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.     

接触网系统各部件内部应力概率分布规律

采用有限元并结合改进算法的径向基神经网络RBF,判别接触网系统各部件内部应力的随机分布规律。以兰新线武嘉段接触网腕臂为算例,把安装角度、冰负载、承力索覆冰风负载、接触线覆冰风负载等参量作为基本变量,按各变量的分布规律随机地产生50组样本数据,通过有限元计算出每一组参数对应的内部最大应力,依据随机抽样规律抽取40组,按经验分布计算出对应的应力分布函数值。利用RBF进行模式识别得到应力符合威布尔分布,并用回归分析计算出正态分布、指数分布、威布尔分布、对数正态分布二个变量的相关系数。从相关系数和拟合图可以看出,应力符合威布尔分布最好,服从指数分布的可能性最小,RBF识别的结果与回归分析的结果是一致的。     

A capacity restraint transit assignment with elastic line frequency

This paper proposes a new formulation for the capacity restraint transit assignment problem with elastic line frequency, in which the line frequency is related to the passenger flows on transit lines. A stochastic user equilibrium transit assignment model with congestion and elastic line frequency is proposed and the equivalent mathematical programming problem is also formulated. Since the passenger waiting time and the line capacity are dependent on the line frequency, a fixed point problem with respect to the line frequency is devised accordingly. The existence of the fixed point problem has been proved. A solution algorithm for the proposed model is presented. Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the application of the proposed model and solution algorithm.     

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。     

Real-time freeway traffic state estimation based on extended Kalman filter: Adaptive capabilities and real data testing

This paper reports on real data testing of a real-time freeway traffic state estimator, with a particular focus on its adaptive capabilities. The pursued general approach to the real-time adaptive estimation of complete traffic state in freeway stretches or networks is based on stochastic macroscopic traffic flow modeling and extended Kalman filtering. One major innovative feature of the traffic state estimator is the online joint estimation of important model parameters (free speed, critical density, and capacity) and traffic flow variables (flows, mean speeds, and densities), which leads to three significant advantages of the estimator: (1) avoidance of prior model calibration; (2) automatic adaptation to changing external conditions (e.g. weather and lighting conditions, traffic composition, control measures); (3) enabling of incident alarms. These three advantages are demonstrated via suitable real data testing. The achieved testing results are satisfactory and promising for subsequent applications.     

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.

路段平均行程时间估计方法

为了有效利用线圈检测数据,精确估计路段平均行程时间,提出了一种路段平均行程时间估计方法。将路段平均行程时间分为平均行驶时间、平均排队时间和平均通过路口时间三部分。考虑线圈埋设的特点,通过估计平均行驶速度得到平均行驶时间。用分段时齐Poisson过程描述车辆驶入路段过程和驶离过程,用Markov排队模型描述车辆排队过程,用生灭过程描述排队车辆数,得到车辆排队模型,计算了路段有、无初始排队的平均排队时间。基于选取与路口相关的饱和流率和平均车长,计算了平均通过路口时间。计算结果表明:平均行程时间估计值与实测值的误差小于12%,说明路段平均行程时间估计方法可行。     

Travel Behavior Analysis of the Females in Beijing

In urban life, compared with the same age group of male contrast, the statistical indicators of female travel behavior show significant differences. According to the sample data of Beijing 2005 travel survey, the paper analyzes the female travel behavior in the travel rate, travel consumption, trip purpose, and travel mode. Furthermore, the paper introduces the concept of the trip chain, to construct a female morning commuter trip chain choice behavior model with noncollection theories and methods, to analyze 10 factors that influence a female individual's choice of a trip chain from the source. Subsequently, model parameters are estimated, to calculate the incidents that can help to quantitatively understand the impact of each factor on a female's choice of the trip chain. The results show that the travel rate of elderly women is far lower than that of elderly men. Female travel proportion in shopping and social activities is obviously higher than that of male travelers, and factors related to the structure of families create important constraints in their average travel time consumption. The main travel mode of the female is walking, which is far more than that of a male. Age, whether they hold licenses, monthly income, and transport ownership are dominant factors for the female's choice of the trip chain.     

基于空间特性的行李跟随系统的车辆调度方法

为了提高车辆配送初始解获得的效率,在不确定条件下,研究了上海世博会行李跟随系统需求点的空间特性,提出了基于空间特性的车辆调度方法,建立了需求点的空间特性SLINK聚类分析方法和聚类分析结果评估方法。计算结果表明:在需求点群聚状态下,采用基于空间特性的聚类分析法的调度初始解总距离为583,而传统SWEEP扫描法的调度初始解总距离为595,因此,在对车辆调度问题进行求解时,对需求点的空间分布特性进行分析有助于不确定环境下车辆调度问题的最终求解。