Beijing Transportation Research Articles

Breaking through the Key Challenges to Further Electrification of Public Transport in Beijing

In recent years, with the improvement of people's awareness of environmental protection and the increasingly serious problem of urban traffic congestion, the Beijing Municipal Government has actively promoted the development of green transportation, among which electric buses, as a low-carbon, environmentally friendly and energy-saving mode of transportation, are regarded as an important measure to improve air quality and reduce pollution emissions, which has attracted much attention. As electric buses grow, so do the operational challenges of the promoted electric buses, including high initial investment costs, inadequate charging infrastructure, technical limitations in terms of vehicle range and charging speed, and a lack of more supportive policies and regulations. This paper summarizes and analyzes the current situation of electric buses in Beijing. And proposes to solve the challenges encountered in the operation of electric buses by implementing targeted strategies. For example, optimize government financial subsidy measures and implement diversified financial support; The government supports companies to carry out technological innovation and invest in R&D to enhance electric vehicle technology; further promote the construction of charging infrastructure and improve the level of charging services; Effectively deploy battery recycling; promote the integrated development of intelligent vehicles and networking, and accelerate the construction of intelligent public transportation systems; strengthening international cooperation and resource sharing; and the development of a comprehensive policy to promote and facilitate the electrification of public transport in Beijing. Inject new impetus into Beijing's sustainable urban development.

Assessing carbon reduction benefits of teleworking: A case study of Beijing

Teleworking can efficiently decrease the energy consumption and carbon emissions related to physical commuting. Previous studies on assessing the carbon reduction benefits of teleworking were customarily performed according to hypotheses or qualitative methods, and disregarded different potentials of different industries for teleworking implementation. In this study, a quantitative approach was proposed to assess the carbon reduction benefits of teleworking in different industries, which was illustrated via the case study of Beijing, China. The teleworking penetrations of different industries were first estimated. Then, the carbon reduction of teleworking was assessed through the decreased commuting distance using the large-scale travel survey data. Finally, the study samples were extended to a citywide scale and the uncertainty of carbon reduction benefits was evaluated with Monte Carlo simulation. The results showed that (1) teleworking can lead to an average of 1.32 (95 % confidence interval (CI): 0.70–2.05) million tons of carbon reduction, accounting for 7.05 % (95 % CI: 3.74 %–10.95 %) of the total carbon emissions by road transport in Beijing; and (2) information and communication, and professional, scientific and technical service industries had higher carbon reduction potential. Additionally, the rebound effect slightly weakened the carbon reduction benefit of teleworking, which was necessary to be considered and mitigated through relevant policies. The proposed method can be also applied to other regions worldwide, helping to exploit future work patterns and realize global carbon neutrality targets.

Variations in aerosol optical characteristics from SKYNET measurements in Beijing

Atmospheric aerosols have significant impacts on climate and environment, so the study on aerosol optical properties is of great scientific significance for climate change and atmospheric environment. The variations in column-integrated aerosol optical properties over Beijing were investigated from March 2016 to December 2019 based on the SKYNET data products. Higher values of AOD and AE found in summer indicate that it is important to pay more attention to fine particle pollution in summer. By fitting the AOD data of SKYNET with AERONET at same waveband, we found that monthly variations in aerosol optical depth estimated from SKYNET observation were mostly consistent with the AERONET data. Aerosols were divided into several modes according to optical characteristics, which deepen some insight into aerosol optical and radiative properties and revealed that the weak absorption aerosol dominated and contributed much to the radiation transport in Beijing. Data derived from the polarization lidar CALIPSO were combined with aerosol optical depth (AOD) from SKYNET and these results were consistent, which further identified the scientific of data. The random forest algorithm was used to interpolate the missing AOD500nm observations. The original results and the interpolation results were fitted with MODIS respectively, which proved that the random forest algorithm can supplement the missing results well. This work will be of great significance in addressing the impacts of aerosols on climate and environment, and will help reduce the uncertainty of the impacts of aerosols on the Earth's radiation budget. All work will provide scientific support for the prevention and control of specific pollution.

Performance Evaluation of Fee-Charging Policies to Reduce the Carbon Emissions of Urban Transportation in China

As a market-based instrument for transportation demand management, a transport fee-charging policy can not only effectively reduce traffic congestion, but also improve air quality. Considering the urgent need to improve urban transport fee-charging policies and reduce transport carbon emissions, the paper focuses on the role of the performance of fee-charging policies in reducing the carbon emissions of urban transport. In this study, we propose a methodological framework for the performance evaluation of urban traffic carbon emission fee-charging policies. First, we analyze the current situation of the implementation of fee-charging policies and their relationship with urban traffic congestion. Subsequently, we analyze changing trends of carbon emissions associated with transportation travel in Beijing in recent years, to identify the main sources of carbon emissions from transport. Finally, we used the DEA method to evaluate the performance of the fee policies for urban transport, which are meant to reduce carbon emissions, analyze their implementation efficiency, and then discuss the main factors affecting their efficiency. The results show that with the implementation of fee-charging policies, urban traffic congestion has eased. The overall carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from transportation in Beijing grew rapidly. CO2 emissions generated by car travel are the main source of carbon emissions from transportation in Beijing. The average value of the overall technical efficiency (TE) of Beijing’s fee-charging policies to reduce transportation carbon emissions from 2006 to 2018 is 0.962, indicating that the overall implementation of Beijing’s fee-charging policies has been effective. Adjustments to the fee structure reduce motor vehicle travel to an extent, increase the proportion of green travel, and reduce the intensity of transportation carbon emissions. The technical non-efficiency in Beijing’s fee-charging policy is mainly due to non-efficiency of scale, followed by pure technical non-efficiency. Appropriately adjusting the fee structures imposed by different policies would help to improve the efficiency of policy implementation.

Estimating the energy saving potential of residential consumption in China based on decent living standards

The basic well-being of residents should be fully considered when making residential energy-saving policies. In this study, decent living standards for China were proposed. The provincial energy saving potential of Chinese residents were estimated from a lifetime perspective using environmental extended input–output analysis. The results show that, in 2017, the energy saving potential of Chinese residents constituted 32.74% of total energy consumption. The consumption categories of transportation, housing and cooking had the greatest energy saving potential of 1668.40, 3540.83 and 3229.75 trillion kJ, respectively, in which direct energy consumption accounted for 85% of total energy consumption. For food, clothing, water, health care and education, there was only energy saving potential from indirect consumption, of which food has the largest indirect energy consumption of 3159.25 trillion kJ. Moreover, the energy saving potential varied at the provincial level, coming from different consumption categories. Special attentions should be paid to the transportation in Beijing, housing in Liaoning, and cooking in Gansu, which have relatively greater energy saving potential with per capita energy saving potential of 207.38, 1002.16, and 4256.6 thousand kJ, respectively. The results verify the importance of differentiated and targeted energy policies for residential consumption in different provinces.

Scenarios of demographic distributional aspects of health co-benefits from decarbonising urban transport

There is limited knowledge on the distribution of the health co-benefits of reduced air pollutants and carbon emissions in the transport sector across populations. This Article describes a health impact assessment used to estimate the health co-benefits of alternative land passenger transport scenarios for the city of Beijing, China, testing the effect of five transport-based scenarios from 2020 to 2050 on health outcomes. New potential scenarios range from implementing a green transport infrastructure, to scenarios primarily based on the electrification of vehicle fleets and a deep decarbonisation scenario with near zero carbon emissions by 2050. The health co-benefits are disaggregated by age and sex and estimated in monetary terms. The results show that all the alternative mitigation scenarios result in reduced PM2·5 and CO2 emissions compared to a business-as-usual scenario during 2020-50. The near zero scenario achieves the largest health co-benefits and economic benefits annually relative to the sole mitigation strategy, preventing 300 (95% CI 229-450) deaths, with health co-benefits and CO2 cost-saving an equivalent of 0·01% (0·00-0·03%) of Beijing's Gross domestic product in 2015 by 2050. Given Beijing's ageing population and higher mortality rate, individuals aged 50 years and older experience the greatest benefit from the mitigation scenarios. Regarding sex, the greatest health benefits occur in men. This assessment provides estimates of the demographic distribution of benefits from the effects of combinations of green transport and decarbonising vehicles in transport futures. The results show that there are substantial positive health outcomes from decarbonising transport in Beijing. Policies aimed at encouraging active travel and use of public transport, increasing the safety of active travel, improving public transport infrastructure, and decarbonising vehicles lead to differential benefits. In addition, disaggregation by age and sex shows that the health impacts related to transport pollution disproportionately influence different age cohorts and genders. National Natural Science Foundation of China and FRIEND Project (through the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT).

Shared Transportation in Future Beijing

With repaid development of science and technology, various high-tech transportation has come into Chinese society. Moreover, with the further development of sharing economy in China, all kinds of shared transportation have gradually come into our society. In Beijing, it is nothing extraordinary to see shared bicycles stop at the roadside. However, with the popularity of shred transportation, many social problems have also aroused people’s thinking. In this essay, we will be based on the contemporary science and technology develop situation to discuss how will the shared transportation be like and how will the shared transportation interact with people.

Forecasting Transportation Network Speed Using Deep Capsule Networks With Nested LSTM Models

Accurate and reliable traffic forecasting for complicated transportation networks is of vital importance to modern transportation management. The complicated spatial dependencies of roadway links and the dynamic temporal patterns of traffic states make it particularly challenging. To address these challenges, we propose a new capsule network (CapsNet) to extract the spatial features of traffic networks and utilize a nested LSTM (NLSTM) structure to capture the hierarchical temporal dependencies in traffic sequence data. A framework for network-level traffic forecasting is also proposed by sequentially connecting CapsNet and NLSTM. On the basis of literature review, our study is the first to adopt CapsNet and NLSTM in the field of traffic forecasting. An experiment on a Beijing transportation network with 278 links shows that the proposed framework with the capability of capturing complicated spatiotemporal traffic patterns outperforms multiple state-of-the-art traffic forecasting baseline models. The superiority and feasibility of CapsNet and NLSTM are also demonstrated, respectively, by visualizing and quantitatively evaluating the experimental results.

Study on Traffic Status and Carbon Emission of Urban Transport in Beijing

At present, most of the literatures on transportation carbon emissions in China are to calculate the total amount of transportation carbon emissions. There are few literatures on carbon emission of specific transportation mode. There are few literatures on the calculation and analysis of urban traffic carbon emissions in Beijing. The historical data in these documents are very early, which can not effectively evaluate the current situation of urban transport in Beijing. Firstly, this paper analyzes the travel situation of Beijing residents in recent years. Then, based on the average daily passenger traffic volume and travel share rate of Beijing residents, a statistical model of urban transport vehicle energy consumption is established. Finally, the carbon emission of Beijing passenger transport is estimated.

Quantifying Contributions of Local Emissions and Regional Transport to NOX in Beijing Using TROPOMI Constrained WRF-Chem Simulation

Air quality is strongly influenced by both local emissions and regional transport. Atmospheric chemical transport models can distinguish between emissions and regional transport sources in air pollutant concentrations. However, quantifying model inventories is challenging due to emission changes caused by the recent strict control measures taken by the Chinese government. In this study, we use NO2 column observations from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument to retrieve top-down nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions and quantify the contributions of local emissions and regional transport to NOx in Beijing (BJ), from 1 November 2018 to 28 February 2019 (W_2018) and 1 November 2019 to 29 February 2020 (W_2019). In W_2018 and W_2019, the BJ bottom-up NOX emissions from the multi-resolution emission inventory for China in 2017 were overestimated by 11.8% and 40.5%, respectively, and the input of NOX from other cities to BJ was overestimated by 10.9% and 51.6%, respectively. The simulation using our adjusted inventory exhibited a much higher spatial agreement (slope = 1.0, R2 = 0.79) and reduced a mean relative error by 45% compared to those of bottom-up NOX emissions. The top-down inventory indicated that (1) city boundary transport contributes approximately 40% of the NOX concentration in BJ; (2) in W_2019, NOX emissions and transport in BJ decreased by 20.4% and 17.2%, respectively, compared to those of W_2018; (3) in W_2019, NOX influx substantially decreased (−699 g/s) in BJ compared to that of W_2018 despite negative meteorological conditions that should have increased NOx influx by +503 g/s. Overall, the contribution of intercity input to NOx in BJ has declined with decreasing emissions in the surrounding cities due to regional cooperative control measures, and the role of local emissions in BJ NOx levels was more prominent. Our findings indicate that local emissions may play vital roles in regional center city air quality.

Vertical Characteristics of Pollution Transport in Hong Kong and Beijing, China

Transported pollution plays an important role in the atmospheric environment of eastern China. This study analyzed the characteristics of surface winds at different air quality levels using meteorological station observations of both wind and mass concentrations of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters <2.5 μm (PM2.5) over Hong Kong and Beijing. In recent decades, wind directions at the surface exhibit a similar pattern for both good and poor air quality levels at all three stations, indicating a weak relationship between surface winds and air quality in Hong Kong. However, winds at a height of 1–2 km govern pollution accumulation. This dominant role is illustrated by a sudden change in wind direction within this layer and a simultaneous pollution accumulation stage on 8 January 2014. The controlling influence of winds at 1–2 km on both the deterioration and improvement of air quality is also supported by a distinct vertical wind distribution for all 21 monotonic increasing stages and 17 decreasing stages of PM2.5. In contrast, air pollution is transported to Beijing throughout the atmospheric layer that extends from the surface to a height of more than 3 km. This key difference may be due to variations in meteorology, topography, and emission sources between Hong Kong and Beijing. The results that layer of 1–2 km in Hong Kong and of surface to 3 km in Beijing is the height where pollution transport is most likely to occur are critical for forecasting severe haze episodes in eastern China.

Study on commuter travel of urban workers——Analysis of coordination between ground bus and rail transit in Beijing

At present, with the advancement of China’s urbanization construction process, China’s urbanization rate has gradually increased in recent years, and the population in the suburbs and surrounding towns and rural areas continue to pour into large cities, which inevitably leads to a series of social problems in the process of China’s urban economic development. In the process of population gathering in large cities, traffic problems have a great impact on urban workers. With the increase of urban population and the rising stock of private cars, the efficiency of ground transportation continues to decline; the population aggregation in big cities, the poor travel experience of public transport system in the morning and evening rush hours on weekdays, and the long commuting time and distance of workers restrict the long-term development of large cities in China to a certain extent. This paper studies the coordination between ground public transport and rail transit in Beijing with reference to the coordination of the development of ground public transport and rail transit. Finally, based on these problems, this paper puts forward some suggestions for the long-term coordinated development of public transport in Beijing.

The effect of policy planning, population and age structure on carbon emission under different city scale

In recent years, air pollution has become more and more serious in the world. The transportation system in cities made a large contribution to carbon emission. Therefore, the problem of urban traffic pollution needed to be solved urgently. The city scale, population, the age structure of population and policy planning would influence the energy consumption and carbon emission of transportation systems. This article compared three different transportation systems: private motor vehicles, buses and subway in three cities. Beijing, Nanjing and Shijiazhuang were selected as the main cities which represented the different city scale. By reading the article about carbon emission from the transportation system and analyzing the research methods used before, this article analyzed the carbon emission from transportation in Beijing, Nanjing and Shijiazhuang. The article mainly included the following parts. First of all, ‘engineering technical model’ was used in this article. Using the ‘engineering technical model’ based on the data, which includes amounts of transportation tools, total miles, energy consumption and carbon emission factors, the carbon emission would be taken. Besides that, this article also predicted the carbon emission in 2035 based on ’The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for the National Economic and Social Development of the People Republic of China and the Outline of the Long-range Goals to 2035’ to detect the effect of policy on carbon emission. At last, the cities with advanced transportation systems would have less carbon emission, but the super cities like Beijing still had the largest carbon emission. The age structure of the population also influenced carbon emission. Government policy was also the main influence factor for carbon emission. Under the government policy, the carbon emission of the transportation system decreased sharply.

Relationship between summertime concurring PM2.5 and O3 pollution and boundary layer height differs between Beijing and Shanghai, China.

The rapid development in the economy during past decades has caused serious air pollution issues in China with high concentrations of PM2.5 and O3, particularly in the densely populous cities. To integrate PM2.5 and O3 controls, it is necessary to understand the impacts of meteorology on both pollutants. Thereby, the complex linkages between planetary boundary layer (PBL), synoptic forcing, regional transport, and heavy pollution in Beijing and Shanghai during summer were investigated using long-term measurements, simulations, and reanalysis. Influenced by the unfavorable meteorological conditions, PM2.5 pollution and O3 pollution often simultaneously occurred. In Beijing, the heavy concurring pollutions usually happened on the days with shallow afternoon PBL and southerly/southwesterly prevailing winds. Within the PBL, the pollutants emitted from the southern plains can be transported to Beijing and accumulated on the windward side of the mountains. At the top of PBL, the synoptic southerly warm advections can strengthen the elevated thermal inversion layer and suppress the development of PBL, leading to worse pollution. Contrarily, the heavy pollutions in Shanghai usually occurred on the days with deep afternoon PBL and southwesterly warm advections within the PBL. Although the warm advections were more favorable to the PBL development than the movements of cool marine air mass, the input of pollutants from the southwest can overweigh this advantage, resulting in poor air quality in Shanghai. The occurrence of heavy pollution or clean condition in Shanghai was primarily determined by the synoptic forcing rather than the local PBL structure. This comparative study indicates that the relationship between PBL height and pollution level is changeable and complicated, which needs to be elucidated from the synoptic perspective.

Analysis and Risk Assessment of PM2.5-Bound PAHs in a Comparison of Indoor and Outdoor Environments in a Middle School: A Case Study in Beijing, China

People spend most of their time in indoors and, as a result, indoor air quality has become an issue of increasing concern. Due to the use of coal and heavy transportation in Beijing, China, concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) bound to PM2.5 have risen and caused concerns about health risk, both outdoors and indoors. This study carried out quantitative investigation of PM2.5-bound PAHs in middle school classrooms and estimated the health risk to adolescents. According to the results, indoor PM2.5 concentrations ranged from 20.9 μg/m3 to 257.6 μg/m3, indoor PAH concentrations ranged from 8.0 ng/m3 to 83.0 ng/m3, and both were statistically correlated with outdoor concentrations. Results of diagnostic ratios (DR) and the PMF (positive matrix factorization) model indicated that coal combustion was the main source of PAHs in the classroom environment. The average value of incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR) was estimated to be 1.49 × 10−6, which indicated a potential health risk to students according to USEPA standards. Predictions showed that by 2021–2022, the risk will be reduced to an acceptable level. Results of this study could provide useful information for air pollution control in Beijing and proposing targeted solution against indoor air pollution.

Research on the Construction of New Transportation Infrastructure in Beijing

This paper analyzes the development of new transportation infrastructure in Beijing by taking the utility tunnel as an example. The utility tunnel is a modern and intensive urban infrastructure that is constructed by integrating various engineering pipelines, such as electricity, communications, gas, heating, water supply, and drainage in the underground tunnel space of cities. The construction of the underground pipe gallery is conducive to ensuring the comprehensive utilization of the underground space of cities, which can meet the needs of continuous growth of roads and paths, and facilitate intensive management. This article focuses on the development of the construction of the utility tunnel in Beijing. Based on analyzing the development bottlenecks of the underground utility tunnel in Beijing, implementing scientific planning, realizing intelligent management of the utility tunnel and establishing the paid use system are put forward in order to provide solutions for promoting the development of the utility tunnel in Beijing and solving urban transportation problems, and to promote high-quality development of transportation in Beijing.

Passenger Travel Patterns and Behavior Analysis of Long-Term Staying in Subway System by Massive Smart Card Data

Due to the massive congestion in ground transportation in Beijing, underground rail transit has gradually become the main mode of travel for residents of large urban areas. Because the average daily traffic of the Beijing subway is over 12 million passengers, ensuring the safety of underground rail transit is particularly important. Big data shows that more than 4000 passengers participate in Long-term Stay in the Subway every day. However, the behaviors of these passengers have not been characterized. This paper proposes a method for identifying the Long-term Staying in Subway System (LSSS) in the subway based on the shortest path and analyze its travel mode. In combination with the past research of scholars, we try to quantify the suspected behavior with a database of assumed suspected behavior records. Finally, we extract the spatial-temporal travel characteristics of passengers and we propose a SAE-DNN algorithm to identify suspected anomalies; the accuracy of the training set can reach 95.7%, and the accuracy of the test set can also reach 93.5%, which provides a reference for the subway operators and the public security system.

An Assessment of Modes of Passenger Transportation in Beijing: Problems and Solutions

The purpose of this study was to analyse the historical trends of various modes of passenger transportation in Beijing with respect to planning, policies, performance, and public behaviour based on statistical data. Using Beijing’s passenger transportation data since about 2003, the discussion addresses changes in (1) Beijing’s passenger transportation supply and demand, (2) population density, and (3) the apparent causes and effects of passenger transportation policy at various stages of policy implementation. The analysis revealed that budgetary shortfalls, air pollution, population density, and lack of governmental integration are persistent problems. Specific proposals for ameliorating those problems are presented.

Efficiency Evaluation of Public Transportation in Beijing Based on Super-Efficiency DEA Method

The investment in urban public transportation resources in China has increased year by year, and its efficiency has been widely concerned by all walks of life. Based on the data of public transportation in Beijing from 2004 to 2017, the efficiency of the ultra-efficiency model was used to evaluate and analyze the efficiency. The results showed that the efficiency of public transportation is increasing but the growth trend is slowing down. Before 2010, the efficiency is not effective. The external environment of urban traffic has a significant impact on efficiency. Therefore, the public transportation system should be improved to ensure the effective use of input resources and to enhance the adaptability of public transportation to the external environment.

Investigating the aerosol mass and chemical components characteristics and feedback effects on the meteorological factors in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, China

The measurement of aerosols (PM1.0 and PM2.5) was conducted during 2016 and 2017 in Beijing, Tangshan and Shijiazhuang, investigating the spatial and temporal variations of aerosols and major chemical components. The WRF-Chem model was applied to simulate the impacts of aerosol direct and semi-direct feedbacks on meteorological factors and identify the source of PM2.5. The results showed that the average annual concentrations were 63.3–88.7 μg/m3 for PM1.0 and 81.3–112 μg/m3 for PM2.5 at the three study cities, and the average seasonal concentration ratios of PM1.0/PM2.5 ranged from 64.3% to 86.0%. PM1.0 and PM2.5 showed a good correlation that the squared correlation coefficients were all higher than 0.9, indicating both mainly came from the same emission sources. Water-soluble inorganic ions and carbonaceous components were major chemical species in PM1.0 and PM2.5, accounting for 48.9%–54.1% and 25.6%–27.8% in PM1.0, 48.1%–52.3% and 22.7%–24.7% in PM2.5. Those chemical species showed spatially similar characteristics but pronounced seasonal differences, with higher concentrations in autumn and winter, lower in spring and summer. Aerosol feedbacks had different effects on various meteorological factors. Three study cities monthly-mean incoming solar radiation decreased by 40.6 W/m2, 82.2 W/m2, 38.4 W/m2, and 49.9 W/m2; planetary boundary layer height reduced by 54.0 m, 109 m, 32.2 m and 85.2 m; temperature at 2 m decreased by 0.5 °C, 0.8 °C, 0.5 °C and 1.3 °C; relative humidity increased by 1.5%, 2.6%, 1.3% and 4.7% in April, July, October and January, respectively, while wind speed changes were relatively smaller than above factors. Additionally, the major sources of PM2.5 in January were identified as transportation in Beijing, while industrial and domestic sources in Tangshan and Shijiazhuang. The obtained results will provide more in-depth and comprehensive understanding of aerosol pollution and management strategies.