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Economic circles have been formed and developing in China. An economic circle consists of more than one closely adjoining central cities and their influence zones. It is always the major engine for the development of one country's economy and even for the world economy. A combined modal split and assignment model with deterministic travel demand is proposed for modelling passengers' choices of intercity bus and train which are two main competing modes in the multimodal transportation network of the economic circle. The generalized travel cost model of highway and railway are used incorporating travel time, ticket fare and passenger's discomfort. On the highway network, the interactions of private vehicles and intercity buses are asymmetric. Thus, a variational inequality formulation is proposed to describe the combined model. The streamlined diagonalization algorithm is presented to solve the combined model. The multimodal transportation network based on Yangtze River Delta economic circle is presented to illustrate the proposed method. The results show the efficiency of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with the estimation of the probable shift of auto-rickshaw (three wheeled motorized para-transit vehicle) users to the bus due to an increase in its level of service after providing exclusive bus lanes on Indian city roads carrying heterogeneous traffic. The quantum of an increase in the level of bus service due to the introduction of an exclusive bus lane was determined using a recently developed simulation model of heterogeneous traffic flow. The data on other factors (variables) that might cause modal shift from the auto-rickshaw to the bus was collected conducting a home-interview survey based on the stated preference approach. A binary logit model of mode-choice was then calibrated using the collected data and the model was also validated using a holdout sample. A mode-choice probability curve to depict the possible shift of auto-rickshaw users to the bus is developed taking difference in the travel times of two-modes as the basis to serve as a user friendly tool to analyze the possible modal shift for a wide range of the values of the involved variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household trip production is not a constant parameter and vary based on socio-economic characteristics. Even households produce several numbers of trips in each category (households with constant socio-economic characteristics). The purpose of the present study is to model a variation of household trip production rate in statistical societies. To achieve the purpose, a concept of Bayesian Inference has been used. The city of Isfahan was selected as a case study. First, the likelihood distribution function was determined for average household trip production. Then, likelihood distribution was determined for the numbers of household trips separating odd and even trips. In order to increase the precision of the function, the concept of Bayesian inference was utilized. To insert household socio-economic variables in the function, the disaggregate model was calibrated for average household trip production. Statistical indices and χ² test show that the likelihood distribution function of average household trip production follows the gamma distribution and the numbers of household trip production follows the poisson distribution. The final composed probability distribution was determined on the basis of Bayesian inference. The related function was created with a compilation of the mean parameter distribution function (gamma distribution) and the numbers of household trip production (poisson distribution). Finally, the disaggregate model was inserted to the final composed probability function instead of the mean parameter. The obtained results show that the use of Bayesian inference method would open up the possibility of modeling the variation of household trip production rate in statistical societies. Also it would be possible to insert socio-economic characteristics in the model to predict the likelihood of real produced trips for each category of household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railway service terminals (nodes) are the places of a railway network equipped with costly technology based on high complexity technological procedures demanding a high degree of coordination and control skills. Great effort is therefore exerted to find an optimal configuration of infrastructure to extensively exploit technical and human resources and to effectively organize technological procedures. Due to the complex system, a simulation model seems to be the only suitable tool for performing investigations under realistic conditions. The paper focuses on the possible utilization of simulation methods to support the design and optimisation of infrastructure process control algorithms in railway terminals. The paper also deals with the most important properties and possibilities offered by the simulation tool Villon and comments on the experience gained during its utilisation. The tool supports tactical (middle- term) and strategic (long-term) planning usually related to infrastructural or operational proposals which are supposed to guarantee the optimal (or at least effective) behaviour of the modelled terminal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delay is an important factor in the optimization of traffic signals and the determination of the level of service of a signalized intersection. This paper proposes a methodology and a new formulation to identify the delay parameter in signalized intersection delay models. In this study, the delay parameter is modeled as a function of analysis period instead of a fixed value used by the existing delay models. Therefore, the proposed delay model including new delay parameter can produce more reasonable delay estimations at signalized intersections for variable time periods. A comparative study of the proposed time-dependent model against the existing four different models was performed to present the improvements in this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question is: whether the system total travel cost and travel time are reduced by adjusting the work start time or not? This paper proposes the two-level model for answering the question; the upper-level minimizes the system travel cost and travel time by using the work start time as a decision variable, the lower-level models the stochastic dynamic simultaneous route/departure time equilibrium problem. Finally, numerical results of a small network are provided to illustrate the behavior of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation plays a significant role in the world. This paper deals with harmonization of classification and coding systems, which is of fundamental importance in everyday freight handling practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]