A comparative life-cycle energy and emissions analysis for intercity passenger transportation in the U.S. by aviation,intercity bus,and automobile

Intercity passenger trips constitute a significant source of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and criteria pollutant emissions. The most commonly used city-to-city modes in the United States include aircraft, intercity bus, and automobile. This study applies state-of-the-practice models to assess life-cycle fuel consumption and pollutant emissions for intercity trips via aircraft, intercity bus, and automobile. The analyses compare the fuel and emissions impacts of different travel mode scenarios for intercity trips ranging from 200 to 1600 km. Because these modes operate differently with respect to engine technology, fuel type, and vehicle capacity, the modeling techniques and modeling boundaries vary significantly across modes. For aviation systems, much of the energy and emissions are associated with auxiliary equipment activities, infrastructure power supply, and terminal activities, in addition to the vehicle operations between origin/destination. Furthermore, one should not ignore the embodied energy and initial emissions from the manufacturing of the vehicles, and the construction of airports, bus stations, highways and parking lots. Passenger loading factors and travel distances also significantly influence fuel and emissions results on a per-traveler basis. The results show intercity bus is generally the most fuel-efficient mode and produced the lowest per-passenger-trip emissions for the entire range of trip distances examined. Aviation is not a fuel-efficient mode for short trips (<500 km), primarily due to the large energy impacts associated with takeoff and landing, and to some extent from the emissions of ground support equipment associated with any trip distance. However, aviation is more energy efficient and produces less emissions per-passenger-trip than low-occupancy automobiles for trip distances longer than 700–800 km. This study will help inform policy makers and transportation system operators about how differently each intercity system perform across all activities, and provides a basis for future policies designed to encourage mode shifts by range of service. The estimation procedures used in this study can serve as a reference for future analyses of transportation scenarios.     

城市综合体对社区居民出行行为影响研究

城市综合体作为一种高度复合的新型开发模式，通过改变社区建成环境，对居民日常活动产生了潜移默化的影响.本文从交通规划者视角，对城市综合体产生的社区居民出行行为影响进行了研究.基于问卷调查数据，通过倾向得分匹配预处理，弱化个人信息对于出行特征分析的干扰，以有城市综合体的社区居民自陈述的出行变化作拟纵向分析，初步把握城市综合体对社区居民出行特征产生的影响趋势.而后对有无城市综合体两类社区居民的出行数据进行对比分析.结果显示，城市综合体开发模式可有效促进居民产生更多的短距离慢行出行替代机动化长距离出行以满足弹性需求.本研究可为城市综合体区别于传统单一用地开发模式的交通系统配置提供方向指导.     

Point-to-point speed enforcement systems: Speed limits design criteria and analysis of drivers’ compliance

Point-to-point (P2P) speed enforcement is a relatively new approach to traffic law enforcement. Its technology allows vehicles whose average speed exceeds the speed limit over the controlled section to be fined. It therefore encourages compliance over distances longer than those where spot enforcement policies have been in place.In this paper, a procedure for consistently setting speed limits with such enforcement systems is proposed. Such a method has been applied to design the speed limits on two motorways in the district of Naples, Italy, where P2P enforcement systems became operational in 2009 and 2010. The speed limits, which were set using the Italian geometric design standard to assess vehicle stability and stopping sight distance, have been compared with those provided by using well-known international standards.The impact of the newly designed speed limits and of the P2P enforcement system on drivers’ speeding behaviour has been quantified for each highway section and vehicle type. In fact, accurate measurements of the average travel speeds of each vehicle crossing the enforced sections, before and after the activation of the system, were available. The migration from the old speed limits with spot speed enforcement to the new approach resulted in a notable increase in drivers’ compliance to the speed limits with a remarkable decrease in both the average of individual speeds and in their standard deviation.In addition, the analysis of 3 years of data shows that a gradual adaptation of drivers’ behaviour to the system took place. In particular, a decreasing compliance to the speed limits points to a non-optimal system management. Finally, the results of a revealed preference survey allowed us to make a behavioural interpretation regarding the significantly different impacts measured on the two motorways.     

Estimation of delay variability at signalized intersections for urban arterial performance evaluation

Urban arterial performance evaluation has been broadly studied, with the major focus on average travel time estimation. However, in view of the stochastic nature of interrupted flow, the ability to capture the characteristics of travel time variability has become a critical step in determining arterial level of service (LOS). This article first presents a stochastic approach that integrates classic cumulative curves and probability theories in order to investigate delay variability at signalized intersections, as a dominant part of the link travel time variability. This serves as a basis for arterial travel time estimation, which can be obtained through a convolution of individual link travel time distributions. The proposed approach is then applied in the estimation of travel time along one arterial in Shanghai, China, with abundant automatic vehicle identification (AVI) data sources. The travel time variability is evaluated thoroughly at 30-min intervals, with promising results achieved in comparison to the field measurements. In addition, the estimated travel time distributions are utilized to illustrate the probability of multiple LOS ranges, namely, reliability LOS. The results provide insights into how we might achieve a more reliable and informative understanding of arterial performance.     

Plate scanning tools to obtain travel times in traffic networks

The management of vehicle travel times has been shown to be fundamental to traffic network analysis. To collect travel time measurement, some methods focus solely on isolated links or highway segments, and where two measurement points, at the beginning and at the end of a section, are deemed sufficient to evaluate users' travel time. However, in many cases, transport studies involve networks in which the problem is more complex. This article takes advantage of the plate scanning technique to propose an algorithm that minimizes the required number of registering devices and their location in order to identify vehicles candidates to compute the travel times of a given set of routes (or subroutes). The merits of the proposed method are explained using simple examples and are illustrated by its application to the real network of Ciudad Real.     

Subjective-utility travel time budget modeling in the stochastic traffic network assignment

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose a new model called subjective-utility travel time budget (SU-TTB) model to capture travelers' risk-averse route choices. In the travel time budget (TTB) and mean-excess travel time (METT) model, a predefined confidence level is needed to capture the risk-aversion in route choice. Due to the day-to-day route travel time variations, the exact confidence level is hard to be predicted. With the SU-TTB model, we assume travelers' confidence level belongs to an interval that they may comply with in the route choice. The two main components of SU-TTB are the utility function and the TTB model. We can show that the SU-TTB can be reduced to the TTB and METT model with proper utility function for the confidence levels. We can also prove its equivalence with our recently proposed nonlinear-expectation route travel time (NERTT) model in some cases and give some new interpretation on the NERTT with this equivalence. Finally, we formulate the SU-TTB model as a variational inequality (VI) problem to model the risk-averse user equilibrium (RAUE), termed as generalized RAUE (GRAUE). The GRAUE is solved via a heuristic gradient projection algorithm, and the model and solution algorithm are demonstrated with the Braess's traffic network and the Nguyen and Dupuis's traffic network.     

Effectiveness of travel time reliability indicators in the light of the assessment of dynamic managed lane strategy

ABSTRACT

The aim of traffic management is to ensure a high quality of service for a maximum number of users by decreasing congestion and increasing safety. Uncertainty of travel times decreases the quality of service and leads end users to modify their plans regardless of the average travel time. Indicators describing travel time reliability are being developed and should be used in the future both for the optimization and for the assessment of active traffic management operations. This article discusses the efficiency of certain reliability indicators in an ex-post assessment of a traffic management strategy. Ex-post assessment is based on an observational before–after study. As some factors other than the studied management strategy may intervene between the two periods, and as most reliability indicators require knowledge of the full travel time distribution and not only its average, a methodology is developed for the identification of the impact of these exogenous factors on the whole distribution. Many reliability indicators are split into different parts allowing the identification of the part due to the management strategy impact. The methodology is tested numerically on a managed lane operation consisting of Hard Shoulder Running (HSR) at rush hour on a section of a French motorway. The variation of some reliability indicators appears misleading, whereas the splitting of the indicators increases our understanding of the strategy and highlights its impact. The paper gives the reliability assessment of the HSR field test and discusses different reliability indicators to identify their potential performances and shortcomings.     

Robust traffic assignment model: Formulation,solution algorithms and empirical application

ABSTRACT

The deterministic traffic assignment problem based on Wardrop's first criterion of traffic network utilization has been widely studied in the literature. However, the assumption of deterministic travel times in these models is restrictive, given the large degree of uncertainty prevalent in urban transportation networks. In this context, this paper proposes a robust traffic assignment model that generalizes Wardrop's principle of traffic network equilibrium to networks with stochastic and correlated link travel times and incorporates the aversion of commuters to unreliable routes.

The user response to travel time uncertainty is modeled using the robust cost (RC) measure (defined as a weighted combination of the mean and standard deviation of path travel time) and the corresponding robust user equilibrium (UE) conditions are defined. The robust traffic assignment problem (RTAP) is subsequently formulated as a Variational Inequality problem. To solve the RTAP, a Gradient Projection algorithm is proposed, which involves solving a series of minimum RC path sub-problems that are theoretically and practically harder than deterministic shortest path problems. In addition, an origin-based heuristic is proposed to enhance computational performance on large networks. Numerical experiments examine the computational performance and convergence characteristics of the exact algorithm and establish the accuracy and efficiency of the origin-based heuristic on various real-world networks. Finally, the proposed RTA model is applied to the Chennai road network using empirical data, and its benefits as a normative benchmark are quantified through comparisons against the standard UE and System Optimum (SO) models.     

基于宜兴市居民出行特征的客运交通发展对策研究

居民出行调查是城市交通规划、建设和管理的基本依据．本文根据宜兴市2002年居民出行调查的有关数据,对人均出行次数、平均出行时耗、出行方式构成、出行目的和出行时间分布等进行了分析,并在此基础上,结合宜兴市交通现状及城市总体规划,从优先发展公共交通、重视自行车交通、控制摩托丰发展、加强交通管制、强化市场机制、加强企业管理和政府扶持相结合以及颁布公交行业服务标准等方面,提出了宜兴市客运交通发展的几点对策．     

湖北城际铁路动车组选型与交路优化研究

以湖北城际铁路为例,通过比照区间运行速度、参考我国高级动车的技术配置合理选择车型,并优化原交路,最终对原、现两种方案的成本效益对比分析,实证表明,该方案有助于减少动车购置成本,降低亏损,并简化原有运输组织工作.