Tomaž Kramberger, Bojan Rupnik, Gregor Štrubelj, Klemen Prah
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
This paper presents a new approach for hinterland modelling based on the results of port choice modelling. The paper follows the idea that the shippers’ port choice is a trade-off between various objective and subjective factors. The presented model tackles the problem by applying the AHP method in order to obtain ports’ preference rates based on subjective factors, and combine them with objective factors, which include port operation costs, sailing times, and land transport costs using MILP. The ports’ hinterlands are modelled by finding the optimal port of choice for different locations across Europe and merging the identical results. The model can be used in order to produce captive hinterland of ports and can also be exploited in order to analyse how changes in the traffic infrastructure influence the size of hinterlands.
Bin Yu, Keming Wang, Zixuan Peng, Can Wang, Ziyou Gao, Baozhen Yao
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
This paper presents a dynamic extra buses scheduling strategy to improve the transit service of transit routes. In this strategy, in order to decide when to dispatch an extra bus, the service reliability of transit route is assessed firstly. A model aimed at maximizing the benefit of the extra buses scheduling strategy is constructed to determine how many stops extra buses need to skip from the terminal to accommodate passengers at the following stops. A heuristic algorithm is defined and implemented to estimate the service reliability of transit route and to optimize the initial stop of extra buses scheduling strategy. Finally, the strategy is tested on two examples: a simple and a real-life transit route in the Dalian city in China. The results show that the extra buses scheduling strategy based on terminal stops with a reasonable threshold can save 8.01% waiting time of passengers.
Muhammed Yasin Çodur, Ahmet Tortum
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
This study presents an accident prediction model of Erzurum’s Highways in Turkey using artificial neural network (ANN) approaches. There are many ANN models for predicting the number of accidents on highways that were developed using 8 years with 7,780 complete accident reports of historical data (2005-2012). The best ANN model was chosen for this task and the model parameters included years, highway sections, section length (km), annual average daily traffic (AADT), the degree of horizontal curvature, the degree of vertical curvature, traffic accidents with heavy vehicles (percentage), and traffic accidents that occurred in summer (percentage). In the ANN model development, the sigmoid activation function was employed with Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The performance of the developed ANN model was evaluated by mean square error (MSE), the root mean square error (RMSE), and the coefficient of determination (R2). The model results indicate that the degree of vertical curvature is the most important parameter that affects the number of accidents on highways.
Jinxing Shen, Wenquan Li, Feng Qiu, Shukang Zheng
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
This paper is aimed at investigating the influence of different types of traffic flows on the capacity of freeway merge areas. Based on the classical gap-acceptance model, two calculating models were established specifically considering randomly arriving vehicles and individual difference in driving behaviours. Monte-Carlo simulation was implemented to reproduce the maximum traffic volume on the designed freeway merge area under different situations. The results demonstrated that the proposed calculating models have better performance than the conventional gap-acceptance theory on accurately predicting the capacity of freeway merge areas. The findings of research could be helpful to improve the microscopic traffic flow simulation model from a more practical perspective and support the designing of freeway merge areas as well.
Algimantas Kajackas, Vidas Žuraulis, Edgar Sokolovskij
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
The paper presents Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) system based on an analysis of the movement of a motorcade in an emergency situation. This analysis seeks to answer the question: when and under what conditions Emergency Message (EM) sent by Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) system reaches the final target to help in preventing of serious accidents, such as multi-vehicle collisions. The model of calculation based on the key principles of vehicle braking enables finding the time to possible collision and the residual velocity of the vehicle. In the calculations, the average values of the driver’s reaction time are accepted; in addition, a sent emergency message is considered to be free of interference. Upon choosing different road and driving conditions, it is found what vehicle of the motorcade stops before the possible obstacle on emergency braking. The performance of vehicles with and without VANET system is compared.
Tadej Brezina, Josef Michael Schopf, David Moncholi y Badillo
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
Public transport in the transition zone from cities to rural areas is increasingly becoming a focus from the financial and public service provision perspective. The (perceived) supply differences of rural and remote areas are on the agenda of policy discourse. Our survey studies the public transport supply of two districts and their municipalities in the region of Vienna, Austria, by using the parameters of service-opportunities, municipal population, acreage of settlement units and potential demand. Annual service-opportunities is a parameter recorded by the public transport authority of the Vienna region for every single station under its zone of influence. These parameters are analyzed to conclude that service-opportunities pose a viable entity for systematic public transport analysis and differences in supply of these two districts are in contrast to expectations. Finally, we address the need for future development of service-opportunities based analyses.
Miroslav Vujić, Sadko Mandzuka, Martin Greguric
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
The problem with traffic congestion is particularly expressed in urban areas where possibilities for physical increment of capacity are limited or impossible. Significant in the approach to solving this problem is the usage of Public Transport (PT) and the implementation of various advanced control measures that can improve the quality of overall public transport system. The main objective of this research is to explore the possibilities of implementation of adaptive traffic control on signalized intersections giving priority to public transport vehicles through urban traffic network in the city of Zagreb. The possibilities of implementing public transport priority (PTP) technique in the city of Zagreb are analyzed because of specific traffic situations on defined corridors (location of stops, distance between intersections, etc.). With proper usage of PTP techniques (e.g. adequate detector positions, good estimation of PT vehicle arrival time at intersection) the total tram travel time can be significantly reduced. The Level of Service at intersection may be approximately retained because cross-street traffic demand was not ignored. According to technological level of traffic control system in the city of Zagreb, global implementation of PTP is not possible. So, for each intersection the PTP algorithm was developed separately, but mutual traffic influence of all intersections on the corridor was considered. The cooperative concept application within urban traffic control is considered as well.
Dalibor Pešić, Boris Antić, Davor Brčić, Jelica Davidović
2015 (Vol 27), Issue 3
Large amounts of energy drinks and caffeine, which is the main ingredient of energy drinks, produce a negative effect on the drivers, and therefore affect traffic safety.
In order to determine the attitudes of drivers toward the impact of energy drinks and caffeine, a research was conducted using a questionnaire form and the targeted group of the survey were drivers. The research was conducted in the City of Belgrade in December 2012. There were 420 survey papers distributed to drivers of different age groups of which 412 were returned. The survey was completely anonymous and consisted of two parts. The first part was related to basic demographic information about the respondents and it had 8 closed type questions. These questions were responded by circling one of the offered answers. The second part of the survey referred to determining the driver’s attitudes about energy drinks and caffeine. The second part consisted of 26 questions and respondents were to use a five-level scale in order to show to what extent they agree or disagree with any of the listed statements.
The results show that energy drinks are consumed mostly by young people, less than 25 years old. The effect of caffeine on gender is statistically significant. Headache is the reason why caffeine (25%) is consumed more than energy drinks (8%).
Major impact of energy drinks and caffeine on road safety indicates a required activity in this area such as education.
