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In many countries, public transport (PT) services are offered by multiple operators with different modes, such as trains, metros, and buses, which are interchangeable across a single journey. This paper presents a model with one origin (O)-destination(D) path operated by two operators, each of which is responsible for different parts of the OD journey. One operator competes with potential third-party transport companies by offering discount incentives. Such an abstract settings has not been discussed in the literature. We explore how prices, demand, profits, and social welfare change with discounts through a theoretical analysis and numerical simulations under five scenarios. The results indicate that in all the scenarios the operator offering a discount incentive can always attract more passengers and increase its profits. Moreover, reducing the service time of operators offering discounts contributes to an increase in social welfare. Notably, this paper deduces for the first time that the demand scenario aimed at maximizing social welfare is twice as high as that aimed at maximizing total profit. However, in the scenario of maximum social welfare, the profitability of operators becomes challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of the sharing economy, shared bicycles have become an important component of urban transportation. This paper explores the nonlinear dual oligopoly system for the Cournot model in the bike-sharing market; both operators have maximized profits as their competitive goals. The analysis of pivotal factors influencing passenger preferences, including pricing discounts and comfort levels, is meticulously depicted by a bifurcation diagram. A new chaotic attractor—the shared bicycle attractor—is discovered. The research results indicate that larger discounts and adjustment speeds can cause the system to be in a chaotic state, which is not conducive to the long-term development of operators, although discounts can indeed attract more passengers to a certain extent. On the other hand, the increase in the marginal cost of comfort loss can also make it difficult for enterprises to operate, which requires continuous technological innovation to improve the comfort of cycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disruptive events cause decreased functionality of transportation infrastructures and enormous financial losses. An effective way to reduce the effects of negative consequences is to establish an optimal restoration plan, which is recognized as a method for resilience enhancement and risk reduction in the transportation system. This study takes the total travel time as the resilience measure to formulate a bilevel optimization model for a given scenario. However, the uncertainties involved in restoration activities cannot be overlooked. In this context, the inherent uncertainty is represented with a set of scenarios generated via the Latin hypercube technique. To assess the risk under uncertainty, a conditional value at risk with regret (CVaR-R) measure is introduced when considering the existence of worst-case scenarios. Then, the bilevel programming model is transformed from the deterministic case to the stochastic case, where the upper-level problem determines the restoration sequence to minimize CVaR-R and the lower-level problem is a traffic assignment problem. An integrated framework based on a novel genetic algorithm and the Frank—Wolfe algorithm is designed to solve the stochastic model. Numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the properties of the proposed bilevel programming model and the performance of the solution algorithm. The proposed methodology provides new insights into the restoration optimization problem, which provides a reference for emergency decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the shortcomings in decision-making methods for ground motion threshold warning models in high-speed rail earthquake early warning systems (HSREEWs), we propose a dual judgement method and corresponding early warning process for earthquake early warning decisions based on joint peak ground acceleration (PGA) and complex earthquake environmental risk evaluation (ERE) values. First, we analyse the characteristics of four complex earthquake environments based on the characteristics of high-speed rail (HSR) operating environments. Second, we establish an earthquake environmental risk evaluation index system and propose an adversarial interpretive structure modelling method-based complex earthquake situation evaluation model (AISM-based ESEM). The AISM method firstly evaluates the proximity by the TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution) method, then effectively rank targets with fuzzy attributes through opposite hierarchical extraction rules without sacrificing system functionality. Since PGA can reflect the current size of earthquake energy, combining PGA thresholds with ESEM-derived values of ERE can effectively determine the risk status of each train and make decisions on the most appropriate alarm form and control measures for that status. Finally, case analysis results under the background of Wenchuan Earthquake show that the new early warning decision-making method accurately assesses environmental risks in affected areas and provides corresponding warning levels as a supplement to existing HSREEWs warning models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies salient beliefs that influence e-bike couriers' traffic violation behavior based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Two surveys were conducted in Nanjing, China, in 2018. The first survey extracted the key psychological beliefs, which were used to design a questionnaire. The second survey assessed TPB components and reported e-bike couriers' traffic violation behavior. A structural equation model was adopted to analyze the data. The results revealed that attitudes, descriptive norms, and perceived behavioral control explained 55.7% of the variance in intention to perform traffic violation behavior, and intentions together with perceived behavior control accounted for 28.5% of the variance in self-reported violation riding behavior. All of the belief composites had strong direct impacts on their respective TPB constructs. Salient beliefs were applied to develop effective intervention strategies. Age, education level, whether one possessed a driver's license, and past traffic violation behaviors had significant effects on belief composites and behavior. The quantitative analysis results obtained in the study can provide theoretical support for designing more effective interventions for reducing the traffic violation rate of e-bike couriers., Author(s): Qian Cheng (corresponding author) [1]; Wei Deng [2]; Qizhou Hu [3] 1. Introduction With the rapid development of e-commerce and the logistics industry, demand in the logistics market is [...]