Urban Transportation Facilities Research Articles

Research on Deformation Characteristics and Design Optimization of Super-Large Cofferdam Enclosure Structure

With the rapid development of urban transportation facilities, their construction inevitably encounters unfavorable conditions, such as rivers and lakes. When using the weir construction method to build transportation facilities in lakes, the design scheme for the pit slope excavation inside the cofferdam is related to the success or failure of the construction. In this study, the design scheme for pit excavations in lakes is discussed and analyzed using numerical simulation and on-site monitoring against the background of Jinji Lake Tunnel. The findings are as follows. (1) The greater the distance between the pit and the cofferdam, the smaller the impact of pit excavation on the cofferdam is; when the excavation depth is 10 m and the distance is more than 47 m, the deformation of the whole pile is less than 15 mm. (2) Under the condition that the platform width is kept the same, the smaller the height and width ratio is, the greater the safety factor will be, and under the condition that the height and width ratio is kept the same, the longer the platform width is, the greater the safety factor will be. (3) When the pit and cofferdam are far away from each other, different slope release design schemes have different effects on cofferdam deformation and stability. The results of this research can provide references and guidance for the design and construction of similar projects.

Residents' Choice of Transportation Mode Based on Multiple Logit Model

In recent years, with the promotion of urbanization, China's urban structure has become larger and larger, and most cities have only one urban center. Commercial and residential areas are mainly concentrated in the city center, with high population density, which leads to great traffic pressure. Therefore, the factors affecting the residents' travel mode can be analyzed. The multiple logit model based on the random utility theory is used to analyze the travel mode of residents, and then the suggestions to improve the urban transportation facilities and land use mode are put forward, which is helpful to solve some urban congestion problems and reduce the urban traffic pressure. This paper takes Hangzhou, which is located in Zhejiang Province in East part of China as an example to analyze the travel mode of residents. Based on the investigation of local residents' choice of travel mode, three general travel modes, namely private cars, public transportation and non-motor vehicles, were selected as logarithmic model parameters for coefficient calibration, and the influence of gender, age, travel purpose, income and other factors on the choice of travel mode were analyzed. The study found that men are more likely to use private cars. The higher the monthly income, the higher the probability of private car travel. If the public transportation is more convenient in the place of departure and destination, the probability of choosing public transportation is also higher.

A Case Study of Tariq Road Underpass, Karachi: Environmental Analysis

The construction projects are rising in Pakistan to overcome the flow of traffic on the main road of big cities. Karachi is the metropolitan city of Pakistan facing uncontrolled growth and urbanization, which leads to an increase in the demand for urban transport facilities. The study focuses on the assessment of the environmental impacts of the Tariq Road underpass construction site. The data was collected with the help of community consultation using analytical methods. It includes public chat, site visits, interviews, questioners, and the samples collection of environmental components. The results show that the most common hazards were related to excavation, working practice variation, and personal protective equipment (PPEs). Faulty and unmaintained machinery with the lack of proper barrier producing noise and air pollution.

Autonomous Vehicles for Enhancing Expressway Capacity: A Dynamic Perspective

With rapidly developing communication and autonomous-driving technology, traffic flow on road networks will change from homogeneous human-driven vehicle (HDV) traffic flow to heterogeneous mixed traffic flow (MTF) comprising HDVs, autonomous vehicles (AVs), and connective-and-autonomous vehicles (CAVs). To understand the changes in the MTF of transportation engineering, we investigated the reserved capacity (RC) and right-of-way (ROW) reallocation policy that should be utilized under MTF scenarios. We established an MTF-based theoretical model to calculate the expressway segment capacity, theoretically analyzed the influence of the market penetration rate (MPR) on capacity and validated the model through numerical analysis. The results showed that the MPR of AVs and CAVs can enhance the MTF RC that is within 0–200% and that the platooning rate of CAVs positively influences the MTF RC. CAV popularization does not necessarily lead to a rapid increase in the transportation system efficiency when the MPR is <40% but significantly improves the efficiency of existing urban transportation facilities. When the MPR is >40%, the greatest enhancement is 4800 pcu/h/lane in terms of RC. A ROW reallocation policy that equips CAV-dedicated lanes according to the MPR of AVs and CAVs can enhance the capacity of expressway systems by 500 pcu/h/lane in terms of RC.

A Case Study of Tariq Road Underpass, Karachi: Environmental Analysis

The construction projects are rising in Pakistan to overcome the flow of traffic on the main road of big cities. Karachi is the metropolitan city of Pakistan facing uncontrolled growth and urbanization, which leads to an increase in the demand for urban transport facilities. The study focuses on the assessment of the environmental impacts of the Tariq Road underpass construction site. The data was collected with the help of community consultation using analytical methods. It includes public chat, site visits, interviews, questioners, and the samples collection of environmental components. The results show that the most common hazards were related to excavation, working practice variation, and personal protective equipment (PPEs). Faulty and unmaintained machinery with the lack of proper barrier producingnoise and air pollution.

Exploring Built Environment Influence on Taxi Vacant Time in Megacities: A Case Study of Chongqing, China

Driven by the emission peak and carbon neutrality targets, traditional cruising taxis are also under pressure to reduce emissions, and reducing taxi vacant time is an effective way to reduce emissions. This paper aims to examine the influence mechanism of built environment characteristics on vacant time of taxi trips from the supply-side perspective. To do so, the study uses a one week of taxi trajectory data of 2019 provided by a taxi company in Chongqing, a megacity in China. We take the divided square grid cell as the study units, calculate the taxi vacant time of 168 (7 × 24) hourly slots for each grid, and then calculate the built environment indicators of the grids with Point of Interest (POI) and vector road network data. A generalized additive model (GAM) based on panel data is constructed to investigate the influence mechanism of built environment on taxi vacant time. The results show that the time-varying trend of taxi vacant time is opposite to the time-varying trend of taxi trips and is similar to taxi trips in spatial distribution with significant spatial dependence. Taxi vacant time is negatively correlated with taxi trips. POI mixture, the number of enterprises, governmental agencies, and shopping services are negatively correlated with vacant time, while the number of sports and leisure services, hotel services, healthcare services, financial and insurance services, and living services are positively correlated with vacant time. An interesting finding is that metro stations significantly increase the vacant taxi time in the region. Average traffic flow speed, road density, the number of bus stops, catering services, residence communities, and motor vehicle services show strong nonlinear relationships with taxi vacant time, and their influence effects are alternately positive and negative. The study provides useful insights for understanding mechanisms of the role of built environment on taxi vacant time and has important implications for driver searching strategy improvement, taxi management measures development, spatial and temporal scheduling of taxi capacity resources, and urban transportation facilities layout planning.

Construction and Evaluation of Urban Sponge Road Traffic System Structure

The imbalance of traffic resources is one of the important reasons that restrict the healthy development of the urban traffic system. Based on the concept of “sponge city”, this paper puts forward a kind of road traffic system, which can explore the flexible space of transportation infrastructure. The Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is established to comprehensively evaluate the system performance, deeply explore the flexible space of urban transportation facilities, and improve the performance of the urban transportation system. The sponge-type road traffic system evaluation model proposed in this paper can provide a reference for other regions to tap the flexible space of regional traffic infrastructure resources.

Congestion Prediction Based on Dissipative Structure Theory: A Case Study of Chengdu, China

With the continuous growth of traffic demand and the mismatch of urban transportation facilities, urban traffic congestion has been caused, leading to various related problems, such as environmental pollution, traffic accidents, and slow economic development. Many cities have implemented relevant measures to improve traffic congestion, but fewer are ideal. This study used the hidden Markov model combined with the dissipative structure theory and entropy theory to predict the congestion more accurately. The temporal and spatial distributions of the online ride-hailing Didi data in Chengdu were analyzed. There are morning peaks, noon peaks, and evening peaks during workdays. During the noon peak and evening peak, travel demand in the city’s central area is relatively stable. It is found that the prediction model has a higher accuracy after combining the dissipative structure theory and entropy theory, which could be used to propose methods to prevent congestion.

Study on the treatment materials of urban rail transit water-containing caves

With the sustained and rapid development of the national economy and the accelerating urbanization process, the contradiction between urban basic design, especially urban transportation facilities and urbanization, has become increasingly prominent. Rail transit has become the main public transport in major cities with its advantages of large capacity, fast speed, safety and reliability, and on-time comfort. Most of the rail transit lines are underground tunnels. When the tunnel crosses the karst area, it may encounters caves with different sizes, different locations, different filling levels and different water content. The existence of these caves will seriously affect the surrounding rock in tunnel construction. To carry out research on the typical disaster of water-filled caves, different types of filling materials were compared and analysed. And the applicable scope, advantages and disadvantages of various filling materials were also analyzed. Aiming at the treatment method of cement-water glass as filling material for the water-soluble cave, the relationship between the setting time of cement-water glass and the water inflow time was studied. The research shows that the effect of injecting the cave near the cement-water glass is the best.

Semantic processing and emotional evaluation in the traffic sign understanding process: Evidence from an event-related potential study

Traffic signs are used on highways and in urban transportation facilities. As a critical element of driving safety, traffic signs are generally evaluated using questionnaires and by measuring reaction time. This study investigated the cognitive processing of traffic signs by measuring event-related potential (ERP) and explored semantic and emotional processing. A stimulus 1–stimulus 2 paradigm was adopted. Traffic sign–word pairs were organized into semantically congruent and semantically incongruent groups. Larger N400 amplitude and theta activity were simultaneously elicited by semantically incongruent traffic sign–word pairs, which indicated the semantic distance between traffic signs and words. A greater late positive potential was elicited by semantically congruent traffic sign–word pairs, which reflected participants’ positive emotional arousal. Additionally, this study measured ERP to assess semantic distance and emotional arousal in the traffic sign understanding process.

Criterion for Estimation of Ecological Safety of Objects of Urban Transport Construction

A new approach to assess the ecological safety of the urban environment including urban transport facilities is being considered. The chemical and acoustic pollution of the environment from the impact of the urban transport construction objects is analyzed. The description of the sustainable state concept and ecological balance of the urban environment is given. A criterion for assessing environmental safety based on a comprehensive indicator of the city’s biosphere compatibility was proposed. The scale of environmental safety assessments is constructed.

Heterogeneous urban traffic data and their integration through kernel-based interpolation

Purpose This paper aims to present collection and analysis of heterogeneous urban traffic data, and integration of them through a kernel-based approach for assessing performance of urban transport network facilities. The recent development in sensing and information technology opens up opportunities for researching the use of this vast amount of new urban traffic data. This paper contributes to analysis and management of urban transport facilities. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the data fusion algorithm are developed by using a kernel-based interpolation approach. Our objective is to reconstruct the underlying urban traffic pattern with fine spatial and temporal granularity through processing and integrating data from different sources. The fusion algorithm can work with data collected in different space-time resolution, with different level of accuracy and from different kinds of sensors. The properties and performance of the fusion algorithm is evaluated by using a virtual test bed produced by VISSIM microscopic simulation. The methodology is demonstrated through a real-world application in Central London. Findings The results show that the proposed algorithm is able to reconstruct accurately the underlying traffic flow pattern on transport network facilities with ordinary data sources on both virtual and real-world test beds. The data sources considered herein include loop detectors, cameras and GPS devices. The proposed data fusion algorithm does not require assumption and calibration of any underlying model. It is easy to implement and compute through advanced technique such as parallel computing. Originality/value The presented study is among the first utilizing and integrating heterogeneous urban traffic data from a major city like London. Unlike many other existing studies, the proposed method is data driven and does not require any assumption of underlying model. The formulation of the data fusion algorithm also allows it to be parallelized for large-scale applications. The study contributes to the application of Big Data analytics to infrastructure management.

Trend Analysis of Crime Incidences and Crime Vulnerability Differentials on Urban Transport Facilities in Ibadan

There is a noticeable increment in the rate of criminal attacks on transport facilities globally and some evidences of such abound in Nigeria, a most worrisome trend is that most criminals are increasingly finding passengers veritable targets for criminal acts. In this study, the temporal pattern of crime incidences across five selected bus stops and the variables that may likely determine the chances of becoming crime victims in Ibadan were analyzed. Crime records for six years (2003-2008) were statistically and descriptively analyzed alongside primary data obtained through a questionnaire survey of 250 respondents, who were frequent users of these terminals. The result validated the established findings that frequencies and concentration of criminal acts usually significantly differs temporally and spatially. It was equally revealed that criminals seemingly target the more vulnerable groups as victims as the females (of all age groups) bore the brunt of most attacks. It is also discernible from the study that site selection processes for the choice of bus stop within the public transit system is subjective and can aid their emergence as crime ‘hot spots’. KeywordsCrime trends; Vulnerability Differentials; Bus Stops; Public Transit System

METHOD TO RECONSTRUCT URBAN TRANSPORT FACILITIES

Measurements have shown that the International Roughness Index (IRI) values for the urban transport facilities predicted for reconstruction range from 5m/km to 14m/km, and for new or already reconstructed ones the values vary about 2m/km. Usual ways of repair of the pavement facilities structures in the city of Zagreb are: 1) replacement of already existing asphalt layers with a new bituminized crushed stone material base course and wearing asphalt concrete layer and 2) performance of the new pavement structure (layer of mechanically compacted course of grain stone material, bearing layer stabilized by hydraulic binder, bearing layer made of bituminized crushed stone material and a layer of splitmastix asphalt wearing course - SMA. As a large number of urban facilities are planned for reconstruction, the study was conducted to justify each repair mode. The study proposes the IRI values, obtained from the investigation measurement results upon which the reconstruction could be carried out to get the aimed IRI values ranging up to 2m/km in the end point.

A Study of the Correspondence of Urban Expansion in Relation to Transport Coordination in Osaka City during the Interwar Period (1918-1939)

This paper clarifies that transport coordination in Osaka City was not only controlled by the economy, but also by urban expansion similar to urban planning by examining the territoriality of urban transportation. The territoriality generally consisted of intraurban and suburban transportations. The contents of this paper can be summarized as follows:1) The municipal monopoly of urban transport facilities in Osaka City is generally considered to have begun in 1903. The system functioned well as long as the municipal area did not grow. After the second expansion of the municipal area in 1925, many inconsistencies developed.2) The municipal tramway under the municipal monopoly was profitable by the first half of the 1920s and it played a leading role. Later, however, due to the increasing number of buses and taxis, it declined in profitability.3) Rapid transit was planned as a part of overall urban planning in the 1920s. One purpose was to integrate intraurban and suburban transportations as a means of controlling urban expansion.Another purpose of urban planning was the construction of transport facilities, not the functional coordination of the various means of transportation. Moreover, plans for rapid transit paid little attention to its relationship to other means of transportations.4) The most disruptive influence on the municipal monopoly was the opening of the Osaka Bus Company. At first, Osaka Bus was only a supplement to the municipal tramway. However, it drained off numerous passengers because it possessed bus lines in the central part of the municipal area. One purpose of the later opening of a competing municipal bus line was to integrate intraurban and suburban transportations as a temporary substitution for rapid transit that tended to be constructed late. However, that bus line was not authorized to operate within the central municipal area.5) Essentially, the rise of transport coordination in Osaka City was a de facto amendment of the municipal monopoly on the range and scope of urban transportation to its integration.6) The new municipal monopoly of urban transport facilities which adapted territoriality of urban transportation was completed by the municipal tramway, bus, and rapid transit, and merger with Osaka Bus in 1938. Wartime regulation was indispensable for its realization, but the result was a reinstatement of the municipal monopoly of urban transport facilities. It is clear that the essential purpose of transport coordination in Osaka City was to strengthen the municipal monopoly of urban transport facilities, which had been undermined between 1918 and 1939. Although wartime regulation was indispensable for its realization, such a purpose was common to urban planning at the same time. From these conclusions, it is clear that transport coordination in Osaka City was not only controlled by the economy, but also by urban expansion.

Street Smarts

Most historians would agree in affirming the importance of transportation in facilitating urban decentralization. However, less is known about the important role of transportation experts in constructing and managing each city's transportation network. This paper explores the role of engineering experts in guiding development of 3 forms of urban transportation facilities and networks: streetcars, highways, and airports. The evolution of the statistical approach to transport decisionmaking, the types of biases that those statistics concealed, and the varying degrees of success achieved by engineers as proponents of a statistical approach are discussed.

A STUDY ON THE FORMATION OF URBAN CORE DISTRICTS AND THEIR RELATION TO TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

The function of urban transportation facilities which have large impact on the formation of urban structure, has to take into consideration much more in urban transportation planning. On the bases of above mentioned background, this study analyses the relationships between the function of urban core districts and the impacts of transportation facilities on them.The urban core districts are defined and classified to several types by their function which includes commercial, business, and so on. Then, each type of urban core districts is extracted in four Japanese urban areas. They are analyzed by their type and size, in relation to the improved level of urban transportation facilities. As a result, it is made clear that the different type of transportation services is required in each type and size of urban core districts.

Resident's Evaluation of Trade-off between Convenience of Urban Transport Facilities and their Environmental Impacts

Resident's Evaluation of Trade-off between Convenience of Urban Transport Facilities and their Environmental Impacts

Transit funding: Implications of federal aid strategies

Federal funding strategies greatly affect investment in urban transportation facilities in the United States. This analysis concentrates on the implications of varying federal aid matching requirements, structuring aid programs as categorical or block grants, and allo cating funds on a discretionary basis or according to formula. Toward this end the effects of recent federal transit aid arrangements are assessed.

A Newfoundland Printer on the Tramp

LONG BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL revolution in England, skilled artisans left their homes at intervals, travelling from town to town and taking work if it was available or simply receiving a tramp allowance ? supper, lodging, and perhaps some beer ? from their brethren in the same trade. According to E.J. Hobsbawm, the custom developed as a method of unemployment relief and may have originated among woollen workers in the West Country of England.1 Tramping did not grow out of the exigencies of industrial capitalism, but rather was based on ancient artisanal custom. It may have reflected a wide-spread belief that no man knows his ability or what he is worth until he has worked in more towns than one. After the industrial revolution, periodic but massive unemployment overburdened this older artisan way of coping with localized gluts on the labour market. Larger labour markets, increasing specialization within crafts, and the rise of urban transport facilities led more unemployed artisans to seek jobs within range of their homes and families. tram replaced the tramp, Hobsbawm observed. But not entirely. In the later stages of tramping, artisans used the old custom as a way to make their own grand tours during an era when the wealthier classes popularized such travel. This seems to have been the case for Timothy J. Ryan, a young printer from St. John's, Newfoundland, who embarked upon a sojourn across Canada and parts of the United States in spring 1913. The young Ryan had been boarding at 11 William Street, St. John's, in a house probably owned by his parents or possibly a relative.2