Socioeconomic and usage characteristics of transportation network company (TNC) riders

Transportation - The widespread adoption of smartphones followed by an emergence of transportation network companies (TNC) have influenced the way individuals travel. The authors use the 2017...     

Widening the Panama Canal and U.S. ports: historical and economic impact analyses

ABSTRACT

The economic history of the U.S. illustrates how the role of many cities has been changed by being seaports or located on navigable rivers or lakes. Based on the widening of the Panama Canal in 2016, the West Coast ports that include the west coast seaports of California, Oregon, and Washington were expected to become less important, while the freight shares of the East Coast and Gulf ports would increase. By how much it has been not easy to measure or predict so far, but this study attempted to define some of the key parameters in the measurement. As well as several relevant background topics, both the demand- and supply-side versions of the National Interstate Economic Model, have been applied for the measurement of economic impacts. U.S. port authorities and policy makers at the local and national levels who respond and develop plans for coping with the new realities of the Panama Canal are able to understand the extent to which changes in shippers’ and land-mode transporters’ behaviors would undermine the logistics and the costs of their activities. Therefore, this study is important for a diverse spectrum of port development strategies in the U.S. to respond to the Canal expansion.     

Shape Optimization of Elliptical Road Containers Due to Liquid Load in Steady-State Turning

A numerical analysis of liquid load in elliptical road containers undergoing a steady-state turning manoeuvre is presented for containers of unrestricted size and for containers of fixed capacity. The liquid load is expressed in terms of the horizontal and vertical forces and the overturning moment created by these forces around the middle bottom point of the container. The moment is obtained by integrating the liquid free-surface equation and using numerical calculation of the resulting expressions. An optimization study with an objective to minimize the peak overturning moment is performed on containers of fixed capacity to identify the optimal height/width ratio of the container. The results of this investigation being of a general nature, i.e. with no restriction for an application, are particularly intended for road tankers under a steady turning manoeuvre, where they can be applied with high degree of accuracy.     

Transit assignment under crowded conditions

This paper presents a transit assignment algorithm for crowded networks. Both congestion in vehicles and queuing at stations are explicitly taken into account in predicting passenger flows for a fixed pattern of origin-destination trip demands. The overflow effects due to insufficient capacity of transit lines are considered to be concentrated at transit stations, while the in-vehicle congestion effects (or discomforts) are considered to be dependent on in-vehicle passenger volume. Overflow delay at a transit station is dependent on the number of excess passengers required to wait for the next transit car. We use a logit model to determine the split between passengers that chose to wait for the next transit car and passengers that chose to board on the alternative transit lines. The proposed algorithm predicts how passenger will choose their optimal routes under both queuing and crowded conditions.     

Dynamics of Tracked Vehicles

This paper provides a brief review of the state-of-the-art of tracked vehicle dynamics, including mobility over soft terrain, ride dynamics over rough surfaces and manoeuvrability. It is found that considerable progress has been made in the development of analytical frameworks for evaluating and predicting tracked vehicle mobility over soft terrain, taking into account the characteristics of terrain response to normal and shear loading. Certain computer simulation models for tracked vehicle mobility have been gaining increasingly wide acceptance by industry and governmental agencies in product development and in procurement. It is also found that most of the research on tracked vehicle ride dynamics and manoeuvrability is confined to operations on rigid surfaces. To achieve a realistic evaluation and prediction of the dynamic behaviour of tracked vehicles in the field, the key is to have a better understanding of terrain response to dynamic vehicular loading, including its dynamic stiffness and damping. Challenges that face vehicle dynamicists in this emerging field are identified.     

A study of passenger discomfort measures at the Hong Kong mass transit railway system

This note investigates the important attributes relating to the crowding effects at the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) stations in Hong Kong. Data was collected at two sets of three MTR stations to study the responses of the passengers due to the discomfort at crowded vehicles and platforms. Stated preference surveys were used to study the effects of passenger discomfort measures.     

In-plane Dynamics of Tires on the Road Based on an Experimentally Verified Rolling Ring Model

The dynamic behavior of tires rolling on the road is predicted based on a ring model that is experimentally verified to well represent a real tire. The road contact is kinematically represented by two displacement constraints, one in radial and one in tangential direction. The displacement constraints are enforced via the receptance theory. The receptance matrix developed for the rolling tire is found to be Hermitian. Numerical results show that the natural (or eigen-) frequencies of the rolling tire with road contact are, as expected, higher than those of the tire with no contact. The influence of the rotating speed to the eigen-frquencies of the tire is also shown. Analytic expressions for the mode shapes of a rolling tire with ground contact are derived.     

Estimation of origin‐destination matrices for a multimodal public transit network

This paper presents a procedure for the estimation of origin‐destination (O‐D) matrices for a multimodal public transit network. The system consists of a number of favored public transit modes that are obtained from a modal split process in a traditional four‐step transportation model. The demand of each favored mode is assigned to the multimodal network, which is comprised of a set of connected links of different public transit modes. An entropy maximization procedure is proposed to simultaneously estimate the O‐D demand matrices of all favored modes, which are consistent with target data sets such as the boarding counts and line segment flows that are observed directly in the network. A case study of the Hong Kong multimodal transit network is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.     

A traffic flow simulator for short‐term travel time forecasting

This paper presents an off‐line forecasting system for short‐term travel time forecasting. These forecasts are based on the historical traffic count data provided by detectors installed on Annual Traffic Census (ATC) stations in Hong Kong. A traffic flow simulator (TFS) is developed for short‐term travel time forecasting (in terms of offline forecasting), in which the variation of perceived travel time error and the fluctuations of origin‐destination (O‐D) demand are considered explicitly. On the basis of prior O‐D demand and partial updated detector data, the TFS can estimate the link travel times and flows for the whole network together with their variances and covariances. The short‐term travel time forecasting by O‐D pair can also be assessed and the O‐D matrix can be updated simultaneously. The application of the proposed off‐line forecasting system is illustrated by a numerical example in Hong Kong.     

Multiphysic modelling of railway vehicles equipped with pneumatic suspensions

This article presents a multidisciplinary approach of railway pneumatic suspension modelling: both multibody and pneumatic aspects are taken into account. The work aims at obtaining a realistic model of the secondary suspension and coupling it with a multibody model of a train. Various components of the pneumatic circuit such as bellows, tanks, pipes and valves are taken into account. The article focuses on the bellow-pipe-tank subsystem for which several modelling approaches are presented and compared. Differences between differential and algebraic models are highlighted, and an application-dependent choice between them is suggested. A complete model of the pneumatic circuit is then obtained and coupled with a multibody model of the train. As a result, the behaviour of a suburban train equipped with a pneumatic secondary suspension is analysed, in particular undesired oscillating motions which affect the comfort. Topological modifications and improvements of the suspension are also investigated and discussed.