Road Pricing: Old Beliefs, Present Awareness and Future Research Patterns

The theoretical evolution of academic beliefs and practical policymakers' perceptions of road pricing (from now on rp) as an instrument of efficient and equitable allocation of resources are described and analysed. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the logical evolution of the theory behind rp in order to understand why there has been scarce policy impact in spite of a long theoretical tradition. In so doing I try to bring to the fore the fundamental issues that will have to be tackled by future research in order to generate consensus around this policy instrument. The paper is structured in four parts. In the first part the fundamental issues of a typical rp model are considered. Among the most important aspects one recalls: first-best/second-best environment, short/long term analysis, homogeneous/heterogeneous time evaluation, perfect/imperfect information, efficiency/equity analysis, use/non-use of resources generated, private/public transportation provision. In the second part the characterising parameters have been interpreted in the light of the Smeed Report of 1964 that can be considered representative of the "old belief". In the third part the "present awareness" is expressed by an analysis of the main contents of the book Internalising the Social Costs of Transport of 1993. In the fourth part some reflections on the most promising research areas for rp implementation and acceptance are put forward. Specific research will have to be conducted concerning social acceptability and feasibility, simultaneous cost internalisation, behavioural assumptions, information and pricing interconnections.Road pricing, Social Acceptability, Congestion, Congestion charging

Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey

With growing numbers of intelligent autonomous systems in human environments, the ability of such systems to perceive, understand and anticipate human behavior becomes increasingly important. Specifically, predicting future positions of dynamic agents and planning considering such predictions are key tasks for self-driving vehicles, service robots and advanced surveillance systems. This paper provides a survey of human motion trajectory prediction. We review, analyze and structure a large selection of work from different communities and propose a taxonomy that categorizes existing methods based on the motion modeling approach and level of contextual information used. We provide an overview of the existing datasets and performance metrics. We discuss limitations of the state of the art and outline directions for further research.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37 page

Traffic congestion and congestion pricing

For several decades growth of traffic volumes has outstripped investments in road infrastructure. The result has been a relentless increase in traffic congestion. This paper reviews the economic principles behind congestion pricing in static and dynamic settings, which derive from the benefits of charging travellers for the externalities they create. Special attention is paid to various complications that make simple textbook congestion pricing models of limited relevance, and dictate that congestion pricing schemes be studied from the perspective of the theory of the second best. These complications include pricing in networks, heterogeneity of users, stochastic congestion, interactions of the transport sector with the rest of the economy, and tolling on private roads. Also the implications of congestion pricing for optimal road capacity are considered, and finally some explanations for the longstanding social and political resistance to road pricing are offered. * The authors would..

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 users in their movement between any two nodes in a network. The importance of the time reliability depends on the penalties incurred by the users. 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.variability, reliability, travel time, scheduling.

Application of geotechnical monitoring in tunnels with neural networks and finite elements methods

Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) “Σχεδιασμός και Κατασκευή Υπόγειων Έργων