We use 2008 data for 34 Chinese cities to compare urban transportation systems. The results show stronger eastern and central cities focusing more on high capacity and less on sustainable modes of transportation, while western cities do the opposite. Chinese cities with more sustainable transportation are also more likely to have lower gross domestic product per capita, be smaller, are less urbanized and have higher bus usage. This model needs to change to align with China’s new policy priorities.

This paper uses registration and enforcement information to assess the impact of London’s low emission zone on vehicle registrations, usage and air pollution. The zone was implemented in a staged process in 2008 to reduce the emissions of air pollutants of direct harm to human health. The zone targeted the worst polluters, specifically heavy diesel vehicles, buses and coaches by imposing minimum emissions standards on vehicles operating in an area covering most of Greater London. Several years on it remains unclear how successful the zone has been in meeting its stated objectives and what improvements in pollution levels can be attributed to the low emission zone. Results presented in this paper suggest the rate of fleet turnover for affected vehicle classes in London increased substantially when the zone was first introduced before returning to the national average in subsequent years. Early evidence for light commercial vehicles, which became subject to the scheme in early 2012, shows a similar effect is likely. Despite an overall growth in freight vehicles operating in London, the number of pre-Euro III vehicles has dropped and this has been coupled with a switch from rigid vehicles to light commercial vehicles and articulated vehicles. Ambient air quality measurements show concentrations of particulate matter within the low emission zone have dropped by 2.46–3.07% compared to just over 1% for areas just outside the zone. However, no discernible differences are found for NO_X concentrations.

The effectiveness of transit-based emergency evacuation highly depends on the location of pick-up facilities, resource allocation, and management. These facilities themselves are often subject to service disruptions during or after the emergency. This paper proposes a reliable emergency facility location model that determines both pre-emergency facility location planning and the evacuation operations afterwards, while facilities are subject to the risk of disruptions. We analyze how evacuation resource availability leverages individual evacuees’ response to service disruptions, and show how equilibrium of the evacuee arrival process could be reached at a functioning pick-up facility. Based on this equilibrium, an optimal resource allocation strategy is found to balance the tradeoff between the evacuees’ risks and the evacuation agency’s operation costs. This leads to the development of a compact polynomial-size linear integer programming formulation that minimizes the total expected system cost from both pre-emergency planning (e.g., facility set-up) and the evacuation operations (e.g., fleet management, transportation, and exposure to hazardous surroundings) across an exponential number of possible disruption scenarios. We also show how the model can be flexibly used to plan not only pre-disaster evacuation but also post-disaster rescue actions. Numerical experiments and an empirical case study for three coastal cities in the State of Mississippi (Biloxi, Gulfport, and D’lberville) are conducted to study the performance of the proposed models and to draw managerial insights.

This paper establishes an evaluation index system of coordinated relationship between urban rail transit and land use under TOD mode. The evaluation results and rank are generated by the improved DEA model. Different input/output indexes are standardized through further analysis of different indexes' slack variables and surplus variables. The influencing degrees of different index factors to the coordinated relationship are examined. The improved directions of DEA invalid decision making units (DMU) are also analyzed through the DEA projection theory, which provides an improved reference to the invalid DMU. A case of Allegheny country in U.S. is conducted to verify the evaluation method, and the results show that the evaluations match well with the real situations. It is an effective way to evaluate the coordinated relationship between urban rail transit and land use under TOD mode.

To relieve worsening traffic congestion and protect the deteriorating environment, many cities in China start to operate rail transit lines. However, the expected modal shift will only occur if the rail transit system offers great advantages over road transport modes. To this end, designing efficient operational arrangement has far-reaching impacts not only on rail transit itself, but also on the overall urban transport system. Focusing on a crowded rail transit line, this paper aims to jointly optimize fare, frequency and number of carriages under advocated management objectives. Factors that enter into this joint optimization include negative externality arising from noise pollution, the adverse effect from in-vehicle crowding and positive externality from road congestion relief. To assess whether the rail transit line in a given corridor is priced efficiently and the service provision is appropriate, detailed numerical calculations are carried out for one representative Chinese city—Suzhou. A synthesis of theoretical and empirical analyses depicts: compared with profit optima, social welfare optima are characterized with lower fares, greater frequency, more number of carriages and higher ridership; the change from the current operational arrangement to social optimum would call for reducing fares, increasing frequency and adopting more carriages.

This paper discusses the potential for energy savings in heating and ventilation of light rail vehicles. We present the results of a detailed monitoring campaign on one articulated tram in Ghent, Belgium. The results give insight in the energy use for heating and ventilation in light rail as a function of ambient weather conditions. After several months of monitoring, changes in the HV strategy were implemented and the monitoring was continued. Based on this monitoring data, an energy-use model was constructed for HV both before and after the heating and ventilation strategy changes. These models then served as input for a Monte Carlo simulation, providing average energy savings over 1 year as a result of the optimized heating and ventilation strategy.

It has been frequently noted that in a non-regulated environment the development of public transport service is self-adjusting: Faced with decreasing demand, operators will tend to reduce service to cut costs, resulting in a decrease in the level-of-service, which then triggers a further drop in demand. The opposite may also occur: high demand will induce the operator to increase supply, e.g. through an increase in frequency, which results in a higher level-of-service and a subsequent increase in passenger numbers, triggering another round of service improvements. This paper adds to the literature by presenting an analytic model for analyzing these phenomena that we call vicious and virtuous cycles. Based on field data regarding passengers’ variation in willingness-to-wait for a public transport service, we investigate the dynamics of the line service and show how the emergence of a vicious or virtuous cycle depends on the total number of potential passengers, the share of captive riders, and bus capacity. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the planning of public transport services.

The regional bus scheduling is the future trend of urban public transport development. It focuses on assigning trips belonged to several routes to buses located at different depots to reduce fleet size and operating costs. With consideration of the emergencies in reality interfering with vehicles to complete a trip on time, this paper studies regional bus scheduling problem with grey travel time to meet some side constraints such as multi-vehicle-type, depots capacities and fuelling, etc. The model is resolved by the improved ant colony algorithm to prepare a lowest-cost scheduling scheme. The proposed scheduling method is easily operated and can be used for different situations. At the last section, an example proves the correctness and effectiveness of the model and algorithm.

A field trial is used to investigate effects of two programmes aimed at encouraging bus drivers to develop and maintain ecological driving behaviour. Drivers on one bus line were divided into three groups, one received feedback from an in-vehicle system, the second received the same feedback coupled with personal training sessions, and the third acting as a control. A 6.8% fuel saving and large decreases in instances of harsh deceleration and speeding were found, but with no difference in the effect of the two eco-driving strategies. The drivers reported perceived gains in theoretical knowledge of eco-driving, but found it more difficult to put that knowledge into practice. Several contextual factors were found to limit drivers’ to eco-driving, most noticeably shaped by their work tasks, but also the commitment of the company where they were employed.

Major commuting corridors in metropolitan areas generally comprise multiple transportation modes for commuters, such as transit (subways or buses), private vehicles, or park-and-ride combinations. During the morning peak hour, the commuters would choose one of the available transportation modes to travel through the corridors from rural/suburban living areas to urban working areas. This paper introduces a concept of transportation serviceability to evaluate a transportation mode’s service status in a specific link, route, road, or network during a certain period. The serviceability can be measured by the possibility that travelers choose a specific type of transportation service at a certain travel cost. The commuters’ modal-choice possibilities are calculated using a stochastic equilibrium model based on general travel cost. The modeling results illustrate how transportation serviceability is influenced by background traffic flow in a corridor, value of comfort for railway mode, and parking fee distribution.