Air transport and economic growth: a review of the impact mechanism and causal relationships

ABSTRACT

The impacts of air transport on the economy arise both directly, via activity in the aviation sector; and indirectly, via increased spending and wider economic benefits associated with improved access to resources, markets, technology and economic mass. Economic activity, in turn, supports and generates demand for air transport. Despite its potential importance, the reciprocal nature of the causal relationship between air transport and economic performance has remained somewhat understudied. This paper provides a synthesis review of the channels the aviation sector interacts with regional economy. The review focuses on quantitative studies that contribute to the state-of-the-art understandings of the causality. We find that the reciprocal causal relationship is more likely to prevail in less developed economies. For more developed economies, only one direction of the causality is recognised, which runs from air transport to economic growth. Especially substantial is the effect of airline enplanement on service-related employment. The reverse direction of the relationship is, however, not as significant as believed in a causal sense within the developed world. Therefore, cautions need to be taken when applying income elasticities (such as the elasticity of air passenger demand with respect to GDP) in air travel demand forecasting, which implicitly assumes that economic growth causally leads to air traffic increment. Based on the fundamental links between air transport and economic growth, some typical imperfections and inefficiencies in aviation markets are discussed and promising avenues for future research are proposed.     

基于组合预测模型的铁路货运量预测研究

为了进一步提高铁路货运量的预测精度,提出基于乘积季节模型与引入注意力机制(Attention Mechanism)的长短期记忆(Long Short-Term Memory)模型的组合预测模型。首先建立乘积季节模型、LSTM模型与引入注意力机制的LSTM模型,然后利用误差修正法分别将2种LSTM模型与乘积季节模型组合起来进行预测,最后将预测结果分别与单一模型进行对比。采用2005年至2018年全国铁路月度货运量进行预测分析,结果表明2种组合预测模型的预测精度均高于单一预测模型的预测精度,其中基于乘积季节模型与引入注意力机制的LSTM模型的组合预测模型精度最高,具有研究和实用价值。     

川藏铁路跨线列车合理跨线时间范围分析

本文基于旅客出行时间特征,将跨线列车划分为日间动车组、跨夜动车组、日间普通旅客列车、跨夜普通旅客列车等四类。结合跨线列车的定义,推导出跨线列车的适应性条件,确定其影响因素为线上运行时间、线下运行时间、全程旅行时间。跨线列车的适应性条件可以确定跨线列车的种类、初始跨线时间域。结合跨线列车的始发终到时间域、跨线时间域,推导出跨线列车的合理始发终到时间范围、合理跨线时间范围的计算方法,并实例求解了川藏铁路跨线列车的合理跨线时间范围,验证了跨线列车的适应性判别条件、合理始发终到时间范围、合理跨线时间范围求解方法的可行性与正确性。研究结论可以为川藏铁路列车运行图的铺画、分时段客货共线的研究提供参考。     

高峰期考虑乘客议价的网约车定价与平台收益及社会福利优化

现阶段有关网约车动态定价的研究主要是从司机和平台的角度出发，借助排队论、生灭过程等方法描述司机的运行状态，对市场需求的动态变化特征关注较少，同时也没有考虑乘客方的自主议价权力。本文采用动态匹配描述网约车市场中乘客与司机的匹配过程，通过构建动态匹配模型描述短时间内市场变化的影响，采用需求与供给函数描述乘客和网约车的状态，在此基础上，构建平台利润最优模型和社会福利最优模型；然后提出乘客议价影响因子并依据现有数据确定其在市场运行不同时段的函数，将影响因子引入已建立的模型得到修正后的动态匹配模型和定价模型；最后设置算例验证模型可行性，探讨价格变化对市场的作用，分析乘客议价对动态匹配网约车市场的影响。算例结果表明，随着价格变化因子倍数的增加，社会福利、平台利润和匹配量先增后减，在倍数为2.0时，社会福利达到最大，倍数为1.3时匹配量达到最大。对比分析发现，乘客议价将推动市场向供求平衡移动，同时增加网约车市场高峰时段的平台利润和社会福利。     

大城市城市轨道交通线网规划关键技术探讨

目前,城市轨道交通线网规划的技术已相对成熟,指导了我国超大、特大城市的城市轨道交通建设。随着城市化进程的不断加快,人口在100万至500万的大城市已成为城市轨道交通规划和建设的重要参与者。大城市在空间、人口、经济、交通出行特征等方面与超大、特大城市存在较大的差异,使得目前城市轨道交通线网规划的技术对大城市的适用性存在一定的局限。通过分析大城市与城市轨道交通的互动关系,提出大城市城市轨道交通线网规划的需求。基于现有的城市轨道交通线网编制技术流程,结合大城市的需求,从前提研究、方案研究、实施规划三个层面,对城市轨道交通线网规划编制中服务范围分析、线网规模确定、近期建设方案制定等技术内容提出优化建议,以适应大城市城市轨道交通线网规划的编制需求。     

一种“效率-公平-运力”多维权衡的需求可拆分配送方法

针对自然灾害及重大社会公共事件等各类突发事件的配送问题，本文以公路运输为研究场景，将配送时间最短、加权时间攀比值最小和使用车辆数最少为多维目标，在引入需求可拆分这一限制条件的基础上，构建“效率-公平-运力”多维权衡的需求可拆分应急物资配送模型。针对该问题设计改进的蚁群算法求解模型。从选择拆分点、信息素更新和引入变邻域搜索算子这3个方面改进了算法，并实现当解持续不变时，初始化信息素，以增加随机性。结果表明，与传统求解算法相比，改进算法的稳定性更高(平均偏差率降低7.00%)，寻优性更好(优化率提高7.41%)。 通过分析考虑三目标、双目标和决策者具有明显偏好的多重场景下的求解结果得知：效率、公平、 运力这3个子目标相互悖反，增加运力投入可以显著提高配送方案的效率与公平；当运力不变时，效率与公平之间近似呈同比例反比关系。研究结论可为救灾目标不确定条件下多因素考量的应急物资配送决策生成与优化问题提供方法改进与可量化决策支撑。     

公共交通设施配套规模研究——以中山市公共交通设施配套标准为例

针对城市公共交通场站用地紧张和居民公交出行不便等问题,文中根据部分城市公共交通配套标准经验,并以土地利用和交通需求等相关理论为基础,构建建设项目公共交通设施配套规模的计算方法。方法根据建设项目的规模,推算项目需要的公共交通设施配套规模,最后以中山市城区的相关交通参数为例,代入模型进行计算,得出中山市公共交通设施配套标准。     

Economic factors affecting the registration of lower CO2 emitting aircraft in Europe

We examine the various forces influencing the development and uptake of environmentally beneficial technical changes, focusing on airline technology. Within this context, we consider not only the nature of competition within the final market in which aircraft, an intermediate product, are sold, but also that of the product market itself, the commercial airline industry. The reasons for the gradual reduction in CO₂ per seat per aircraft movement in aircraft design are examined in terms of the real costs of aviation fuel, changes in the nature of the supply industry, the movement towards carbon cap-trade policies, and endogenous technical progress in the technology of the industry. The latter being taken as an empirical proxy for the role market forms play in influencing the fuel efficiency of the types of aircraft used. The results support the existence of these latter forces on the demand for aircraft types, allowing for other influences that affect aircraft technology.     

Demi-flexible operating policies to promote the performance of public transit in low-demand areas

The efforts of providing attractive transport service to residents in sparse communities have previously focused on operating flexible transit services. This paper identifies a new category of transit policies, called demi-flexible operating policies, to fill the gap between flexible transit services and conventional fixed-route systems. The passenger cost function is defined as the performance measure of transit systems and the analytic work is performed based on a real-world flag-stop transit service, in which we compare its system performance with another two comparable systems, the fixed-route and flex-route services, at expected and unexpected demand levels in order to be closer to reality. In addition, the dynamic-station policy is introduced to assist the flex-route service to better deal with unexpectedly high demand. Experiments demonstrate the unique advantages of demi-flexible operating policies in providing affordable, efficient, and reliable transport service in low-demand operating environments and this work is helpful to optimize the unifying framework for designing public transit in suburban and rural areas.     

Impact of transition between signal timing plans in social cost based in delay,fuel consumption and air emissions

Significant effects of traffic congestion include the cost associated with extra travel time, fuel consumption, and gas emissions. This paper develops a mathematical function to quantify the monetary impact of transition designs between signal timing plans on users and the environment. This function offers an approach to reduce problems such as excessive travel time, pollution emissions and fuel consumption. The proposed social cost function is evaluated for various transition plans to assess the impact of the number of steps required to adjust signal timing. The relationships between delay, fuel consumption and gas emissions and the number of steps needed to achieve the transition are also analysed.