Search

Reinventing the major road infrastructures, giving them more value and making them give us more services is now possible. In this article we will offer a new vision of current road infrastructures. We seek to reinvent them by integrating innovative solutions in order to transform them into sources of local power generation while also equipping them with systems that transform them into smart infrastructures resulting in services for the citizens and in improvements in the quality of life of society as a whole. The article has been divided into two parts: in the first one we will introduce basic concepts, which in turn will be the fundamental principles for understanding the solutions that will be explained in the second part. Solutions that through their installation in the infrastructures will make the most of sunlight and vehicle traffic to generate clean energy locally, which can then be used to power street lighting, road signs, variable information panels, charge electrical vehicles, etc. Through the implementation of these solutions we seek to provide answers to the increase in energy demands while complying with and attaining Horizon 2020, the European strategy for intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of Smart road is based upon definition of a broader, all-inclusive concept with the capacity to incorporate all of the various aspects currently motivating efforts to improve the road sector, such as environmental aspects, highly advanced traffic control technology, analysis of construction maintenance costs (life cycle), the best possible designs taking user capacity into account and financing solutions The base for the development of the Smarf road concept has been included in this article, as an integration of the several positive aspects of highways and address people's highest expectations in relation to highway transport, defeating its importance in the global transport offer. The challenge is now in the development of this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban road design has traditionally been based on a hierarchical classification of roads according to the volume and type of motor traffic they are to carry and in conjunction with geometric parameters (cross-section, curve radius, etc.) and speed parameters for each resulting type. Such classifications and design methods are today clearly obsolete given the varied requirements of our urban environment and the need to reduce vehicle traffic in cities, whose negative impacts are well known. The study sets out this process, outlines the new framework that should apply to the road network, points out the insurmountable difficulties of adapting the traditional classification to this new framework and looks forward to criteria for designing and structuring urban roads with which the new and complex challenges of more sustai-nable cities and mobility may be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years ago, six new toll highways were inaugurated in Madrid. These projects, which began to be studied in 1976, have been analyzed by the Spanish mass media with different points of view (different projects, construction, opening, technical and economical problems and their bankruptcy). In this article, this journalistic vision will be studied, as well as, its contrast with a professional and technical treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private vehicle is still the dominant mode of transport in motorized trips carried out by citizens, in spite of being the most ineficient and pollutant of all. Improving the quality of public transport services can produce a modal shift towards this more sustainable modes of transport. In this research and using data from customer satisfaction surveys, we applied decision trees for analyzing the service quality of the metropolitan public transport of Granada (Spain), in order to define transport strategies that leads towards a higher level of quality of the service and, conse-quetly, more satified passengers. This analysis is developed for the overall sample of users, but also for segments of passengers with more homogeneous opinions about the service. The stratification is performed according to passengers' travel reason. This stratification allows to formulate more personalized guidelines of improvement and not generic ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rules for designing highway junctions (intersections, interchanges and roundabouts) in Spain since the 'sixties are reviewed. These rules have been scant for the big development in highway construction in the same period. A des-cription is given of the development of the Guidelines for Highway Junctions, which have been introduced by a Circular Order of the Highways General Directorate in December, 2012: an endeavor of no small scope. The author of this article has acted as main Rappor-teur for its text. A description follows of the aim guiding the text of this new Guide, which strives to state the degree of binding carried by each of its provisions. The importance of operation is also stressed, human factors and driving aids; the latter must be taken into considerations from the very inception of the design. Two levels-of-service and seven design vehicles have been used as design criteria. The operation of the junction has been taken into account in detail, including interactions between contiguous junctions and the needs of special users (heavy goods vehicles, vulnerable users and transit). Starting from an analytical approach, a set of possible functional morphologies has been syn-thetized; and a method has been established for selecting the most suitable junction for a given case. Some details of the Guide, which are a relative novelty, are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarises research that has been carried out in E.T.S.I. Caminos, Canales y Puertos de Madrid (UPM) into Urban Freight Distribution. An analysis is provided on the current situation of this sector in Spain, more specifically about the legal implications, the economic and environmental problems it causes, as well as feasible solutions, everything from the point of view of Transport Engineering. After that, as an example, the article examines the case of Valdemoro (Madrid). There, it is shown how a change in the layout of reserved parking areas can achieve important improvements on urban traffic, making the zone more efficient and sustainable. The article ends with some conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing development of new traffic monitoring technologies gives rise to a situation with multiple sources of data and multiple algorithms for the estimation of variables that may be of interest, among them information on travel time. This context with data from different sources, all of them imprecise to varying degrees, is the right one for applying data merging techniques. Their objective is to obtain a more reliable and precise merged value than that obtained from any individual estimations by themselves. This article presents a simple data merging methodology for the estimation of travel time on the highway. The proposed method uses data from loop detectors and toll tickets and would be easy to extend to other data sources. Its pilot application on the AP-7 highway has produced promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of new technologies to traffic engineering has allowed the development of Intelligent Transport Systems. ITS improve traffic management and increase road safety optimizing the use of the existing road infrastructure. ITS systems make easy traffic dynamic management. One of most used parameters in traffic management is the Level of Service. Currently, Level of Service are based on the Highways Capacity Manual from Transportation Research Board. However, the proposed model is completely static. Thus, this model is considered suitable for the dimensioning of future road network, but not for dynamic traffic management. This paper presents a new model for the identification of level of service in highways that allows a dynamic traffic management in real time. This model is based on the fundamental relation between speed and occupancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]