Quantifying the Indirect Benefits of Transport Infrastructures and Value Capture Ways in Transportation

Urban transportation is closely related to land use. The changes of transportation cost and accessibility have a direct impact on land use and land prices. Land exploitation and land use play a role of redistributing traffic flow in the urban districts. Real property values are regarded as a sole comprehensive index representing all the benefits generated by transport investment. We have applied the theory of time value on transportation to land price model to evaluate the increased value of real estate resulting from improved accessibility. Agency responsible for the development of urban transport infrastructure can capture part of the financial benefit gained by real estate development through a variety of value capture. This enables us to transfer indirect benefit of transport infrastructure construction to transport enterprise and achieve a benign cycle between urban transport investment and land exploitation.

Characterizing Peak-Time Traffic Jam Incidents in Kampala Using Exploratory Data Analysis

Traffic congestion is associated with increased environmental pollutions, as well as reduced socio-economic productivity due to significant delays in travel times. The consequences are worse in least developed countries where motorized road transport networks are often inefficiently managed in addition to being largely underdeveloped. Recent research on traffic congestion has mostly focused on infrastructural aspects of road networks, with little or no emphasis at all on motorists’ on-the-road behavior (MB). The current study thus aimed to bridge this knowledge gap by characterizing traffic jam incidents (TJI) observed over a period of 80 days in Uganda’s Capital City, Kampala. MB as well as road network infrastructural factors such as road blockage (RB), were captured for each of the observed TJI. A total of 483 peak-time TJI were recorded, and exploratory data analysis (EDA) subsequently performed on the TJI dataset. EDA involved Hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) and K-means clustering of the TJI dataset, as well as a detailed descriptive statistical analysis of both the entire dataset and the emerging TJI clusters. A highlight finding of this study is that 48.2% of the observed TJIs were as a result of on-the-road motorist behavior. Furthermore, the intervention of traffic police officers in a bid to regulate traffic flow was equally responsible for 25.9% of the TJIs observed in this study. Overall, these results indicate that whereas road infrastructural improvement is warranted in order to improve traffic flow, introducing interventions to address inappropriate on-the-road motorists’ behavior could alone improve traffic flow in Kampala, by over 48%. Additionally, in-order to effectively regulate traffic flow in Kampala and other least developed cities with similar traffic congestion management practices, motorists’ on-the-road behavior ought to be factored into any data-driven mechanisms deployed to regulate traffic flow and thus potentially significantly curbing traffic congestion.

System integration of China's first PEMFC locomotive

In the face of growing environmental pollution, developing a fuel-cell-driven shunting locomotive is a great challenge in China for environmental protection and energy saving, which combines the environmental advantages of an electric locomotive with the lower infrastructure costs of a diesel-electric locomotive. In this paper, the investigation status and the development trend of the fuel-cell-driven shunting locomotive were introduced. Through innovation of the power system using fuel cells, an experiment prototype of a fuel-cell shunting locomotive was developed, which would reduce the effects on the environment of the existing locomotives. This was the first locomotive to use a proton exchange membrane fuel-cell （PEMFC） power plant in China. From October 2012, we started to test the fuel-cell power plant and further test runs on the test rail-line in Chengdu, Sichuan. The achieved encouraging results can provide fundamental data for the modification of the current individual fuel cell locomotives or further development of the fuel-cell hybrid ones in China.

The Joint Control of Variable Speed and On-Ramp Metering for Urban Expressway

The traffic performance of urban expressway is subject to non-recurring and recurring events, which may cause heavy congestion and vehicles long queuing on ramps. The low performance may bring more traffic delay to the whole network of urban road. This paper presents a new method, the joint control of variable speed control and on-ramp metering, which attempts to improve the level of traffic operations on urban expressway. By analyzing traffic flow on urban expressway, an optimum control strategy of variable speed and on-ramp metering is established in the paper.

Redesign of Motorized and Non-motorized Transport in Cities and Sustainable Mobility

Redesign of motorized and non-motorized transport in cities and sustainable mobility possibilities and utilization of already occupied areas for motorized and non-motorized transport in cities. Reserved area for public transport may be the redesign much more to take advantage of without taking up new space in cities. Redesigned solutions shown in the work of public mass transport and the redesign of non-motorized transport, bicycle and pedestrian paths point to the improved use and safety of movement of passengers, cyclists and pedestrians. This paper presents five redesigned concept designs as improving existing forms of transport and movement of cyclists and pedestrians in cities. Redesigned conceptual designs of motorized and non-motorized transport in cities should serve as ideas for the growing problems of urban development in the segment of insufficient surface for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as sustainable mobility transport people in the city.