Abstract

The World Bank and China has over 30 years of partnership and this partnership has evolved over time. In the early years, the World Bank shared its global knowledge with China on infrastructure development and institutional capacity building, which contributed to shaping China’s modernization and development. Today, many Chinese cities are making significant investment in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and the scale is among the largest in all countries. The World Bank is supporting over 20 urban transport projects in China. This study uses Wuhan and Urumqi as two case studies to evaluate the gender impacts of their existing urban transport ITS, by adopting methods of survey and focus group discussion. Under the support of the World Bank, Urumqi and Wuhan have completed its first Bank-financed ITS construction in 2007 and 2010 respectively. They are now proposing to expand or upgrade ITS in their new Bank-financed projects. The findings suggest that men and women have unique travel patterns and transport demands, which result in special requirements of ITS; the findings also suggest that ITS can play a significant role in filling the gender gap in urban transport. In addition to improving infrastructure and intelligent transport facilities, the pressing issue is to build gender awareness for policy makers and practitioners and mainstream gender in transport and ITS. The study aims at strengthening capacity for gender-informed operations and policy making in East Asia and Pacific (EAP) countries. Besides this report, the team has also developed a technical guideline to better incorporate gender considerations in ITS planning, design, implementation and operation.

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to determine the urban traffic flow spatiotemporal characteristics and correlation with the built environment using SCATS (Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System) and POIs (Point of Interests) data of Shenyang, China. Methods A standard analysis framework based on these data is proposed in the paper. The study analyzes the traffic volume spatiotemporal distributions and built environment influence factors determined by the geographical detector. An improved gravity model using simple structural parameters (lanes number and road length) is proposed to estimate the traffic flows of day and peak hour scales for specific flow ranges. Results The results show that the peak hours of different intersections and roads are heterogeneous and reveal trip time flexibility. The correlation between peak hour flows and day flows is significant in the multidimensional analysis. Based on the investigation of lanes, more interesting conclusions are found. In this case, when the numbers of lanes of intersections and roads are more than 14 and 4 respectively, the lane resources are wasted to a great extent. There is also a certain correlation between these factors. Proposed gravity model establishes the connection between structure and function of urban roads. Conclusions Flexible work time and places will be effective methods to reduce traffic congestion. The day flows could be estimated via a traffic survey on peak hour flows, especially in developing cities. The traffic flow mainly concentrates in a relatively small part of city roads. The maximum service traffic volumes exhibit segmentation, we should reconsider the maximum optimal lanes number of intersections and roads under better performance and utilization rate of the network. The effect of lanes number on the service traffic volumes is found to be more significant compared with the other factors. Our conclusions will be helpful for policy-makers and sustainable urban planning. Document type: Article