33 research outputs found
An Application of Multimedia Services on Transportation: The Use of the World Wide Web (WWW)
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, there is an ever-increasing demand and interest in the use of multimedia
technology and applications in industry, government and academia. Multimedia is often
seen by researchers as the next step forward in interfacing science, technology and
community. Yet, the terminology of multimedia bears several meanings. It may refer to
Compact Disc (CD), moving pictures or video-conferencing. The multimedia technology
referred in this paper is the World Wide Web (WWW) hypertext publishing information
system which was developed by and started at the European Laboratory for Particle
Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. Since the introduction of WWW, its use has
increased dramatically within a couple of years in a widely diverse community including
government departments, university and research establishments, and commercial
organisations. It has significant influence to our communities and our daily lives. Yet, in
most cases, applications of WWW services are largely restricted to electronic library
referencelcatalogue search facilities, electronic mail systems, electronic conference and
discussion systems, electronic news and publishing agents, and remote access to computing
resources on the Internet.
The primary objective of this paper is to exploit the potential of this multimedia technology
as a simple, easy-to-use and effective means of telematics application in transportation
research. It is hoped that initiatives are highlighted via this study and hence encourage
participations and collaborations from different sectors of industries.
In this paper, a brief history of WWW is given in section (2). An overview of the technical
aspects in providing a WWW service is presented in section (3) in terms of computer
hardware requirements, software installation, network connections, application
maintenance and administration, and system security. Compared to most commercially
available multimedia software in the market, WWW services are cheap to run, userfriendly
and readily available to the public on the Internet. In order to exploit the potential
of WWW on transportation research, a study was carried out and results of the findings are
reported in section (4). To further substantiate the level of usefulness, two particular
WWW applications were chosen amongst other web services and they are reported in
section (5) for illustrative purposes. The selected applications are the 'Transportation
Resources on the Internet' developed in mid-1994 in the Institute for Transport Studies
(ITS) at the University of Leeds in England, and the 'Southern California Real-Time
Traffic Report' developed by Maxwell Laboratories, Inc. in collaboration with the
California State Department of Transportation in the US. Finally, a set of issues are raised
in section (6), highlighting the directions of future development of WWW as an easy-touse,
cheap and effective multimedia telematics application on transportation
Propensity to Consider Cycling for Commuting Trips
The British Government launched the National Cycling Strategy (NCS) in July 1996. The aims of this strategy are to establish a culture favourable to the increased use of bicycles for all age groups, to develop sound policies and good practice, and to seek out innovative and effective means of fostering accessibility by bicycle. The central target is to double the amount of cycle trips on 1996 figures by 2002; and double it again by 2012. It is hoped that these increases in cycle trips are as a result of people switching their current mode to bicycle. With this increased interest from national and local governments, there is likely to be increasing demand for rigorous evaluation of proposed schemes in terms of increases in levels of cycling, modal shift and, ultimately, the quantified benefits to existing and potential cyclists.
Yet, in contrast to the vast amount of research which has been done on enhancing our understanding of the demand for motorised vehicles, relatively little attention has been paid to the slow modes (i.e. walk and cycle). Furthermore, most studies on existing and potential demands for cycling are qualitative rather than quantitative in nature. For instance, attitudinal factors of choosing or not choosing cycling are well documented. However, magnitudes of different factors are seldom calculated.
An Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) sponsored project entitled “Cycling and Urban Mode Choice” (Grant Number: R000237103) started in mid-1997, aiming to identify and quantify the factors that might influence people’s decision to travel to work in urban areas. The aim of this paper is to report the findings of the first stage study of this research project.
The first stage study of the “Cycling and Urban Mode Choice” project was to identify and measure the proportion of the general population who would or would not consider cycling to work in urban areas. This study was based on detailed surveys (door-to-door and telephone interviews) of people’s actual mode choices on two what-if situations. The first hypothetical situation is based on provisions of cycle facilities and routes, and the second rests on drastic changes of the current situations of journey to work. Models were built on the survey data to explain people’s choices between driving car, getting a lift, bus, walk and cycle for the journey to work trips