Advanced multimodal traveller information system for reduced energy and GHG emissions

Regulators, policymakers, environmental groups, and investors promote battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as zero-emission vehicles (ZEV). Under current regulations, emissions are measured at the vehicle tailpipe. This definition is widely accepted. However, it is misleading as emissions are still created elsewhere during the life cycle of a battery electric vehicle. For example, mining the earth for raw materials and then manufacturing them into vehicle and powertrain components create embedded emissions. In addition, the production of fuel or electricity generates emissions, and the vehicle end-of-life also impacts total emissions, depending on scrappage or recycling processes. To accurately account for these stages, a life-cycle analysis is required. In a proper life-cycle analysis, it is possible to quantify emissions at each stage of the vehicle’s life to better understand cumulative emissions. Understanding cumulative emissions for different decarbonization pathways, it is possible to correctly choose the best strategy to move towards lower overall GHG emissions from transportation. LCA studies show that BEVs can lower GHG emissions, especially when charged from a renewable grid. However, alternative fuels and hybrid powertrains can have even lower life cycle GHG emissions. Therefore, LCA should be adopted as part of future policy and regulations. The main challenge with the adoption of LCA is the vast number of assumptions used. The final GHG prediction is sensitive to these assumptions and can alter the conclusion of any LCA study. This chapter will review several LCA studies and identify commonly used assumptions, variations on assumptions, and their impact on conclusions. Finally, a set of recommendations for future LCA work is presented.

ABSTRACTThe increase of wasted time and pollution due to vehicular traffic has paved the way to many different countermeasures, ranging from the enforcement of congestion tolls to the commercialization of vehicles powered by low‐emission hybrid engines. Advanced traveler information systems (ATISs), which are capable of supplying updated traffic information to all those citizens that are driving through city roads, represent a prominent approach to combat vehicular congestion. In brief, ATISs are concerned with collecting, processing, and disseminating traffic information, providing data that can be profitably exploited by an on‐board navigation system to compute the most convenient route to a given destination. Indeed, their role becomes progressively more relevant as their accuracy and reliability increases, thus encouraging more and more people to utilize them while driving. With this in mind, we devised a new congestion detection model that accurately estimates and forecasts the short‐term congestion state of a road without requiring any prior knowledge regarding any of its parameters. Such model can be easily integrated within an ATIS and usefully applied to any given road. The efficacy of our model is here proved through the results of several experiments, which witness the validity of our approach. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

TravInfo is a multimodal traveler information system covering the San Francisco Bay Area. The system was intended to “collect and integrate available real-time data on all modes of surface transportation and...broadly disseminate the data through an open system designed to meet the needs of Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS) firms” (Bay Area Ad Hoc IVHS Committee, 1992). This paper documents the institutional evaluation of TravInfo, covering the period from 1992 to 1997. It is based on interviews with key project members (three-waves), review of all meeting minutes, and first-hand observation of the organization throughout the period. TravInfo's primary successes have come in developing a network of public and private professionals, who have collaborated on ITS projects in a variety of venues. Unfortunately, however, TravInfo has not accomplished most of its initial objectives, largely due to a variety of institutional problems. Though some of the problems might be attributed to bad luck. the majority may simply be endemic to the concept. That is, by developing a public/private partnership whose primary purpose is to integrate and centralize traveler information, major institutional problems are bound to occur.

Numerous consumer surveys conclude that users of advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) perceive benefits foremost in travel time, followed by benefits of stress reduction and on-time arrival. Efforts by ATIS evaluators to quantify or empirically validate these benefits through field trials have yielded findings in travel time savings that are inconsistent with findings from surveys. It is hypothesized that users of ATIS benefit in the form of time management and not necessarily by reducing in-vehicle travel time. A novel approach (the simulated yoked study) is presented to evaluate the benefits to commuters from regular ATIS use. To demonstrate the simulated yoked study approach and to test the hypothesis, a case study based on travel conditions in Washington, D.C., between August 1, 1999, and October 1, 1999, was conducted. The travel experiences of commuters regularly using pretrip ATIS are simulated and compared with those of similar commuters using no traveler information before or during their commute. Findings from the case study indicate that benefits are significant in terms of on-time reliability but not in terms of the most frequently used measure of ATIS effectiveness, reduction of in-vehicle travel time. On average, regular pretrip ATIS users can reduce late arrivals by 69 percent and total late schedule delay by 72 percent compared with their counterparts. The regional reliability of the pretrip ATIS service, defined as the percentage of trips using pretrip ATIS that have arrival expectations that are met, is estimated at 77 percent. Analyses of pretrip ATIS user expectations, outcomes, and counterpart outcomes indicated that users’ perceptions of ATIS satisfaction are accurate.

Simultaneous determination of the equilibrium market penetration and compliance rate of advanced traveler information systems

Recently, travel time prediction has become a crucial part of trip panning and dynamic route guidance for many advanced traveler information and transportation management systems. Moreover, a scalable prediction system with high accuracy is critical for the successful deployment of ATIS (Advanced Travelers Information Systems) in road networks. In this paper, we propose two travel time prediction algorithms using naive Bayesian classification and rule-based classification. Both classification techniques provide a velocity class to be used for measuring travel time accurately. Our algorithms exhibit high accuracy in predicting travel time when using a large amount of historical traffic database. In addition, our travel time prediction algorithms are suitable for road networks with arbitrary travel routes. It is shown from our performance comparison, our travel time prediction algorithms significantly outperform the existing prediction algorithms, such as the link-based algorithm, the switching model, and the linear regression algorithm. In addition, it is revealed that our algorithm using naive Bayesian classification is better on the performance of mean absolute relative error than our algorithm using rule-based classification.

With the advent of intelligent transport systems (ITS), it is urgently necessary to research into some issues related to drivers' behavior. Here, the roles of ATIS (advanced traveler information system) and DRGS (dynamic route guidance system) in ITS are analyzed firstly. Then a detailed analysis of drivers' behavior under the influence of information/guidance is presented with control systems, network model and driver behavior considerations. Some basic concepts and detailed model approaches used to assess benefits of ATIS and DRGS are presented. Also, the dynamic driver choice mechanism and the hierarchy of choice faced by drivers are presented, respectively. Finally, the paper explores how the effects of multiple-criteria route guidance will be relevant when these intelligent systems come on-line.

As the rapid raise of transportation in China, increasingly importance has been attached to the convenience and safety of driving on trunk roads. Therefore, advanced traveler information system (ATIS) which can enhance efficiency and safety of driving greatly by using modern technologies has a brilliant prospect in this field. There are no standard ATIS design methods for trunk roads in China at present and the researches in this filed are fewer. In order to research on the standard system design method and explore a Chinese way in developing ATIS for trunk roads, an ATIS spiral rapid design method (ATIS-SRD) was provided under the Spiral Model according to the theories of software engineering. The method can be divided into 11 general steps including project feasibility analysis, travel information service (TIS) status investigation, project objective identification, travel information requirement survey, user service determination, logic architecture design, physical architecture design, application project composition, application design, design evaluation and design amendment, and an increment design step. The operation process of each step was also worked out. The ATIS-SRD was applied to the ATIS design for the Jiangsu section of 312 national road (G312) and the results prove that the method can raise efficiency for designers in trunk road ATIS designing greatly.

The quantity of primary energy needed to support global human activity is in large part determined by how efficiently that energy is converted to a useful form. We estimate the system-level life-cycle energy efficiency (EF) and carbon intensity (CI) across primary resources for 2005-2100. Our results underscore that although technological improvements at each energy conversion process will improve technology efficiency and lead to important reductions in primary energy use, market mediated effects and structural shifts toward less efficient pathways and pathways with multiple stages of conversion will dampen these efficiency gains. System-level life-cycle efficiency may decrease as mitigation efforts intensify, since low-efficiency renewable systems with high output have much lower GHG emissions than some high-efficiency fossil fuel systems. Climate policies accelerate both improvements in EF and the adoption of renewable technologies, resulting in considerably lower primary energy demand and GHG emissions. Life-cycle EF and CI of useful energy provide a useful metric for understanding dynamics of implementing climate policies. The approaches developed here reiterate the necessity of a combination of policies that target efficiency and decarbonized energy technologies. We also examine life-cycle exergy efficiency (ExF) and find that nearly all of the qualitative results hold regardless of whether we use ExF or EF.

The deployment of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) occurred in most metropolitan areas in the United States through the creation of a publicprivate partnership (PPP). An ATIS PPP involves a high level of risk that travelers may be unaware of the ATIS. Because ATIS offers innovative service, sufficient public outreach/marketing efforts must increase usage and limit this inherent risk. For transportation officials, the need for greater public awareness means a changing role. ATIS business plans, those documents that establish policy goals and provide a framework for the PPP, have not focused on marketing ATIS services. Experiences with public outreach efforts, illustrated by three metropolitan ATIS PPP examples, suggest that such efforts have not led to satisfactory levels of usage. The adoption of the 511 telephone number for traveler information, a decision made by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2000, has increased recognition of the need for public outreach.

A reliability-based stochastic system optimum congestion pricing (SSOCP) model with endogenous market penetration and compliance rate in an advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) environment was proposed. All travelers were divided into two classes. The first guided travelers were referred to as the equipped travelers who follow ATIS advice, while the second unguided travelers were referred to as the unequipped travelers and the equipped travelers who do not follow the ATIS advice (also referred to as non-complied travelers). Travelers were assumed to take travel time, congestion pricing, and travel time reliability into account when making travel route choice decisions. In order to arrive at on time, travelers needed to allow for a safety margin to their trip. The market penetration of ATIS was determined by a continuous increasing function of the information benefit, and the ATIS compliance rate of equipped travelers was given as the probability of the actually experienced travel costs of guided travelers less than or equal to those of unguided travelers. The analysis results could enhance our understanding of the effect of travel demand level and travel time reliability confidence level on the ATIS market penetration and compliance rate; and the effect of travel time perception variation of guided and unguided travelers on the mean travel cost savings (MTCS) of the equipped travelers, the ATIS market penetration, compliance rate, and the total network effective travel time (TNETT).

Advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) have been implemented within the last years. But despite sufficient market penetration user acceptance still lags behind. Results of a survey in Austria show that only a small part of the population knows ATIS. Willingness to use ATIS is generally low, although slightly higher for exceptional, nonroutine trips. Younger persons and employed persons without a personal car currently use the Internet more often for obtaining travel information and state higher intentions to use ATIS than other population groups. However, age is only a proxy indicator for the determinants of willingness to use ATIS. Among a scope of possible explanatory variables only attitudes towards information and communication technologies are relevant. Convergent, discriminant and external validity of the attitude measurement is established. The personal experiences with the current transport system people acquire over many years are sufficient for their everyday mobility. Use of ATIS might increase if innovative, inter-/multimodal transport services are introduced which require more effort in scheduling, which in turn demands more detailed traveler information. Additionally, increased market penetration and acceptance of information and communication technologies could raise corresponding attitudes and thus willingness to use ATIS.

This paper presents an analytical method for evaluating the impact of rerouting traffic guided with Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) on air quality. The method is applied to a simple road network composed of two routes with one of the routes experiencing incident congestion. The methodology can be extended to more complex networks. Total emissions of three air pollutants (CO, VOC, and NO x ) on the two routes are evaluated with and without ATIS. Emissions are evaluated for three time periods: 1993–98, 1998–2003, and the time period beyond year 2003. The findings indicate that a systemwide reduction of CO and VOC can be achieved through the implementation of ATIS. Further, more reduction in emissions of CO and VOC can be achieved with higher ATIS market-penetration levels. However, except for small market-penetration levels, ATIS may have a negative impact on NO x emissions. It is also found that ATIS alone cannot compete with improved emission controls in reducing emissions. Emission controls and ATIS together can achieve greater reductions of emissions than can be achieved by emission controls alone, which is likely to eliminate the negative impact of ATIS on NO x emissions.

Advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) are computer-based in-vehicle systems that provide travel-related information to automobile drivers. It is important for user acceptance to occur quickly because ATIS performance is optimized when many automobiles are equipped with the systems. One important factor in user acceptance is how much users trust the technology. Previous studies on this topic revealed that inaccurate congestion information reduced the users’ trust in ATIS and limited compliance with ATIS advice. The previous research is extended by the evaluation of both trust in ATIS and compliance with ATIS advice in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Participants drove through a simulation with the goal of avoiding congestion. A simulated ATIS recommended which way to go to avoid congestion. Participants drove through four trials of ten intersections each. In one trial, ATIS provided accurate information at 100 percent of the intersections. In the other three, the information was 80, 60, or 40 percent accurate. The four trials were presented to the participants in one of three orders. Dependent measures included ( a) how much participants trusted ATIS advice, ( b) how many times they complied with ATIS, and ( c) how accurate they thought the system was. The results show that 40 percent accuracy would not support user trust and compliance, but that 60 percent accuracy probably would. Also, the order in which participants experienced the trials significantly affected both trust and compliance; the effects of accuracy order were similar for both trust and compliance.

The concepts of human information processing provide design recommendations for advanced traveler information systems (ATISs). A driver’s information processing model for the ATIS environment is proposed. This qualitative model explicitly depicts how drivers process ATIS information, from the moment it is received until a decision is made in response to the information. The model is supported by data collected with a driving simulator. The results of the driving simulator study indicate that, because of the limitations of human memory, drivers prefer to have short, simple ATIS information conveyed to them whenever the circumstance allows. Furthermore, drivers do not always need or want visually displayed information (e.g., an electronic map) to assist them in route navigation. In unfamiliar traffic networks, a motorist’s propensity to change routes is strongly correlated to the quality of ATIS information being processed. With the right amount of traffic information presented using an effective conveyance method, more drivers are likely to accept and use ATIS information and divert to alternate routes. The challenge for ATIS designers is to provide options that are acceptable to ATIS users.