Abstract

To preserve resources for future generation, there is rising agreement that transportation system sustainability should capture attributes of system effectiveness and system impacts on economic development, environmental integrity, and social quality of life. To make the region sustainable, sustainability assessment can be incorporated at the planning level in order to influence decision making, and support policies. This paper present a review on methodologies that can be applied in sustainability assessment in transportation planning which can be used to incorporate sustainability more effectively in the planning process. This review on research study is potentially useful to road and transport infrastructural development agencies who are interested in understanding the range of tools and indicators being used for sustainability assessment, so that they can expand or refine their performance measures to capture sustainability in transportation planning, and using them in evaluating tradeoffs among challenging alternative as well as in identifying major alternative

Abstract

Traffic congestion today is a major problem in almost all of the metropolitan areas of the world. An increasing level of congestion results in negative impacts on the urban environment. These include environmental pollution, energy problems and traffic accidents. The analysis of these problems and the predictions of the impacts of any transport policies that could be devised to deal with them are very critical to their success. Traffic problems are almost the same in most modern cities either in developed countries or less economically developed countries.The driving cycle for a vehicle is the representation of a speed–time sequenced profile, which is developed for a specific area or city. It is an important requirement in the evaluation of the driver’s behaviour and the performance of vehicles for a number of applications, mainly in the area of environmental studies. For example, fuel consumption and emissions’ predictions need information input on the characteristics of driving patterns of traffic. The applications of driving cycle analysis can be extended however, to many more other areas. The motivation for this research is to investigate the detailed impacts of travel demand management (TDM) measures, thatare already in application. This is to improve the network performance, using driving cycle analysis. It is important to explicitly assess these measures using a micro-level detailed approach in order to comprehend overall results in terms of emissions and network performance. These understandings will benefit government agencies and policy makers in their planning and appraisals. It will also benefit public transport providers to improve their service in attracting and retaining their customers.The developments of the real world driving cycles in Edinburgh and Abu Dhabi have been presented in this research. The analysis of real world data, which has been obtained from monitoring traffic conditions in both cities using the GPS tracking of traffic, is presented. This data was collected from trips which have been carried out on a number of traffic corridors in both cities. The assessment of various parameters of traffic (i.e. speed, time percentage spent on acceleration, deceleration, idling, cruising and cycle duration) and their statistical validity, produced a real world driving cycle for the buses as well as the private cars. Two TDM measures have been considered; bus lanes and traffic calming measures. At each corridor, a handheld GPS device was used to record speed, acceleration, deceleration and distances driven. This data enabled the analysis of driving cycles for the buses and for the private cars. The driving cycle analysis and investigations have further been investigated using regression analysis techniques. The results suggest that the approach shows potential but further research is needed with more data available. The results suggest that the driving cycle analysis approach would be very useful to have a better understanding of driving behaviour and also the detailed impacts of the transport policies on traffic. In terms of bus lanes and traffic calming measures, the results show some positive impacts of these policies, while there are evidences of some negative impacts as well. These findings would be very valuable for the policy decision makers. It is recommended from this research that the driving cycle analysis could be utilised effectively in the assessment of TDM measures. Further investigations and analysis of driving cycle is urgently recommended in a number of research directions. Combined GIS and GPS data could also enhance the development in this research. Document type: Thesis

Abstract

The current literature in the field of cycle lanes has often shown contradictory evidence as to the benefits and risks of cycle lanes and previous work has specifically shown that on higher speed roads, drivers may pass closer to a cyclist when a cycle lane is present. Utilising an instrumented bicycle, we collected information as to the passing distance demonstrated by drivers when overtaking a cyclist within the urban (30 mph/40 mph) environment. The presented analysis shows that when a driver encounters a cyclist mid-block (i.e. not at a junction), there are more significant variables than the presence of a cycle lane that determines the overtaking distance. The three most significant variables identified are: absolute road width, the presence of nearside parking and the presence of an opposing vehicle at the time of an overtaking manoeuvre. The analysis also demonstrated that there is a larger unknown factor when it comes to overtaking distances. We postulate that this unknown variable is the driver himself and will vary by area, site and even time of day (i.e. different driving cultures, congestion, or frustration during peak times, etc.) making it difficult to quantify. First Published Online: 22 Sep 2014 Document type: Article