Highway Network Research Articles

Assessment of floating car data quality for emission estimation

This paper presents a method for assessing the quality of floating car data and estimating emissions of the road network. The authors use a fundamental diagram from real probe vehicles to determine the categorization of the road network. These data are complemented by the widely used emission factors of the COPERT model to investigate the quality of the floating vehicle data to use them for the determination of emissions on individual road classes with a detailed spatiotemporal resolution. From the same data, an estimate of the emission rate of the categories is determined and it is assessed whether similar differences are exhibited. The hypothesis is that the quality of data is quite sufficient on highways and high-class roads, but unusable and insufficient on low-class roads. The results show that differences in emission estimates can be observed for the road categories of the highway network and low-class road network. For some pollutants, the urban network can also be identified. The offered categorization could lead to further possibilities of using floating vehicle data, such as the assumption of the possibility to detect atypical traffic phenomena (traffic jams, accidents, or impassable roads due to bad weather conditions).

Enhancing highway transportation safety resilience during emergencies: A network-based analysis and assessment.

In order to evaluate the impact of emergencies on the resilience of highway transportation, a resilience network hierarchical model of the highway transportation system was constructed by analyzing the formation and emergence process of safety resilience in the highway transportation system. Four layers of networks were divided, including highway network, transport network, traffic network, and emergency network. Combined with the network hierarchical model, a resilience evaluation index system was designed, and an assessment method for highway transportation systems based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process(FAHP) was proposed. Finally, a case study of a public health emergency in a region of Hunan was carried out. The results show that the proposed method for evaluating the safety resilience of highway transportation systems can better reflect the overall resilience under public health emergencies, which is consistent with the quantitative analysis results through the system resilience curve. It helps to accurately evaluate the safety resilience of the system. At the same time, this method has the advantages of flexibility and simplicity in solving unstructured decision-making problems of the system, which helps to improve the safety production management and safety resilience level of highway transportation systems. In the future, the scope of research scenarios and regions can be expanded, and further analysis of the evolution of safety resilience and the ability of resilience development in different stages under external disturbances can be conducted in order to further explore and optimize the resilience of the system.

Dynamic measurements and finite element analysis of a composite steel-concrete highway girder bridge

This study focuses on the Operational Modal Analysis and numerical modeling of a steel-concrete girder bridge of the Italian highway network that has been subjected to extensive retrofit. A thorough experimental campaign is conducted, including in situ tests to measure the dynamic behavior of the bridge under wind or seismic loads. The test data are used to identify the modal parameters of the bridge and to calibrate a finite element model of the structure that reflects its current state. The finite element model is then adopted to perform sensitivity analyses for different scenarios of heavy vehicle traffic. The results help to understand how the bridge reacts to different loading conditions.

Effectiveness of mortar injection repair activity on an existing prestressed bridge girder

This paper reports the results of an experimental test performed on a prestressed reinforced concrete bridge girder, extracted from an existing bridge of the Italian highway network. The element exhibited cracks damage along the curved tendons of the prestressing system, probably due to the rainwater infiltration into the protecting duct. The experiment consists of a three-point bending test, where a point vertical load is located at mid-span and cyclically increased until bending collapse occurs. Before the test, the cracks pattern has been repaired by high-pressure injection of high-resistance mortar. The test results demonstrate the effectiveness of the mortar injection repair intervention.

User Opinion on Factors Affecting Drivers Frequent Lane-Changing Behavior: A National Sample of Drivers in Pakistan

Abstract: In recent years massive traffic volume increase has demanded the implementation of traffic improvement plans in Pakistan. The urban Highway transportation networks are becoming congested in developed as well as in most of the developing countries. The main causes of unmanageable heterogeneous traffic congestion on the highway are an increase in population, change in lifestyle, and economic development of a country. To recognize the characteristics of a driver who frequently changes lanes and analyze the techniques of frequent lane-changing behavior. The researchers collected data via a questionnaire survey and analyzed the influence of traffic environment and driver characteristics violation on frequent lane-changing behavior on travel speed in detail by manually Excel statistics. Results showed that the impact of a heterogeneous traffic environment of two lanes and three lanes cars, and traffic flow density was sharply associated with frequent lane-changing behavior. The drivers were the main factors affecting frequent lane-changing behavior in heterogeneous traffic conditions, which was most popular during aggressive driving. Only 8.33% of drivers were never involved in this behavior. Most liable to frequent lane-changing behavior were males as compared to females, 31–40-year-old drivers, and those with low academic qualifications and private vehicle personalities. Among various traffic factors, changes in required speed had the most significant impact on how often lane changes occurred. The findings of the current study highlight the most significant traffic parameters that influence the lane change frequency. This research recommends strict enforcement of lane discipline to counter traffic congestion and the remedial measures that are to be taken for the improvement of better and sustainable road infrastructure conditions. Overall the research study will have practical implications for improving traffic management and safety on highways, and it provides a foundation for further research in the field of traffic-related technologies.

The role of bio-based additives in achieving sustainability in asphalt pavements

Increased service demands from asphalt pavements due to ever-increasing volumes, coupled with the aging of highway networks, and calls for improved sustainability across the industry, have rendered the need for smart and sustainable pavement material and design more important than ever. While chemical warm mix additives and rejuvenating technologies have been utilized in pavement materials at various scales of research and practice in the past, in recent years bio-based additives have emerged as increasingly practical solutions for potentially achieving more sustainable pavements, offering the prospect for high performance combined with environmental and economic sustainability. Adaptation of chemical warm mix additives and rejuvenators in practice requires a working knowledge on the definitions, relevant evaluation criteria available to the practitioner, and, perhaps most importantly, demonstrated experience of successful application in practice. The present study will review current efforts underway in the industry to incorporate bio-based chemical warm mix additives and rejuvenators in performance-based design methods for HMA and WMA, using real world Balanced Mix design (BMD). Examples including comprehensive research being carried out in conjunction with NCAT and MnROAD research and test facilities will be reviewed to illustrate the utilization of such concepts in practice today.

Adaptive maintenance strategies to mitigate climate change impacts on asphalt pavements

This study aims to explore the potential of optimization-based maintenance strategies in adapting asphalt pavements to future climate change. Based on a highway network in Jiangsu, China, the impacts of climate change, characterized by global warming and intensified precipitation, on pavement life cycle cost (LCC) and performance were quantitively assessed, and the benefits of maintenance optimization in mitigating climate change impacts were examined. The findings indicate that climate change may increase pavement rutting depth and reduce pavement roughness and skid resistance, while its effect on transverse cracking varies over time. Adjusting the maintenance schedules, but still following the threshold-based approach, would increase the LCC by about 15.5 %∼19.1 %. The optimization-based maintenance decision-making model significantly mitigates climate change impacts, ultimately even saving 0.6 % of LCCs compared to the baseline. The outcomes will provide a quantitative understanding of the climate change impacts on asphalt pavements, as well as adaptive maintenance strategies to improve pavement resilience.

Optimal en-route charging station locations for electric vehicles with heterogeneous range anxiety

This paper addresses a new optimal charging station location problem for intercity highway networks where electric vehicles are of heterogeneous driving ranges and usually need to be charged multiple times in their long-haul trips. Driving range heterogeneity can be measured in practice by sampling the driving population under a variety of physical, environmental and psychological conditions and is characterized in this study by a continuous distribution of some appropriate forms. The behavioral assumption underlying this problem is that all individual drivers choose their optimal route-and-charge choices if they can make a trip by driving an electric vehicle or cancel their trips or switch to other transportation modes if they cannot. By explicitly taking into account the impact of limited driving ranges on both route and trip/mode choices, we constructed a mixed integer linear programming model for formulating the charging station location problem, the goal of which is to maximize the networkwide travel efficiency and preference subject to a limited infrastructure investment budget. To tackle this integer programming model, we developed a branch-and-bound algorithm and a neighborhood search heuristic, in both of which a multi-criterion label-correcting algorithm is embedded for deriving the underlying route-and-charge flow pattern. For justifying the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithms, a synthetic network and two real-world networks are employed as numerical examples. The computational results obtained from the numerical analysis show that the heuristic is capable of obtaining optimal solutions in most test scenarios and is much more computationally efficient than the branch-and-bound algorithm, with a computing time that is only about one tenth of the latter.

PRINCIPLES OF CALCULATIONS AND ARRANGEMENT OF LOCAL DRAINAGE SYSTEMS IN PRIVATE BUILDING TERRITORIES

Abnormally heavy rains in the first two spring months of 2023 revealed the unpreparedness and lack of protection of many settlements in the Kyiv region from excessive moisture and inundation. Among them, is Novi Petrivtsi village, where the natural conditions for surface runoff and precipitation infiltration (lack of visible surface slopes and poorly permeable cover sediments) are unfavourable and significantly complicated by buildings, and a network of highways. The long-term retention of water on the surface, the rise of groundwater levels, and the layered structure of the upper part of the geological section provide grounds for the use of combined local drainage systems with compliance with drainage standards of at least 3,0 m. Since the high density of buildings often does not allow for contour drainage around residential buildings, it is necessary to lay single-line horizontal drainage to a greater depth than for a conventional contour drainage of 3,5 meters or more. However, the lack of roadside ditches and other water intakes and means of orderly drainage do not allow homestead drainage systems to work as efficiently as possible. This requires the creation of an orderly system of water intakes (trenches and closed collectors) on the scale of the village. Foreign experience convinces that the rational planning of such systems is possible under the conditions of establishing the character of rainfall distribution with a resolution of 1–5 minutes in time and a step of 500 m across the area. Meteorological radar is used to record radar images of rain and study its intensity. An effective solution to the water drainage problem is impossible without detailed engineering and geological investigations. Due to them, litho-facies inhomogeneities in the aeration zone and water-saturated stratum, which lead to the retention and support of groundwater, were discovered in the local area. Taking into account the spatial boundaries of these engineering and geological elements allow drainage more efficiently. Drainage capacity is substantiated by forecasts of changes in the maximum amount of precipitation per day and two days in a row. Due calculating the drainage capacity, it should be taken into account that the maximum amount of precipitation in the future period will have a guarantee of 0,5-2,0% less than the actual maximum values. In the calculation part, the main attention is paid to the selection of equations for determining the width of influence of a single horizontal drain. Five formulas have been selected that can be used to solve similar problems. The time of onset of the established mode of operation of a single drain was calculated. Future research should focus on the collection of high-resolution rainfall and local urban runoff data, as well as the implementation of urban drainage models.

Climate Change Impact on Corrosion of Reinforced Concrete Bridges and Their Seismic Performance

As a consequence of climate change impact, a significant variation in terms of temperature, atmospheric humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration levels is happening. This condition leads to several negative effects on the safety and the life cycle of existing concrete structures, such as the increase in the rate of material degradation, due to corrosion phenomena. In fact, the presence of carbonation and corrosion phenomena significantly influence the load-bearing capacity of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures, under both static and dynamic loads. Among the wide range of existing RC constructions, bridges stand out for their importance. Furthermore, as structures directly exposed to the weather effects, they are more susceptible to these phenomena. In this paper, the influence of corrosion on existing RC motorway viaducts’ seismic behavior, considering the impact of climate change, is investigated, by means of an efficient procedure based on the implementation of 3D simplified finite element models and the use of analytical relations to obtain the amount of reduction in the steel reinforcement area as a function of the age of the bridge and of the different corrosion scenarios analyzed. Several scenarios for the expected variations in CO2 concentrations, temperature, and relative humidity are evaluated, considering that most of the viaducts present in the Italian motorway network were built between the 1960s and the 1970s. The results obtained using the projection of climate change impacts are compared with those calculated considering the corrosion scenarios resulting from the DuraCrete research project, to understand if the evolution of climate change leads to worse scenarios than those previously assessed.

Highway networks and regional poverty: Evidence from Chinese counties

This paper establishes a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model to estimate the impact of highways on regional poverty using county-level panel data from China. We construct a multidimensional poverty index and use satellite-monitored night light brightness as a proxy indicator. The results demonstrate that highways significantly reduce county poverty and that the poverty reduction effect becomes increasingly pronounced over time. This result remains robust after controlling for non-random highway route selection. Furthermore, the poverty reduction effect of highways is conditional, with a significant poverty reduction effect in the less economically-developed western regions and non-municipal counties, and no significant poverty reduction effect in the economically-developed eastern and central regions and municipal districts. Moreover, the poverty reduction effect of highways gradually decreases as the average altitude of counties increases. Our tests provide empirical evidence for effective road investments in developing countries that incorporate poverty alleviation targets.

3D HIGHWAY CURVE RECONSTRUCTION FROM MOBILE LASER SCANNING POINT CLOUDS THROUGH DEEP REINFORCEMENT LEARNING

Abstract. Reconstructing the geometric curves of highways holds significant value for various tasks, such as highway design, traffic simulation, and road network planning. An essential step in highway curve reconstruction is fitting highway curve models to the extracted road markings from laser scanning point clouds. Existing methods for highway curve fitting typically handle one curve at a time. However, a stretch of highway often contains multiple curves. In this paper, we introduce a novel method capable of fitting multiple highway curves simultaneously. The method leverages a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm to achieve this goal. Specifically, we design a unique RL environment that empowers the RL algorithm to fit multiple highway curves. Our experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our method over other methods.

Analysis of Traffic Volume and Travel-Time Relationship Using Continuous One-Hour Values on Urban Expressway

To make more efficient use of the expanded freeway and urban expressway networks, various measures such as bottleneck management and wide-area congestion pricing based on traffic data obtained from traffic detectors, including traffic volume and travel time, have been considered. Generally, the congestion status of the data varies from day to day. This study proposes a method for analyzing a graph of traffic volume and travel time to visually and intuitively grasp the change in the daily traffic situation using continuous one-hour values. These values are continuously generated hourly values obtained by shifting data every minute. Twenty-four hours 1 minute data for 128 days on 32 segments with detectors in the Nagoya Expressway Network in Japan were used to draw a continuous one-hour value graph. A number of graphs showed loops of continuous one-hour values with congestion and a smooth variation characteristic of values over time. These graphs provide an accurate estimate of the daily maximum one-hour traffic volumes and facilitate a sequential understanding of the congestion pattern changes on successive route segments. Hourly travel-time prediction models were constructed to macroscopically examine congestion measures over a range of several hours. These models were fabricated with high accuracy using multiple regression analysis based on the characteristics of continuous one-hour values. Exploratory predictive analysis of hourly travel-time models has allowed us to study and discuss various congestion factors in road structures and traffic flows, and it has been found to be easy to grasp the phenomenon and ensure accuracy and operability.

Enhancing local citation recommendation with recurrent highway networks and SciBERT-based embedding

When writing academic papers, referencing statements, claims and previous studies is always an important activity. However, it is considered challenging for scientists to find relevant and appropriate scientific articles which are closely related to their current works in order to reference them in their research. As a consequence of the rapid growth in scientific papers being published every year, researchers might easily get overwhelmed within a huge number of resources. One way to help them find the desired references more easily is to use context-aware citation recommendation. The citation recommender system can automatically provide a list of suitable papers as references based on specified inputs which reflect the researchers’ interests. Among the outstanding achievements of deep learning and natural language processing in recent years, the utilization of deep neural learning architectures have supported to address the problem of citation recommendation. As the result, the neural citation recommendation area has received much attention from the academic community, with the aim of enhancing the precision and correctness of the results of existing citation recommendation systems. Following this research direction, in our paper we present a novel context-aware citation recommendation model, called RHN-DualLCR (Recurrent Highway Networks – Dual Local Citation Recommendation), which integrates Recurrent Highway Networks (RHN), an improved model of the original Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) architecture, and uses a SciBERT-based (Science text of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) embedding layer to build up the efficiency of the state-of-the-art local citation recommendation model, which enriches context representation with global information. Our research demonstrates its originality and relevance because we used one of the latest achievements of deep models (RHN model) and natural language processing (SciBERT) applied to the citation recommendation problem. We have conducted experiments on the RHN-DualLCR model on 3 widely known datasets for the citation recommendation problem: ACL-200 (Association for Computational Linguistics), ACL-600 and RefSeer, and also used 2 common evaluation standards Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR) and the Recall@K (R@K for short) to evaluate the performance of our model. Experimental results show that our proposed model is 3% to 16% better than the original models or state-of-the-art models.

Evaluation of Drainage Network System (Case Study of Pangkajene Kepulauan State Agricultural Polytechnic Campus Area)

The purpose of this research is to identify the condition of highway drainage channels and evaluate the existing highway drainage network system in accommodating runoff discharge, channel dimensions and flow direction in channels that occur inundation in the Pangkajene Islands State Agricultural Polytechnic Campus area which is expected to help solve flooding problems in the area. The research method used is descriptive quantitative, which is a method of calculation and description of the results of field data processing. Secondary data collection includes; rainfall data for the last 10 years, obtained from the Department of Resources; topographic maps, drainage network maps and situation maps, obtained from the Politani Pangkep Campus planning section. Primary data collection is obtained from direct measurements in the field using a Waterpass measuring instrument to measure elevation and channel length. The results of this study found that the drainage capacity < 2-year and 5-year return period Plan Flood Discharge, so planning is needed to increase drainage capacity

A new targeted on-ramp control approach considering both efficiency and equity

Abstract On-ramp control is an effective approach for alleviating traffic congestion on highways. However, there is still a lack of on-ramp control approaches applicable to large regional highway networks. Here, we develop a targeted on-ramp control approach applicable to regional highway networks by taking advantage of the vehicle source information, which pinpoints the on-ramps contributing major traffic flow to the highway bottleneck. Furthermore, a combined and tunable controlling index is proposed to enhance the equity of the generated traffic control scheme. The proposed on-ramp control approach is validated on an actual large highway network using actual travel demand data. Results indicate that the proposed approach can well mitigate the traffic congestion of highway bottleneck while at the same time enhancing the equity and practicability of the generated traffic control scheme.

Impact of connected and automated vehicles on the travel time reliability of an urban network

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to revolutionise the transportation industry, with a plethora of research already revealing considerable gains in safety, travel time and mobility, as well as reduced congestion and pollution. As the number of CAVs on the road grows, rigorous testing for various market penetration rates (MPRs) of CAVS is essential to determine under what conditions the benefits can be realised. For the studies investigating the impact of CAVs on travel time reliability specifically, the MPRs in which the network most thrives have been inconsistent. The majority of the research is concerned with highway networks with only a few travel time reliability studies that focus on urban networks. In this simulation study, the impact of varying MPRs of CAVs on travel time reliability is evaluated in an urban network for different traffic demands. Travel time reliability metrics are assessed, including the standard deviation, buffer time index and misery index. The study demonstrated that from 0% to 100% MPR, the overall weighted average travel time decreased by 28%, and the standard deviation of the weighted average travel time declined by 35%, highlighting the significant increase in travel time reliability. Travel time improvements were visible from the MPR of 10%; however, the reliability metrics highlighted the greatest benefits occurred at higher MPRs. This study presents valuable results about the reliability that CAVs can bring to urban networks during the fleet transition to CAVs.

European highway networks, transportation costs, and regional income

To what extent do highways increase income in the European Union? To answer the question, this paper uses detailed data on the expansion of highways in Europe between 1990 and 2020 combined with time-invariant data on more than 2.3 million roads and 1400 ferry connections. I construct a new network database of highways, roads and ferries depicting a 31-year evolution of the lowest travel times along 51 000 region-to-region routes. To tackle endogeneity, I use non-local highway improvements as a source of exogenous variation. Reduced-form estimations suggest that, through decreasing transportation costs, highways increase aggregate regional income and economic cohesion. The study determines that transportation infrastructure policies can generate substantial economic benefits and reduce income disparities between poor and rich European regions.

Sustainable Prioritization of Public Asphalt Paved Road Maintenance

The development of transportation infrastructure is crucial for a country's progress as it enables access to social and economic amenities and acts as a vital link between production and consumption. This is particularly significant for landlocked nations like Zambia, which heavily rely on a wide network of public highways, including both paved and unsurfaced roads. Regardless of their quality and construction, all road surfaces degrade over time due to the combined effects of traffic load and environmental factors. If not properly managed, this can lead to costly repairs and rehabilitation efforts. Government organizations face a dilemma when deciding which public roads to prioritize for maintenance. This follows that the inherent hurdle is competing needs within limited finances for infrastructure development. However, the challenge of road maintenance prioritization can be addressed by adopting a multi-criteria approach. This study aims to address the issue of sustainability and provides insights into which public roads should be given priority for maintenance. The research proposes a comprehensive set of criteria focusing on sustainability and assigns relative importance to them, with emphasis on state of deterioration, emergency function, climate resilience, environment, strategic importance, social considerations, economic factors, and political importance. It suggests that road maintenance decision-making should prioritize sustainability, resilience, and societal well-being, challenging traditional assumptions.

Analysis of modern approaches to the design and construction of arch bridges using tube-reinforced concrete

This article is a part of the author’s dissertation research. The paper discusses experience of application of tube-reinforced concrete structures in bridge construction on the example of facilities built over the last 30 years in the People’s Republic of China. The peculiarities of the bridge construction over the Xun River in Pingnan County, Guangxi Province, with a record span are considered. The author has made a review of outstanding facilities built with the use of long span braced arches made of tube-reinforced concrete elements working mainly in off-centre compression. Various tube-reinforced concrete arch bridge spans erection techniques, advantages and disadvantages of each method are considered. The technology of tube concrete coating, designs and construction methods of facilities with the use of long span solid cross-section arches with a tie for the bridge constructions of medium and large spans are analysed in detail. The review of modern research works in the field of bending arches operation is carried out, in comparison with the model assuming the operation of the tube-reinforced concrete element as an off-centre compressed column is made, which in the future can provide more effective use of material properties in design. Modern approaches to the tube-reinforced concrete elements study are considered. It is concluded that there is a large amount of research on the work of tube-reinforced concrete in off-centre compression with insufficient experimental data on the work of arch tube-reinforced concrete structures working in bending. It is of interest to study the possibility of tube-reinforced concrete application for small spans in the bridge construction. The author has established the prospect of using tube-reinforced concrete structures for arch spans in the construction of small soil-backfilled bridges, which is especially important in areas remote from the construction industry with a poorly developed network of motorways. The necessity of carrying out the bending tube-reinforced concrete structures research works for realisation of this purpose is revealed.