A study of characteristics of intercity transportation systems. Phase 1: Definition of transportation comparison methodology

Decision making in early transportation planning must be responsive to complex value systems representing various policies and objectives. The assessment of alternative transportation concepts during the early initial phases of the system life cycle, when supportive research and technology development activities are defined, requires estimates of transportation, environmental, and socio-economic impacts throughout the system life cycle, which is a period of some 40 or 50 years. A unified methodological framework for comparing intercity passenger and freight transportation systems is described and is extended to include the comparison of long term transportation trends arising from implementation of the various R & D programs. The attributes of existing and future transportation systems are reviewed in order to establish measures for comparison, define value functions, and attribute weightings needed for comparing alternative policy actions for furthering transportation goals. Comparison criteria definitions and an illustrative example are included

CALIBRATING THE INTERCITY HIGH SPEED RAIL (HSR) CHOICE MODEL FOR THE RICHMOND-WASHINGTON, D.C. CORRIDOR

This study aims to quantitatively investigate how the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) influences traveler’s choice behavior. The study focuses on recalibrating the Florida-based HSR choice model to fit the intercity travel northward from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C. The model takes a nested logit formulation and includes a binary marginal choice submodel to project travel behavior between aggregate ground and individual air transportation modes, and a trinomial conditional mode choice model to examine the travel behavior patterns within three ground transportation submodes: auto, bus, and rail. The data collected is based upon the base year 2008 market conditions, and the recalibrated model is used to forecast the year 2014 HSR levels of service. Empirical results show that reduced travel cost and other impedance factors stand to increase utility for HSR, even though the auto will continue to be the dominant travel mode.high speed rail, nested logit model, mode choice, Richmond, Washington D.C.

Simulating the Impact of Strategy Development Frameworks on Transportation Infrastructure System Performance

This paper develops, through a simulation model, a deeper understanding of the relationship between transportation infrastructure strategy development frameworks and system performance. A strategy development framework for transportation can be characterized by the infrastructure ownership structures, cross-modal and cross-sectoral linkages, revenue sources, resource allocation decision-making processes, and geographic scales of the organizations responsible for making infrastructure investments. Taking the dimensions of a strategy development framework as inputs, the model simulates investments in an infrastructure network over time—in this paper, the national intercity roadway network of Portugal. The results demonstrate the value of using simulation models of complex transportation systems to inform the decisions of not only planners but also of stakeholders who design strategy development frameworks. Such a tool is particularly important given the ongoing reorganizations of the Portuguese transportation sector, including increasing reliance on concession agreements, highway tolls, and sub-national government participation

Forecast of Future Aviation Fuels. Part 1: Scenarios

A preliminary set of scenarios is described for depicting the air transport industry as it grows and changes, up to the year 2025. This provides the background for predicting the needs for future aviation fuels to meet the requirements of the industry as new basic sources, such as oil shale and coal, which are utilized to supplement petroleum. Five scenarios are written to encompass a range of futures from a serious resource-constrained economy to a continuous and optimistic economic growth. A unique feature is the choice of one immediate range scenario which is based on a serious interruption of economic growth occasioned by an energy shortfall. This is presumed to occur due to lags in starting a synfuels program

Survey of air cargo forecasting techniques

Forecasting techniques currently in use in estimating or predicting the demand for air cargo in various markets are discussed with emphasis on the fundamentals of the different forecasting approaches. References to specific studies are cited when appropriate. The effectiveness of current methods is evaluated and several prospects for future activities or approaches are suggested. Appendices contain summary type analyses of about 50 specific publications on forecasting, and selected bibliographies on air cargo forecasting, air passenger demand forecasting, and general demand and modalsplit modeling

On Strategies Improving Accuracy of Speed Prediction from Floating Car Data (FCD)

For smart mobility, speed data extracted from Floating Car Data (FCD) plays an important role in speed predictionaccuracy. However, there are reliability issues for commercial FCD due to processing of individual vehicletracking data, and imposed temporal averaging to compress data size. Furthermore, spatial discretizationsignificantly affects the accuracy of the prediction due to uneven segment lengths and highly variable dataavailability in the network. In this study, these issues are examined in detail, and several strategies to improveaverage speed prediction are proposed. An extensive FCD data from a 75-km long corridor is utilized in thecalculations. Firstly, for data reliability, several filters are applied to clean data, then, a robust algorithm is appliedto smoothen the speed data. Secondly, to investigate and reduce prediction errors due to spatial segmentation, anumber of segmentation approaches are developed, and their effects on the average speed prediction are assessed.Finally, several autoregressive prediction models are implemented and a comprehensive comparison of results ispresented

The Impact of LRT Jabodebek in Enforcing Capability of the Intercity Transportation Network in the Greater Jakarta Area

Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi (Jabodetabek or Greater Jakarta) is the greater capital region in Indonesia. Unfortunately, the fast growth of the population in Jabodetabek was not supported by a good growth or improvement of public transportation. The transportation network was predicted and evaluated to suffer considerable congestion by 2020. The current presence of Bus Rapid Transit and Commuter Line were insufficient to accommodate the current demand for the total number of trips in urban and suburban areas. Additionally, land availability and cost budgeting condition extend this issue to be more challenging. Thus, civil engineers and the government’s decision and collaboration contribute a significant role in solving and suggesting an optimal decision to strengthening transportation in Jabodetabek. Light Rail Transit (LRT) becomes a prominent answer to solve this problem, integrating the suburban to an urban area and reduce the traveling time. This paper evaluates the impact of LRT Jabodetabek in improving the capacity of traffic for the Greater Jakarta area and measure the effectiveness of LRT Jabodetabek. From this study, the analysis showed the positive contribution of LRT Jabodetabek in improving the longing dilemma by 2025. The paper also suggested future development of LRT Jabodetabek in optimizing the effectiveness through expanding its routes

The Evolution of Transport Networks

Between 1900 and 2000, the length of paved roads in the United States increased from 240 km to 6,400,000 km (Peat 2002, BTS 2002) with virtually 100% of the U.S. population having almost immediate access to paved roadways. Similarly, in 1830 there were 37 km of railroad in the United States, but by 1920 total track mileage had increased more than ten-thousand times to 416,000 km miles, however since then, rail track mileage has shrunk to about 272,000 km (Garrison 1996, BTS 2002). The growth (and decline) of transport networks obviously affects the social and economic activities that a region can support; yet the dynamics of how such growth occurs is one of the least understood areas in transport, geography, and regional science. This is revealed time and again in the long-range planning efforts of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), where transport network changes are treated exclusively as the result of top-down decision-making. Changes to the transport network are rather the result of numerous small decisions (and some large ones) by property owners, firms, developers, towns, cities, counties, state department of transport districts, MPOs, and states in response to market conditions and policy initiatives. Understanding how markets and policies translate into facilities on the ground is essential for scientific understanding and improving forecasting, planning, policy-making, and evaluation.Transportation Network Growth, Transportation-Land Use Interaction, Markov Chain

Bringing World-Class High-Speed Rail to America: Special General Session, 12th Annual Transportation and Infrastructure Summit, MTI S-09-04

The 12th Annual Transportation & Infrastructure Summit, held in Irving, Texas on August 11?14, 2009, provided more than 1,100 attendees from 30 states and 13 countries the opportunity to network and interact with elected representatives and influential transportation officials from the United States, and to learn about transportation systems on a global scale. The special session, Bringing World-Class High-Speed Rail to America, featured representatives from three proposed regional high-speed rail projects currently planned for the United States. Majority Whip of the California State Assembly Fiona Ma shared information about California´s High-Speed Rail Initiative. Assemblywoman Ma talked about her experience on France´s record-breaking TGV train and her vision for bringing a similar system to California. Rick Harnish, executive director for the Midwest High-Speed Rail Association discussed how regional initiatives were working toward improving current Midwestern rail corridors and upgrading to high-speed levels to increase mobility. Robert Eckels, chair of the Texas High-Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation, shared his organization´s vision and details of Texas´ T-Bone high-speed rail project

Human Response and Annoyance Towards Ground-Borne Vibration Induced by Railway Traffic

Limited findings regarding the level of perceived irritability and annoyance experienced by the affected people living near to the source of the vibrations especially in Malaysia became the motivation for this study. This paper attempted to gather the empirical data by setting up a few basic instruments to measure the vibration induced by railway traffic at the site under study. The collected data would determine the vibration level and how it affects human annoyance based on the Malaysian standard guideline. In this paper, identifying the vibration level induced by rail traffic will determine the level of annoyance and discomfort experienced by the residents living close to the railway tracks. This data can be used to mitigate the problems created by the ground-borne vibration in Malaysia. The vibration data were observed to investigate the level of vibration towards the human response and annoyance by comparing the collected data to the standard guidelines. In this study, the receivers of the vibrations were limited to the residents living nearby the railway track along with the designated areas under study. This paper is expected to bridge the gap of knowledge regarding the fundamental understanding of the ground-borne vibration that consists of the combination of several branches of learning on the local rail traffic condition