Driver Management and Service Delivery: Insights within State-Owned Enterprises in Zimbabwe

Driver management may be considered an organization’s most valuable asset, and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) must invest in it to secure their survival and growth. The study sought to establish the effect of driver management on service delivery in SOEs. Various empirical studies reveal that there is a lack of understanding of the impact of driver management on service delivery in public organizations, notably SOEs, resulting in sectorial and contextual research gaps that must be filled. The study used a mixed-method research strategy and a pragmatic research philosophy. In addition, 344 respondents from 86 SOEs were given standardized questionnaires to complete. The researchers employed stratified and purposive sampling. Statistical package for social scientists (SPSS) version 20 was used to generate descriptive statistics. All study items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and research hypotheses were assessed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in AMOS version 21. The study findings revealed that despite having clear driver recruiting procedures, there is bad driver conduct and a lack of driver recognition programs to reward good driving. The study concluded that driver management has a positive effect on service delivery. In light of these conclusions, the study suggests that SOEs should ensure that drivers understand their responsibilities when using company vehicles. Furthermore, drivers should be periodically trained in line with the tenets of the New Public Management Theory which advocates for quality service delivery, customer centrism and reduction in rigidity.

A Dynamic Leader Election Algorithm for Decentralized Networks

Leader election algorithms play an important role in orchestrating different processes on distributed systems, including next-generation transportation systems. This leader election phase is usually triggered after the leader has failed and has a high overhead in performance and state recovery. Further, these algorithms are not generally applicable to cloud-based native microservices-based applications where the resources available to the group and resources participating in a group continuously change and the current leader may exit the system with prior knowledge of the exit. Our proposed algorithm, the dynamic leader selection algorithm, provides several benefits through selection (not, election) of a set of future leaders which are then alerted prior to the failure of the current leadership and handed over the leadership. A specific illustration of this algorithm is provided with reference to a peer-to-peer distribution of autonomous cars in a 5G architecture for transportation networks. The proposed algorithm increases the efficiencies of applications that use the leader election algorithm and finds broad applicability in microservices-based applications.

How Cities Influenced by High Speed Rail Development: A Case Study in China

This study aims at analyzing various extents of transportation equity change and the accessibility change of cities along High Speed Rail (HSR) line in China. To evaluate the accessibility change and transportation equity, certain cities along the transportation corridor which the successfully operating WuGuang HSR lies in are selected as samples of influenced ones first. Cities’ connection with HSR and their sizes are considered as choosing criteria. Weighted mean travel time and Generalized weighed travel time, which integrated with generalized cost, are both calculated in the two different scenarios to indicate accessibility changes of each city. The two scenarios are with or without the advent of WuGuang HSR. Accessibilities in different scenarios were carefully contrasted. It was found out that there is no significant change in the mean accessibility aspect of the region between the two scenarios. Then transportation equity issue of the transportation corridor is discussed based on the results of Gini coefficient using the data of Passenger Transportation Balance index. Passenger Transportation Balance index is proposed in this article to indicate the how much is one city’s transportation demand satisfied. The research found that cities had HSR stations built-in all attained a more accessibility improvement comparing with the others. And the gap between the accessibilities of the cities along the HSR line and those which are not is relatively wider. However, the equity evaluation using Transportation Balance Gini Coefficient reveals that massive investment in HSR has no potent evidence for equity improvement.

Traffic Incident Management Performance Measures: Ranking Agencies on Roadway Clearance Time

This study develops a procedure to rank agencies based on their incident responses using roadway clearance times for crashes. This analysis is not intended to grade agencies but to assist in identifying agencies requiring more training or resources for incident management. Previous NCHRP reports discussed usage of different factors including incident severity, roadway characteristics, number of lanes involved and time of incident separately for estimating the performance. However, it does not tell us how to incorporate all the factors at the same time. Thus, this study aims to account for multiple factors to ensure fair comparisons. This study used 149,174 crashes from Iowa that occurred from 2018 to 2021. A Tobit regression model was used to find the effect of different variables on roadway clearance time. Variables that cannot be controlled directly by agencies such as crash severity, roadway type, weather conditions, lighting conditions, etc., were included in the analysis as it helps to reduce bias in the ranking procedure. Then clearance time of each crash is normalized into a base condition using the regression coefficients. The normalization makes the process more efficient as the effect of uncontrollable factors has already been mitigated. Finally, the agencies were ranked by their average normalized roadway clearance time. This ranking process allows agencies to track their performance of previous crashes, can be used in identifying low performing agencies that could use additional resources and training, and can be used to identify high performing agencies to recognize for their efforts and performance.

Path Selection of Multimodal Transport Based on Multi-Objective Mixed Integer Programming

Based on “One Belt and One Road”, this paper studies the path selection of multimodal transport by using the method of multi-objective mixed integer programming. Therefore, this paper studies the factors of transportation time, transportation cost and transportation safety performance, and establishes a mathematical model. In addition, the method of multi-objective mixed integer programming is used to comprehensively consider the different emphasis and differences of customers on cargo transportation. Then we use planning tools of Microsoft Excel to solve path selection and to determine whether the chosen path is economical and reliable. Finally, a relatively complex road network is built as an example to verify the accuracy of this planning method.

The Development of Regression Models to Estimate Routine Maintenance Costs for State Highway Infrastructure

Literature review indicates that most studies on pavement management have been on reconstruction and rehabilitation, but not on maintenance;this includes routine, corrective and preventive maintenance. This study developed linear regression models to estimate the total maintenance cost and component costs for labor, materials, equipment, and stockpile. The data used in the model development were extracted from the pavement and maintenance management systems of the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT). The life cycle maintenance strategies adopted by NDOT for five maintenance prioritization categories were used as the basis for developing the regression models of this study. These regression models are specified for each stage of life-cycle maintenance strategies. The models indicate that age, traffic flow, elevation, type of maintenance, maintenance schedule, life cycle stage, and the districts where maintenances are performed all are important factors that influence the magnitude of the costs. Because these models have embedded the road conditions into the life-cycle stage and type of maintenance performed, they can be easily integrated into existing pavement management systems for implementation.

Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Research of Goal Attainment of Green Transportation Development Policy —Take Dongguan “Motorcycle Ban” Policy as an Example

Launching the evaluation research of green transportation can grasp the green transportation implementation accurately and diagnose the existing problems. From the perspective of green transportation, this research chose Dongguan “motorcycle ban” policy as the research object, and constructed secondary evaluation index system in transportation and environmental harmony, transportation and future harmony, transportation and society harmony, transportation and resource harmony, four dimensions. Then it used fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model to do the evaluation and found that the policy’s positive effect on the Dongguan green transportation development was average. Finally, based on the evaluation results, measures and advices were proposed.

Using OD Estimation Techniques to Determine Freight Factors in a Medium Sized Community

Developing an understanding of the socio-economic factors that can be used to generate truck trip productions and attractions in small and medium sized communities can be used to improve travel models and provide better information upon which infrastructure decisions are made. Unfortunately, it is difficult to collect this data in a timely, cost-effective manner. This paper presents a methodology that uses matrix estimation techniques from existing traffic counts to develop origin/destination pairs that can be used to statistically develop truck trip generation models. A case study is presented and a model is presented for one smaller urban community.

Railway Transport Infrastructure Monitoring by UAVs and Satellites

Improving the rail transport security requires development and implementation of neoteric monitoring and control facilities in conditions of increasing speed and intensity of the train movement and high level of terrorist threat. Use of Earth remote sensing (ERS), permitting to obtain information from large areas with a sufficiently high resolution, can provide significant assistance in solving the mentioned problems. This paper discusses the possibility of using various means of remote sensing such as satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), also known as drones, for receiving information in different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. The paper states that joint using of both these means gives new possibilities in improving railroad security.

Shortest Alternate Path Discovery through Recursive Bounding Box Pruning

Congestion is a dynamic phenomenon and hence efficiently computing alternate shortest route can only help expedite decongestion. This research is aimed to efficiently compute shortest path for road traffic network so that congestion can be eased resulting in reduced CO2 emission and improved economy. Congestion detection is achieved after evaluating road capacity and road occupancy. Congestion index, a ratio of road occupancy to road capacity is computed, congestion index higher than 0.6 necessitates computation of alternate shortest route. Various algorithms offer shortest alternate route. The paper discusses minimization of graph based by removing redundant nodes which don’t play a role in computation of shortest path. The proposal is based on continuous definition of a bounding box every time a next neighboring node is considered. This reduces maximum number of contentious nodes repeatedly and optimizes the network. The algorithm is deployed from both the ends sequentially to ensure zero error and validate the shortest path discovery. While discovering shortest path, the algorithm also offers an array of shortest path in ascending order of the path length. However, vehicular traffic exhibits network duality viz. static and dynamic network graphs. Shortest route for static distance graph is pre-computed and stored for look-up, alternate shortest path based on assignment of congestion levels to edge weights is triggered by congestion index. The research also supports directed graphs to address traffic rules for lanes having unidirectional and bidirectional traffic.

Multi Model Criteria for the Estimation of Road Traffic Congestion from Traffic Flow Information Based on Fuzzy Logic

In this study, the road traffic congestion of Dehradun city is evaluated from traffic flow information using fuzzy techniques. Three different approaches namely Sugeno, Mamdani models which are manually tuned techniques, and an Adaptive Neuo-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) which an automated model decides the ranges and parameters of the membership functions using grid partition technique, based on fuzzy logic. The systems are designed to human’s feelings on inputs and output levels. There are three levels of each input namely high, medium and low for input density, fast, medium and slow for input speed, and five levels of output namely free flow, slow moving, mild congestion, heavy congestion and serious jam for the road traffic congestion estimation. The results, obtained by fuzzy based techniques show that the manually tuned Sugeno type technique achieves 72.05% accuracy, Mamdani type technique achieves 83.82% accuracy, and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System technique achieves 88.23% accuracy. ANFIS technique appears better than the manually tuned fuzzy technique, and also the manually tuned fuzzy technique gives good accuracy which leads that the fuzzy inference system can capture the human perception better through manual adjustment of input/output membership functions.

Plug-In Vehicle Acceptance and Probable Utilization Behaviour

This paper presents a study undertaken to understand the plug-in vehicle acceptance and probable utilization behaviour in terms of charging habits and utility factor (probability of driving in electrical mode). A survey was designed to be answered via World Wide Web, throughout 3 months and only accessible to Portuguese inhabitants. The survey was composed by biographical and car ownership info, mobility patterns, awareness toward plug-in vehicle technologies, price premium and, finally, potential buyer’s attitudes regarding charging vehicles with electricity from the grid. An explanation of how each vehicle technology works in the case of a regular hybrid (HEV), a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and a pure electric vehicle (EV) was provided. A total sample of 809 volunteers answered the survey, aged above 18 years old, 50% male and 50% female. The results allowed the estimation of the typical daily driving distance, the Utility Factor curve for plug-in hybrid future users, the charging preferences for future users of pure electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles and the necessary feebates to promote the market penetration of such technologies. Other correlations were also analyzed between driving patterns, type of owned car, price premium and the willingness to buy pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The main policy implications are that an increase of awareness campaigns is necessary if the government intends to support the plug-in electric vehicle technology widespread and a minimum of 5000 € investment per ton of avoided CO2 will be necessary in a year.

Design and Stability Analysis of Fuzzy Switched PID Controller for Ship Track-Keeping

The fuzzy switched PID controller which combines fuzzy PD and conventional PI controller is proposed for ship track-keeping autopilot In this paper. By using rudder angle, the whole voyage is divided into two operating regimes which named transient operating regime and steady operating regime respectively. The fuzzy PD controller is employed in transient operating regime for increasing response, reducing overshoot and shorting transition time. And conventional PI controller is used to improve the stable accuracy in steady operating regime. The global controller is achieved by fuzzy blending of all local controllers. Routh stability criterion is utilized to obtain the stability condition of closed-loop system. The simulation results show the effectiveness of proposed method.

Analysis of Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Usage in Proximity to Charging Infrastructure in Indiana

This paper explores the movement of connected vehicles in Indiana for vehicles classified by the NHTSA Product Information Catalog Vehicle listing as being either electric (EV) or hybrid electric (HV). Analysis of trajectories from July 12-18, 2021 for the state of Indiana observed nearly 33,300 trips and 267,000 vehicle miles travelled (VMT) for the combination of EV and HV. Approximately 53% of the VMT occurred in just 10 counties. For just EVs, there were 9814 unique trips and 64,700 Electric Vehicle Miles Traveled (EVMTs) in total. A further categorization of this revealed that 18% of these EVMTs were on Interstate roadways and 82% on non-interstate roads. Proximity analysis of existing DC Fast charging stations in relation to interstate roadways revealed multiple charging deserts that would be most benefited by additional charging capacity. Eleven roadway sections among the 9 interstates were found to have a gap in available DC fast chargers of 50 miles or more. Although the connected vehicle data set analyzed did not include all EV’s the methodology presented in this paper provides a technique that can be scaled as additional EV connected vehicle data becomes available to agencies. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need for transportation agencies and automotive vendors to strengthen their data sharing partnerships to help accelerate the adoption of EV and reduce consumer range anxiety with EV. Graphics are included that illustrate examples of counties that are both overserved and underserved by charging infrastructure.

Quantifying the Influence of Road Geometric Parameters on Road Safety (Case Study: Hawassa-Shashemene-Bulbula Rural Two-Lane Highway, Ethiopia)

Road safety depends on humans, vehicles, and highway conditions. These factors influence road safety separately or in combination. Despite these facts, the police report indicated that only a single cause of accident has been reported for a given accident in Ethiopia and the number of accidents that had been caused by road defect accounted around 1% of total accidents per year, which underestimates its contribution to road accidents. Beside these facts, only a few studies were carried out in Ethiopia on this issue. Even though dangerous road segments were identified and ranked along the same study area of this paper in our previous publication, Hawassa-Shashemene-Bulbula two-lane rural highway, the influences of road geometric parameters on road safety were not correlated along this study area. Therefore, it is imperative to clarify the relationship between the expected number of traffic accidents and the geometric conditions of the road under study to reduce accidents and provide safe driving environment. The main objective of this study was to quantify the influence of road geometric parameters on road safety. Using historical accident data, traffic data, and road data, the expected numbers of accidents were estimated by using the empirical Bayes (EB) method. Then, the expected numbers of accidents have been correlated with one or more road geometric parameters at a time. Accordingly, the identified dangerous road segments in the previous publication (DOI: 10.4236/jtts.2018.83009) were further analyzed to estimate the influence of road geometric parameters on road safety based on expected accident frequency. The result of the analysis shows that the radius of horizontal curve, superelevation, transition curve length, lane and shoulder widths were negatively correlated with the expected frequencies of accidents. Whereas the numbers of horizontal and vertical curves per segment, grade of the road, the occurrence of left turn horizontal curves with down grade and right turn horizontal curves with upgrade were positively correlated with the expected number of accidents. Therefore, it has been concluded that the influence of road geometry has significant effect on the occurrence of accidents along this study area.

Analyzing Pedestrian Fatality Risk in Accidents at Mid-Blocks

Objective: Pedestrian safety is considered as one of the greatest concerns, especially for developing countries. In the year of 2015, about 48% pedestrian accidents with 56% fatalities occurred at mid-blocks in Beijing. Since the high frequency and fatality risk, this study focused on pedestrian accidents taking place at mid-blocks and aimed at identifying significant factors. Methods: Based on total 10,948 crash records, a binary logit model was established to explore the impact of various factors on the probability of pedestrian’s death. Furthermore, first-degree interaction effects were introduced into the basic model. The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test was used to assess the model performance. Odds ratio was calculated for categorical variables to compare significant accident conditions with the conference level. Variables within consideration in this study included weather, area type, road type, speed limit, pedestrian location, lighting condition, vehicle type, pedestrian gender and pedestrian age. Results: The calibration results of the model show that the increased fatality chances of an accident at mid-blocks are associated with normal weather, rural area, two-way divided road, crossing elsewhere in carriageway, darkness (especially for no street lighting), light vehicle, large vehicle and male pedestrian. With road speed limit increasing by 10 km/h, the probability of death accordingly increases by 46%. Older victims have higher chances of being killed in a crash. Moreover, three interaction effects are found significant: rural area and two-way divided, rural area and crossing elsewhere as well as speed limit and pedestrian age. Conclusions: This study has analyzed police accident data and identified factors significant to the death probability of pedestrians in accidents occurred at mid-blocks. Recommendations and improving measures were proposed correspondingly. Behaviors of different road users at mid-blocks should be taken into account in the future research.

Use of the AHP Methodology in Vehicle Design Process Dynamics: Determination of the Most Effective Concept Phases for the New Automotive Product

The function of decision-making in the management of new product development and vehicle design activities is achieved by defining, constructing or evaluating the outcome-oriented, and most effective steps from the sub-steps that form this basic process. The choice of the sub-stages of the basic process or the decision of how to do a job gains importance in terms of the efficiency of the firm’s activities. Therefore, the decision making function is one of the basic elements involved in the formation and development of the basic processes that can comply with the market dynamics of firms. With the new product being developed, the selection, the current editing or the evaluation of the steps that make up the vehicle design activities for the automotive industry companies that exist and compete in the market, bring about significant gains. In the manufacturing industry, the design of the vehicle determines the market spread, while the competitive conditions are driven by the new or improved product decision. In both cases, the automotive industry firms must know the stages of the most appropriate vehicle design in their own right, and the steps of forming new project dynamics must be devised in this direction. In this study, the result oriented activity of the current vehicle design phases used in the automotive industry companies is determined and the order of importance of the stages is listed. For this purpose, under the same conditions of competition (the same market, the same class vehicles develops and manufactures), 4 in the automotive firm administration, a total of 40 employees (4 × 10 process manager) with the vehicle design was evaluated by determining the effectiveness of the use of the stage. At this stage, analytic hierarchy methods applied to each of the phases are explored in practice instead of the use of the significance level automotive company. Study of the vehicle design phase of the automotive industry: structure, process modifications or new project reveals the important values to be configured according to the size.

Multiple Period Repair Kit Problem with Capacity Considerations

The repair kit problem seeks an optimal stock of parts for a repair kit for purposes of remote repairs. This problem has often been studied when restocking is possible between each order, or when the number of orders is known between each restocking. This research evaluates a model for the repair kit stocking problem for which there is multiple-period demand with a known time interval between each restocking, but an unknown number of on-site repair visits is required during the restocking period. Most previous work focuses on minimum cost subject to some minimum service level;in the case where the value of technician time and customer service is relatively large, the space constraint of the kit and volume of parts comes into play. This work contributes to the literature by testing the robustness of a heuristic originally proposed by [1] in a field study. We conduct numerical experiments to evaluate the heuristic over a wide range of parameterizations. Our results indicate that the heuristic performs close to optimum, and its performance improves as the problem size grows.

Modeling Motorization Development in China

Entering the 21st century, China’s economic development has reached new heights and the country has ascended to the world’s second largest economy. The 20 year unrelenting development in China also stimulates income growth. The increased disposable income enables an ordinary Chinese family vehicle ownership which was unthinkable two decades ago. The most populous country has started a love affair with automobile just like in the United States. Annual automobile sales in China rose from 2.1 million in 2000 to 18.1 million in 2010 with a yearly growth rate of 24.3%, which spurs the vehicle ownership increase from 18.1 million in 2000 to 78.8 million in 2010, a growth rate of 15.9% The unprecedented motorization development in China is making a huge impact on all aspects of society, including negative consequences that cannot be ignored. Traffic congestion, air pollution, and dependency on imported oil are huge emerging problems threatening Chinese sustainable development. Although these problems occurred and still exist in many other developed and developing countries, they are more acute in China today. By collecting and analyzing the massive data from various sources, this paper explores the relationship between economic development and level of mobility by studying the historical developments from several developed counties and discusses the key issues in Chinese motorization development. The objective of the study is to predict the future level of motorization and its potential impacts.

Cyclist Warning Systems: Design and Evaluation

Cyclists belong to the group of vulnerable road users and, thus, need particular protection in road traffic. One way to enhance cyclists’ safety is to use urban data (e.g., infrastructure data, accident statistics) to inform cyclists about potentially dangerous areas, allowing them to better adjust to the situation and elevate their self-protection. However, the question is how to inform cyclists about such dangerous areas. In this paper, we present the results of two field studies, investigating two wearables (headphones vs. smart glasses) and different signal options to inform cyclists about dangerous areas. Study participants were cycling along a predefined track and could experience the different wearables and signals. The main aim of the studies was to find out how cyclists perceive and experience the different approaches. Participants’ impressions were captured with questionnaires and interviews. Our results show a clear preference of the headphones over the smart glasses and signaling with intermittent audio while being in the dangerous area. However, we also found that participants’ acceptance of the approach was influenced by the additional perceived benefit the respective wearable would have in daily life. Using a wearable solely to be warned, although this would increase safety, was less acceptable. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design of cyclist warning systems.