通系统发展优化建议与思考

文章通过大量的信息调研,综合分析了杭州市公共自行车交通系统(PBS)的运营现状及存在的问题,提出了拓宽非机动车道、服务点规模等级化、站点设施结构智能化、换乘系统综合化的公共自行车交通系统发展优化建议。     

Modelling the impact of weather conditions on active transportation travel behaviour

Three weather sensitive models are used to explore the relationship between weather and home-based work trips within the City of Toronto, focusing on active modes of transportation. The data are restricted to non-captive commuters who have the option of selecting among five basic modes of auto driver, auto passenger, transit, bike and walk. Daily trip rates in various weather conditions are assessed. Overall, the results confirm that impact of weather on active modes of transportation is significant enough to deserve attention at the research, data collection and planning levels.     

Foldable container in empty container repositioning in intermodal transportation network of Belt and Road Initiative: strengths and limitations

In 2013, the concept of the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (Belt and Road)’ was initiated by the Chinese government, which involves Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas. Logistics plays a core role in such a large framework of economy and trade. In recent years, China, European Union, and Southeast Asia pay much attention to the design and development of the intermodal transportation network towards both economic and environmental efficiency. In this paper, we propose an empty container repositioning model in the intermodal transportation network of Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative by considering both standard and foldable containers. In this model, empty containers are repositioned from the inland of the original area, such as China, to other areas of B&R Initiative related countries and regions, such as European Union and Southeast Asia. We develop a mixed integer linear programming model to determine the optimal repositioning of empty containers via the intermodal transportation network. An Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is developed to solve large size problems in practice and numerical experiments are conducted to show the efficiency of our proposed algorithm. We provide managerial insights regarding the impact on the network performance of foldable containers transportation.     

Locating rental stations and bikeways in a public bike system

To determine the spatial distribution of rental stations and bikeways in a public bike system, this paper proposes a facility location and network design model. The model is developed as a multi-objective programing problem that considers four objectives (minimizing cyclist risk, maximizing cyclist comfort, minimizing adverse impacts on traffic and maximizing service coverage) and multiple constraints (monetary budget, network connectivity, station spacing, bikeway types, station number and value ranges of decision variables). The ε-constraint method solves the programing problem for the public bike system in Daan District, Taipei City, Taiwan. The nine non-dominated alternatives generated are all markedly better than existing locations of rental stations and bikeways. Scenario analysis results indicate that increasing the construction budget for bikeways significantly improves cyclist safety and comfort whilst increasing the adverse impact on traffic. Planners can use this model to develop public bike systems that spatially integrate rental stations and bikeway networks.     

Emission rates of intermodal rail/road and road-only transportation in Europe: A comprehensive simulation study

Intermodal rail/road transportation combines advantages of both modes of transport and is often seen as an effective approach for reducing the environmental impact of freight transportation. This is because it is often expected that rail transportation emits less greenhouse gases than road transportation. However, the actual emissions of both modes of transport depend on various factors like vehicle type, traction type, fuel emission factors, payload utilization, slope profile or traffic conditions. Still, comprehensive experimental results for estimating emission rates from heavy and voluminous goods in large-scale transportation systems are hardly available so far. This study describes an intermodal rail/road network model that covers the majority of European countries. Using this network model, we estimate emission rates with a mesoscopic model within and between the considered countries by conducting a large-scale simulation of road-only transports and intermodal transports. We show that there are high variations of emission rates for both road-only transportation and intermodal rail/road transportation over the different transport relations in Europe. We found that intermodal routing is more eco-friendly than road-only routing for more than 90% of the simulated shipments. Again, this value varies strongly among country pairs.