Meilan Jiang

Carsharing has received considerable attention as a sustainable mobility paradigm. Various service designs and dynamic business environments have increased the decision complexity for the carsharing business. Therefore, carsharing operators require a tool for assessing business development from holistic perspectives. This research provides a framework for outlining the requirements of the carsharing system with holistic perspectives of stakeholders being considered, as well as to derive assessment metrics for examining carsharing development. To create the framework, the system modeling tool, context diagram, was adopted to map out the interactions of externalities with the system and the requirements of the system. Eight assessment metrics: the market condition, business advantage, parking condition, electric vehicle deployment, self-serving configuration, vehicle reservation, vehicle maintenance, and pricing scheme, were eventually identified from the system modeling. From these dimensions, we review 24 carsharing cases from China, Europe, Japan, and the United States, and we summarize discrepancies among different marketplaces and some managerial insights on carsharing development, such as carsharing motivators and inhibitors, innovations in respect of different business backgrounds, approaches of increasing parking privileges, approaches of increasing electrifications, essential digital features, reservation regimes, methods of vehicle maintenances, and service pricing regimes.

This study investigates which factors can influence bicycle accidents for a variety of age groups at the traffic analysis zone level. The cyclists were divided into four age groups: child, young, adult, and elderly. To accommodate for the potential variation in the influence of exogenous factors for these age groups, we utilized the multivariate Poisson gamma mixture model. The formulated model not only incorporates the heterogeneity and over-dispersion of the unobserved factors but also allows for the variance of the covariance between the age groups among the zones. The zone-level variables considered in this study include sociodemographic characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, the built environment, road network characteristics, and traffic characteristics. The model was estimated using bicycle accident data for the year 2011 in Nagoya, Japan. The estimated results clarify the impacts of the explanatory variables for the respective age groups. Children tend to experience more accidents in their residential zones, while the young and adult age groups have more accidents in zones that have many companies. All age groups are more likely to have accidents in the area of many shops. The elderly group is greatly affected by both the number of bicycle trips and its spatial spillover effect, implying that they are most prone to bicycle accidents among all age groups. The findings of this research can assist decision-makers in making proactive decisions to improve bicycle safety.

The serviceability of a road network often faces challenges of traffic congestion and natural disasters which can damage the performance of many links within the network. To ensure the high performance of a road network, it is essential to identify and protect the critical links which if disrupted will cause substantial damage to the network. This study analyzes the vulnerability of the road network of the city of Casablanca in Morocco. Capacity weighted spectral analysis of the graph Laplacian is used to evaluate the road network vulnerability and identify potential critical links. We consider two cases concerning the weight definition: capacity weighted without considering travel demand and reserve capacity weighted with consideration of travel demand. After finding the critical links of the network, we investigate its vulnerability with consideration of a future tramway project. We compare two cases: the road network with the current tramway lines and that including two additional tramway lines planned for the future. The results show shifts in the critical links between the two cases. Furthermore, an increase in vulnerability is observed after the construction of the new tramway lines if no measures are taken to maintain the corresponding link capacities.

Understanding the influence areas for transit stations in Indian cities is a prerequisite for adopting transit-oriented development (TOD). This study provides insights into the last mile patterns for selected Delhi Metro Rail (DMR) stations, specifically, Karkardooma, Dwarka Mor, Lajpat Nagar, and Vaishali, and the extent of the influence area based on different access modes. The variation in the extent of the influence areas based on various modes and the locational characteristics of stations have been considered in this study. The last mile distances reported in the conducted survey involved the problems of rounding and heaping, and they were subjected to multiple imputation to remove the bias. The spatial extent of the influence areas for various modes was estimated based on the compound power exponential distance decay function. Further, the threshold walking distances were calculated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The variations were noted in the last mile distances among stations. The walking distances (mean and 85th percentile) among stations did not vary considerably; however, large variations were noted when comparing other modes. These differences in accessibility must be taken into account when considering multimodal accessibility and multimode-based TOD. The study can provide useful inputs for planning and implementing TOD in New Delhi.

As Indian cities adopt the concept of transit-oriented development (TOD), concerns have arisen regarding the applicability of TOD standards formulated in developed countries in the Indian context. This study aims to estimate the TOD influence areas in New Delhi by examining the last mile connectivity patterns of passengers on the Delhi Metro Railway (DMR). Questionnaire surveys conducted on the last mile connectivity reveals use of various access modes for metro stations in India, although current research only considers walking and cycling to be universal forms of access. Therefore, this study focuses on the DMR’s multimodal accessibility to investigate the last mile distance of each mode. In order to offset the rounding errors of reported distance, a heaping model and multiple imputation (MI) were employed to improve the accuracy of the reported distance. Afterward, distance decay analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine the thresholds of last mile distances. The findings show that the influence area differs across travel modes and increases in the order of walking, informal transit, buses, and private transport, respectively.

Transit oriented development (TOD) is a land-use and transport integrated urban planning strategy that is highly acclaimed for promoting sustainable city development. This review aims to identify the problems regarding adoption of TOD standards or guidelines formulated by developed countries in developing countries, such as India, and the necessity of conducting adaptability studies on TOD influence areas. The existing studies show that the size of the influence area varies among different cities and travel modes. Accordingly, no single size influence zone is suitable for all cases. This review highlights the necessity of carefully considering the spatial extent of influence areas and modes other than walking as access or egress modes in the Indian context. Moreover, this review aims to provide insight on how to plan TOD in the context of developing countries, because the mobility patterns in these countries differ considerably from those in the developed world.

Value of travel time (VOTT) is a key factor in cost benefit analysis for transport projects, since benefit of time saving overshadows other benefit. Although it is clear that value of travel time varies according to travelers and travel environments, this value has often been often assumed as a constant in its applications for the sake of analytical convenience. In this paper discrete route choice model, which is easy to catch the variation of value of travel time, is used to conclude the relationship between value of travel time and travel time. A nationwide stated preference survey provides the data source for this analysis. This paper also makes an attempt to apply the evaluated variable value of travel time to benefit analysis of transport projects. A comparison between benefits calculated from the variable value of travel time and fixed values confirms that fixed value of time may produce a substantial bias.