Should we abandon activity type analysis? Redefining activities by their salient attributes

This paper poses a challenge and begins a search. The challenge is to reconsider the usefulness of traditional activity types (“work”, “shopping”, etc.) in the understanding and modelling of travel behaviour. The search is for the more salient attributes of activities that may serve to better explain complex travel behaviours—such as activity scheduling and tour formation. In particular, this paper focuses on explicit measures of the spatial, temporal and interpersonal flexibility of activities, along with several traditional attributes (frequency, duration, involved persons, travel time, and location). Data from a recent in-depth week-long activity scheduling survey was used to define and compare these attributes. Results show that considerable variability in the attributes between and within traditional activity groups is evident. This casts considerable uncertainty on assumptions that statically assign levels of spatial, temporal, and interpersonal flexibility to any given activity type. A Principal Components Analysis further revealed eight new distinct clusters of activities that share like attributes. The relative role of each attribute in each component is examined, and subjective interpretations emerged (e.g., “Long and frequent”, “Space and time flexible” “Social networking”). The implications of these results for future model development and research are discussed. Future research should continue to expand the search for salient attributes and link them more directly to decision processes.     

铁路车站股道运用排序模型与算法

遵守车站股道运用条件,在引入时间窗、权重和有限度3个参数的基础上,利用排序理论构建车站股道运用排序模型。结合列车在车站的实际作业过程和进路编排,利用启发式算法对模型求解,得到股道运用初始方案。基于排序原则选择、进路编排方式和多方案选优3种解改进策略对股道运用初始方案进行改进,得到股道运用改进方案。利用现代柔性理论,设置1个人—机交互接口,以股道运用可行性为第1优化目标、均衡性为第2优化目标,建立股道运用的柔性模型,按照人—机交互会话的方式进行求解。采用该模型与算法编制的铁路车站股道运用自动编排系统,目前已在广州东站和韶关站初步运用。     

周期运行图编制模型与算法研究

在周期运行的运输组织模式下,所有列车在车站到发都是周期循环发生的。将安排列车运行线的问题看作周期事件安排问题,并借助周期约束图及周期势差模型,可以建立周期运行图网络模型。模型充分考虑到列车不同情况下的停站时间、到发安全间隔等各项周期约束,并将列车的总停留时间最小作为目标函数。当约束图顶点和弧的数量众多时,模型的求解将比较困难。通过选择合适的约束图生成树,找到变量的合理取值范围,并对模型进行一些预先简化处理,可以降低模型的求解难度。最后求解一个区段不同列车开行方案的周期运行图,验证模型的可行性。     

Value of travel time reliability: A review of current evidence

Travel time reliability is a fundamental factor in travel behavior. It represents the temporal uncertainty experienced by travelers in their movement between any two nodes in a network. The importance of the time reliability depends on the penalties incurred by the travelers. In road networks, travelers consider the existence of a trip travel time uncertainty in different choice situations (departure time, route, mode, and others). In this paper, a systematic review of the current state of research in travel time reliability, and more explicitly in the value of travel time reliability is presented. Moreover, a meta-analysis is performed in order to determine the reasons behind the discrepancy among the reliability estimates.     

The value of service reliability

This paper studies the impact of service frequency and reliability on the choice of departure time and the travel cost of transit users. When the user has (α, β, γ) scheduling preferences, we show that the optimal head start decreases with service reliability, as expected. It does not necessarily decrease with service frequency, however. We derive the value of service headway (VoSH) and the value of service reliability (VoSR), which measure the marginal effect on the expected travel cost of a change in the mean and in the standard deviation of headways, respectively. The VoSH and the VoSR complete the value of time and the value of reliability for the economic appraisal of public transit projects by capturing the specific link between headways, waiting times, and congestion. An empirical illustration is provided, which considers two mass transit lines located in the Paris area.     

Scheduling of Intelligent and Autonomous Vehicles under pairing/unpairing collaboration strategy in container terminals

A new class of Intelligent and Autonomous Vehicles (IAVs) has been designed in the framework of Intelligent Transportation for Dynamic Environment (InTraDE) project funded by European Union. This type of vehicles is technologically superior to the existing Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), in many respects. They offer more flexibility and intelligence in maneuvering within confined spaces where the logistic operations take place. This includes the ability of pairing/unpairing enabling a pair of 1-TEU (20-foot Equivalent Unit) IAVs dynamically to join, transport containers of any size between 1-TEU and 1-FFE (40-foot Equivalent) and disjoin again. Deploying IAVs helps port operators to remain efficient in coping with the ever increasing volume of container traffic at ports and eliminate the need for deploying more 40-ft transporters in the very confined area of ports. In order to accommodate this new feature of IAVs, we review and extend one of the existing mixed integer programming models of AGV scheduling in order to minimize the makespan of operations for transporting a set of containers of different sizes between quay cranes and yard cranes. In particular, we study the case of Dublin Ferryport Terminal. In order to deal with the complexity of the scheduling model, we develop a Lagrangian relaxation-based decomposition approach equipped with a variable fixing procedure and a primal heuristics to obtain high-quality solution of instances of the problem.     

Creating bus timetables with maximal synchronization

This paper addresses the problem of generating a timetable for a given network of buses so as to maximize their synchronization. It attempts to maximize the number of simultaneous bus arrivals at the connection (transfer) nodes of the network. Transit schedulers, taking into account the satisfaction and convenience of the system's users, appreciate the importance of creating a timetable with maximal synchronization, which enables the transfer of passengers from one route to another with minimum waiting time at the transfer nodes. In this paper, the problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem, and a heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the problem in polynomial time. The efficiency of this algorithm, compared to optimal solutions, is illustrated through a series of examples.     

基于时间便利性的行程选择

出行者基于广义成本最小化选择最佳的出行方式。广义成本包含资金成本、时间成本与舒适成本。随着社会的发展。出行者对时间成本看的越来越重。时间成本与时间长度和时间起始点有关,时间成本不仅包含出行者的时间价值也包括早到或晚到的损失。相对于频率较快的地铁与公交,满足乘客长距离出行的火车的时间点对乘客出行的影响很大。本文通过对杭州与上海之间的城际高铁后,出行者在汽车、自驾车及高铁三种方式之间的选择进行调查。得出列车行程安排应考虑旅行时间长度来安排起讫点的时间点,并通过两个例子来佐证合理的时间安排可增加列车的竞争力。优化出行结构同时也保证了列车的客源。本文的研究对于其他的城际列车有借鉴作用。     

三峡水库航运优化调度蓄水方案研究

文章通过研究分析水库蓄水过程对坝上下游河段演变的影响,并根据汛末长江来水过程,对三峡枢纽汛末蓄水的起蓄时间、起蓄水位及下泄流量进行了研究,提出了合理的优化调度方案。该方案可降低三峡枢纽汛末蓄水对坝上回水变动区河段淤积的不利影响．提高对坝下河段浅滩的冲刷效果,并保证三峡水库按时蓄满。     

Scheduling for Uncertain Data Broadcast in Mobile Networks

With the increasing popularity of wireless sensor network and GPS (global positioning system) , uncertain data as a new type of data brings a new challenge for the traditional data processing methods. Data broadcast is an effective means for data dissemination in mobile networks. In this paper, the definition of the mean uncertainty ratio of data is presented and a broadcasting scheme is proposed for uncertain data dissemination. Simulation results show that the scheme can reduce the uncertainty of the broadcasted uncertain data effectively at the cost of a minor increase in data access time, in the case of no transmission error and presence of transmission errors. As a result, lower uncertainty of data benefits the qualities of the query results based on the data.