Traffic Congestion In Cities Research Articles

ACE-INPUTS: A Cost-Effective Intelligent Public Transportation System

With the rapid adoption of mobile devices and location based services (LBS), applications provide with nearby information like recommending sightseeing resort are becoming more and more popular. In the mean time, traffic congestion in cities led to the development of mobile public transportation systems. In such applications, mobile devices need to communicate with servers via wireless communications and servers should process queries from tons of devices. However, because users can not neglect the payment for the wireless communications and server capacities are limited, decreasing the communications made between central servers and devices and reducing the burden on servers are quite demanding. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a cost-effective intelligent public transportation system, ACE-INPUTS, which utilizes a mobile device to retrieve the bus routes to reach a destination from the current location at the lowest wireless communication cost. To accomplish this task, ACE-INPUTS maintains a small amount of information on bus stops and bus routes in a mobile device and runs a heuristic routing algorithm based on such information. Only when a user asks more accurate route information or calls for a “leave later query”, ACE-INPUTS entrusts the task to a server into which real-time traffic and bus location information is being collected. By separating the roles into mobile devices and servers, ACE-INPUTS is able to provide bus routes at the lowest wireless communication cost and reduces burden on servers. Experimental results have revealed that ACE-INPUTS is effective and scalable in most experimental settings.

Refocusing the Modelling of Freight Distribution: Development of an Economic-Based Framework to Evaluate Supply Chain Behaviour in Response to Congestion Charging

The distribution of freight is a major contributor to the levels of traffic congestion in cities. However it is much neglected in the research and planning activities of government, where the focus is disproportionately on passenger vehicle movements. Despite the recent recognition of the contribution of freight transportation to the performance of urban areas under the rubric of city logistics, we see a void in the study of how the stakeholders in the supply chain might cooperate through participation in distribution networks, to reduce the costs associated with traffic congestion. Given that transport costs are typically over 45 of all distribution costs, with congestion a major contributor in the urban setting, the importance of establishing ways in which supply chain partnerships might cooperate to reduce levels of freight vehicle movements has much merit. This paper sets out a framework to investigate how agents in a retail supply chain might interact more effectively to reduce the costs of urban freight distribution. We propose an interactive agency choice method as a way of formalising a framework for studying the preferences of participants in the supply chain to support specific policy initiatives. Such a framework is a powerful way of investigating the behavioural response of each agent to many policies, including congestion pricing, as a way of improving the efficient flow of traffic in cities.

Regional Planning Issues and Measures Implemented in City and Regional Master Plans

abstractThe purpose of this study is to identify regional planning issues and measures implemented to resolve such issues in city and regional master plans, particularly in the Naha and Koza city planning areas, by primarily examining the awareness of municipal government officials, and also to identify measures concerning regional planning issues in both master plans.Municipal government officials are aware of regional planning issues, and each municipality is dealing with issues such as sprawl, waning city centers and traffic congestion in its own way. There were also cases where several municipalities worked together to resolve these issues. Moreover, although regional master plans address a few of these issues, they are still not sufficient.The following three measures can be considered regarding the resolution of municipal regional planning issues: 1) Coordination among municipalities to deal with problems, 2) Addressing of problems in a uniform manner according to the regional master plan, and 3) Ensuring that the upper-level plans are consistent throughout, and that actions are taken according to such plans.

Planning historical evaluation of Sapporo Kanjo-dori ring road

As a policy which solves city traffic congestion, although maintenance of a ring road is promoted, construction is not progressing in almost all cities. Although under these circumstances Sapporo took the time for about 70 years, maintenance of the ring road which is not a highway was realized for the first time in Japan. The arc road plan in which the reason which Sapporo Kanjo-dori ring road completed was based on an ideal and reality was a factor.Moreover, there was thought of national defense, air defense, and fire prevention in the historical background of the plan.

Measures for Reducing Traffic Congestion in Cities

Traffic planners and designers are daily confronted by theproblems of traffic flow. Finding a solution for the optimal organisationof the traffic system in the wider (at the state level)and the narrower sense (cities, towns), requires accurate planningand adequate financing. With Croatia being a developingcountry that has higher investments into the traffic system, thematerial means need to be rati01~t~lised and the human andland resources cautiously managed. With the development andimplementation of the traffic studies, an improvement of thetraffic in cities can be expected. The work describes the trafficmeasures which provide higher quality traffic flow, with low investments.They can be used as guidelines in planning the trafficand as the first implementations of solutions from the trafficstudies.

Alternative Tax Systems to Correct for Externalities, and the Efficiency of Paying Compensation

This article has two purposes. The first is to discuss the question of exactly which commodities it is correct to tax when an external diseconomy is present, but when for some reason it is impossible to tax the externality directly. The second is to clarify the question of whether the payment of compensation to the victims of an external diseconomy affects the achievement of allocative efficiency. The first matter-which commodities should be taxed-is of interest whenever there are political or technical problems that make it excessively difficult to tax an externality directly. Many examples of such situations can be given. One is aircraft noise, which, possibly because of international conditions, cannot be taxed; then the government will want to know whether allocative efficiency can be achieved by other methods-by taxing the sale of aeroplanes to operators, by taxing aircraft movements or by subsidizing the installation of double glazing in homes and offices near the airport. Again, the externalities of car exhaust fumes cannot be taxed directly, because of the cost of metering and levying taxes; is it then sufficient to tax the consumption of petrol, or could one instead tax the raw materials used in its production, or must one do both? Another example arises in connection with central city traffic congestion; it has been suggested in at least one instance (Greater London Development Plan, 1973) that this could be remedied partially by the imposition of a central area employment tax, in addition to (or instead of) the usually recommended methods of traffic restraint or road pricing. There is no doubt about the validity of correcting for externalities by means of a tax imposed on the output of the externality itself, or by direct regulation of output. What is in doubt is the practicability of these measures. When they are too difficult one might want to consider whether alternative taxes can achieve the desired result of Pareto optimality. Plott (1966) has shown that, in the simple case where the output of an externality is a function of only one factor of production, Pareto optimality can be achieved by taxing the use of that factor alone, but not by taxing either the priced output or any other factor. This paper includes some more general results of that kind. The contention that has been made by Baumol and Oates (1975) and by Baumol (1972), that the payment of compensation will prevent the externality taxes (wherever imposed) from leading the economy to Pareto optimality, would be of great concern if it were always true, but it is shown below that it is not necessarily so. It is argued that in theory there are methods that do not have this disadvantage; the difficulty lies in putting them into practice, and to be realistic one may have to accept that the payment of compensation may be feasible only at the cost of some allocative inefficiency. In Section I the basic production model is introduced and is used to show how corrective taxation can be used to achieve Pareto optimality without the

High-speed rapid-transit equipment

The role that high-speed rail rapid transit can play in alleviating city traffic congestion is discussed. For instance, multiple-unit train facilities can be provided in the center mall of expressway constructions at a fraction of the expense involved in building the additional highways to handle the equivalent number of people in automobiles.

Express Highway Planning in Metropolitan Areas

Perhaps, the need for free-flowing highway facilities to relieve traffic congestion in cities is evident, but attention is focused on this need by the superior facilities available on arterial routes in rural areas as compared with those in urban areas. The factors that influence the locations of arterial routes in cities and their effect on the city plan are discussed. The need for obtaining factual data is emphasized and the pattern of arterial routes developed in representative cities is shown. Brief comment is included on the subjects of by-passes versus radial routes, the need for flexibility, the use of existing streets, and the terminal problem. Relative merits of different types of expressways are presented. The need for, and description of, preliminary engineering reports to unite the numerous interested agencies are detailed, and an economic analysis of each project is suggested.