Improving the efficiency of demand-responsive paratransit services

State agencies responsible for ADA-eligible paratransit services are increasingly under pressure to contain costs and maximize service quality. Many do not operate vehicles themselves; instead, they contract out the provision of services. Contractors are paid for each hour of service. They are responsible for hiring crew, forming routes, dispatching, and operating and maintaining agency-owned vehicles. In the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Metro Mobility, the agency responsible for providing paratransit services, requires contractors to use agency-approved software for booking trips dynamically and sets parameters that guide contractors’ practices. Customer trips booked in this fashion may not utilize capacity in the most efficient manner. Therefore, beginning with the daily trip schedules generated by the software, this paper proposes two approaches for improving the efficiency of paratransit operations and estimates the benefit of using these approaches via experiments that utilize Metro Mobility data. The first approach re-optimizes routes developed at the end of each day. The second approach evaluates the benefit to state agencies of selectively using non-dedicated service providers such as taxis. Both approaches are tested on actual data obtained from Metro Mobility. The study shows that a conservative estimate of savings from re-optimization would be approximately 5% of Metro Mobility’s operating costs. Savings from the use of taxis are smaller and in the range of hundreds of dollars per day.     

Condition monitoring of wooden railway sleepers

Wooden railway sleeper inspections in Sweden are currently performed manually by a human operator; such inspections are to large extent based on visual analysis. In this paper a machine vision based approach has been considered to emulate the visual abilities of the human operator to enable automation of the process. Digital images from either ends (left and right) of the sleepers have been acquired. A pattern recognition approach has been adopted to classify the condition of the sleeper into classes (good or bad) and thereby achieve automation. Appropriate image analysis techniques were applied and relevant features such as the number of cracks on a sleeper, average length and width of the crack and the condition of the metal plate were determined. Feature fusion has been proposed in order to integrate the features obtained from each end for the classification task which follows. The effect of using classifiers like multi-layer perceptron and support vector machines has been tested and compared. Results obtained from the experiments show that multi-layer perceptron and support vector machines have achieved encouraging results, with a classification accuracy of 90%; thereby exhibiting a competitive performance when compared to a human operator.     

Overseas trade vis-a-vis overseas shipping: Growth and performance in India (1999–2009)

Maritime trade has been and even continues to account for about a lion's share of India's total cargo volumes. Despite the growth of multimodal transport (by land, water and air), shipping still continues to be the major mode of transport in the bulk carriage of country's overseas trade. In view of this vital role of shipping, in the first four decades of independence, under the initiative of planned development and active government support, India's shipping and port sector saw dramatic growth in their performance to build adequate national fleet, in keeping up with the transport of overseas cargo. However, the onset of economic liberalization in 1991 has given rise to many new dimensions in the development of the shipping and port sector of the country with a significant redefinition of shipping and port services, in response to the new global trend patterns. For instance, it has also established the new era of containerization in the mode of cargo delivery from the dominance of the era of bulk and break-bulk trade during the decade of sixties and seventies. Moreover, as global competition increases, in response to this emerging trade patterns within this country, India's volume of traffic growth also increases manifold. So, India's shipping and port sectors need, significantly, to build up and furnish their capacity by increasing the frequency of this mode of transport i.e. the growth of the national overseas fleet to meet this surging demand. This paper, therefore, have focused on this role of shipping in such rising overseas trade, with a view to examine the shipping performance (the growth of overseas fleet) in response to the growing overseas trade at all ports of India during the period (1999–2000 to 2008–2009), in terms of both a mathematical model and a graphical representation. Finally, it concludes that the absolute overseas trade, being highly import dependent, have led to a more or less stagnant performance in overseas shipping, owing to the lack of the adequate growth of absolute overseas exports during this period.     

A model for work activity schedules with synchronization for multiple-worker households

This paper presents a hybrid discrete choice-duration model for work activity scheduling with interactions between workers in a multiple-worker household. The model operates in discrete space with a fine level of temporal resolution. The key innovative feature of the model is the introduction of intra-household interactions through worker schedule synchronization mechanisms. The model was estimated based on a large Household Travel Survey from the San Francisco Bay Area. The estimation results confirmed that individual work schedules for workers in a multiple-worker household are subject to strong synchronization and should be modelled jointly rather than independently. In particular, workers in the same household tend to align their schedules and create time window overlaps for joint activities before and after work. Relative strength of the synchronization mechanisms proved to be a function of the person characteristics and household composition.     

基于工作空间的复杂公路工程BIM交付研究

在研究众多公路工程BIM实施方案相关资料的基础上,分析现阶段BIM建模至交付过程中存在设计协同、各专业间数据逻辑关联、成果质量、统一交付等多个难点,及这些难点导致的BIM建模不规范、过程不协同、交付不一致等技术问题;总结传统公路工程BIM交付中成果质量的影响因素,提出公路工程BIM工作空间模式管理BIM交付的新概念;以机荷高速公路立体改扩建项目为依托,制定基于工作空间的BIM协同设计流程,建立项目级协同设计环境;实现了统一标准、统一工作流程,统一数据管理;规范了BIM设计协同工作模式,为全生命周期BIM应用、智慧交通应用等提供了完整的数据支撑,同时也为同类工程BIM设计提供理论和实践依据。     

Utilization of passenger transport subsidy in Kolkata: A case study of Calcutta State Transport Corporation

The present study tries to see whether the subsidy given to CSTC, which is the oldest and the largest state transport corporation operating in and around Kolkata, is really being used to cover the losses they make over the years or to merely cover-up an inefficient performance. The state owned buses are required to serve, not only non-profitable routes in off-peak hours, but also to give social security or employment to a large section of society. The burden of carrying a huge staff structure and serving at an administered and less than competitive price for welfare reasons, makes CSTC liable to an operating loss. Therefore, it makes a case for subsidy. However, the regular commuters experience regarding the condition of and the services provided by these raises a question about the justification of subsidy. In the study it is seen that the subsidy given is not based on any of the components on which it should, economically.     

Use of methylation filtration and Cot fractionation for analysis of genome composition and comparative genomics in bread wheat

We investigated the compositional and structural differences in sequences derived from different fractions of wheat genomic DNA obtained using methylation filtration and Cot fractionation. Comparative ...     

A competitive, charter air-service planning model for student athlete travel

This paper presents a model for planning an air charter service for pre-scheduled group travel. This model is used to investigate the competitiveness of such an enterprise for student athlete travel in conference sports. The relevant demand subset to be served by a limited charter fleet is identified through a comparison with existing scheduled travel options. Further, the routing and scheduling of the charter aircraft is performed within the same framework. Through this modeling a method for formulating and accommodating continuous time windows and competitive market dynamics in strategic planning for a charter service is developed. Computational improvements to the basic model are also presented and tested. The model is applied to the Big Sky Conference for the 2006-2007 season, quantifying the benefits to the students from such a service and the change in expenditure associated with such a benefit for various assumptions about operations and value of time. The findings indicate the lack of spatial or sport based patterns for maximizing benefit, indicating the absence of simplistic “rules of thumb” for operating such a service, and validating the need for the model.     

BIM技术在轨道车辆运维方面研究综述

基于国内外相关研究,梳理了近年来BIM技术在轨道车辆运维领域的研究现状,总结归纳了该领域的理论、技术及应用研究成果.研究结果表明:BIM技术在轨道车辆运维的应用研究框架包括理论、技术和应用3个层次;理论研究集中在车辆建模、数据库建立和运营、维护方面;技术研究集中在三维CAD、平台建设、数字化管理和车辆部件监测等领域;应...     

Assessing urban sidewalk networks based on three constructs: a synthesis of pedestrian level of service literature

ABSTRACT

Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) models are widely used to assess walking facilities. These models have been in existence since the 1970s, wherein the process broadly consists of three steps, i.e. attribute selection, model calibration, and classification of model results into service-level categories, based on Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs). This paper reviews existing sidewalk PLOS studies based on their association with the three constructs of flow characteristics, built environment and users’ perception, which in combination represents the entire walking environment spectrum, as has been indicated by existing researchers. Forty-seven PLOS studies, along with eight review papers, written by authors from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia, between the years of 1971 and 2019, are analysed in this review. The review finds that although 49% of the studies employed both qualitative and quantitative data for their respective methodologies, but none of them use all the three broad constructs in a combined fashion. Also, in selecting the attributes to be used for developing the PLOS, these studies have only referred to previous literature available at that point in time, and not employed any consistent and robust method in selecting context-specific attributes. When it came to the preferred analysis technique, 60% of the studies favoured the use of the regression technique while calibrating their model, whereas 22% used a points-based marking scheme. Finally, 89% of the studies manually classifies the PLOS model results to respective service levels (i.e. letter grades), as opposed to utilising a classification algorithm. In addition, this review could identify only one paper that describes a PLOS based on pedestrian route directness, which is a measure of pedestrian network connectivity. In view of these findings, the review paper suggests the need of a robust methodology in selection of attributes and the use of innovative modelling techniques, both of which could allow the utilisation of all three constructs. Also, such advanced modelling techniques could bypass the need for categorising service levels manually. Finally, the study advocates the use of network connectivity measures in developing sidewalk PLOS, as it is an important part of the built environment.