Aspects of the Rapid Development of Christian Religious Travel in the 4th Century A.D.

'People travelled for numerous reasons,' so J.W. Drijvers submits at the beginning of his piece on travel and pilgrimage literature. Be it ‘commerce, government affairs, religion, education, military business or migration,’ people ‘made use of the elaborate system of roads and modes of transport such as wagons, horses and boats’ to traverse the far-reaching stretches of the Roman Empire. And for 4th century Christians in particular, participating in religious festivals as well as interaction with holy sites, sacred artifacts and clergymen had become greater a reason to travel still. Motivation to travel, in other words, was aplenty. But what exactly allowed for Christian religious travel in the 4th century AD to develop as quickly as it did

Motor traffic on urban minor and major roads: impacts on pedestrian and cyclist injuries

This article compares per-mile risks posed by motor traffic to pedestrians and cyclists on urban major and minor roads. Carrying out new analysis of police injury data from 2005-15, the paper finds that per billion vehicle miles, motor vehicles on minor roads create more pedestrian casualties than motor vehicles on major roads. Specifically, for KSI (killed or seriously injured) injuries the rate per billion motor vehicle miles is 17% higher on minor roads (47 versus 40 KSIs per billion vehicle miles), while for slight injuries it is 66% higher (188 vs. 123 slight injuries per billion vehicle miles). Examining the costs of injuries sustained, these are 7.4% higher for pedestrians per motor vehicle mile travelled on urban minor roads, compared to major roads. For cyclists, injury costs are slightly higher (4.2%) on major roads per mile driven, compared to minor roads. These results suggest that re-routing motor traffic to major roads in urban areas may reduce pedestrian casualties. However, if cyclist safety on major roads is not improved, shifting motor traffic from minor to major roads may result in unintended negative injury consequences for cyclists

Indonesia's hidden heritage: cultural journeys of discovery

Even now into the second decade of the 21st century, there are still voyages of discovery to be done, still hidden heritages to be revealed, and the Ministry of Education and Culture in collaboration with the team of David Metcalf and Stephanie Brookes set out to discover them, travelling the roads much less travelled by most visitors

Achieving genuinely dynamic road user charging : issues with a GNSS-based approach

Peer reviewedPostprin

Unveiling E-bike potential for commuting trips from GPS traces

Common goals of sustainable mobility approaches are to reduce the need for travel, to facilitate modal shifts, to decrease trip distances and to improve energy efficiency in the transportation systems. Among these issues, modal shift plays an important role for the adoption of vehicles with fewer or zero emissions. Nowadays, the electric bike (e-bike) is becoming a valid alternative to cars in urban areas. However, to promote modal shift, a better understanding of the mobility behaviour of e-bike users is required. In this paper, we investigate the mobility habits of e-bikers using GPS data collected in Belgium from 2014 to 2015. By analysing more than 10,000 trips, we provide insights about e-bike trip features such as: distance, duration and speed. In addition, we offer a deep look into which routes are preferred by bike owners in terms of their physical characteristics and how weather influences e-bike usage. Results show that trips with higher travel distances are performed during working days and are correlated with higher average speeds. Usage patterns extracted from our data set also indicate that e-bikes are preferred for commuting (home-work) and business (work related) trips rather than for recreational trips

Motor Vehicle Usage Patterns in Australia: A Comparative Analysis of Driver, Vehicle & Purpose Characteristics for Household & Freight Travel

An ordered probit model is used to predict motor vehicle usage in Australia on the basis of the unit record files underlying the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Survey of Motor Vehicle Use. Both household and freight transport are analysed. The paper examines the statistical significance of a number of driver, vehicle and travel purpose variables on the level of motor vehicle usage. Factors analysed include driver age and gender, vehicle and fuel type, age of the vehicle, purpose of trip, place of registration, type of freight and number of drivers. The results indicate that the cut-off points between very low, low, medium, high and very high vehicle usages are significant and that the factors associated with differences in usage include driver age, engine size and age of vehicle for household vehicles and the type of freight, type of vehicle, gender and number of drivers for freight usage

Problems for Vulnerable Road Users in Great Britain, The Netherlands and Sweden

INTRODUCTION In many countries in Europe pedal cycle and pedestrian travel are important transport modes for the population. However, given the vulnerable nature of these modes of transport, the number of accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists is high, and in particular the number of killed and seriously iDjured victims is high. Technical measures to improve safety and efficiency focus almost exclusively on motorized traf£ic, disregarding the needs of non-motorized traffic participants. In order to determine how technical measures, such as Road Trac Informatics (RTI) applications, can be used to increase the safety and mobility of pedestrians and cyclists, more information is needed about the causes of accidents to these groups. The aim of this report is to compare the hdings of three previous reports (Tight, Carsten and Sherborne, 1989; Van Schagen and Rothengatter, 1989; and Ekman and Draskhy, 1989), which examined the problems faced by vulnerable road users (VRUs) in Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, and in one city from each of those countries, namely Bradford, Groningen and VGo. The aim of these reports was to examine a number of the attributes of accidents which involve VRUs and the charaderistics of their travel, in order to identify areas where safety and mobility improvements may be obtained. It is not intended that this report should provide a general comparison of the safety and mobility problems faced by VRUs in the three countries, but rather a review of those issues that are related to the RTI measures envisaged by the present research programme (DRIVE Project V1031). This project is aimed at improving VRU safety and mobility both directly, through the enhancement of signalized junctions and pedestrian crossings, and indirectly, through the creation of a model of the traffic system incorporating vulnerable road users. It is intended that this model will permit the routing and guidance of motorized vehicles in such a way as to enhance VRU safety and reduce VRU annoyance and delay from traffic. Both the direct and the indirect measures envisaged will only be relevant to VRU safety and mobility on main roads in urban areas; they are unlikely to be applicable to residential streets or minor roads unless these have substantial VRU flows. The report therefore concentrates (in so far as existing information permits) on VRU safety and mobility on main roads and on VRU use of facilities that are intended to be upgraded through the planned RTI measures. This report is split into two main sections, the first of which examines comparisons of safety and mobility at the national level, and the second examines such comparisons at the local (city) level. The analyses undertaken in this report concerning the national level are largely based upon published information, while at the local level, due mainly to the lack of any regularly published information, a number of special tabulations have been made. The information given in the tables is for the most up-to-date year available. As with most international comparisons, this study encountered a number of compatibility problems when trying to bring together data from the three countries involved. These included problems of definition, problems of interpretation and differences in the levels of inaccuracy and underreporting of accident statistics. It is not intended to expand upon the possible effects of such problems at this point, as these have been adequately covered in other reports (see for example Tight et al, 1986). Where possible comparable data have been used in the analyses which follow, however on occasions it was not possible to produce exactly comparable data, and in such cases mention is made of this in the text

Road Design Criteria and Capacity Estimation Based on Autonomous Vehicles Performances. First Results from the European C-Roads Platform and A22 Motorway

Several European road operators and authorities joined the C-Roads Platform with the aim of harmonising the deployment activities of cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS). C-ITS research is preliminary to future automated-driving vehicles. The current conventional highways were designed on traditional criteria and models specifically developed for traffic flows of manually guided vehicles. Thus, this article describes some new criteria for designing and monitoring road infrastructures on the basis of performance features of autonomous (or self-driving) vehicles.The new criteria have been adopted to perform an accurate conformity control of the A22 Brenner motorway, included in the C-Roads Platform, and also to ascertain whether in future it may be travelled by automated vehicles in safety conditions. Always in accordance with the technical and scientific insights required by the C-Roads Platform, a traffic model has been implemented to estimate how the A22 capacity increases compared to current values, by taking various percentages of automated or manual vehicles into consideration. The results given by theoretical models indicate that the highway will be able to be travelled by automated vehicles in safety conditions. On the other hand, the lane capacity is due to increase up to 2.5 times more than the current capacities, experimentally determined through traffic data collected from 4 highway sections by means of Drake's flow model

Night-time accidents: a scoping study. Report to The AA Motoring Trust and Rees Jeffreys Road Fund

Context: Only a quarter of all travel by car drivers is undertaken between the hours of 19.00 and 08.00, but it is in this period that 40 percent of fatal and serious injuries are sustained by drivers. This indicates that car travel at night carries a greater risk of being killed or seriously injured than does travel during the day. The literature indicates that disproportionate numbers of young drivers, especially young men, are injured at night. But to be able to introduce measures targeted at this group more needs to be known about the purpose of their journeys, the types of roads they travel on, and how far they drive and at what times in the evening and at night. Older drivers tend to have fewer accidents at night, but little is currently known about how much can be accounted for by exposure related to their driving patterns. People over the age of 60 years form about 20 percent of the population, yet they make up over a quarter of traffic fatalities. These two groups of young and older drivers have been selected for study with the following aims: (a) to assess what information exists which relates to night-time exposure by activity and by group (young and older); (b) to assess what is known about exposure and risk to young and older drivers at night, in conjunction with an analysis of relevant accident data to provide a picture of the size of the potential problem areas, and gaps in current knowledge; (c) to identify people’s concerns, attitudes and beliefs with regard to the problems of night-time driving; and (d) to provide the basis for decision on what measures might be brought to bear on the problem, and what further research would be needed in order to point to focused action. This scoping study is in two parts and provides an assessment of the information available and hence the gaps in our knowledge on the nature and extent of night-time driving, and the risks involved at these times. The first part assesses the available data, and the second uses focus groups to gather the views of drivers themselves, together with their concerns, attitudes and beliefs with regard to the problems of night-time driving. The measurement of exposure, or amount of travel by car, of drivers of different age and gender is central to the assessment of the risk of being killed or injured in a road traffic accident. In this study, the measure of exposure used is distance travelled per person per year. This has been combined with casualty data to make preliminary assessments of risk to people of different ages and gender of driving at during the daytime and at night