Strategies to achieve deep reductions in metropolitan transportation GHG emissions: the case of Philadelphia

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates strategies that could achieve an 80% reduction in transportation emissions from current levels by 2050 in the City of Philadelphia. The baseline daily lifecycle emissions generated by road transportation in the Greater Philadelphia Region in 2012 were quantified using trip information from the 2012 Household Travel Survey (HTS). Emissions were projected to the year 2050 accounting for population growth and trends in vehicle technology for both the Greater Philadelphia Region and the City of Philadelphia. The impacts of vehicle technology and shifts in travel modes on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2050 were quantified using a scenario approach. The analysis of 12 different scenarios suggests that 80% reduction in emissions is technically feasible through a combination of active transportation, cleaner fuels for public transit vehicles, and a significant market penetration of battery-electric vehicles. The additional electricity demand associated with greater use of electric vehicles could amount to 10.8 TWh/year. The use of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) shows promising results due to high reductions in GHG emissions at a potentially manageable cost.     

Dynamic demand estimation and microscopic traffic simulation of a university campus transportation network

Abstract

This article documents the authors' experience with the modeling, simulation, and analysis of a university transportation system, using the TRansportation ANalysis and SIMulation System (TRANSIMS). The processes of data preparation and network coding are described, followed by the algorithm developed to estimate the dynamic 24-hour demand, which includes a procedure for estimating the ‘desirability’ of the different parking lots from readily available data. The dynamic demand estimation algorithm is validated by comparing estimated and observed parking lot occupancies, where it is shown that the algorithm is capable of replicating observed results. Finally, an example is included to demonstrate how the developed model can be used in campus transportation planning. Besides serving as a first case study for using TRANSIMS to model a university campus, the study's contributions include the development of a procedure for parking lot desirability ranking and a practical procedure for estimating dynamic demand on university campuses.     

Non‐compatible chemicals as cargoes in industry,on road,rail, and water

Toronto is to have an urban transit system with a passenger carrying capacity which fills the gap between the capacity of the subway and the capacity of the car and bus. Correspondingly, in the words of the Premier of Ontario, the system will “make possible an attractive alternative to high‐rise, high‐density living and urban sprawl. . . .” Furthermore, the new system is sufficiently economical to provide “. . . an encouragement to growth in appropriate areas, rather than merely responding to growth as it occurs . . .”

The decision to have such a system is the culmination of some years of major transportation activities in the Province, which included the Metropolitan Toronto and Region Transportation Study (MTARTS) of 1962. This study pursued both urban expressways and public transport solutions to the movement of people in Metropolitan Toronto.

The urban expressways programmes ran into difficulties, on environmental terms, when strong opposition from community groups was met on proposed routes. A climax came when the Ontario Government halted the construction of the controversial Spadina expressway in June 1971. However, the programmes of public transport solutions met with great success. The Toronto subway and its extensions, together with the change in land values along the route, has become a classic success story. So, too, has the introduction of the GO Train Service (Government of Ontario train service). This pioneered a combination of commuter rail service and integrated feeder buses and today replaces some 14,000 cars each day along the lakeshore highways.

The success of the subway and the GO train coupled with the difficulties experienced by the urban expressways programme, gave rise to the realisation that a better city through public transport rather than the car, was practicable. However, subways were too expensive and they needed a large patronage in a narrow corridor. Accordingly, an intermediate capacity transit system was sought.

The paper describes the programme of activities involved in the choice of the system and describes the technical specification which the system will enjoy. In particular, the demonstration installation which is to be set‐up in Toronto is described in detail, together with the plans to instal some 56 miles over five routes in Metropolitan Toronto.     

Women’s mode and trip structure choices in daily activity-travel: a developing country perspective

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we analyze the travel patterns of Iranian women, where typical patriarchal views and specific social and cultural norms may differ from the patterns of those in western societies. In addition to inherent psycho-physical gender differences, women in Iran can face special constraints forcing them not to be involved in all activity-travel patterns that people in developed countries usually undertake. We pay special attention to the role of marital and employment status on women’s activity-travel patterns. To this end, we develop a joint mode and daily activity pattern (DAP) discrete choice model, which is a two-level mixed nested Logit. The upper nest of the proposed model embodies women’s DAP choices, and the lower nest belongs to the mode choices. In this paper, we try to show how different factors in a patriarchal Muslim society like Iran affect or restrict women’s type and structure of activity-travel patterns.     

降雨量对OD 行程时间可靠性影响分析

为详细研究降雨量对OD行程时间可靠性的影响，基于Uber 出行共享的3 年美国波士顿10 对OD行程时间数据及WeatherUnderground 网站提供的小时历史天气，构建了OD行程时间高斯混合模型(GMM). 模型参数利用EM法进行求解，K 值根据K-S 检验后的P 值 (大于0.500 0)进行确定，模型分位数利用二分法进行求解. 提出一种基于缓冲指数(BI)的新指标——缓冲指数变化率(BIVR)作为定量评估指标. 结果表明：降雨会降低总体OD行程时间可靠性，降低效果随降雨量提高而增强，但增强效果并不明显；尽管可能性较低，但当降雨处于次要影响因素时可能提高可靠性；小雨天气可视为正常天气；雨天可靠性显著低于正常天气，居民在雨天(除小雨外)出行应预留更多时间.     

A parameterized consideration set model for airport choice: an application to the San Francisco Bay Area

Airport choice is an important air travel-related decision in multiple airport regions. This paper proposes the use of a probabilistic choice set multinomial logit (PCMNL) model for airport choice that generalizes the multinomial logit model used in all earlier airport choice studies. The paper discusses the properties of the PCMNL model, and applies it to examine airport choice of business travelers residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Substantive policy implications of the results are discussed. Overall, the results indicate that it is important to analyze the choice (consideration) set formation of travelers. Failure to recognize consideration effects of air travelers can lead to biased model parameters, misleading evaluation of the effects of policy action, and a diminished data fit.     

The quality of survey data: Telephone versus face-to-face interviews

Those designing surveys and producing data have always been concerned about its quality. The increasing stringency of the financial constraints which affect public authorities and the increased scope of involvement in the regulation of urban travel has led us to pay even greater attention to the quality of data. This issue is frequently covered in the literature on survey methods. However, comparisons between different survey methods are more rarely conducted. The decision to conduct such an analysis is partly the result of the development of telephone use to the detriment of other survey modes in many countries and also the development of Computer-Aided Telephone Interviewing (CATI) which facilitates the running and monitoring of the survey.This paper examines several aspects of this question in order to compare the performance of telephone and face-to-face interviews. The first aspect is the representativeness of the sample, and therefore relates mainly to the issue of nonresponses and the choice of a sample base. The second concerns the accuracy of the information and involves the choice of a survey area and the recording of all trips, including short-distance travel. Finally, the quality of data is obviously determined by the quality of the responses given by those interviewed.The answers we give frequently depend on the objective of the surveys, which leads us to put forward a table which summarizes the performance of telephone and face-to-face interviews on the basis of the main objective of the survey. Broadly, the telephone seems to be the favoured tool for surveys in the area of transport planning and surveys which aim to provide data for forecasting models, mostly on the grounds of cost. However, face-to-face techniques are often preferred for surveys which aim to discover and analyze the factors which explain individual travel behaviour.     

世界银行贷款项目“卫津路拓宽工程”的经济效益计算

本市以天津城市主干道卫津路拓宽改造工程为例，论述城市道路经济效益计算方法。按全天高峰小时、非高峰小时，分别计算机动车和非机动车的运营成本、时间价值及事故费用，采用有、无项目对比法．进行经济效益计算。经济效益中以车辆行程时间延误与路口时间延误的节约作为主要效益。     

Modeling children’s school travel mode and parental escort decisions

Understanding of the activity-travel patterns of children is becoming increasingly important to various policy makers. Further, there is also a growing recognition that intra-household interactions need to be explicitly accommodated in travel models for realistic forecasts and policy evaluation. In the light of these issues, this paper contributes towards an overall understanding of the school-travel behavior of children and the related interdependencies among the travel patterns of parents and children. An econometric model is formulated to simultaneously determine the choice of mode and the escorting person for children’s travel to and from school. The 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) data are used in the model estimation process. Empirical results indicate that the characteristics of child like age, gender, and ethnicity, and employment and work flexibility characteristics of the parents have strong impacts on the mode choice decisions. In addition, the impacts of some of these attributes on the choice of mode to school are different from the corresponding impacts on the choice of mode from school. The distance between home and school is found to strongly and negatively impact the choice of walking to and from school, with the impact being stronger for walking to school. Several land-use and built-environment variables were explored, but were found not to be statistically significant predictors.