Should we all just stay home? Travel,out-of-home activities,and life satisfaction

How and why travel contributes to our life satisfaction is of considerable import for transportation policy and planning. This paper empirically examines this relationship using data from the American Time Use Survey. It finds that, controlling for relevant demographic, geographic, and temporal covariates, travel time per day is significantly and positively associated with life satisfaction. This relationship is attenuated, but still significant, when the amount of time spent participating in out-of-home activities is controlled for. Time spent bicycling is strongly associated with higher life satisfaction, though it attains significance only in some models; time spent walking is also quite positive, though it is not significant. However, both walking and bicycling are positively and significantly associated with life satisfaction when time spent on purely recreational walking and bicycling is included. Life satisfaction is positively and significantly associated with time spent traveling for the purposes of eating and drinking, religious activities, volunteering, and playing and watching sports. Travel time exhibits a strong positive relationship with life satisfaction in smaller towns and cities, but in large cities the association weakens, and for very large cities travel time may actually not be associated with life satisfaction at all. This may be due to the costs of traffic congestion, which disproportionately exists in large cities. In all, while the associations between travel and life satisfaction are clear, the causal story is complex, with the positive relationships potentially being explained by (1) travel allowing us to access destinations that make us happy, (2) the act of travel itself being fulfilling, and/or (3) intrinsically happier people being more likely to travel. In all likelihood, all three factors are at play.     

A hybrid heuristic strategy for liquefied natural gas inventory routing

As liquefied natural gas (LNG) steadily grows to be a common mode for commercializing natural gas, LNG supply chain optimization is becoming a key technology for gas companies to maintain competitiveness. This paper develops methods for improving the solutions for a previously stated form of an LNG inventory routing problem (LNG-IRP). Motivated by the poor performance of a Dantzig-Wolfe-based decomposition approach for exact solutions, we develop a suite of advanced heuristic techniques and propose a hybrid heuristic strategy aiming to achieve improved solutions in shorter computational time. The heuristics include two phases: the advanced construction phase is based on a rolling time algorithm and a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP); and the solution improvement phase is a series of novel MIP-based neighborhood search techniques. The proposed algorithms are evaluated based on a set of realistic large-scale instances seen in recent literature. Extensive computational results indicate that the hybrid heuristic strategy is able to obtain optimal or near optimal feasible solutions substantially faster than commercial optimization software and also the previously proposed heuristic methods.     

城乡快速干道车-人冲突时间窗预测模型

为了解决城乡快速干道车-人冲突和事故严重的问题，将车-人冲突点的分析方法扩展到车-人冲突时间窗的分析方法，构建一种行人运动轨迹实时监测和穿越时间预测相结合的车-人冲突时间窗组合预测模型。首先，分析行人违规穿越的实测数据，确定不同类别行人对应的穿越时间置信区间以及松弛时间；其次，根据运动学模型的预测结果判断行人的所属类别并初步确定行人的穿越时间，同时通过卡尔曼滤波算法对行人穿越过程进行实时监测；再次，融合运动学模型预测结果和卡尔曼滤波监测结果，确定最终的车-人冲突时间窗；最后，对所提出的组合预测模型进行标定和验证，并通过VISSIM仿真平台进行安全性能测试。模型验证结果表明：在正常情况下，该模型能够保障行人的安全且能兼顾松弛时间重置次数；在行人初始穿越速度过低或穿越前、中期存在持续低速的情况下，该模型可以通过多次松弛时间重置来解决模型的适用性问题。安全性能测试结果表明，在车辆行驶时间均值增加4.7%的情况下，安全车辆数占比增加了37.3%，车辆的后侵占时间(PET)测试值则增加53.8%。因此，与无松弛时间的预测模型相比，所提出的有松弛时间的车-人冲突时间窗预测模型能够在对交通效率影响较小的前提下，较大程度地提高车-人冲突的安全性。     

Quantifying uncertainty in short-term traffic prediction and its application to optimal staffing plan development

In this paper, we aim to quantify uncertainty in short-term traffic volume prediction by enhancing a hybrid machine learning model based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) neural network. Different from the previous studies, the PSO-ELM models require no statistical inference nor distribution assumption of the model parameters, but rather focus on generating the prediction intervals (PIs) that can minimize a multi-objective function which considers two criteria, reliability and interval sharpness. The improved PSO-ELM models are developed for an hourly border crossing traffic dataset and compared to: (1) the original PSO-ELMs; (2) two state of the art models proposed by Zhang et al. (2014) and Guo et al. (2014) separately; and (3) the traditional ARMA and Kalman filter models. The results show that the improved PSO-ELM can always keep the mean PI length the lowest, and guarantee that the PI coverage probability is higher than the corresponding PI nominal confidence, regardless of the confidence level assumed. The study also probes the reasons that led to a few points being not covered by the PIs of PSO-ELMs. Finally, the study proposes a comprehensive optimization framework to make staffing plans for border crossing authority based on bounds of PIs and point predictions. The results show that for holidays, the staffing plans based on PI upper bounds generated much lower total system costs, and that those plans derived from PI upper bounds of the improved PSO-ELM models, are capable of producing the lowest average waiting times at the border. For a weekday or a typical Monday, the workforce plans based on point predictions from Zhang et al. (2014) and Guo et al. (2014) models generated the smallest system costs with low border crossing delays. Moreover, for both holiday and normal Monday scenarios, if the border crossing authority lacked the required staff to implement the plans based on PI upper bounds or point predictions, the staffing plans based on PI lower bounds from the improved PSO-ELMs performed the best, with an acceptable level of service and total system costs close to the point prediction plans.     

Lap time optimisation of a racing go-kart

The minimum lap time optimal control problem has been solved for a go-kart model. The symbolic algebra software Maple has been used to derive equations of motion and an indirect method has been adopted to solve the optimal control problem. Simulation has been successfully performed on a full track lap with a multibody model endowed with seven degrees of freedom. Geometrical and mechanical characteristics of a real kart have been measured by a lab test to feed the mathematical model. Telemetry recorded in an entire lap by a professional driver has been compared to simulation results in order to validate the model. After the reliability of the optimal control model was proved, the simulation has been used to study the peculiar dynamics of go-karts and focus to tyre slippage dynamics, which is highly affected by the lack of differential.     

A real time forecasting tool for dynamic travel time from clustered time series

This paper addresses the problem of dynamic travel time (DTT) forecasting within highway traffic networks using speed measurements. Definitions, computational details and properties in the construction of DTT are provided. DTT is dynamically clustered using a K-means algorithm and then information on the level and the trend of the centroid of the clusters is used to devise a predictor computationally simple to be implemented. To take into account the lack of information in the cluster assignment for the new predicted values, a weighted average fusion based on a similarity measurement is proposed to combine the predictions of each model. The algorithm is deployed in a real time application and the performance is evaluated using real traffic data from the South Ring of the Grenoble city in France.     

Using survival models to estimate bus travel times and associated uncertainties

Transit agencies often provide travelers with point estimates of bus travel times to downstream stops to improve the perceived reliability of bus transit systems. Prediction models that can estimate both point estimates and the level of uncertainty associated with these estimates (e.g., travel time variance) might help to further improve reliability by tempering user expectations. In this paper, accelerated failure time survival models are proposed to provide such simultaneous predictions. Data from a headway-based bus route serving the Pennsylvania State University-University Park campus were used to estimate bus travel times using the proposed survival model and traditional linear regression frameworks for comparison. Overall, the accuracy of point estimates from the two approaches, measured using the root-mean-squared errors (RMSEs) and mean absolute errors (MAEs), was similar. This suggests that both methods predict travel times equally well. However, the survival models were found to more accurately describe the uncertainty associated with the predictions. Furthermore, survival model estimates were found to have smaller uncertainties on average, especially when predicted travel times were small. Tests for transferability over time suggested that the models did not over-fit the dataset and validated the predictive ability of models established with historical data. Overall, the survival model approach appears to be a promising method to predict both expected bus travel times and the uncertainty associated with these travel times.     

An impact analysis of traffic image information system on driver travel choice

A driver is one of the main components in a transportation system that influences the effectiveness of any active demand management (ADM) strategies. As such, the understanding on driver behavior and their travel choice is crucial to ensure the successful implementation of ADM strategies in alleviating traffic congestion, especially in city centres. This study aims to investigate the impact of traffic information dissemination via traffic images on driver travel choice and decision. A relationship of driver travel choice with respect to their perceived congestion level is developed by an integrated framework of genetic algorithm–fuzzy logic, being a new attempt in driver behavior modeling. Results show that drivers consider changing their travel choice when the perceived congestion level is medium, in which changing departure time and diverting to alternative roads are two popular choices. If traffic congestion escalates further, drivers are likely to cancel their trip. Shifting to public transport system is the least likely choice for drivers in an auto-dependent city. These findings are important and useful to engineers as they are required to fully understand driver (user) sensitivity to traffic conditions so that relevant active travel demand management strategies could be implemented successfully. In addition, engineers could use the relationships established in this study to predict drivers’ response under various traffic conditions when carrying out modeling and impact studies.     

道路工程的用地困难问题与其“虚属性”的迫切性要求分析

现有工程建设大多面临着直接、机械式的制约后续工程建设用地、后续工程建设持续发展困难的问题。文中从虚工作既不占用时间、也不占用社会生活环节的资源，但它具有时间指标、时间属性虚资源这个角度．提出采用无机动时差的双代号网络进度计划图所实现的“虚工作”的虚特性，解决占地、后续工程持续发展困难等问题的方法。它从虚工作（具有时间属性）的维系客观背景所带来的新的工程客观条件和合乎社会的时代步伐、节拍基础上，解决了工程占地、资源重复利用方面的困扰。它能够满足地区或国家建设领域的稳定、安全发展需要。