Fei-Hui HUANG

This study investigates the factors that drive users to sustain their usage of shared electric scooter (e-scooter) services in Taiwan, distinguishing itself from the conventional focus on predicting consumers’ initial adoption and behavioural intentions. It employs subjective rating questions, incorporating constructs related to user acceptance, attitudes and user experience (UX). Through hierarchical regression analysis of quantitative survey data, the study identifies key factors such as users’ modes of transportation, environmental attitudes, acceptance of shared services, attitudes towards private scooters, UX, total usage instances and age. However, reliance on private scooters as a mode of transportation and frequent usage of shared e-scooters negatively impact the sustained usage of these services. The research further highlights early development challenges in shared vehicle services, including concerns over personal data security, user-unfriendly system designs, lack of convenience, inadequate parking infrastructure and ineffective financial incentives. Based on these findings, the study provides recommendations for service providers and government entities to enhance service design and proactively address these challenges. Implementing these recommendations is expected to mitigate the impact of these challenges and potentially improve user acceptance, UX, and the overall sustainability of shared vehicle services.

2024 (Vol 36), Issue 5

Yi ZHANG, Wenfei HU, JunWu ZHANG, Jing ZHANG

Intelligent shipping is a crucial part of the transportation system, while inland river intelligent shipping is a major safeguard of intelligent transportation. Compared with the studies of mobile fading channels in land-based environments, less current research has focused on channel measurements and modeling for inland waterway bridge environments. In this paper, a segmenting radio channel model is proposed for inland highway and railway combined bridges. The ship's path under the bridge was divided into three phases, and the attenuation of signal strength was modelled separately for each. Hence, it shows ship-to-ship wireless channels in different areas and path loss on inland navigation bridges. A segmented model, instead of a basic path loss model, can accurately forecast path loss and provide a practical approach in ship-to-ship wireless channel transmission scenarios over bridges. Consequently, the channel measurements and modeling in the typical inland waterway are of great significance for establishing a reliable inland navigation broadband radio communication system.

2024 (Vol 36), Issue 5

Wei LI, Tian’ai LI, Yongying MENG, Xuecai XU, Zhifeng MA

This study intended to explore college students’ cognition and attitudes towards connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) in China. A comprehensive questionnaire was designed and distributed in Mainland China, and after collecting and processing the data, Bayesian multivariate analysis was presented to evaluate the six dimensions of cognition, consciousness, safety, privacy, liability, education and acceptance. By analysing each dimension, the results show that gender and status are significant for consciousness, safety, privacy and education, but location plays a significant role in safety and liability. It is found that each dimension reveals a specific thought of college students, and the potential users’ cognition and attitude should be paid more attention to. Some empirical suggestions are presented to enhance the systematic improvement of CAVs and possible ethics issues.

2024 (Vol 36), Issue 5

Yubin ZHENG, Cheng CHENG, Yong ZHANG, Lingyi WANG, Qixuan LI, Hailin ZHANG

Vehicle turn-in rate is a critical and widely adopted input for expressway rest area design and operation. With the implementation of expressway ETC gantries, the ERA turn-in rate can be further estimated by measuring the travel speed distribution via ETC gantry data. This paper proposed an adaptive density peak clustering Gaussian mixture model (ADPC-GMM) for ERA turn-in rate estimation. The ADPC algorithm is applied to generate the GMM’s inputs accommodating to the traffic characteristic of ERA expressway segments and GMM would further provide the turn-in rate estimation results. To validate the model precision, the turn-in rate data of four selected ERAs in Sichuan, China, as well as the ETC gantry data of their corresponding expressway sections are obtained. According to the estimation results, the MAE and RMSE are 0.0228 and 0.0267 for the passenger car scenario and 0.0264 and 0.0356 for the commercial truck scenario, respectively. These results are also at the lowest level compared with the results acquired from ordinary GMM, K-Means and DBSCAN algorithms. The proposed method has good applicability for vehicle turn-in rate estimation and can be deployed at different ERAs, especially those ERAs without traffic monitoring.

2024 (Vol 36), Issue 5

Minghao LI, Yi ZHAO, Jianxiao MA, Yuxin CHEN, Shuo HUAI

This study investigates the overtaking lane-changing (OLC) behaviour in expressway interchange weaving areas, aiming to analyse these behaviours’ causes and potential impacts. Field data are utilised to analyse the statistical characteristics of lane-changing points and spatio-temporal utilisation in weaving areas. A modified NS model, which considers the distribution pattern of vehicle speeds, and a rigid lane-changing rule based on Gaussian distribution are proposed. Additionally, a cellular automaton simulation model is constructed to quantify the influence of OLC behaviour on traffic efficiency and spatio-temporal utilisation based on simulated data. The findings indicate that the imbalanced distribution of lane-changing points and spatio-temporal utilisation in weaving segments, caused by rigid lane-changing behaviour, is an objective factor that triggers OLC behaviour. When the traffic volume in weaving areas ranges from 500 to 1,100 pcu/5 min and the proportion of OLC behaviour is between 0.35 and 0.7, the behaviour will significantly enhance the average vehicle speeds of the outermost lane of the main road and normal rigid lane-changing (NRLC) vehicles, with increases of up to 48% and 51%, respectively. Moreover, OLC behaviour also improves the balance of spatio-temporal utilisation in weaving areas and reduces the average spatio-temporal utilisation. This study clarifies the positive impact of OLC behaviour on expressway interchange weaving areas and provides new research ideas for enhancing the efficiency of these areas.

2024 (Vol 36), Issue 5

Yong CUI, Qing YU, Ullrich MARTIN

This study introduces an advanced software platform and process for the quantitative national economic evaluation of high-speed maglev systems, overcoming limitations of traditional methods through parameter variation experiments and automated solution search. Utilising the adapted German standardised evaluation, this research demonstrates how integrated modelling, evaluation and optimisation software can deeply analyse the impact of various variables and parameters on economic outcomes. By employing an optimisation algorithm, the software not only determines critical evaluation parameters to ensure benefits exceed costs but also deduces optimised model variables. The macroeconomic benefit-cost ratio guides the optimal design concept, with the research finding a critical value for ensuring economic feasibility. The proposed solution achieves a 22% improvement in this ratio (1.106 vs. 0.909) compared to the existing Hefei-Wuhu route, highlighting its potential for large-scale maglev implementation. Future development directions include integration with micro-simulation systems, support for random behaviour, sensitivity analysis, data-driven machine learning and enhanced user interface design for broader applicability. The findings underscore the software’s capability to provide robust, data-driven insights for economic feasibility studies of high-speed maglev systems, presenting a significant step forward in infrastructure project evaluation.

2024 (Vol 36), Issue 5