城市轨道交通无缝线路应力放散施工及运营保障措施

城市轨道交通无缝线路应力放散施工面临有效作业时间不充裕、对供电及信号等轨旁设备影响大、可能影响次日运营等困难。以北京地区某实际工程为例,采用细致筹备、"可视化"现场分工、全方位的专业保障等措施,安全高效地完成全线的无缝线路应力放散。并详细介绍了城市轨道交通运营期的无缝线路应力放散和调整施工组织及供电、信号系统保障措施。     

The cost of equity: Assessing transit accessibility and social disparity using total travel cost

Social equity is increasingly incorporated as a long-term objective into urban transportation plans. Researchers use accessibility measures to assess equity issues, such as determining the amount of jobs reachable by marginalized groups within a defined travel time threshold and compare these measures across socioeconomic categories. However, allocating public transit resources in an equitable manner is not only related to travel time, but also related to the out-of-pocket cost of transit, which can represent a major barrier to accessibility for many disadvantaged groups. Therefore, this research proposes a set of new accessibility measures that incorporates both travel time and transit fares. It then applies those measures to determine whether people residing in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada experience the same levels of transit accessibility as those living in other neighborhoods. Results are presented in terms of regional accessibility and trends by social indicator decile. Travel time accessibility measures estimate a higher number of jobs that can be reached compared to combined travel time and cost measures. However, the degree and impact of these measures varies across the social deciles. Compared to other groups in the region, residents of socially disadvantaged areas have more equitable accessibility to jobs using transit; this is reflected in smaller decreases in accessibility when fare costs are included. Generating new measures of accessibility combining travel time and transit fares provides more accurate measures that can be easily communicated by transportation planners and engineers to policy makers and the public since it translates accessibility measures to a dollar value.     

Drivers of transit service loyalty considering heterogeneity between user segments

Users’ loyalty to public transit service is fundamental to promote its popularity in the transportation market. A four-step analytical framework is advanced to investigate the importance of service attributes that heterogeneous transit user segments place on their public transit service loyalty, measured in terms of overall satisfaction and re-use intention. Critical service attributes perceived by transit users that are relevant for loyalty enhancement are explicitly determined, which vary between user segments. It is suggested that the design of strategies aimed to promote the use of public transit by increasing user loyalty towards transit service be targeted at specific attributes that contribute most to loyalty and specific user segments whose original loyalty level is significantly different to others.     

Identifying transit deserts for low-income commuters in Wuhan Metropolitan Area,China

The rapid expansion of many Chinese cities has put increasing pressure on existing urban transportation systems. Using Baidu users’ location data, this research analyzes the spatial patterns of the transit systems and commuter flows in Wuhan Metropolitan Area, China, and identifies transit deserts affecting low-income commuters. The results show that, first, most transit demand are generated by trips between neighboring communities, while large transit supply tends to occur between distant communities in the region. Second, about 11.21% of low-income commuters are affected by transit deserts in Wuhan Metropolitan Area. In detail, 61.30% of them commute within the city centers and 36.06% of them commute within the suburbs. Only about 2.64% of them actually travel between city centers and suburbs. Third, for low-income suburban commuters, transit deserts occur when they are surrounded by low-density transit infrastructure and low-frequency transit services, which makes it very difficult for them to connect to rest of the region. However, for low-income commuters residing in the city centers, transit deserts are mainly caused by the large numbers of transit-dependent people competing for limited transit supply in the areas. This research explores the relationship between transit systems and commuting demand in a major Chinese metropolitan area. The findings could help guide future transit system planning in China and beyond.     

Planning hierarchical urban transit systems for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions

Public transit systems with high occupancy can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to low-occupancy transportation modes, but current transit systems have not been designed to reduce environmental impacts. This motivates the study of the benefits of design and operational approaches for reducing the environmental impacts of transit systems. For example, transit agencies may replace level-of-service (LOS) by vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as a criterion in evaluating design and operational changes. In previous work, we explored the unintended consequences of lowering transit LOS on emissions in a single-technology transit system. Herein, we extend the analysis to account for a more realistic case: a transit system with a hierarchical structure (trunk and feeder lines) providing service to a city where demand is elastic. By considering the interactions between the trunk and the feeder systems, we provide a quantitative basis for designing and operating integrated urban transit systems that can reduce GHG emissions and societal costs. We find that highly elastic transit demand may cancel emission reduction potentials resulting from lowering LOS, due to demand shifts to lower occupancy vehicles. However, for mass transit modes, these potentials are still significant. Transit networks with buses, bus rapid transit or light rail as trunk modes should be designed and operated near the cost-optimal point when the demand is highly elastic, while this is not required for metro. We find that the potential for unintended consequences increases with the size of the city. Our results are robust to uncertainties in the costs and emissions parameters.     

Mathematically calculating the transit time of cargo through a liner shipping network with various trans-shipment policies

This paper derives the mathematical expressions for the transit time of cargo through a liner shipping network. Main efforts are devoted to deriving the calculation expressions of the connection time of cargo during trans-shipment. For the forward and many-to-one trans-shipment policies, we conduct a minor correction towards the expressions in existing studies to improve the completeness. Meanwhile, we propose an alternative but more straightforward calculation method for connection time which bypasses the complicated inductive argument in existing studies. Then we introduce two new trans-shipment policies: backward trans-shipment and one-to-many trans-shipment, and mathematically calculate the corresponding connection times. Numerical experiments also deliver some managerial insights into the effectiveness of backward trans-shipment in transit time control.     

The effect of crowding on public transit user travel behavior in a large-scale public transportation system through modeling daily variations

In this paper, the crowding effect in a transit vehicle is modeled in a time-expanded network that considers the daily variation in passenger flows. The study models the daily variation of in-vehicle crowding in a real large-scale transit system. A transit assignment for this real network is modeled and implemented by constructing a crowding cost function that follows the valuation of crowding and by using the reliable shortest path finding method. The direct application of the crowding model to a real network for the Utah Transit Authority indicates that crowd modeling with multi-user classes could influence public transportation system planning and affect the revenues of transit agencies. Moreover, the addition of the disutility factor, crowding, does not always appear to cause an increase in disutility for transit users.     

Intermodal Transit System Coordination

In urban areas where transit demand is widely spread, passengers may be served by an intermodal transit system, consisting of a rail transit line (or a bus rapid transit route) and a number of feeder routes connecting at different transfer stations. In such a system, passengers may need one or more transfers to complete their journey. Therefore, scheduling vehicles operating in the system with special attention to reduce transfer time can contribute significantly to service quality improvements. Schedule synchronization may significantly reduce transfer delays at transfer stations where various routes interconnect. Since vehicle arrivals are stochastic, slack time allowances in vehicle schedules may be desirable to reduce the probability of missed connections. An objective total cost function, including supplier and user costs, is formulated for optimizing the coordination of a general intermodal transit network. A four-stage procedure is developed for determining the optimal coordination status among routes at every transfer station. Considering stochastic feeder vehicle arrivals at transfer stations, the slack times of coordinated routes are optimized, by balancing the savings from transfer delays and additional cost from slack delays and operating costs. The model thus developed is used to optimize the coordination of an intermodal transit network, while the impact of a range of factors on coordination (e.g., demand, standard deviation of vehicle arrival times, etc) is examined.     

Using Focus and NomiNal Group Techniques for a Better Understanding of the Transit Disadvantaged Needs

The research presented in this paper explores the context, method, and value of focus group research in transit needs assessments. Group participatory research can generate data that are not easily obtained by other methods. The paper focuses on lessons from three Nebraska communities whose transit disadvantaged rely on community-based paratransit services. Because of the size of the paratransit population and the inability to control who showed up to the focus group sessions, a modified group research protocol was adopted in order to garner information from whomever attended the session. The population parameters and the number of people at the meetings were anticipated by the researchers and mitigated by incorporating nominal group techniques. Research findings from the focus group sessions are discussed paying particular attention to the candid and policy-specific comments made by the focus group participants. The paper concludes with an application of focus group research in transit planning.     

The Downs–Thomson Paradox with responsive transit service

Downs (1962) and Thomson (1977) suggested that highway capacity expansion may produce counterproductive effects on the two-mode (auto and transit) transport system (Downs–Thomson Paradox). This paper investigates the occurrence of this paradox when transit authority can have different economic objectives (profit-maximizing or breakeven) and operating schemes (frequency, fare, or both frequency and fare). For various combinations of economic objectives and operating schemes, the interaction between highway expansion and transit service is explored, as well as its impact on travelers’ mode choices and travel utilities. Further, for each combination, the conditions for occurrence of the Downs–Thomson Paradox are established. We show that the paradox never occurs when transit authority is profit-maximizing, but it is inevitable when the transit authority is running to maximize travelers’ utility while maintaining breakeven. This is because the former transit authority tends to enhance transit service (e.g., raise frequency or reduce fare) when facing an expanded highway; and on the contrary, the latter tends to compromise transit service (e.g., reduce frequency or raise fare). Both analytical and numerical examples are provided to verify the theoretical results.