Large-scale Transportation Systems Research Articles

Urban mass transit, gender planning protocols and social sustainability – The case of Jakarta

The discussion within a number of Global South cities is increasingly focused on the planning and implementation of large-scale urban mass transport systems. There is, however, a significant challenge of delivering such large investments in a manner to produce equity in the benefits across different urban spaces and across different social groupings. The transaction costs of urban survival and its associated urban mobility and their differences across gender and other social groups may work against the hypothesised distribution of benefits predicted from traditional individualistic, utility-maximising rational choice planning models. This may affect the social sustainability of such large-scale investments. There is a need for new methods and protocols in transport planning and management to ensure that such transport systems promote social sustainability. The mainstreaming of gender into the planning, financing, implementation, operation and management of such large-scale urban transport systems is a fundamental component for tackling the challenges facing the delivery of social sustainability. This paper will look at a case study of the Jabotabek Suburban Rail and Bus Rapid Transit systems in Jakarta as examples of large-scale mass transit investment. It will draw on survey research that highlights the gender differences in the use of this large urban transport system, gender differences in how the system interacts with geographies of opportunities and daily travel patterns, gender differences in the impact of the systems operation on passenger safety and security. It will highlight the need for new gender and user group protocols in the planning, implementation and management of urban mass-transit systems. It will provide some concrete examples of what measures would arise from such new planning protocols.

Automatic Detection Apparatus Development of Steel Cord Conveyor Belt

Steel core belts are widely used in long-distance, large capacity, large angle of mine, metallurgy, port, electricity and other departments of the large-scale transportation systems. According to incomplete statistics, this kind of belt accident 93.75% occurred in the joints and most are due to joints tic was not timely detected. Hence, non-destructive detection of belt is the key to the whole transportation system’s safety. For steel core belt automatic detection technology, deep research has been carried out at home and abroad. Detection apparatus was developed based on the electromagnetic theory and principle of X-ray, however, some varying defects existed in the industrial applications. Automatic detection apparatus of steel cord conveyor belt, developed by Pingdingshan Industry Polytechnic College and Shanxi Huaning Beier Measurement & Control Co. Ltd., integrated both advantages of electromagnetic detection and X-ray detection. It overcomes the difficulties of X-ray machine explosion proof and long time radiation. This kind of automatic detection apparatus has been installed and worked well in more than 30 mines and achieved good economic and social benefits since it was installed in Zhong Ping Energy Chemical Group’s 12th main slope conveyor.

The lesson learn of non-self financing ability BOT project: large-scale rail transportation systems in Taiwan

Finance–base or Service Delivery approaches were utilized to dominate BOT projects but both approaches require a reasonable self–financing ability ratio (SFA). In addition, few studies show successfully implemented BOT schemes with low SFA. To examine the heuristic rule, two cases including one of the largest BOT projects, Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) Transportation Plan, are used to conduct interview correspondence, close examination, and analysis of the document of concessionaire selection. We draw on the experience of the process of the Large–scale Rail Transportation concessionaire selection practices where the story of PPP s projects remains limited worldwide. In our case, government involves financing the BOT project to provide a long–term loan guarantee for the private sector on the finance aspect. The issues which cause BOT construction to be costly as well as

Advancing the Supercapacitor Materials and Technology Frontier for Improving Power Quality

Electrochemical supercapacitors are emerging devices of prime importance in energy sustainability due to their superior characteristics, unmatched by any other charge storage device. These exceptional properties include: 1) high power densities at relatively high energy densities and 2) long cycle life. These characteristics have already been exploited in various applications such as power electronics, large scale transport systems comprising subway trains and buses, energy storage at intermittent generators including windmills, and smart grid applications. Smart grid needs will include grid stability, frequency smoothing, peak shifting, and frequency regulation. This interest has spurned a large number of interesting technologies including the evolution of new materials for use in the electrodes such as graphene, transition metal oxides, and transition metal nitrides. The use of non-aqueous electrolytes and ionic liquids has also led to very high energy densities. The challenge however, lies in maintaining cyclability and stability at high rates.

Review of Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation Systems by Joseph M. SussmanPerspectives on Intelligent Transportation SystemsSpringer

Intelligent transportation systems ITS have captured the imagination of the transportation community for nearly 20 years. The promise of applying cutting edge information technologies to address the significant surface transportation challenges of society has proven to be compelling to engineers, planners, and policy makers. Of course, with this promise has also come a large amount of hype. A key challenge to transportation professionals as they seek to advance ITS and, in doing so, improve surface transportation, is to go beyond the hype to understand the fundamentals associated with operating complex, large-scale transportation systems. Who better to guide one in this endeavor than Joseph Sussman, a distinguished transportation professional who has been heavily involved in ITS since its inception in the mid-1980s? In his new book, Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Dr. Sussman provides a fascinating historical perspective on the development and deployment of ITS. This book is not a technical reference. In fact, there is very little information provided in the book regarding the “bits and bytes” of transportation management or traveler information. Rather, the focus of the book is on the essential organizational, management, and human aspects that underpin ITS. The book is comprised of a series of articles and papers that Dr. Sussman has written between the years 1995–2004. While a reader may initially find this problematic, the inclusion of articles from the mid-90s are, in fact, very beneficial for the following reasons. First, they provide important insight into the intentions behind the creation of the ITS program in the United States. Second, the articles also clearly illustrate how much has changed both technically and institutionally in this relatively short period of time. For example, Dr. Sussman points out that at the time the original ITS Strategic Plan was written, neither the Internet nor the cell phone had become ubiquitous in American culture. Now, one could not imagine ITS or daily life without these technologies. The book is organized in five sections. The first section provides an introduction to ITS. It begins with a description of major ITS functional areas the “traditional” alphabet soup of ATMS, ATIS, AVCS, APTS, CVO, and ARTS . In addition, it

Using hydraulic equivalences to discriminate transport processes of volcanic flows

We characterized stratified deposits from the Upper Toluca Pumice at Toluca volcano, Mexico, to distinguish the various modes of transport at play in their genesis. Using the concept of hydraulic equivalence, we determined that deposits resulted from a combination of suspended-load fallout, saltation, and rolling. In particular, some well-sorted coarse stratified beds have a single pumice mode most likely indicative of clasts having traveled through both the transport system and the traction bed. Such beds are likely remnants of the sorting operated within the large-scale transport system. Other coarse beds have pumice and lithic modes suggesting rolling in the traction bed. We propose that boundary layer processes control the sorting of those beds and all finer beds. By helping to discriminate between transport mechanisms, hydraulic equivalences have a general applicability in geophysical flows involving clasts of contrasted densities.

Operational planning of a large-scale multi-modal transportation system

This paper describes the operational planning system POP developed for Danzas Euronet, a merger of Deutsche Post Transport and Danzas NTO. As of November 1997, the system has been used daily for the transportation planning of on average 4000 container-orders a day on trains and trucks in Germany. An important feature is that the future has to be taken into account: trucks have to return home within a couple of days, and empty containers have to be available at the right time and the right place. These repositioning aspects are taken into account integrally with the planning of the orders in order to get a cost-efficient solution. In addition, practical constraints play an important role, and the system has to be flexible for new and modified constraints. The system has not only been used heavily for daily planning, but also for many simulation studies, thereby supporting operations as well as commerce.

Knowledge Logistics as an Intelligent Web-Service for Transportation System Management

The technology of Web-services is developing fast. The paper presents an approach to implementation of a Web-service that creates routing plans for large scale transportation systems taking an advantage of the knowledge logistics idea. The latter is based on synergistic integration of knowledge acquired from distributed sources in order to obtain new or complement insufficient knowledge. The paper demonstrates scalability and extensibility of the presented approach by adding new knowledge sources.

SPECIAL ISSUE FOREWORD

This special issue contains 6 papers solicited from researchers working for the Center for Automotive Research (JKK) in the past few months. They are all associated with the ongoing works related to the research and development of intelligent and future generation vehicles and transportation systems. Papers were sought to encompass the activity of the JKK briefly that is characterized by its highly interdisciplinary nature in this area. In particular, the articles reflect research spanning from the basic control theoretic approaches (linear and nonlinear approaches are equally weighted) to large-scale interdisciplinary views, which are designed to exploit information at multiple scales. This was done in an attempt to demonstrate how stand-alone control methods and solutions can be integrated in the analysis and synthesis of large-scale interconnected vehicle and transportation systems.

Real cases applicaitons of the fully dynamic METROPOLIS tool-box : an advocacy for large-scale mesoscopic transportation systems

This paper presents the pros and cons of the so-called “mesoscopic” approach used in dynamic traffic modeling. After a quick overview of methodologies applied in dynamic models, we discuss the critical issues that mostly determined the shape of past and current research: the time modeling scheme, the level of detail of the approach, the computer implementation strategy and the availability of field data. This paper stresses the importance of modeling departure time choice and information processing. Along this discussion, we describe the features of METROPOLIS, a tool-box designed for the simulation of large-scale transportation systems that proved to be tractable on large-scale, real cases. The system features both within-day and day-to-day dynamics. Lastly, this paper presents simulation results on the wide Parisian region (Ile-de-France).

Motion Planning Method for Mobile Robots in Large Scale Transportation Systems by Genetic Algorithms

Motion Planning Method for Mobile Robots in Large Scale Transportation Systems by Genetic Algorithms

A New Algorithm for Shortest Paths in Discrete Dynamic Networks

Abstract In this paper we study two shortest paths problems in discrete dynamic hetWorks: the one-to-all for one departure time interval, and the all-to-one for all departure time intervals. Early results are revisited. New properties of these problems are established and exploited in developing solution algorithms. A new and simple solution algorithm for the all-to-one fastest paths problem for all departure time intervals is proposed. It is proved, analytically, that the new solution algorithm has an optimal running time complexity that equals the complexity of the problem. Computer implementations and experimental evaluations of four solution algorithms support analytical results and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. We expect our findings to be of major benefit to research and development activities in the field of dynamic management of large-scale transportation systems.

Applications of Petri networks to transportation network modeling

The development of a mathematical modular framework based on Petri network (PN) theory to model a traffic network is the subject of this paper. Traffic intersections are the primitive elements of a transportation network and are characterized as event-driven and asynchronous systems. Petri networks have been utilized to model these discrete event systems; further analysis of their structure can reveal information relevant to the concurrency, parallelism, synchronization, and deadlock avoidance issues. The Petri-net model of a generic traffic junction is presented, with its deadlock avoidance property proven. These modular networks are effective in synchronizing their components and can be used for modeling of an asynchronous large-scale transportation system. The derived model is suitable for simulations on a multiprocessor computer since its program execution safety is secured. The software pseudocode for simulating a transportation network model on a multiprocessor system is presented.

Application of Computer Simulation to Freight Transport Systems

Selecting an appropriate simulation-model structure for complicated, large-scale transport systems is a non-trivial and challenging task. This paper reports practical research which evaluates a number of alternative model structures for the Arizona state-highway network system based on the immediate dependency on input data obtained from a multistage mail survey. The most appropriate topology structure selected is a data-driven, link-based, discrete-event simulation model using conditional probability branching logic. Separating model and data makes the simulation model a generic traffic-routeing logic processor that is easy to use and does not require simulation skills. Different transport systems can easily be accommodated by simply changing input data. The model is validated by comparative analysis of input data using statistical techniques. An upper bound on the size of the valid network is thus obtained.

Application of Computer Simulation to Freight Transport Systems

Selecting an appropriate simulation-model structure for complicated, large-scale transport systems is a non-trivial and challenging task. This paper reports practical research which evaluates a number of alternative model structures for the Arizona state-highway network system based on the immediate dependency on input data obtained from a multistage mail survey. The most appropriate topology structure selected is a data-driven, link-based, discrete-event simulation model using conditional probability branching logic. Separating model and data makes the simulation model a generic traffic-routeing logic processor that is easy to use and does not require simulation skills. Different transport systems can easily be accommodated by simply changing input data. The model is validated by comparative analysis of input data using statistical techniques. An upper bound on the size of the valid network is thus obtained.

Modern techniques applied to industrial telemetry

The major industries concerned with large-scale distribution and transport systems for fluids and electric power now see centralized remote control as the basis of efficient and reliable network operation. The work described in this article is typical of many projects that will be discussed at the forthcoming International Telemetering Conference at Savoy Place from the 23rd to 27th September 1963.