Transportation Projects Research Articles

Transportation agencies as consumers and producers of science: The case of state, regional, and county transportation agencies in California

Transportation agencies rely on scientific information to design and site infrastructure, plan operations, and make policies. However, the ways in which science interfaces with transportation policy are not straightforward: political incentives, usability challenges, implementation failures, and capacity limitations all shape how public organizations use scientific information. To build stronger connections between transportation-relevant science and policy it is necessary to better understand current patterns of scientific information use in practice, particularly as transportation agencies address an expanding purview of policy issues, such as climate change mitigation and intelligent transportation systems. This paper measures science use observed in transportation planning and project documents such as plans, proposals, impact assessments, and other deliverables that agencies are required to produce as part of the policy process. Using state, regional, and county transportation agencies in the state of California as a focal sample, this paper applies automated natural language processing (NLP) tools to analyze documents and identify references to scientific information. Our sample includes 5080 documents from 59 organizations involved in transportation governance in the state of California. We observe that the transportation science-policy interface is a cyclical system in which public agencies act in varying (and simultaneous) capacities as consumers, producers, funders, and brokers of scientific information. For instance, documents produced by state-level entities draw more heavily on academic literature, while regional and county-level agencies rely most heavily on reports produced internally by state agencies and by state-funded research institutes. Understanding where different transportation agencies access scientific information, and how scientific information flows between entities at different levels of government, can help researchers and science-policy boundary organizations increase the uptake of scientific products and design interventions to improve information access and use.

Assessment Methods from Around the World Potentially Useful for Public Transport Projects

The financial crisis in 2008/2009 has made many countries aware that public funds need to be managed better. A logical step is to identify methods that thoroughly assess the impacts of infrastructure and service investment. The authors argue that assessments should both identify and use performance indicators related to the ‘triple bottom line’, i.e. economic, social and environmental impacts.This paper provides an overview of assessment methods used to evaluate public transport investments. Positive and negative aspects of various assessment tools are identified and discussed. Some developing world examples appear to be more elaborate and appropriate, than developed world examples, including examples from the United States (U.S.). Although the authors conclude that all methods/tools have challenges, they are of the opinion that a broad and inclusive assessment of public transport investment projects is a must and that the narrowly analyzed and ad-hoc investments witnessed around the world should be avoided.

Valuing Public Transport Customer Amenities: International Transit Agency Practice

Public transport customer amenities cover a range of measures that can enhance the quality of the passenger experience, such as information provision and station quality. While much research has determined the value that users place on amenities, there is little understanding of current practice in the use of customer amenity valuations in project appraisal. A survey of transit agencies in 11 cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland, London, Paris, Toronto, Vienna, Oslo, and Singapore) was undertaken and showed that Australasian cities generally have widespread inclusion of customer amenities as part of advanced appraisals for all relevant types of public transport projects. Australasian practice tends to include customer amenities more frequently in project appraisal than London, Singapore, and Oslo. Paris, Toronto, and Vienna rarely (if at all) include customer amenities in these appraisals, although they adopt advanced appraisals for some projects. While agencies generally use published sources of customer amenity values specific to their country, Toronto and Singapore tend to use customer amenity values from London, highlighting a lack of local customer amenity values.

An Application of Path Analysis in Gaugeing Stimulated Travel Demand

This article aims to gauge stimulated travel demand in the case of İstanbul by investigating the inter-relationship between two variables called amount of trips and travel time. Such an empirical investigation is expected to construct a baseline for determining the optimum transportation project with regard to the concern of minimizing the amount of travel time spent by communities. At this juncture, an amount of applied econometric models for measuring stimulated travel demand were exhibited in detail. According to the results of path analysis as an advanced version of simultaneous equations system, approximately 27 % decrease in travel time causes 71 % additional increase in amount of trips in a day. This result once more reveals that unending supply of transportation infrastructure in urban areas causes a kind of vicious circle in the long run, which necessitates further travel demand management strategies in all over the world.

Planning for fauna-sensitive road design: A review

Roads can have significant negative impacts on wildlife. Fauna-sensitive road design (FSRD) can alleviate adverse impacts on several species by installing specialised structures, such as wildlife crossing structures. This developing subfield has generally, however, had a limited impact on transportation planning and management. Indeed, most research is focused narrowly on technological solutions, instead of broader policy learnings. This systematic quantitative literature review (SQLR) of international literature sought to identify the biodiversity concerns acknowledged in transport planning policy, as well as the barriers to the adoption of environmental policies within transport planning. Despite considerable literature available on the impacts of roads on wildlife elsewhere, acknowledgement and consideration of both fauna movement and fauna-sensitive road design were limited in road transportation planning research. More broadly, failure to achieve environmental objectives within transport planning occurred primarily as a result of competing sector interests (conflicted knowledge), different political objectives (political interest), and incorrect interpretation of policies. In essence, the results add new layers of understanding to the field of transportation planning and policy, in particular, the gaps in acknowledgement of wildlife movements and the limitations of current fauna-sensitive road design considered. Importantly, the review identified multiple ecological support tools available to transport policy- and decision-makers. Integration of these in road transportation projects could facilitate enhanced uptake and adoption of FSRD measures and thus foster improved sustainability of the transport network.

Review of Critical Success Factors and Key Performance Indicators in Performance Assessment of P3 Transportation Projects

Review of Critical Success Factors and Key Performance Indicators in Performance Assessment of P3 Transportation Projects

A methodology to assess and select transport infrastructure development projects based on the fuzzy logic approach

Subject. This article analyzes the totality of economic relations and problems within the framework of the spatial development of settlements and subjects of the Russian Federation. Objectives. The article aims to develop a multi-criteria approach to the assessment and selection of transport infrastructure development projects, taking into account the interests of a wide range of subjects, quantitative and qualitative criteria based on the fuzzy logic approach. Methods. For the study, we used the methods of economic analysis, synthesis, comparison, and n-dimensional Euclidean distance. Results. The article reveals internal and external, direct and indirect effects and offers a classification of criteria for assessing infrastructure projects, taking into account the socio-economic and environmental context. The article also presents a methodology for multi-criteria assessment and selection of transport infrastructure development projects, including the calculation of an integral indicator, the consideration of quantitative and qualitative criteria based on the apparatus of fuzzy sets, which allows ranking them and determining the most priority project for implementation. Relevance. The proposed methodological approach to the evaluation of infrastructure projects can be used by executive authorities as a tool to support management decision-making in the framework of a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of national and regional transport projects.

Analysis on Stress-Strain Model of Unsaturated Ice-Containing Soil

The relationship between the stress-strain characteristics of ice-containing unsaturated soil and its various physical properties has important implications for the design and construction of transportation and building projects. The study also reveals the varying phases of the substance that can be deposited within the pore space. During winter, the freezing-thawing cycles affect the various media that can be deposited within the soil pore space, such as water and other water. The presence of water and others in the soil’s pores can cause a freeze-thawing phenomenon and a significant change in the material’s elastic modulus. This paper presents a method that uses the representative elementary volume (REV) model to perform a representative state variable analysis on an unsaturated ice-containing soil with porosity. The three stress-strain REV models that were developed for the study were designed to analyze the properties of an unsaturated ice-containing soil under freezing-thawing conditions. Then a comprehensive analysis of the soil’s various components was performed. The effects of frozen soil on the change law of the relationship between different porous medium are studied. The study also explores the effects of the presence of porosity on the variation law of the frozen soil relationship between the stress-strain. The paper presents the study of the variation characteristics of the elastic modulus of permafrost soil. It also explores the various factors (porosity, moisture content, ice percentage, and tortuosity) that influence the stress-strain characteristics of unsaturated soil.

Passengers receptivity of a new public transport mode: case of a BRT project in Lebanon

This study examines how far the level of knowledge on a new public transport mode in Lebanon might affect mode choice. Indeed, passenger mode choice is a major issue associated with the effectiveness of new transport projects, as their level of effectiveness and feasibility will depend on the number of new adopters. This investigation is performed by developing mode choice models based on data collected via a questionnaire-based survey. The models were used to compare preferences among private cars, current public transport modes and a newly proposed Bus Rapid Transit system. The driving factors are divided into two categories: economic and psychological. The results reveal that explicit evaluations of several factors on the proposed transport modes yields mode choices different from direct evaluation. Besides, the structure of the utility function reveals that economic driving factors prevail over the psychological aspects, which is the opposite of what is observed with direct mode assessment. Moreover, people’s expectations of the proposed Bus Rapid Transit were significantly positive in terms of usability in addition to operational and economic reliability. This study shows that people’s level of knowledge of previous transport modes and their perceptual expectations of new travel modes must be taken into consideration in the feasibility studies of any transport implementations in the developing countries where the public transport services are discouraged.

Transit Oriented Development and Sustainable Land Use Theories Impacts on New Mega Transportation Projects in New Capital City in Egypt

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) land use theories have been applied in multiple countries both developed and developing areas of the globe. It has proven its strength in maintaining a more sustainable approach in both urban development and lifestyle. The greater Cairo Region is witnessing huge transportation projects such as Electric Elevated Train that connect old Cairo with the new Capital City in the Eastern desert of Egypt. The New electric Train line is foreseen as a major clean transportation for number of important areas in greater Cairo, nevertheless it lacks more broader urban planning vision to use the transit main spots as a potential of applying a land use planning approach to maximize the urban potentials of these sites. This paper is providing a land-uses planning approach to maximize the land uses around these transits stops by providing the theory of transit-oriented development and propose the suitable solution that TOD offer to create more comprehensive sustainable urban oasis. The paper theorizes TOD land use planning, and what suitable development could be provided for such spots. Analysis of the locations of main train stops are provided, recommendation for one stop TOD development as a replica for other main stops to create more sustainable urban oases in the eastern desert of Cairo New Capital.

The Risk Model of Traffic Engineering Investment and Financing by Artificial Intelligence.

This study aims to analyze the influencing factors and mechanisms of investment and financing risks in transportation projects so that regions do not restrict the transportation investment and financing risk models in all areas to achieve intelligent transportation financial risk assessment. Firstly, the investment and financing modes are studied and analyzed. According to the analysis of intellectual investment and the financing report of traffic engineering infrastructure, a traffic engineering investment and a financing model based on intelligent computing is established, which is based on artificial intelligence (AI) big data analysis technology. Secondly, the investment and the financing risk model of traffic engineering is established based on multimodal learning. Finally, the urban traffic engineering of Xi'an is taken as the research object. Based on its investment and financing data in the construction of urban roads, the risk assessment is carried out. Combined with risk influencing factors, the accuracy of the intelligent calculation in the risk assessment model is calculated. Different grades of urban transportation projects have different risks in the investment and financing of transportation projects. The results show that different levels of urban transport projects have different risks in the investment and financing (IAF) performance of transport projects. Among them, the risk index of the first-class project is the highest, reaching 0.55. The risk index of the second-class project is 0.49. The results before and after using the flow engineering IAF risk model are compared. In the test results of traffic engineering risk, all target risks did not increase after the AI-based traffic engineering IAF is tested. The model test results for credit risk and financial risk are the highest at 70 and 60, respectively. Combined with the actual urban development situation, this study can provide investment and financing risk models for urban transportation projects in different regions and provide a reference for the resource control of transportation projects. This study uses AI to learn and analyze traffic engineering investment and financing data and more accurately provide data references for traffic engineering investment and financing risk models.

What We Have and Have Not Done in Transportation: The Story of Our Major Cities in Last Hundred Years

Farklı yönetimler, rejimler ve durmaksızın değişmekte olan bir dünya ortamını kapsayan yüz yıllık bir sürenin tümünün bir yazı çerçevesinde incelenmesi fazla iddialı gelebilir. Hele konu, bazen birkaç yılda bir değişen büyük şehirlerimizin ulaşım politikaları olursa… Bu nedenle yazı, İstanbul’un Aksaray semtinin ulaşım tarihine odaklanarak başlamakta, ilk olarak 20. Yüzyılın başlarından 1970’lere kadarki gelişmeler özetlenmektedir. Bu çerçeve içinde, Tarihi Yarımada’da çoğu bilinçsizce hayata geçirilen yol projelerinin yıkıcı sonuçları da göz önüne serilmektedir. Bu yıllardan itibaren dünyada ulaşım politikalarında ortaya çıkan çağdaş anlayışların kısa bir özetinin ardından, Ankara ve İzmir de dahil, Türkiye’nin üç büyük kentinde yürütülen ulaşım politikaları incelenmektedir. Bu dönemde birkaç yerel çağdaş uygulama dışında, büyük kentlerde eski anlayışın sürdüğü görülmektedir. Devamında, bu şehirlerde 1990’lardan günümüze kadar uygulanmış olan ulaşım proje ve önlemlerinin, dünyada kabul görmüş genel ölçütler çerçevesinde değerlendirmesi yapılmaktadır. Makale, pandemi koşulları sona erdiğinde, çağdaş ulaşım politikalarını oluşturan nedenlerin hala geçerliğini sürdüreceğini ve bunlara her zamankinden daha fazla ihtiyaç duyulacağı görüşü ile sona ermektedir.

Exploring the Key Priority Development Projects of Smart Transportation for Sustainability: Using Kano Model

Many smart transport programs are being carried out despite the fact that new smart transport programs technologies are not yet mature and people’s needs are not fully understood. As a result, many smart transport projects fall into chaos and fail to operate successfully, and can even impede socioeconomic development for sustainability. Therefore, this study suggests that cities should consider first the perceptions of people toward smart transport before they actively implement smart transport projects; this is an indispensable, key step to the smooth development of smart transport. Based on exploratory research, the study explores the procedure of constructing a kano model of smart transportation. A six-stage procedure is developed as primary collected 50 smart transport cases worldwide and then extracted 24 smart transport items. We designed questionnaire contents within the theoretical framework of the kano model, and eventually collected 369 completed questionnaires to determine how smart transport items can be classified under appropriate need attributes. Additionally, we use the customer satisfaction coefficient method to further prioritize the smart transport items, and four methods to prioritize them. Decision-makers can consider prioritization results from using different rules and methods, and reduce the gap between technologies implementation and actual needs.

Analysis of Washington State Department of Transportation Risks

Risk management is an important part of ensuring the successful delivery of major transportation projects. The first step in the risk management process is to identify the risks facing the project team so they can proactively complete the remaining steps: analyzing the severity; choosing how to respond; and controlling the level of risk throughout the lifecycle of the project. Although some state agencies have been practicing risk management for nearly two decades, little analysis of the risks identified during project development has been done. This study analyzes the risk registers pertaining to 51 major transportation projects undertaken by the Washington State Department of Transportation valued at approximately $7.7 billion to determine the distribution of risks among categories in the risk breakdown structure and find the most common risks in each category. The findings were then explored through interviews with industry professionals to gain insight into the results, add context, and illustrate the importance of identified risks. The results contribute to a better understanding of the risks facing transportation departments and lay the foundation for a more comprehensive risk identification step at the project level.

Marine trade and analysis of the ports in the Black Sea economic cooperation region

ABSTRACT This paper aims to (i) investigate the crucial role of marine trade, (ii) reveal the main characteristics and the integrating role of ports, (iii) analyse the networks of ports serving at the international level, produce route maps, and examine transportation corridors affecting the BSEC region that constitutes a significant part of Southeast Europe. In this context, we have carried out the social network analysis (SNA), which allows an understanding of the network structure, social dynamics, trends, and the actors’ effects in the network. According to SNA, Romania – Constanta Port, Bulgaria – Burgas Port, Ukraine – Chornomorsk Port, Russian Federation – Novorossiysk Port, Georgia – Batumi Port, and Turkey – Samsunport are the most prominent ports of the region. Due to the features they have and their involvement in international transportation projects, the ports are a tool for directing/accelerating foreign trade and marine traffic and developing economic cooperation between countries in the Black Sea Region.

Modeling the effects of government subsidy and regulation on BOT transport project contract design within contractible service quality

Government subsidy and regulation are frequently employed to encourage the private sector to participate fully in Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) transport projects. Besides service charge, the service quality of BOT transport project (i.e., maintenance quality, toll service, operational monitoring, emergency management, safety management and so on) is also an important factor affecting the choice of users. This paper studies the optimal service quality decisions in both concession period (CP) and post-CP, in which we assume that the market demand is dependent on both service price and service quality. Firstly, in the absence of subsidy scheme, we derive the related players’ optimal decisions of toll charge, contractible service quality, project capacity and length of CP in the BOT contract design process. Secondly, we investigate how to design an optimal BOT transport project contract when the government subsidizes the private sector. Thirdly, we explore the effects of government regulation policies (i.e., price cap regulation and service quality floor regulation) on the BOT contract design. Finally, we make three extensions to further examine the impacts of the demand uncertainty, the risk-aversion attitude of private sector, the asymmetric cost information and the nonlinear demand function on the BOT contract design. From our model results, some policy implications are derived regarding BOT transport project contract design when the service quality is a fundamental contractible variable.

The dimensional outlook levels of the writer N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky

In the present article the author analyzes the role of images in the writers consciousness. A writer, possessing extensive travel experience and comparative perception of his / her and someone elses concepts and ideas, will look like a much more trustworthy and objective descriptor of domestic spaces and life realities. The railway trips of the engineer and writer Nikolai Georgievich Garin-Mikhailovsky have produced an impact on the dimensional impressions and his work. The authors dimensional experience is reflected via the travel sketches Volynia Pictures, Drawing from Nature with a Pencil. Across the Western Siberia, Across Korea, Manchuria and Liaotung Peninsula, Through the Window of the Wagon, Around the World. Such literary images constitute a unique metageography a set of subjective images of the surrounding spaces. The concept road and its intertwining symbolic meanings has acquired special significance for N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky. The above-mentioned influence may be interpreted due to the participation of engineer Mikhailovsky in the implementation of huge transport projects. In addition to its purely utilitarian meaning, the road in the consciousness of the Russian person has acquired a broader semantic increment. N. Garin-Mikhailovskys consciousness has not been limited to the provincial theme, he has also been interested in the problems of the civilization development, the opportunities and challenges of the modern technical era, events and processes referring to the social history. Being in a county town or in the Volga Region village, he has always felt that he belonged to a bigger world. The sketch Around the World is notable in this case, reflecting the impressions of a round-the-world trip made in 1898. The civilizational, social and psychological aspects of the authors reflections are of great relevance and significance.

الأهمّيّة المعاصرة لدراسات طريق الحرير القديم في البناء المشترك لمبادرة "الحزام والطريق" / The Contemporary Significance of the Study of the Ancient Silk Road from the Perspective of Arabic Geographical Classics to the Coconstruction of the “Belt and Road” Between China and Arab Countries

Abstract Both China and Arab countries are great nations with long histories and splendid cultures. The Silk Road and the Spice Road are great transportation projects jointly created by people of all countries. These two roads were the main routes for concecting China with Arab countries, and the main artery for connecting the West and the East. China and Arabia have long-term friendly exchanges, and thus have close cultural relations. The Chinese and Arab people learn from each other to enrich and develop their respective cultures. The historical process of developing friendly relations between the two great nations is the glorious course of their great contribution to the progress of human civilization. Since ancient times, in the process of civilization exchanges and mutual learning on the ancient Silk Road, China and Arab countries have inevitably left many traces of mutual records, especially in geographical classics and ancient maps, thus forming a cognitive impression of the two sides. Moreover, this impression continues to develop and deepen with the changes of the times. By interpreting the written records of the China-Arab exchanges on the Silk Road in Chinese and Arabic geographical books and ancient maps, and comparing Chinese and Arab classics, the research results show that traditional friendship is the main theme of China-Arab exchanges. This provides historical experience and contemporary inspiration for the co-construction of the “Belt and Road” between China and Arab countries, and contributes to building a community with a shared future between China and Arab countries and a community with a shared future for mankind.

Research on Internal Structure and Mechanism of Landslide Based on Hydrogeophysical Investigation (Quan’an Landslide, Southwest China)

The survey area is located in the planning area of Longquan national urban park, with frequent human activities, numerous water conservancy, transportation projects, and frequent geological disasters such as landslides. The Red Mudstone has low strength and easy to soften in the case of water, and it is very prone to landslide in rainy season. At present, there are many studies on Red Mudstone Landslides, but most of them are analyzed by geological means, and the monitoring process is also dominated by surface deformation and settlement; there is less analysis with hydrogeological that is caused by rainfall and human activities. For Red Mudstone Landslides, to effectively reveal and analyze the process of the Slip Mechanism, we need to carry out the characteristics of hydrogeological structure and underground physical structure, and compare with surface monitoring and point geological structure. In this study, a one-year field survey and hydrogeophysical survey were carried out. Combined with the characteristics of environmental geology, the geophysical forward modeling problem based on finite element method was used to verify the influence of rainfall on the electrical characteristics of underground media. The smoothness constrained least square method and three-dimensional unstructured grid method are used to interpret the ERT data, analyze the abnormal patterns of electrical structure of landslide in different seasons, and correspond well with the GPR data. According to the characteristics of surface vegetation and weathering, as well as the displacement and settlement monitoring after landslide, the spatial characteristics of red bed landslide are revealed, and the relationship between landslide, rainfall, and human activities is clarified.

Integrating a computable general equilibrium model with the four-step framework

In the transport policy development process, four-step models are commonly used to estimate transport costs and flows based on representations of travel demands and networks. However, these models typically do not account for broader changes in the economy, which may significantly shift travel patterns in the case of larger transport projects. LUTI models are often applied to simulate changes in land-use patterns, and regional production function models have been used to estimate changes in production, but these methods rely on fixed economic parameters that may not capture the structural economic changes induced by large transport projects. In a separate line of development, computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, which simulate entire economies, have been increasingly applied to estimate the magnitude and distribution of economic impacts from transport improvements both spatially and through markets, including GDP and welfare. Some CGE models are linked with transport network models, but none incorporate detailed networks or generate a complete set of travel demands. This paper presents an integrated CGE and transport model that generates household and freight trips and simulates a detailed road network for different time periods, such that the transport submodel can be calibrated and run as a conventional transport model. The model provides a tool for the rapid strategic assessment of transport projects and policies when economic responses cannot be assumed to remain static. In the model, the CGE submodel simulates the behaviour of households and firms interacting in markets, where their behaviour takes trip costs into account. The model then generates trips as a derived demand from agent activities and assigns them to the road network according to user equilibrium, before feeding back trip costs to the CGE submodel. The model is then tested by simulating the WestConnex motorway project under construction in Sydney, with results showing significant increases in welfare for regions close to the improvements. Further development of the model is required to incorporate land-use and mode choice.