Prioritizing road extension projects with interdependent benefits under time constraint

Since transportation projects are costly and resources are limited, prioritizing or sequencing the projects is imperative. This study was inspired by a client who asked: “I have tens of approved road extension projects, but my financial resources are limited. I cannot construct all the projects simultaneously, so can you help me prioritize my projects?” To address this question, the benefits and costs of all the possible scenarios must be known. However, the impacts (or benefit) of road extension projects are highly interdependent, and in sizable cases cannot be specified thoroughly. We demonstrate that the problem is analogous to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Dynamic change in travel demand during construction is another aspect of the complexity of the problem. The literature is yet to provide efficient methods for large cases. To this end, we developed a heuristic methodology in which the variation of travel demand during the construction period is considered. We introduce a geometrical objective function for which a solution-finding policy based on “gradient maximization” is developed. To address the projects’ interdependency, a special neural network (NN) model was devised. We developed a search engine hybridized of Ant Colony and Genetic Algorithm to seek a solution to the TSP-like problem on the NN based on gradient maximization. The algorithm was calibrated and applied to real data from the city of Winnipeg, Canada, as well as two cases based on Sioux-Falls. The results were reliable and identification of the optimum solution was achievable within acceptable computational time.     

Assessment of antenna characteristic effects on pedestrian and cyclists travel-time estimation based on Bluetooth and WiFi MAC addresses

Monitoring pedestrian and cyclists movement is an important area of research in transport, crowd safety, urban design and human behaviour assessment areas. Media Access Control (MAC) address data has been recently used as potential information for extracting features from people’s movement. MAC addresses are unique identifiers of WiFi and Bluetooth wireless technologies in smart electronics devices such as mobile phones, laptops and tablets. The unique number of each WiFi and Bluetooth MAC address can be captured and stored by MAC address scanners. MAC addresses data in fact allows for unannounced, non-participatory, and tracking of people. The use of MAC data for tracking people has been focused recently for applying in mass events, shopping centres, airports, train stations, etc. In terms of travel time estimation, setting up a scanner with a big value of antenna’s gain is usually recommended for highways and main roads to track vehicle’s movements, whereas big gains can have some drawbacks in case of pedestrian and cyclists. Pedestrian and cyclists mainly move in built distinctions and city pathways where there is significant noises from other fixed WiFi and Bluetooth. Big antenna’s gains will cover wide areas that results in scanning more samples from pedestrians and cyclists’ MAC device. However, anomalies (such fixed devices) may be captured that increase the complexity and processing time of data analysis. On the other hand, small gain antennas will have lesser anomalies in the data but at the cost of lower overall sample size of pedestrian and cyclist’s data. This paper studies the effect of antenna characteristics on MAC address data in terms of travel-time estimation for pedestrians and cyclists. The results of the empirical case study compare the effects of small and big antenna gains in order to suggest optimal set up for increasing the accuracy of pedestrians and cyclists’ travel-time estimation.     

Trip generation and distribution: the inconsistency problem and a possible remedy

There are many shortcomings commonly associated with the conventional urban transportation modeling process. This paper focuses on one of the more important problems — the inconsistency between trip generation and distribution components — and suggests a possible way of alleviating it. The suggested approach involves sorting out the independent effects on tripmaking of origin, destination and travel cost characteristics, and introducing accessibility measures explicitly into the modeling process. The resulting modeling framework can be used to obtain consistent estimates of trip generation and distribution quantities which are responsive to changes in the transportation and spatial systems.     

Optimization of transport investment and pricing policies: the role of transport pricing in network design

This paper investigates the role of transport pricing in network design and describes two facts about flow pattern in a transportation system. The first, illustrated by an example of Braess paradox, is that adding a new link to the network does not necessarily minimize the total travel time. The second is that introducing of appropriate toll pricing may reduce not only the total network time but also the travel time for each individual traveller. It follows with the investigations of different system objectives and different pricing policies (only toll pricing and distance‐based pricing are considered), and shows how they affect the system performance and flow pattern. Lastly, a systematic optimization process is proposed for integrated planning of transport network and pricing policies.     

Airport privatization in congested hub–spoke networks

This paper investigates the airport privatization issue. One congested hub and two linked local airports serve symmetric hub carriers. Passengers valuate the congestion delay cost and benefit from greater frequencies. The government considers privatizing either the hub or local airports. We find that in each privatizing scenario, welfare-maximizing public airport(s) set a charge below their operating costs in order to fully coordinate the high charge of privatized airport(s). If this fiscal deficit is not allowed, each scenario causes distortion. Interestingly, the distortion—and hence welfare losses—in privatizing a hub are smaller (larger) than those in privatizing both local airports when both passengers’ valuations are small (large); this is exactly the case when privatized local airports are strategic substitutes (complements). We also surprisingly find that retaining the hub airport as public and privatizing one or both local airports achieves the same market outcomes. We further find that if all airports are privatized, welfare becomes worse than the other scenarios; the hub airport charges lower (higher) prices than local airports when both local airports are strategic substitutes (complements).     

Stability and bifurcation in network traffic flow: A Poincaré map approach

Previous studies have shown that, in a diverge-merge network with two intermediate links (the DM network), the kinematic wave model always admits stationary solutions under constant boundary conditions, but periodic oscillations can develop from empty initial conditions. Such contradictory observations suggest that the stationary states be unstable. In this study we develop a systematic approach to investigate the stability property of stationary states in this and other networks within the framework of network kinematic wave theories. Based on the observation that kinematic waves propagate in a circular path when only one of the two intermediate links is congested, we derive a one-dimensional, discrete Poincaré map in the out-flux at a Poincaré section. We then prove that the fixed points of the Poincaré map correspond to stationary flow-rates on the two links. With Lyapunov’s first method, we demonstrate that the Poincaré map can be finite-time stable, asymptotically stable, or unstable. When unstable, the map is found to have periodical points of period two, but no chaotic solutions. We further analyze the bifurcation in the stability of the Poincaré map caused by varying route choice proportions. We apply the Poincaré map approach to analyzing traffic patterns in more general (DM)ⁿ and beltway networks, which are sufficient and necessary structures for network-induced unstable traffic and gridlock, respectively. This study demonstrates that the Poincaré map approach can be efficiently applied to analyze traffic dynamics in any road networks with circular information propagation and provides new insights into unstable traffic dynamics caused by interactions among network bottlenecks.     

Large-scale evacuation network optimization: a bi-level control method with uncertain arterial demand

To improve the efficiency of large-scale evacuations, a network aggregation method and a bi-level optimization control method are proposed in this paper. The network aggregation method indicates the uncertain evacuation demand on the arterial sub-network and balances accuracy and efficiency by refining local road sub-networks. The bi-level optimization control method is developed to reconfigure the aggregated network from both supply and demand sides with contraflow and conflict elimination. The main purpose of this control method is to make the arterial sub-network to be served without congestion and interruption. Then, a corresponding bi-objective network flow model is presented in a static manner for an oversaturated network, and a Genetic Algorithm-based solution method is used to solve the evacuation problem. The numerical results from optimizing a city-scale evacuation network for a super typhoon justify the validity and usefulness of the network aggregation and optimization control methods.     

Tradable network permits: A new scheme for the most efficient use of network capacity

Akamatsu et al. (2006) proposed a new transportation demand management scheme called “tradable bottleneck permits” (TBP), and proved its efficiency properties for a single bottleneck model. This paper explores the properties of a TBP system for general networks. An equilibrium model is first constructed to describe the states under the TBP system with a single OD pair. It is proved that equilibrium resource allocation is efficient in the sense that the total transportation cost in a network is minimized. It is also shown that the “self-financing principle” holds for the TBP system. Furthermore, theoretical relationships between TBP and congestion pricing (CP) are discussed. It is demonstrated that TBP has definite advantages over CP when demand information is not perfect, whereas both TBP and CP are equivalent for the perfect information case. Finally, it is shown that the efficiency result also holds for more general demand conditions.     

Closed-form multiclass cell transmission model enhanced with overtaking,lane-changing,and first-in first-out properties

A novel multiclass macroscopic model is proposed in this article. In order to enhance first-in, first-out property (FIFO) and transmission function in the multiclass traffic modeling, a new multiclass cell transmission model with FIFO property (herein called FM-CTM) is extended from its prior multiclass cell transmission model (M-CTM). Also, to enhance its analytical compactness and resultant computational convenience, FM-CTM is formulated in this paper as a set of closed-form matrix equations. The objective is to improve the accuracy of traffic state estimation by enforcing FIFO property when a fast vehicle cannot overtake a slow vehicle due to a limitation of a single-lane road. Moreover, the proposed model takes into account a different priority for vehicles of each class to move forward through congested road conditions, and that makes the flow calculation independent from their free-flow speeds. Some hypothetical and real-world freeway networks with a constant or varying number of lanes are selected to verify FM-CTM by comparing with M-CTM and the conventional CTM. Observed densities of VISSIM and real-world dataset of I-80 are selected to compare with the simulated densities from the three CTMs. The numerical results show that FM-CTM outperforms the other two models by 15% of accuracy measures in most cases. Therefore, the proposed model is expected to be well applicable to the road network with a mixed traffic and varying number of lanes.     

在线监测系统在工业水管网中的应用

该文针对上海石化地区工业水管网的运行情况,研究了在线监测方法,建立了管网在线监测系统,并对系统运行效果进行了分析评价。研究表明,该系统反馈及时、信息准确、运行经济,可实现远端无人值守,提高水厂的运行质量。