Search

Copyright of Control Theory & Applications / Kongzhi Lilun Yu Yinyong is the property of Editorial Department of Control Theory & Applications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlights • Floods influence upon the volume of traffic on the roads, its fluency, and the selection of an optimum route. • Author's application can be used to react accordingly for non-typical obstructions. • The greatest changes in vehicle traffic density during flood regard the Warsaw. Abstract The purpose of this article is to determine the size and spatial structure of changes in traffic density within the regional road network following an occurrence of a flood in the Mazovian Voivodeship, Poland. The use of the application developed for the purpose of this article – offers a possibility to react accordingly when there are non-typical obstructions (here: a flood). On the basis of the conducted study, it has been stated that the greatest changes in vehicle traffic density (the analysis of commute traffic) regard the capital of Mazovian Voivodeship, which – first of all – stems from the fact that it is Warsaw that the largest number of employees commute to. Secondly, it is influenced by the location of the capital city in relation to the river system. In the case of the analysed voivodeship and in 'normal' circumstances (no flood), commuting to work remains approximately within the 160-min isochrone. In the second variant, this time would extend nearly eightfold, and in the remaining scenarios fivefold. As far as 'normal' circumstances (no flood) and commuting in the Mazovian Voivodeship are concerned, the greatest load refers in particular to the following road classes: main road of accelerated traffic, main road and cumulative road. In this case, express and motorways play a marginal role. On the other hand, in the remaining scenarios, the importance of the class of main road of accelerated traffic decreases at the expense of the classes of main road and cumulative road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Commuting is an essential part of urban life. Long commutes have negative impacts on individuals and society, such as stress, loss of productivity, traffic congestion and air pollution. However, researchers often face the challenge of lack of data such as commute distance, duration, departure/arrival time, and origins/destinations in countries such as China. This study uses points of interest (POIs) to estimate employment locations, and implements a gravity-based model to estimate interzonal commuting patterns in central Shanghai, China. The results reveal a "busy corridor" in the west of the central city, especially during the morning peak hours. This pattern corresponds well with reported real-time traffic conditions in Shanghai. Our methodology offers a promising alternative for studying commuting patterns when such data are limited. Highlights • This study uses a gravity-based model to estimate commuting patterns. • It shows that POIs can be used to estimate employment. • Employment in Shanghai has a monocentric structure. • There is a busy commuting corridor in the western part of central Shanghai. • It offers an alternative to study commuting patterns when there are limited data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a systematic approach for planning and operating a one-way vehicle-sharing system (VSS) under demand uncertainty. It investigates the distribution of parking spaces and vehicles considering stochastic demand and interactions with the major operational decisions, namely vehicle redistribution activities. An optimization model is formulated that aims to determine the best deployment strategy for minimizing overall cost while achieving a certain level of service (LoS). Then, a simulation-based solution approach based on a discrete-event simulator (DES), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Optimal Computing Budget Allocation (OCBA) is devised to solve the mathematical model. The methodology is then applied to a car-sharing system in Singapore. Results demonstrate that considering rebalancing activities is imperative in making deployment strategies. The case study also provides managerial insights regarding designing and operating one-way VSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses automatically-recorded vehicle number plate data from a network of 22 cameras in Dorset, UK, to investigate the extent to which regular trip making can be determined using the regularity of individual vehicle arrival times across the same sites and time intervals over extended periods of several months and illustrates how a cohort of recognised regular vehicles may provide indicative evidence of traffic delays. Regularity was defined based on minimum numbers of observations over a given period and with specified maximum values of standard deviation in arrival time, with sensitivity to different values being tested. It was found that around one-fifth of all vehicles were regular during the morning peak where the definition required at least 30 observations out of 210 working days and with a standard deviation in arrival time of no more than ten minutes; significantly fewer vehicles were found to be regular in the afternoon peak. The turnover, or churn, of regular vehicles was found to be considerable, with only one-tenth of defined regular vehicles being continuously regular throughout the period and with identified pools of regular drivers halving in size every three months, as vehicles ceased to be regular and where the pool was not updated. This suggests that any database of regular drivers should be updated at least quarterly to ensure that new regular vehicles are included and that old ones are discarded. These findings may have inferences for traffic information systems tailored for different driver groups according to assumed levels of network knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journey to work receives a great deal of research attention due to the peak demand on the transport system. Cities are increasingly concerned with managing traffic congestion and reducing pollution and most of the focus of this research has been on cars, public transport, walking and cycling. In contrast, the role of powered two-wheelers (PTWs), including motorcycles and scooters, in commuting has received little attention, particularly in the context of cities in the developed world. This paper provides new insight into commuting by PTW by drawing on census journey to work data from Australia's three largest cities (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) combined with an intercept survey of PTW commuters in Melbourne. It explores the extent of, and changes in, PTW commuting as well as the demographics of PTW commuters. While PTWs account for only a small percentage of urban commuting in Australian cities, their use is growing rapidly and there is a concentration of commuting by PTW into city centres. PTW commuters tend to be high-income males in skilled professional and technical professions. The implication of these findings for transport policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commuting is the single largest impact a University has on the environment and represents a noticeable share of urban traffic, when the University is located within a city. There is a large amount of literature on which policies could reduce car use and improve the environmental and social sustainability of commuting to college. However, most studies focus, to the best of our knowledge, only on the effectiveness of such policies, disregarding their social efficiency, measured as the difference between the social costs and benefits. This paper presents an estimate of the effectiveness and the efficiency of nine hypothetical transport policies regarding the University of Trieste, Italy, on the basis of a transport demand model estimated via revealed and stated choice data. All policies but one are effective in reducing car use, but only six of them appear to be efficient. We find that fully subsidizing bus fares would be the most effective and efficient policy. However, it is doubtful whether fully subsidizing bus fares is financially sustainable. The second best policy would be a mix of bus subsidies and parking restrictions. In case of the University of Trieste, our model suggests the adoption of a policy mix based on a relatively low hourly parking tariff (€0.3 per hour) and the use of the parking revenues to subsidize the bus users. The methodology and the results presented in this paper can be used by the college Mobility Managers to design better transport policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the design and efficiency of a highway use reservation system where commuters need reservations to access a highway facility at specific times. We show that, by accommodating reservation requests to the level that the highway capacity allows, traffic congestion can be relieved. Generally, a more differentiated design of the reservation system yields a higher reduction of travel cost and thus achieves a higher efficiency. The efficiency bound of the system is established. We also show that braking or tactical waiting behaviors of drivers would cause a loss of efficiency, which thus need be proactively accommodated. Given that user heterogeneity cause further loss of efficiency, we explore how two specific types of user heterogeneity affect the system efficiency. Auction-based reservation is then proposed to mitigate the efficiency loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new centrality measure, nominated by the authors as mobility centrality ( C), which arose during the study of the interregional road network in Greece. The proposed measure is constructed by the use of the anagogic method considering the formula of the kinetic energy of a particle in Physics and adjusting its mathematical analogue to the case of the interregional road network. The new centrality measure is estimated to be useful for the operational analysis of a network (such as the analysis of network flows), since it characterizes as central these vertices that appear to have the greatest tendency to attract or expel network flows. The ability of the proposed centrality measure to illustrate flow tendencies was examined empirically by correlating and regressing mobility centrality to the commuting status of the Greek interregional network and to four of the most common existing centrality measures (betweenness, closeness, straightness and degree centrality) of the available data. The empirical analysis indicated that the proposed centrality measure ( C) presents sufficient ability to describe the status of the Greek interregional commuting system and it is believed that it is able to describe the inner potential that produces flows in a network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Population dependence on car use has adverse health consequences including road traffic injury, physical inactivity, air pollution and social severance. Widespread car dependence also entrenches lifestyles that require unsustainable levels of energy use. Most transport policies explicitly include goals for public health and sustainability. Transport interventions can therefore be seen as complex public health programmes, and assessing their outcomes against health and sustainability goals is vital. Using organisational travel plans (OTPs) as an example, we demonstrate how best practice epidemiological systematic reviews can be used to assess the existing evidence to inform transport policy. Such a synthesis of the evidence for OTPs has not been undertaken previously. Methods: We undertook a rigorous systematic review in accordance with a peer reviewed protocol to assess the effects of OTPs on individual and population health. We defined OTPs as travel behaviour change programmes conducted in a workplace or education setting. We included published and unpublished randomised controlled trials and controlled before and after studies, where the measured outcomes included change in travel mode or health. Results: 17 studies were included. One study directly measured health outcomes, and all studies measured change in travel mode. The overall methodological validity of studies was poor. The highest quality studies reported mixed effects on travel mode in the school setting. An isolated randomised controlled trial in a workplace suggests that reductions in car use are possible by people already contemplating or preparing for change to active travel. Conclusions: Despite widespread implementation, there is insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of organisational travel plans for improving health or changing travel mode. Given the current lack of evidence, new OTP programmes should be implemented in the context of robustly-designed research studies, accounting for potential adverse effects such as child pedestrian injury. Cochrane systematic review methods used in partnerships between public health and transport planners can help achieve transport policy goals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose – In order to alleviate the impacts of traffic congestion that undermine the mobility and accessibility conditions of the Aristotle University campus, the paper aims at the presentation and description of a complementary network of alternative modes (i.e. pedestrian and bicycle) and the discussion of the appropriate measures for its successful implementation in the campus. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach of the paper is twofold: the overview of good practices for implementing cycling and pedestrian networks in European university campuses in an attempt to identify an integrated activity framework compatible to the European approach; and a questionnaire survey for the assessment of the modal split for trips towards and from the campus and the current mobility and accessibility conditions for pedestrians and cyclists in the Aristotle University campus. Findings – The successful implementation of alternative transport networks in university campuses depends on the specific features of each campus in relation to the urban transport network and the commuting characteristics of staff and students. In the case of the Aristotle University campus, the modal split shows that 2/3 of campus-related trips are conducted by motorised transport while the share of bicycle use is very low. In order to promote cycling and walking in the campus, a combined approach must be adopted based on five fields of activity: policy; research; design; support and promotion; and monitoring. Research limitations/implications – The paper derives from the research initiatives of the Aristotle University's Sustainable Mobility Committee, which was founded in order to promote sustainable solutions for the campus's transport system. Originality/value – The paper provides a common and integrated activity framework for the implementation of an alternative transport network in a university campus based on the extensive overview of European experience. Furthermore, it develops for the first time a full proposal for the implementation of a pedestrian and bicycle network in the Aristotle University campus, which is one of the oldest and largest campuses in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Behavioral travel research has neglected to examine the role of mindfulness in the context of the work commute. Mindfulness is a psychological construct that has been associated with improvements to mental health, social engagement, and behavioral regulation. We examined ways in which users of different travel modes perceive their journey to work from an affective stance, their dispositional mindfulness, and time affluence. Using survey data from 786 university employees, we estimated a structural equation model capturing the direct and indirect relationships between mindfulness and the degree to which commuters find their work trip satisfying and peaceful (commute-related attunement), and related mediators. Bus users, walkers, and bicyclists reported significantly less stress than drivers. Walkers and bicyclists reported greater positive journey-based affect than drivers and bus users. Additionally, walkers and bus users maintained relatively greater perceptions of time affluence than drivers. Modeling results revealed that mindfulness directly, and operating through time affluence, competence, and stress, enhanced attunement to the commuting experience. The findings suggest that enhancing individual-level time affluence and sense of competence using non-motorized modes may encourage individuals to choose active transportation modes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Across the world, there is increasing interest in managing car traffic. One approach developed for addressing the journey to work is known as ‘workplace travel planning’. This paper primarily reports on 20 case studies of UK employers undertaking travel planning, who had cut commuter driving by an average of 18%. It concludes that considerable behavioural change can be achieved in a variety of contexts – but employers usually need an overall strategy that addresses car parking, in addition to improving alternative travel modes. Moreover, a more comprehensive national strategy is needed, if travel planning is to achieve its potential. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We study the departure time decisions of commuters traversing a traffic network with the goal of arriving at a common destination at a specified time. There are costs associated with arriving either too early or too late, and with delays experienced at bottlenecks. Our main hypothesis, based on the Nash equilibrium distribution of departure times, implies that, for certain parameter values, expanding the capacity of an upstream bottleneck can increase the total travel costs in the network. We report the results of a large-group laboratory experiment, which are strongly supportive of this counterintuitive hypothesis, and we discuss the implications. (JEL D85, R41) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We introduce the idea of a European-type congestion call option to value commuting to work along a given path for a given departure time selected by automobile drivers who are modeled as Cournot–Nash non-cooperative agents competing for limited roadway capacity when the alternative of telecommuting exists. We show how to compute flow patterns based on congestion call options and contrast these to traditional user optimized flow patterns. In particular, a numerical example is presented that shows congestion options have the potential to lower the network-wide social costs of congestion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We study the structure of the network representing the interurban commuting traffic of the Sardinia region, Italy, which amounts to 375 municipalities and 1 600 000 inhabitants. We use a weighted network representation in which vertices correspond to towns and the edges correspond to the actual commuting flows among those towns. We characterize quantitatively both the topological and weighted properties of the resulting network. Interestingly, the statistical properties of the commuting traffic exhibit complex features and nontrivial relations with the underlying topology. We characterize quantitatively the traffic backbone among large cities and we give evidence for a very high heterogeneity of the commuter flows around large cities. We also discuss the interplay between the topological and dynamical properties of the network as well as their relation with sociodemographic variables such as population and monthly income. This analysis may be useful at various stages in environmental planning and provides analytical tools for a wide spectrum of applications ranging from impact evaluation to decision making and planning support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reversible roadways have been used throughout the world to mitigate the effects of congestion and optimize roadway performance for more than 70 years. They have been applied on a variety of roadway types using many different methods of control to address an assortment of needs, including the movement of unbalanced directional traffic associated peak commuter periods, emergency evacuations, roadway construction work zones, and other major gatherings and events. Despite the long and varied history of reversible roadways there are a limited amount of established guidelines and standards to guide their planning, design, and operation. To overcome this lack of information the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) sponsored a project to investigate and document reversible roadway practices to better understand the conditions that warrant their use, their impacts on safety, operations, and the environment, and their design and implementation requirements. This paper builds upon the findings of NCHRP Synthesis 340 by highlighting and summarizing the range of reversible roadway applications and discussing how the variety of reversible roadway applications have been able to address problems despite the fact there is little standardized practices to guide their implementation or assure uniformity in their use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our paper is to generalize the model by Arnott et al. (1990a) to situations with a single origin and destination connected by two routes and to test the analytical results in an experiment with discrete time departure choices. The experimental evidence does not support the theoretical predictions: While the accumulated experience creates significant learning effects which imply a positive evolution of the empirical travel costs towards the equilibrium, the Nash hypothesis is still rejected and the commuting system shows substantial fluctuations until the end of the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correctly pricing transport behaviour to take account of the ‘external’ costs such as congestion and emissions imposed on society by excessive car use has long been a tenet of effective transportation demand management. But while policy‐makers have striven to increase public transport subsidies, raise petrol taxes and introduce road‐user charging schemes to price the real costs of car travel properly, in most cases correcting the wider influences of the personal tax regime has begun only relatively recently. This paper is based on work undertaken for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Inland Revenue of the UK government, which is currently working on addressing this very issue. In addition to reporting the British situation, the paper also uses a series of case studies to outline how this same process has been approached in the USA, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway, and how successful they have been thus far with respect to transportation demand management objectives. It then draws conclusions about which direction policy‐makers should be aiming for in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the uniqueness of user equilibrium in transportation networks with heterogeneous commuters. Daganzo (1983) proved the uniqueness of (stochastic) user equilibrium when commuters have heterogeneous tastes over possible paths, but identical disutility functions from time costs. We first show, by example, that his result may not apply in general networks if disutility functions are allowed to differ. However, for "simple" transportation networks, we show that user equilibrium is always unique and weakly Pareto efficient (cf. the Braess example) for a general class of utility functions. We investigate whether this result applies to more general networks. We also show that user equilibrium is unique in a dynamic bottleneck model with a simple network. We discuss an interesting relationship between the following two problems: the existence of user equilibrium in a finite model and the uniqueness of user equilibrium in a continuum model. In the appendix, we also provide a proof of a slightly generalized version of Daganzo's theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One challenge to researchers dealing with traffic management is to find efficient ways to model and predict traffic flow. Due to the social nature of traffic, most of the decisions are not independent. Thus, in traffic systems, most of the decisions are not independent. Thus, in traffic systems the inter-dependence of actions leads to a higher frequency of implicit co-ordination decisions. Although there are already systems designed to assist drivers in these tasks, such systems do not consider or even have a model of the way drivers decide. Our research goal is the study of commuting scenarios, driver's decision-making its influence on the system as a whole and how simulation can be used to understand complex traffic systems. This paper addresses two key issues: simulation of driver decision-making and the role of a traffic forecast component. For validation, empirical data from real experiments are used and it is shown that the heuristics drivers evolve lead to a situation similar to that obtained in the real experiments.

An integrated optimal control model and its solution algorithm have been developed for commuting corridor management. Three traffic control measures, including ramp metering, intersection signal timing, and freeway flow diversion, have been incorporated and optimized simultaneously. As an improvement to our previous work, the presented model and algorithm have the following three unique features: (1) modeling traffic state evolution on surface streets with flow conservation within sections, flow transition between sections, and flow discharging at downstream intersections; (2) estimating time-dependent model parameters adaptively with real-time traffic measurements, rather than assuming as pre-determined; and (3) having a limited-step convergence property in its solution logic. Preliminary numerical tests have demonstrated the potential of the developed model and algorithm for integrated real-time corridor control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a dynamic system-optimal control model (DSOCM) for commuting corridors which consist of both freeway and surface street segments. Need to implement effective traffic control; Complex interactions among freeway, surface street and diversion flows; Computation of the optimal time-dependent ramp metering rate.

The transportation impacts of center-based telecommuting for 24 participants (representing 69 person-days of travel and 295 trips) in the California Neighborhood Telecenters Project are analyzed. Comparing non-telecommuting (NTC) day to telecommuting (TC) day travel shows that person-trips did not change significantly, whereas vehicle-trips increased significantly (by about one trip) on TC days. Both PMT and VMT decline significantly on TC days: by an average of 68 miles (74%) and 38 miles (65%), respectively. When these savings are weighted by the frequency of telecommuting, overall reductions in PMT and VMT come to 19% and 17%, respectively, of total weekday travel. Commute trips increase slightly (by 0.5 trips) but significantly, mainly due to lunch-time trips made home from the telecenter. Total non-commute travel does not increase, but there is a significant shift from other modes to driving alone on TC days. Commute mode split on NTC days is not affected by telecommuting. Travel on TC days tends to be compressed into fewer hours. Higher numbers of return home, eat meal, shopping, and social/recreational trips are made on TC days, in exchange for a reduction (to zero) in the number of change mode trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on La Serenissima, the serene city of Venice, Italy has suffered greatly in 2021 as tourism has dropped. Topics include the million people visited the 3 square miles of the historic center of Venice during the tourist season, and thee goal is understandable, but the method involves surveillance that might strike citizens and tourists as creepy.