Road Passenger Transport Research Articles

Flexible Capacity Road Passenger Transport: History, Current, Future

Regular passenger transportation plays an important role in the life of modern society. At the same time, the financial burden of paying for its operation falls on the state budget and is the subject of periodic measures aimed at reducing this budgetary burden. Implementation of such goals is usually carried out by reducing the number of flights, which leads to a decrease in the quality of passenger service and their outflow to the personal car, which leads to an increase in motorization with all the negative attributes inherent in this phenomenon. This publication gives a literature review of scientific publications on the subject of the use of road passenger transport of dynamic capacity - trailer passenger vehicles, which in the period of growth of passenger traffic are coupled, increasing capacity, and in periods of decline - uncoupled, reducing capacity. Modern scientific and practical tendencies of this direction abroad are shown. A new approach to the organization of regular passenger transport operation in the Republic of Belarus is proposed, which consists in the daily forecasting of passenger capacity for each trip of each route with the subsequent assignment of passenger vehicles of flexible capacity to such trips, maximally corresponding to the available passenger capacity.

WITHDRAWN: Evaluating Collaborative Emission Reduction Efforts in Urban Road Passenger Transportation: insights from the City Scale

Road passenger transportation contributes significantly to carbon dioxide (CO2) and pollutant emissions, posing challenges for urban sustainability, particularly in rapidly urbanizing cities such as Fuzhou, which was recognized as a global sustainable development city for 2023. This study addresses the research gap by integrating road green factors, which refer to the ecological attributes of roads, such as green space, vegetation, and tree coverage that contribute to improving air quality and reducing pollution, into emission reduction strategies for city-scale road passenger transportation. This novel approach has not been extensively explored in the existing literature. The purpose of this study was to identify a rational pathway for emissions reduction by analyzing the economic, demographic, transportation infrastructure, road green space, and policy factor impacts on emissions. Employing a system dynamics (SD) model, this research evaluates the emissions from road passenger transportation in Fuzhou from 2010 to 2030 under various scenarios, including a baseline scenario (BS), controlled private cars travel demand (CPD), promotion of new energy vehicles (PVE), improvement in energy efficiency (IEE), increase in road capacity (IRC), and improvement in road green level (IRG). The principal results indicate that by optimizing the traffic structure and integrating other emission reduction measures, peak CO2 emissions can be achieved by 2024 under the three scenarios or by 2023 under the four scenarios. Furthermore, significant reductions in pollutants of 84.62% and 86.07% are projected, respectively. The study concluded that the economic benefits of CO2 emissions reductions consistently exceeded those of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC), and nitrogen oxide (NOx) reductions, highlighting the importance of a holistic approach to emissions reduction strategies. Based on these findings, policy recommendations were proposed to guide the formulation of effective road passenger transportation policies aimed at achieving sustainable urban development.

Multi-Index Driver Drowsiness Detection Method Based on Driver's Facial Recognition Using Haar Features and Histograms of Oriented Gradients.

It is estimated that 10% to 20% of road accidents are related to fatigue, with accidents caused by drowsiness up to twice as deadly as those caused by other factors. In order to reduce these numbers, strategies such as advertising campaigns, the implementation of driving recorders in vehicles used for road transport of goods and passengers, or the use of drowsiness detection systems in cars have been implemented. Within the scope of the latter area, the technologies used are diverse. They can be based on the measurement of signals such as steering wheel movement, vehicle position on the road, or driver monitoring. Driver monitoring is a technology that has been exploited little so far and can be implemented in many different approaches. This work addresses the evaluation of a multidimensional drowsiness index based on the recording of facial expressions, gaze direction, and head position and studies the feasibility of its implementation in a low-cost electronic package. Specifically, the aim is to determine the driver's state by monitoring their facial expressions, such as the frequency of blinking, yawning, eye-opening, gaze direction, and head position. For this purpose, an algorithm capable of detecting drowsiness has been developed. Two approaches are compared: Facial recognition based on Haar features and facial recognition based on Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG). The implementation has been carried out on a Raspberry Pi, a low-cost device that allows the creation of a prototype that can detect drowsiness and interact with peripherals such as cameras or speakers. The results show that the proposed multi-index methodology performs better in detecting drowsiness than algorithms based on one-index detection.

Decoding the transport policy maze towards climate neutrality: Cross-sectoral policy landscapes

Making transport sustainable is one of the grand global challenges. Numerous policies are currently underway, particularly in the European Union, to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions substantially. Germany has set ambitious targets, aiming for a 65% reduction in emissions by 2030 and becoming climate neutral by 2045. Unlike other sectors, Germany and the European Union have struggled to reduce emissions in the transport sector. Thus, the effectiveness of the current policy framework has been questioned. This study presents the outcomes of a comprehensive policy review across multiple sectors with direct or indirect implications for the sustainable transition in the transport sector. For this purpose, 44 policies were identified in the fields of transport, energy, agriculture, bioeconomy, and climate change. A mixed method content analysis approach was used to scrutinize policy documents, examining targets, fuel alternatives, transport modes, and coherence among policies. The findings underscore Germany’s commitment to meet the climate targets through different pathways regulated by national and European policies. Electrification has been the predominant pathway for the decarbonization of the transport sector, followed by renewable fuels, e.g., Power-to-X fuels. Although well-designed plans exist for the electrification of road passenger transport, findings indicate low policy support for renewable fuels, especially for parts of the transport sector not well-suited for electrification, e.g., aviation and maritime.

Justification of key factors regarding the application of prospective ecological transport in the urban passenger transportation system

Research objective. Justification of the key factors that have an impact on the introduction of promising ecological transport in the system of urban passenger transport in order to improve the quality of transport services for passengers and improve ecology in densely populated cities. Materials and methods. To achieve the goal, the fuzzy Dematel method is used, which is based on graph theory and allows to classify all available factors that influence decision-making based on cause-and-effect relationships. Results. The eight key factors that form the transport project and the factors that have a significant impact on them are substantiated for the implementation of the transport project of the implementation of promising ecological passenger transport on urban routes into the transport system of urban passenger transportation. These include the level of development of modern transport technologies when transporting passengers on city routes and the availability of their support centers; the availability of financial programs for updating/restructuring the rolling stock fleet of the motor vehicle enterprise and the availability of the appropriate legal framework for preferential operation of electric passenger transport; rapid adaptation of the transport infrastructure of a modern city for the operation of ecological transport; compliance of ecological transport with the transport characteristics of the passenger transportation route; operational properties of a modern electric bus; the effect of relevant legislative initiatives regarding benefits for the purchase and costs of operating electric vehicles. Scientific novelty consists in identifying the interrelationships between the factors that form the transport project and the factors that have a significant influence on them, on the implementation of the transport project of the implementation of promising ecological passenger transport on urban routes into the transport system of urban passenger transport, which allows to estimate the possible economic costs of road transport enterprises carrying out passenger transportation. Practical significance lies in the determination of key factors that can be used for the implementation of a transport project for the use of promising ecological passenger transport in the system of urban passenger road transport

Do current energy policies in Germany promote the use of biomass in areas where it is particularly beneficial to the system? Analysing short- and long-term energy scenarios

BackgroundPolicymakers are tasked with both driving the rapid expansion of renewable energy technologies and, additionally channelling the limited national potential of biomass into areas where it can provide the greatest benefit to the energy system. But do current policy instruments promote the use of biomass in these areas? As biomass is limited, its use must be sustainable without leading to further biodiversity loss or depleting forest or soil resources. In this study, short-term energy scenarios are generated using the BenOpt model, which take into account both current and alternative policy instruments under limited biomass utilisation. The results are compared with long-term, cost-optimal energy scenarios for the use of biomass.ResultsThe analysis reveals that the instrument of a GHG quota does not promote the use of biofuels in hard-to-electrify areas of the transport sector, where they should be cost-optimally allocated according to long-term energy scenarios. Biofuels are promoted for use in passenger road transport and not in the shipping or aviation sector. In contrast, alternative policy scenarios indicate that the sole instrument of a high CO2 price is more conducive to direct electrification and could displace more fossil fuels by 2030 than the GHG quota alone. This instrument also promotes the optimal use of biogas plants in the power sector in accordance with long-term cost-optimal developments.ConclusionsThe instrument of a GHG quota might lead to counterproductive developments in passenger road transport, but it also helps to ramp up the biofuel capacities required in shipping and aviation in the long term. However, it does not provide the necessary incentives for the ramp-up of battery electric vehicles, which would be the cost optimal solution in passenger road transport according to the long-term scenarios. Even though alternative policy scenarios show that the sole instrument of a high CO2-price is more conducive to direct electrification, a high CO2 price alone is not enough (e.g. in the heat sector) to promote the efficient use of biomass instead of simply covering the base load demand.

Research on Active Safety Situation of Road Passenger Transportation Enterprises: Evaluation, Prediction, and Analysis.

The road passenger transportation enterprise is a complex system, requiring a clear understanding of their active safety situation (ASS), trends, and influencing factors. This facilitates transportation authorities to promptly receive signals and take effective measures. Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, we delved into potential factors for evaluating ASS and extracted an ASS index. To predict obtaining a higher ASS information rate, we compared multiple time series models, including GRU (gated recurrent unit), LSTM (long short-term memory), ARIMA, Prophet, Conv_LSTM, and TCN (temporal convolutional network). This paper proposed the WDA-DBN (water drop algorithm-Deep Belief Network) model and employed DEEPSHAP to identify factors with higher ASS information content. TCN and GRU performed well in the prediction. Compared to the other models, WDA-DBN exhibited the best performance in terms of MSE and MAE. Overall, deep learning models outperform econometric models in terms of information processing. The total time spent processing alarms positively influences ASS, while variables such as fatigue driving occurrences, abnormal driving occurrences, and nighttime driving alarm occurrences have a negative impact on ASS.

Evaluation of intercity road passenger transportation using a novel double-frontier game-regret-cross-efficiency

The Cross-Efficiency (CE) method, based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), is a commonly used approach to measure the efficiency of Decision-Making Units (DMUs). Various secondary goal models can yield different efficiency results. The recently developed Game CE (GCE) method aims to address this issue and achieve convergence efficiencies. However, the conventional GCE was developed under the unrealistic assumption that Decision Makers (DMs) are perfectly rational, as it relies on the arithmetic mean aggregation method. Additionally, the GCE evaluates DMUs based on efficient reference points, disregarding the pessimistic perspective. The study introduces a new aggregation method called Regret-Consensus Aggregation (RCA) that captures the subjective preferences of DMs. GCE-RCA scores are obtained by incorporating RCA into the GCE. A new method called Game Cross In-Efficiency (GCIE) with RCA (GCIE-RCA) has been developed to incorporate anti-efficient reference points into the evaluation process. A Double-Frontier GCE based on the RCA (DFGCE-RCA) is developed from two perspectives. The DFGCE-RCA is implemented to evaluate the performance of the Iranian Inter-City Road Passenger Transportation (IC-RPT) system based on six key performance indicators. DFGCE-RCA has several advantages in addition to those of GCE. Firstly, considering two perspectives provides more comprehensive results. Additionally, it can capture the subjective perspectives of DMs. Lastly; it enables the aggregation process to reach a consensus.

Theoretical basis for development of indicators for improving training and retraining of specialists and passenger road transport personnel

Introduction. The theoretical basis for the development of indicators for improving the training and retraining of road transport personnel is aimed, first of all, at ensuring the results of transportation and technical operation activities corresponding to the output in road transport. The studied indicators should take into account the amount of labor costs of all types of workers ensuring the operation of rolling stock. Training and retraining of personnel largely determine the safety of the transportation process and must comply with the existing operating conditions of rolling stock. The purpose of this article is to theoretically substantiate the indicators for improving the training and retraining of specialists and personnel of road transport, as an element of the “personnel-bus-road-operating environment” (PADS) system to ensure the planned production of rolling stock in accordance with the requirements of the municipal contract for regular passenger transportation and luggage, taking into account operating conditions.Materials and methods. The theoretical basis for the development of indicators for improving the training and retraining of personnel is based on a systematic analysis of professional and qualification requirements, as well as the theory of current planning of the work of motor transport enterprises, taking into account the probabilistic nature of operating conditions under the influence of the external environment. As a result, structural connections between the driver, mechanic and technical condition inspector were identified as elements of the new PADS system.The parameters of the developed mathematical model of personnel activities and the costs of their training and retraining are determined using methods of mathematical statistics and expert assessments. The content of the new approach is to integrate the production of rolling stock with professional and qualification requirements for personnel.Results. This study focuses on fulfilling the municipal contract for regular transportation of passengers and luggage, i.e. to obtain the planned mileage, it is necessary to take into account the joint activities of groups of personnel and in each group of an individual employee.Discussion and conclusion. The scientific novelty and main results of the study consist in the theoretical substantiation of indicators for improving the training and retraining of passenger road transport personnel, as an element of the PADS system, to ensure the planned production of rolling stock, taking into account operating conditions.Based on the results of the study, the indicators of training and retraining of personnel of automobile passenger transport, ensuring the fulfillment of the contract, are grouped in accordance with their levels and periods of formation.A mathematical model that determines the planning of the results of fulfilling the terms of the contract by each employee has been developed. Further research will be aimed at experimentally determining the values of the identified indicators.

CAR TRANSPORTATION IN UKRAINE: DOCUMENTATION AND FEATURES OF ACCOUNTING

The article examines approaches to documentation and accounting of road passenger transportation. The main problematic aspects regarding the regulatory and legal regulation of this direction of entrepreneurial activity are considered. One of the issues covered in this article is the lack of generalized regulations on the documentation of primary documents. Systematized seasonal features of providing transport services and maintenance of means of production in proper technical condition. The article examines the difficulty of keeping primary records of the provision of services to trucking companies, in the context of the provision of goods transportation services. The lack of a unified regulatory and legal approach to the requirements for filling out primary documents causes disputes in the accounting processes of the supplier and consumer of ATP services. The next aspect to which attention is drawn is the dispute between the technical necessity of updating the rolling stock and the lack of ways to accelerate the formation of sources of funding for renewal reserves.

Regional passenger motor transport systems: problem statement, first estimation results

Relevance. Passenger road transport in the 90s of the last century showed a high rate of transition to new management methods. The subsequent streamlining of activities progressed unevenly, mainly through regulation. However, important problems in the development of the industry, especially in the regions, have not been resolved. A crisis situation in intra-regional inter-municipal transportation and a high accident rate are the example. To a large extent, this situation is caused by the lag of the modern interpretation of the regional passenger road transport system from its real state, which does not allow achieving the greatest effect in the development of passenger road transport. The purpose of the work is to increase the importance of regular passenger transportation based on the substantiation of the importance of the structural parts of regional passenger motor transport systems, the developed methodology for assessing their condition, and creating development rules taking this into account.Materials and methods. General scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, system analysis, mathematical statistics, as well as the provisions of the theory of transport processes and systems are used in the work. Modern general scientific software products, open information resources about passenger vehicles in the regions were used.Results. The main scientific result of the article is the introduced concept of a regional passenger motor transport system. For a quantitative assessment of its condition, an indicator of the level of system self-organization has been developed, which is determined by the ratio of the number of cars to the number of buses, trolleybuses and trams in the region. The values of the indicators are in the range from 74 to 543 with an average value of 277. The dependencies of the influence of gross regional products and the number of population in the regions on the number of buses and cars in them are revealed. The practical significance lies in the development of tools for assessing the state of regional passenger transport systems. The directions for further research to determine the influence of structural parts on the level of self-organization of the system, building on this basis effective regional strategies for the development of passenger road transport are related.

ИННОВАЦИОННЫЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ ДЛЯ БЕСПИЛОТНЫХ СИСТЕМ

Specialists in the motor transport industry are faced with a large-scale task of developing unmanned systems: highly automated vehicles and supporting infrastructure. The article analyzes the state policy of the formation and implementation of innovative, modern and end-to-end technologies for unmanned vehicles and road transport infrastructure. The authors provide an overview of innovative technologies presented in documents at the federal level that influence the development of unmanned systems, prospects and possibilities for their use in the motor transport industry. Innovative foreign and domestic experience in the use of modern innovative technologies in organizing freight and passenger road transport in Russia, the USA, Germany, Israel, and China is presented.

DIGITALIZATION IS THE ONLY WAY TO DEVELOP ROAD TRANSPORT

In this article, the authors have approached the problem of introducing digitalization in the field of road transport.
 The purpose of this study is an attempt to determine the features of the interaction of new digital technologies with the system of freight and passenger road transport.
 During the study, the main directions of digitalization implementation in the field of road transport were identified, the existing difficulties arising during the transition from the old methods of management and control of motor transport to the new digital ones were indicated.
 As a result, conclusions are drawn about the need for the early introduction of digital methods of organization and management of road transport with extensive use of artificial intelligence.
 The introduction of digital methods of organizing transportation activities has broad support from both the Government of the Russian Federation and the business community of Russia. The transition to the digital economy is impossible without a primary transition in its “circulatory system” - the transport system.

FEASIBILITY OF DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMOBILE PASSENGER TRANSPORT IN THE NORTHERN REGIONS OF OUR COUNTRY

Automobile passenger transport is an integral part of the country’s unified transport system and ensures its territorial integrity and accessibility of its regions. Today, in our country, much attention is paid to the development of public transport, which can improve passenger traffic and partially reduce the movement of personal cars in the winter in the northern regions of our country. However, the solution to this problem requires a reliable, comfortable off-road bus fleet. And in the northern regions, this problem remains constantly acute due to the insufficient number of vehicles for transporting passengers, especially in winter.
 Purpose – To study the need for the development of road passenger transport in the northern regions of the Russian Federation.
 Method or methodology of the work: the article used a statistical method of analysis.
 Results: the feasibility of using automobile passenger transport in the northern regions of Russia was investigated, a possible design of a passenger bus was proposed depending on the climatic features of the northern regions.
 The scope of the results: conducting research aimed at creating new technologies in the development of road passenger transport, depending on the geographical location and climatic features of the country’s regions.

Sustainable development of passenger transport in Poland in the context of young passengers’ preference survey

The issue of reducing the adverse impact of transport on the environment has been reflected in key European transport documents. Their content clearly indicates that rail transport is more “environmentally friendly” than road transport. An increase in the number of rail passengers and, at the same time, a drop in the number of road transport passengers is consistent with the concept of sustainable development. The purpose of the article is to analyse the preferences of rail and bus passengers and use research results to enhance sustainable development. In order to achieve this aim, the method of critical analysis of available secondary research results and the survey method were adopted, with the use of a questionnaire in primary research. The author’s own research was conducted on a representative sample of 331 young passengers. On the basis of available secondary research results, the price, travel time and modern technology categories as well as elements thereof were selected for analysis. The study results may be used to formulate a strategy for sustainable development of transport, contributing to the reduction of road passenger transport in favour of rail transport.

Ethanol and electricity: Fueling or fooling the future of road passenger transport?

The vast majority of countries arguably agree that the planet is reaching a point of no return regarding global warming and climate change. Proof of that is the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, ratified by almost every nation worldwide. However, despite signing both great commitments, the states have made too little to meet the sustainability plans. Among the targets, renewable energy sources stand out to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but still, petrol wells continue to be drilled, and vehicle assemblers keep investing in new technologies for running their cars with fossil fuels. At the same time, government policies seem to be betting all their chips on electric engines, as if electricity were the best substitute for oil. This critical review analyses the pros and cons of such alternative fuel for road passenger transport, also taking into account another potential substitute for gasoline: bioethanol. In the following pages, we address the challenges and avenues of both alternatives and demonstrate that diversification of the global energy matrix and the biomass feedstocks should be our guiding principles.

Quantifying Road Transport Resilience to Emergencies: Evidence from China

Facing the shock of emergencies, how resilient is the road transport system? In this process, how are the system’s absorption capacity, adaptability, and recovery capacity? These are very important for the development of sustainable road transportation. Taking China’s road transport during the COVID-19 pandemic as the research object, this paper introduces an integrated resilience quantification method, draws a road transport resilience curve, and comprehensively and dynamically analyzes and compares the resilience of China’s road transport system at different stages among different regions and under different epidemic waves. The results show that the resilience of road passenger and freight transport differs in the face of external disturbance. Freight transport resilience is better than that of passenger transport. Compared to passenger transport, freight transport is more robust; the impacted speed is slower, the recovery speed is faster, the recovery capacity is stronger, and the affected period is shorter. There is regional heterogeneity in road transport resilience. This heterogeneity is reflected in the whole change process of system performance with external disturbance, including absorption capacity, adaptation capacity, and recovery capacity. The resilience of road transport under different waves of the epidemic is different. Compared to the first wave of the epidemic, the resilience of road transport indicators at all stages has been dramatically improved in the later rebound wave of the epidemic. This can help in the development of evidence-based road transport sustainability strategies.

Rethinking Notions of Energy Efficiency in a Global Context

Energy efficiency is, in principle, a simple idea: an output of human value, for example, vehicle-km traveled, divided by the needed input energy. Efficiency improvements are regarded as an important means of mitigating not only climate change, but also other environmental problems. Despite the vast number of articles published on energy efficiency, a few people question whether it is a useful or accurate measure in its present form; nearly all papers are either engineering studies, or address barriers to efficiency improvements. This review addresses this issue via a critical review of the literature, including not only papers on energy efficiency, but those on adjacent areas of research that can help broaden the scope, both geographically and conceptually. These shortcomings are illustrated in case studies of buildings/cities and road passenger transport. The main findings of this review are that (1) energy efficiency inevitably has an ethical dimension, as well as a technical one, in that feedbacks are more widespread than they have generally considered to be, and (2) that conventional efficiency measures omit important energy input items, particularly those concerned with the mining the materials needed for renewable energy plants. The key conclusions are that present efficiency measures are not adequate, and future research is needed to overcome these shortcomings.

Are electric vehicles more efficient? A slacks-based data envelopment analysis for European road passenger transportation

The deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) is rapidly progressing worldwide, and energy efficiency is an important indicator for both the economy and the environment. It is necessary to verify whether EVs are more energy efficient than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. However, studies have yet to evaluate the energy efficiency of EVs using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. To fill this research gap, this paper evaluated the energy efficiency of EVs for road passenger transportation using a slacks-based measure (SBM) approach in six European countries from 2012 to 2018. EVs have been separated from the entire transport sector and compared to ICE vehicles. In the case of EVs that use electricity as fuel, the primary energy supply must be used as energy input to reflect conversion loss during power generation. The primary energy supply was calculated by applying the power generation efficiency of each country for use as an energy input to reflect conversion loss. EVs were more energy efficient than ICE vehicles in four out of six countries but less energy efficient in two countries. Based on the measured slack results, the potential energy savings were quantified, and the main factors in reducing energy efficiency were identified.

Assessment of the Environmental Impact of Pas-senger Road Transport Fleet in Ukraine

Abstract. Problem. Nowadays, the global transport system is still highly dependent on fossil fuels like light oil products, diesel fuel, and gas. This makes it difficult to solve the well-known global problems of the 21st century which are environmental pollution and climate change. In Ukraine, the transport sector remains among the main emitters of greenhouse gases which causes the need to estimate the current situation in fuel consumption and emissions by road transport to get an understanding of the ways to deal with the problem. Because of the high difficulty of this question, it was decided to split it up into two parts which relate to freight and passenger transportation. This paper is aimed to address the latter. Goal. The goal of the paper is to develop an approach to assess the environmental impact of road passenger transport in Ukraine based on corresponding state-of-the-art European methodologies for the estimation of fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Methodology. Provided that there are no open sources with up-to-date information on passenger transport fleet, the regression model based on retrospective state statistical data was used to estimate the number of passenger cars and buses in the country. To calculate their fuel consumption and emissions, the approach based mainly on HDM-4 model was applied. Results. The developed approach allowed determining total fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for the passenger road transport fleet in Ukraine. Originality For the first time, the approximate up-to-date environmental impact of the entire passenger road transport fleet in the transport system of Ukraine was obtained. Practical value. The estimated volumes of total fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are a good basis for developing a national transport policy aimed to improve the ecological parameters and the composition of the passenger road transport fleet.