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Highlights • Road expansions was a contributing cause to traffic-inducing land-use development. • Traffic-growth was stronger than expected, and as compared with Norway. • No or only short-term congestion relief. • Planning policy affected how traffic-inducing the land-use development became. • Capacity expansion contributed negatively to achieve sustainable mobility goals. Abstract This article presents nuanced and context-related empirical research on the traffic-inducing effects of urban road capacity expansion two Norwegian cities. It focusses on the indirect and long-term land-use effects and on land-use planning and policies, that are not well covered in existing literature. Unsurprisingly, results show traffic-inducing land-use development in the period after the road capacity expansions. Differences in planning policy and practices affected how traffic-inducing the land-use development was. The traffic growth was stronger in the affected road corridors than expected, and as compared with Norway. No or only short-term congestion relief was found. It is concluded that the road capacity expansions were necessary conditions for the land-use sprawl, and consequently, contributing causes for the traffic growth. Ex-ante analyses seem not to have included the land-use effects, and this is understood as part of the explanation for the discrepancies between ex-ante expectations and actual development. In both cases, municipal and regional authorities currently attempt to steer land use development in directions contributing to stop traffic growth, in accordance with national policies. Meanwhile, road authorities plan for new capacity expansions in the investigated corridors. Land use effects of the capacity expansions seem, again, not to be included in the assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Philippines consists of over 7000 separate islands, of which around 2000 are populated. In a drive to promote economic growth and prosperity, the government, together with the World Bank, is investing heavily in road building. In order to realise the strategic vision for this road investment programme, the following major challenges were identified. (a) The Philippines road network is extensive yet fragmented, and falls under the responsibility of many levels of government. (b) There is currently no comprehensive mapping of the road network. (c) Historically, road investment has been opaque and highly politicised, with poor governance and corruption undermining delivery. Good financial governance without visibility or transparency is almost impossible to achieve. Smartphones were chosen as the tool to provide the required levels of accountability needed for large-scale infrastructure investment projects. Using the built-in video recording and global positioning system capabilities of these widely available devices, the major investors were able to see exactly where and why road building is needed and to monitor how their money is spent. This innovative solution has proven to be a success and is now being considered as the template for how similar investments can be monitored in countries of a similar nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to analyse the road accidents in India at National, state and inter-city levels. According to the recent available statistics, there is age and gender-wise variations in the proportion of road traffic accidents and deaths where males have a very high percentage share of fatalities (85%) when compared to females (15%). Tamil Nadu had the highest percentage share of accidents (14.9) and Uttar Pradesh had the highest percentage share of fatalities (12.8). Some of the possible solution to combat this raising trend of road traffic accidents are- awareness initiatives, maintenance of good data base, planning and designing for road safety, remedial action at high crash sites, design for pedestrians and cyclists and implementation of strict speed limits. Thus there is an urgent need to provide emphasis on road safety and curtail the worsening situation of road traffic accidents, injuries and deaths in India which is the need of the hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In this study, we assessed the number of child passenger safety technicians (CPSTs) in Michigan over 4 years and characterized the CPST workforce in 2015 to identify factors associated with high productivity and longevity in the field. Methods: We determined the number of CPSTs and those newly certified using lists from the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning (OHSP) from 2012 to 2015. We conducted a statewide survey of Michigan CPSTs in October 2015. Analyses were conducted in 2016. The survey assessed demographic characteristics, reasons to enter the field and maintain certification, and motivations to conduct seat checks. We used CPST-reported time devoted to seat checks and average number of seats checked per month to create a composite "activity level" variable. We examined activity levels across several characteristics. Results: The number of CPSTs ranged from 941 to 980 over the study period, with approximately 200 new certifications annually. In 2015, surveys were started by 496 of 962 eligible CPSTs and 427 submitted complete responses. CPST-instructors had a higher response rate than CPSTs in general (89 vs. 49%, P < .0001). The majority of respondents were women (71%) and self-identified as white (88%). More than one third were 35-44 years old. Just 7% were comfortable checking seats using a language other than English. "Personal reasons" were most often cited motivation for becoming a CPST and maintaining certification. Natural fit/job enhancement were more common reasons to maintain certification than become a CPST. Time and distance had the greatest influence on seat check participation. Perceived need, appointments vs. drop-in, and employer factors were very influential for 10-15% of CPSTs. Few CPSTs considered free food and payments/giveaways very influential. About 40% of respondents were considered high-activity (>24 seats checked/year), one third medium-activity (5 to 24 seats checked/year), and one quarter low-activity (<5 seats checked/year). High-activity CPSTs most commonly reported both being paid and volunteering their time to check seats, worked with a Safe Kids coalition, worked in law enforcement or social services, and had recertified at least once. Motivation to participate in seat checks did not vary with activity level. Conclusions: Understanding the demographic characteristics and motivations of CPSTs can help Michigan OHSP recruit and retain a workforce dedicated to increasing the safety of child passengers. Agencies hosting seat checks can use these results to align the strategies they employ to incentivize CPSTs to serve in their communities with the factors that have the greatest influence on CPST participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this article was to assess the match between child passenger safety resources (child passenger safety technicians [CPSTs], car seat checks, and child restraint system [CRS] distribution programs) and the child population in Michigan by utilizing geographic information systems approaches and to analyze the impact of Michigan's CPSTs on child passenger safety behaviors on departure from a seat check. Methods: Data were collected from administrative sources and a survey of CPSTs to determine the number and location of child passenger safety resources and children in Michigan. The main analyses used data from 2014. The child population ≤4 years old per county and per traffic safety region was determined from census data. CPST and car seat check locations were determined from a list from the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning (Mi-OHSP) and a survey of CPSTs who coordinate seat checks. Summary sheets from Mi-OHSP served as the data source for CRSs distributed through their occupant protection program. Data from child passenger safety checklists completed with seat checks were obtained from Safe Kids Michigan. Addresses were geocoded using Google Maps Geocoding API and then mapped at the county level using ArcGIS Desktop 10.3.1. Descriptive statistics were calculated and levels of service were determined at the county and regional levels. Results: In 2014, there were 570,929 children ≤4 years old in Michigan and 979 CPSTs who worked at 209 known seat check locations. An average of 6,854 seats was checked per year through Safe Kids Michigan Coalitions. All but 3 regions met an intermediate service level for seat check locations by offering one or more per 5,000 children ≤4 years old. There was at least one CPST in 80 of 83 counties (median 5; interquartile range, 2, 10.5). Assuming that an average Michigan CPST provides 10 h of service each year, all but 2 regions reached an intermediate service level of at least one technician hour per 90 children ≤4 years old. Fewer regions reached a basic level of service for the number of seat checks. Almost half (49.5%) of Safe Kids Michigan seat checks resulted in a change in child passenger safety behaviors. Conclusions: Child passenger safety resources in Michigan are not evenly distributed yet most regions and counties meet intermediate levels of service. Reallocating resources to areas that are providing basic levels of service could help reduce disparities in child passenger safety behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to describe the facts about the level of accommodation of community proposals through data on the proposed realization of the results of the musrenbang in the priority scale of sub-districts in the physical field, in accordance with the mandate of the law, which aims at implementing development planning that is oriented to the interests of the community. (Botoom-up planning). However, the opinion that developed in the community considered that musrenbang was considered merely a formality of the government in carrying out the mandate of the law. Departing from the public opinion, the researcher was interested in raising and researching this problem with the object of musrenbang research in Medan Tuntungan sub-district. This study analyzes the problems related to the implementation with qualitative descriptive methods. From the results of the study, it can be concluded that the concept of regional development planning is appropriate, but the real problem is the implementation of the results of the musrenbang in the Medan Tuntungan sub-district which is less accommodated by the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In establishing goals for the Philippine road safety plan, police data were used. Police reports are likely underreporting. We apply capture-recapture analysis to determine expansion factors and estimate the true incidence. Three cities were visited where data on deaths (2014) and injury (January-March 2014) from hospitals, police and civil registry were collected. Matching was done to generate a final list of injured and dead individuals. The Chapman method was used for estimating the true number of cases. Police data exhibited underreporting in all site. Expansion factors of the police data range from 5.4 to 29× for deaths and 3.2 to 47× for non-fatal injuries. Expansion factors are likely useful to estimate the true incidence of road traffic injuries in areas with weak injury surveillance systems such as the Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming for further improvement in ride comfort, a novel integrated system combining preview active suspension control with longitudinal velocity planning based on road height information is proposed. From the suspension control side, the presented semi-EMPC (Explicit Model Predictive Control)-based controller, which is augmented with preview road information, can make up for the shortcomings of traditional implicit MPC and explicit MPC, and achieve a balance between computational burden and memory usage, thus enhancing the practicality of implementing preview suspension in real-world applications. Adopting dynamic programming and quadratic programming algorithms, a longitudinal velocity planning method based on preview information is provided to overcome the vibration that cannot be effectively suppressed by single suspension control, thus expanding the dimension of ride comfort improvement from the original vertical dimension alone to both longitudinal and vertical dimensions. Throughout the design process, the transformation of pavement information among spatial, time, and frequency domains has been regarded as a bridge to combine two systems, thus handling the complex coupling between above two highly interdependent systems. Experiments in the Quanser active suspension plant have been conducted to verify the superiority of semi-EMPC with preview. The integrated approach is simulated in Carsim and shows a significant improvement over single suspension control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A trajectory planning framework (TPF) is proposed to improve traffic efficiency. • The experimental scenario is a signalized road section in mixed traffic flow. • Both the longitudinal and lateral maneuvers of CAVs are optimized simultaneously. • The stochasticity of HDVs is investigated by the concept of α-trajectory. • The rolling time horizon scheme is applied to account for the time-varying traffic situations. Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are projected to bring significant benefits to traffic efficiency and driving comfort. However, the realization of full CAV penetration rate will take a long time. In this paper, a framework is proposed for planning the trajectories of vehicles at a signalized road section in a mixed traffic environment consisting of CAVs, human-driven vehicles (HDVs) and connected and automated buses (CABs). In the proposed trajectory planning framework (TPF), both the lane-changing (LC) behavior of CAVs and the stochasticity of HDVs are considered. The whole TPF is composed of a planning module, a running module, and a switching module. In the planning module, the mixed integer programming (MIP) models for trajectory planning with/without LCs are formulated to optimize the trajectories of CAVs/CABs. A parsimonious algorithm is designed to determine a suitable planning time horizon for the MIP models. The running module and the switching module are designed to ensure the driving safety of vehicles. To consider the stochasticity of HDVs, the concept of α -trajectory is employed in simulations to produce predicted trajectories of HDVs, while the actual trajectories of HDVs are generated by a stochastic car-following model. Here, α is a parameter between 0 and 1 related to one randomly changing parameter of HDVs, and α -trajectory is a series of predicted trajectories generated for HDVs based on the value of α. A rolling time horizon scheme is applied for TPF to account for the time-varying traffic situations. Numerical experiments under different traffic states and market penetration rates (MPRs) of CAVs/CABs are conducted to validate the performance of the proposed TPF. The average improvement in travel time and fuel consumption can reach up to 28.9 %, 17.8 % and 52.2 %, 35.3 % under medium and heavy traffic, respectively, and the average improvement in driving comfort is over 20 % in most traffic scenarios. The comparison experiment without fixed rolling time window (FTW) shows the advantage of setting FTW in adapting to the time-varying traffic situations, especially under heavy traffic. The sensitivity analysis shows that the values of α 1 and α 2 associated with α -trajectory can affect the performance of the proposed TPF in varying degrees. Finally, the length of the control zone is suggested to be set to 300–500 m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A multi-layer framework for highlighting safety interventions on networks composed of different road categories is proposed. • The improvement potential is assessed by estimating safety performances for each road category. • Thresholds for crash frequencies are determined within the optimization process, considering budget constraints. • The effect of safety measures is assessed through crash reduction factors, at the planning level. • The applicability of the proposed framework is demonstrated through a case-study road network. Planning road safety interventions on large road networks implies several layers of complexity in the decision-making process. In fact, the following simultaneous problems should be addressed: estimating safety performances on the different road elements of the network, identifying sites showing high potential for improvement with respect to reference values, defining the possible types of safety measures to be implemented and their anticipated effect on traffic safety, limiting the number of interventions given fixed budget constraints. This study proposes an integrated multi-layer framework which takes into account the above-defined problems into a single optimization procedure which provides the number and type of safety interventions to be implemented over a wide road network composed of different categories of road elements. The proposed framework is based on the following peculiar aspects: the potential for safety improvement is quantitatively assessed based on the estimation of safety performances for each road category, a bi-level thresholding process integrated in the optimization process is used to highlight sites for interventions, the anticipated outcome of safety measures is quantitatively assessed as well through available crash reduction factors. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study which analyzes a sample of real roads belonging to a province-wide road network composed of various road elements (i.e., different categories of segments and intersections), under different budget constraints. Results demonstrate the applicability and flexibility of the proposed approach, which could be used for planning purposes, independently of the particular geographic location. Clearly, the approach is valid at the planning stage, given that several details of the different layers of analysis are necessarily simplified, while they should be studied in detail at the single intervention project stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planning and realisation of road infrastructure projects is often societally controversial because of the impacts and the difficult trade-offs between alternative project designs. Neither in current literature nor in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practice do we find any clear method to engage the public in integral trade-off choices. This paper aims to uncover public preferences about integrated road infrastructure projects, not by focusing directly on the – often contested – alternative project designs but by focusing on the size of the impacts. This paper examines the preferences for combinations of impacts and the corresponding orders of magnitude. We do so by employing Conjoint Analysis (CA), a well-established method in consumer studies which, to date, has rarely been used in infrastructure planning. CA systematically estimates public preferences for (1) the relative importance of selected impacts and (2) the corresponding Willingness-to-Pay and Willingness-to-Accept. We used the total range in sizes of impacts of three existing EIAs for infrastructure projects and asked 600 citizens to trade off the impacts involved. First, we find that public and policy preferences do not necessarily align. The CA results show that loss of 'forest and green structures' and 'agricultural land' are considered to be the most important impacts. Conversely, in each of the projects, travel time gain is regarded as the least important impact. Second, the order of magnitude of the impacts seems crucially important: the greater the magnitude of the impact, the higher its relative importance. Third, when comparing our results with the alternatives in the original EIAs, it appears that the project alternative with the highest weighted public preference required an optimised project design. We find that our systematic approach to uncover public preferences at this stage in the EIA-process can contribute to further design optimisation of the project. This stage is often overlooked in the process while it is the last EIA stage before the final approval decision is made, but the first time that the forecasted size of the impacts of the different alternative designs of a project are available and presented. Such an approach may enhance the development of alternatives that are more widely accepted by the communities and that thus potentially alleviate or even prevent social contestation. • Improving public participation in the final stages of the EIA process. • Enable project managers to optimise design alternatives based on public preferences. • Conjoint Analysis uncovers public preferences for combinations of impacts. • The greater the magnitude of an EIA impact, the higher its relative importance. • Size of impact matters in optimizing alternative road development designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Thika Superhighway to the opening of the Expressway, Nairobi's recent history has been marked by the rapid development of large-scale mobility infrastructures. The paper uses the recently built urban bypass highways that circle the city as a heuristic entry point to theorise the urban and contribute to debates on the nature of the urbanising periphery in Africa. The empirical contribution of the paper is structured into three parts: plans; projects; and plotting. We show how plans operate as performative technologies, manufacturing the imaginary of how places fit into larger systems and relate to imagined cores. We then turn to the patchwork of projects – in particular the bypass roads and related 'new towns' – which reflect vestiges of these planning ideas, but in fact come to be operationalised as incremental expansions. Finally, we show how plotting – the plot-by-plot development driven by small businesses and families – in fact contributes the bulk of development activity. These investments knit urban fringes together in constant conversation with plans, and with the highway infrastructures which reduce the distances between places and spaces. Together, these vectors show the diverse ways in which the periphery is given imagination, substance, and value. • Nairobi's bypass roads can be used to theorise peripheral urbanization. • Road and plans play performative roles, shaping spatial form and institutional design. • With Chinese funding, old highway plans are revived and implemented in complex ways. • Large-scale and plot by plot investments develop relationally on the urban fringes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capability of self-driving cars to relocate occupant-free is suggested to become one of the most disruptive yet beneficial features in the era of fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs). One relocation option is cruising: Once arriving at the destination, a traveler may instruct her FAV to circle around to bridge the time span between drop-off and pick-up, implying no need to park at all. This seems promising, given the various inefficiencies associated with parking. In this paper we show that driverless vehicle cruising is accompanied by its own inefficiency and, thus, should be a major issue of concern. By developing and applying an integrated economic equilibrium speed and parking choice model, we identify the counterpart of the classical (negative) cruising-for-parking externality in the world of non-autonomous vehicles, namely a (positive) speeding-when-cruising externality that may occur in the era of self-driving cars. The externality emerges because driverless vehicle cruising entails moving at very low speed, thereby imposing congestion on regular (non-cruising) traffic. We show that when not accounted for by cruising FAVs themselves (e.g. via a Pigouvian speed subsidy), not corrected through regulation (e.g. via speed control) or planning (e.g. via dedicated lanes), the traffic system fails to achieve a socially optimal outcome. When parking-as-a-substitute-for-cruising is feasible and properly priced, a welfare-maximizing speed regulator would enforce cruising speeds that deter travelers from choosing inefficient cruising. In this case, welfare is improved and parking would be even socially desirable (at least in the short term). However, when parking is free and parking externalities are substantial, the transport system features too many parkers, but to limit the efficiency losses in the parking market, socially optimal speed regulation enables cruising too. In that case, the result is a huge welfare loss even with regulation stemming from traditional cruising-for-parking induced by parkers, and road congestion caused by cruisers. Our findings support the idea of adopting economic instruments, planning tools, command-and-control approaches, and parking-as-a-substitute-for-cruising to tackle the potential inefficiencies resulting from driverless vehicle cruising, but also underscore the inappropriateness of parking-as-a-substitute-for-cruising when it is heavily underpriced. • The detrimental consequences of driverless vehicle cruising in the age of fully autonomous vehicles are studied. • We develop an integrated economic equilibrium speed and parking choice model. • We focus on the adverse effects of large speed differences and un(der)priced parking. • Road planning (separating cruising vehicles from regular traffic), speed regulation (speed control), speed pricing (Pigouvian cruising speed subsidy), and priced parking can curb or even remove the inefficiencies of driverless vehicle cruising. • Unregulated driverless vehicle cruising in conjunction with unpriced parking is the worst possible scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The YRD's LER index over the past 20 years was produced by landscape metrics. • The temporal-spatial variation law of LER in YRD was analyzed. • The relationship between LER and road network growth in YRD was researched. • Significantly negative correlation areas are mainly distributed around the MST. • Significantly positive correlation areas are far away from the MST. One of China's regions with the finest foundations for urbanization, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), has experienced tremendous urbanization growth over the past 20 years. It is crucial to assess how the region's rapidly expanding road network may affect the landscape ecological risk (LER) by using landscape analysis, kernel density estimation and statistical analysis. The findings concluded that 1) The LER, which was significantly affected by the landscape pattern and topography was unevenly distributed throughout the YRD region, exhibiting obvious characteristics of high LER values in the north and low LER values in the south. From 2005 to 2020, the medium and sublow LER zones showed increasing trends, with increases of 7101 and 3186 km2, respectively. The decreased areas reached 5310, 2583, and 2394 km2 for the low, subhigh, and high LER zones, respectively. 2) There were obvious spatial differences in the impact of road networks on the LER's geographical distribution in the YRD region. Significantly negative correlation areas were mainly distributed along and around the minimum spanning tree (MST) generated by the city centers of provinces, which had dense road networks. Significantly positive correlation areas were far away from the MST. 3) From 2005 to 2020, road network expansion in the YRD region impacted the interannual changes in both the LER index and each component index. As the road network expands, the fragmentation, splitting and disturbance indices of shrubs, grasslands and impervious land patches decrease, while those of croplands, forestlands, and water bodies increase. This study can serve as a scientific foundation and point of reference for planning the road network expansion and assessing the regional ecological risk in the YRD region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Illinois' North Meacham Road Corridor Plan, which outlines steps necessary to transform the roadway into a multimodal transportation corridor that balances needs of motorists, cyclists, and transit users while creating a landmark and gateway to the Village of Schaumburg.

Emerging smart cities are typically equipped with thousands of outdoor cameras. However, these cameras are usually not calibrated, i.e., information such as their precise mounting height and orientation is not available. Calibrating these cameras allows measurement of real-world distances from the video, thereby enabling a wide range of novel applications such as identifying speeding vehicles and city road planning. Unfortunately, robust camera calibration is a manual process today and is not scalable. In this article, we propose AutoCalib, a system for scalable, automatic calibration of traffic cameras. AutoCalib exploits deep learning to extract selected key-point features from car images in the video and uses a novel filtering and aggregation algorithm to automatically produce a robust estimate of the camera calibration parameters from just hundreds of samples. We have implemented AutoCalib as a service on Azure that takes in a video segment and computes the camera calibration parameters. Using video from real-world traffic cameras, we show that AutoCalib is able to estimate real-world distances with an error of less than 12%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Brasília, federal capital of Brazil, has an conceptions and contradictions context implicated in his idealization, to the construction of its monuments, roads and urban planning. For decades, the city has expanded its borders, in both ways, symbolic and concrete, and currently represents the synthesis of a dialectical spatiality of the Brazilian population and its territory. These double feature, between the planned utopian and the historical and spatial realities of society, is the focal point of the present paper, seeking to develop such a reflection about Brasilia itself and on the political and ideological totality of which it is a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates resident satisfaction with provided involvement activities during highway planning processes, with particular attention given to the planned Southern Ring Road highway project in Groningen, the Netherlands. In-depth interviews with 38 residents living in the project area reveal important themes contributing to satisfaction. Satisfaction with passive information activities is motivated by the extent to which information addresses concerns, but (dis)trust in government and other information sources also plays a role. For residents preferring to obtain additional information, perceived access to such information and the extent to which it reduces concerns are also important to satisfaction. Finally, for residents who would rather participate actively, satisfaction is motivated by their perceived access to participation activities and the sense of being heard. Study results show how residents’ evaluations of the themes underpinning involvement satisfaction are based on their perceptions of actual project team activities and contextual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the causes of traffic congestion in the central business district of Onitsha, Anambra State. It evaluates the opinion of commuters, transport operators and private car owners on the factors responsible for their experience of traffic congestion in the study area. A total of 158 responses through questionnaire survey of the respondents were collected for analysis. The population was sampled using simple random sampling. The study employed multiple linear regressions to determine the extent of the contribution of the factors responsible for traffic congestion in the Onitsha central business district (CBD).The result of the study showed that traffic congestion within the CBD of Onitsha is significant and will increase by 36.4% for every additional score on poor road network and planning. This indicates that the nature of the road network in Onitsha contributes a major cause to traffic congestion. The study recommends the need to extend, reconstruct and expand existing roads within the CBD to link adjacent and opposite districts as the means to reduce traffic congestion in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An optimal design of vertical alignment, considering the design constraints and costs is one of the most complicated problems of road planning and construction. The results of many linear, nonlinear and heuristic techniques that can enhance design ability to minimize the total cost of road construction using many different variables are well acknowledged. It is assumed that the genetic algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) can be efficiently applied for road vertical alignment allocation. This paper focuses on solving vertical alignment optimization problem using meta-heuristic algorithms. Two intelligent optimization tools of GA and PSO have been used to find a near optimal forest road profile, connecting specified endpoints considering restrictions associated with forest road profile design with cost evaluation. A number of setting parameters such as population size and crossing over and mutation rate in GA and also best group and particle's position in PSO were tested to search the global optimal answer. Results of optimization by GA and PSO approaches were compared with the common manual road profile drawing method. Results indicated that the GA and PSO could reduce earth work volume costs while designing more smoother and qualified alignment in comparison with the manual design. Results suggested that among the applied optimization methods, the GA was the most suitable one for this feature of the problem since it is able to save optimum position at better solutions with a reduced computed cost. From the cost point of view, it was cleared that optimizing the fixed length of road profile applying GA, with different population size, would be better for big numbers of control points but smoother for low numbers of control points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Thermal control mechanism of ventilated-closed block layer composite embankment of expressway in warm permafrost regions" that was published online on August 28, 2023 is presented.