In this study, the traffic parameters were collected from three work zones in Iran in order to evaluate the queue length in the work zones. The work zones were observed at peak and non-peak hours. The results showed that abrupt changes in Freeway Free Speed (FFS) and arrival flow rate caused shockwaves and created a bottleneck in that section of the freeway. In addition, acceleration reduction, abrupt change in the shockwave speed, abrupt change in the arrival flow rate and increase in the percentage of heavy vehicles have led to extreme queue lengths and delay. It has been found that using daily traffic data for scheduling the maintenance and rehabilitation projects could diminish the queue length and delay. Also, by determining the bypass for heavy vehicles, the delay can be significantly reduced; by more than three times. Finally, three models have been presented for estimating the queue length in freeway work zones. Moreover, the procedure shown for creating a queue length model can be used for similar freeways.

Parking problems are getting increasingly serious in the urban area. However, the parking spots in the urban area are underutilized rather than really scarce. There is a large number of private spots in the residential areas that have the potential of being shared. Due to its private nature, shared parking is usually operated by a profitable mode. To study the utilization of shared parking and its impact on the morning commute, this paper proposes an evolution model. The supply side is a profit-chasing manager who decides on the selling prices and the business scale, while the demand side refers to travellers who respond to costs and choose the trip mode. By analysing the behaviour (strategy) of both sides, the study covers: 1 - the attraction and competition between parking lots and trip modes, 2 - the utilization and user composition of the parking lots. By inducing two numerical examples, the conclusions are that 1 - managers can achieve maximum profit and optimal allocation through price adjustment and quantity control; 2 - publicity (system cost minimization) and profitability (profit maximization) are consistent under certain threshold conditions; 3 - competition exists between parking lots as well as trip modes; some parking lots are even in short supply; profitable management does not create a market monopoly.

This study explores the spatial distribution characteristics of travel activities and their relationship with land use, using data from the resident travel survey in 2015 of Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou City, China. A new classification method is proposed to classify the travel activity patterns into three groups: single-activity travel, multi-activity intermittent travel, and multi-activity continuous travel. The main findings are: (a) the length of activity chain and the proportion of multi-activity travels increase with the distance between residence and activity centre; (b) the non-home destinations of single-activity travel, multi-activity intermittent travel and multi-activity continuous travel agglomerate towards the activity centre, and the degree of agglomeration increases in this order; (c) the distribution density of Point Of Interest (POI) and activity destinations have strong positive correlations in space; (d) some attributes of POIs and demographics have significant influence on multi-activity continuous travels. These findings are useful in inducing the activities through reasonable combinations and spatial interconnections of POIs in urban planning.

This paper presents a pricing model of railway infrastructure capacity allocation functioning as a regulatory measure while fulfilling the regulatory requirements on railway infrastructure capacity allocation. The prices of railway infrastructure capacity allocation will be modelled with regard to all economically justifiable costs of railway infrastructure capacity allocation. The structure of model has been developed as a set of calculation sheets in Microsoft Excel. The recommended prices for railway capacity have been found by simulation of a set of variants and the recommendation is done for different operational conditions in an individual way. It analyses different products offered by the railway infrastructure capacity allocator both in the annual working timetable mode, and in the individual ad hoc mode. The aim of the proposed model is to motivate not only railway undertakings, but also the railway infrastructure capacity allocator to submit requests for railway infrastructure capacity in the annual working timetable mode rather than in the individual ad hoc mode. The total price is then verified to the cost of railway infrastructure capacity allocation. This process then ensures the regulation of the demand of railway undertakings on the given route and can influence the decision about the use of the product offered.

Aggregation of different variables into one road safety performance index is a popular concept in evaluating road safety and comparing the performance of territories/entities. This paper presents the development of a novel and innovative weighting methodology using grey relational analysis. Based on the proposed model, ten hierarchical road safety indicators were selected in terms of a two-layered model with three categories related to behaviour, safety and system. Grey weights are assigned to the categorized indicators in each layer, and the grey road safety composite indicator for each entity (21 selected territories) is calculated by the weighted sum approach. With relatively high weights, this systematic methodology can serve the policy makers in targeting the risk domains where improvements are needed. The results clearly illustrate effectiveness in addressing a large number of indicators with hierarchical structures.

This paper proposes a collaborative optimization model of car-flow organization for freight trains based on adjacent technical stations to minimize the average dwell time of train cars in a yard. To solve the car-flow organization problems, a priority-based hump sequence, which depends on the cars available in two adjacent technical stations, is adopted. Furthermore, a meta-heuristic algorithm based on the genetic algorithm and the taboo search algorithm is adopted to solve the model, and the introduction of the active scheduling method improves the efficiency of the algorithm. Finally, the model is applied to the car-flow organization problem of two adjacent technical stations, and the results are compared with those from a single technical station without collaboration. The results demonstrate that collaborative car-flow organization between technical stations significantly reduces the average dwell time at the stations, thereby improving the utilization rate of railroad equipment. In addition, the results indicate that the hybrid genetic algorithm can rapidly determine the train hump and marshalling schemes.

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have been designed to make changes in the travel behaviour of travellers. These changes can be interpreted using transport models and simulation tools. In this study, the daily activity plans were used to study the possibility of increasing the utility of travellers through minimizing the travel time by using AVs. Three groups of travellers were selected based on the benefits that they can obtain when AVs are on the market. The groups are (a) long-trip travellers (b) public transport riders, and (c) travellers with specified characteristics. Each group is divided into one or more scenarios based on the definition of each group and the collected data. A total of seven scenarios were derived from the collected data and simulated twice to include the existing transport modes and the presence of AVs. The simulations were conducted using Multi-Agents Transport Simulation (MATSim) that applies the concept of a co-evolutionary algorithm. MATSim simulates the current plans and the ones where AVs replace all or part of the existing conventional transport modes in the daily activity plans. The results have shown a reduction in the trip time: 13% to 42% for group (a), 33% for group (b), and 16% to 28% for group (c) compared with the original trip times. In conclusion, it can be claimed that AVs could reduce the travel time in all cases, which provides benefits for people to increase their utilities.

The present review paper provides a systematic insight into the studies published so far when it comes to the research on the cost and performance optimisation in the parcel delivery phase. Globalisation, as well as the new trends, such as selling online, directly influences the demands for the delivery of goods. Demand for the delivery of goods proportionally affects the transport prices. A great majority of deliveries is carried out in densely populated urban areas. In terms of costs, the greatest part in the courier organisations costs is observed in the technological phase of parcel delivery, which is at the same time the least efficient. For that reason, significant improvement of performance and cost optimisation in the very delivery phase is a rather challenging field for the researchers. New algorithm-based technologies, innovations in the logistics and outsourcing of individual technological phases are ways by means of which one strives to enhance the delivery efficiency, to improve performance and quality, but also - to optimise the costs in the last phase of delivery. The aim of the present paper is to offer a systematic review into the most recent research in the field of technology, innovations and outsourcing models with the aim of reducing the cost and enhancing the productivity and quality in parcel delivery.

With the rapid development of urbanization in China, the number of travel modes and urban passenger transportation hubs has been increasing, gradually forming multi-level and multi-attribute transport hub networks in the cities. At the same time, Super Network Theory (SNT) has advantages in displaying the multi-layer transport hubs. The aim of this paper is to provide a new perspective to study connectivity contribution of potential hubs. Urban transport hubs are ranked through topological features based on Hub Super Network (HSN). This paper proposes two indexes based on Super-Edge (SE), Zero Hub Degree of SE (ZHDoSE) and a number of shared SEes (NSSE), respectively. Then, a case study was conducted in Beijing, which considers four combinations to study the influence of transport modes and subway lines on connectivity. The results show that no-normalization strengthens the contribution of transport modes and subway lines on connectivity. Besides, the transport mode contributes a lot to the connectivity. However, elements normalization strengthens the subway lines under ZHDoSE reciprocal. In addition, various weights of ZHDoSE and NSSE have different influences on the recognition results of SEes in HSN.

This paper deals with robust optimization and network flows. Several robust variants of integer flow problems are considered. They assume uncertainty of network arc capacities as well as of arc unit costs (where applicable). Uncertainty is expressed by discrete scenarios. Since the considered variants of the maximum flow problem are easy to solve, the paper is mostly concerned with NP-hard variants of the minimum-cost flow problem, thus proposing an approximate algorithm for their solution. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is verified by experiments.

The Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) message is an important input for research and applications of Connected Vehicles (CVs). However, the actuated signal controllers are not able to directly give the SPaT information since the SPaT is influenced by both signal control logic and real-time traffic demand. This study elaborates an estimation method which is proposed according to the idea that an actuated signal controller would provide similar signal timing for similar traffic states. Thus, the quantitative description of traffic states is important. The traffic flow at each approaching lane has been compared to fluids. The state of fluids can be indicated by state parameters, e.g. speed or height, and its energy, which includes kinetic energy and potential energy. Similar to the fluids, this paper has proposed an energy model for traffic flow, and it has also added the queue length as an additional state parameter. Based on that, the traffic state of intersections can be descripted. Then, a pattern recognition algorithm was developed to identify the most similar historical states and also their corresponding SPaTs, whose average is the estimated SPaT of this second. The result shows that the average error is 3.1 seconds.

In times of ever stronger awareness of environmental protection and potentiation of a beneficial modal split, the railway sector with efficient asset utilization and proper investment planning has the highest chance of meeting customer expectations and attracting new users more effectively. Continuous increase in railway demand leads to an increase in the utilization of railway infrastructure, and the inevitable lack of capacity, a burning problem that many national railways are continually facing. To address it more effectively, this paper reviews available methodologies for railway capacity determination and techniques for its enhancement in the recent scientific literature. Particular focus is given to the possibility of increasing railway capacity through signalling systems and installing the European Train Control System (ETCS). The most important relationships with segments of existing research have been identified, and in line with this, the directions for a potential continuation of research are suggested.