ITS Monday: Edition 24, 2024

Next stop suburbia: making shared transport work for everyone in Aussie cities

Climate Council has released a report on the state f play of public and shared transport in Australia’s capital cities. It names the best and worst suburbs, and talks about liveabilit and active transport, plus provides figures on just how much carbon is released into our air through people using private vehicles rather than public transport. The report is downloadable from the link.

Related iMOVE articles:

• MaaS (Mobility as a Service) in Australia: Info, Projects & Resources
  
• Report: MaaS: What have we learned, and where to next?

Related iMOVE projects:

• Mobility landscapes: Mobility as a Service customer impact trial

When transmission lines fell, 16 electric vehicles fed power into the grid. It showed electric vehicles can provide the backup Australia needs

This article in The Conversation is written by Bjorn Sturmberg, Senior Research Fellow, Battery Storage & Grid Integration Program at Australian National University. He details his five-year involvement in the Realising Electric Vehicle-to-grid Services (REVS) project, which is looking at how batteries in electric vehicles could also be enlisted to discharge power to the power grid when needed. And of just such a situation in Canberra in February this year.

Related iMOVE article:

• Electric Vehicles: Info, Projects & Resources
  
• Alternative Fuels: Info, Projects & Resources
• FACTS: A Framework for an Australian Clean Transport Strategy

Related iMOVE projects:

• Gippsland community e-Bus pilot
• Electric school buses for Western Australia: Feasibility study
• Charging requirements for Melbourne’s electric bus fleet

A novel mobility consumption theory for road user charging

A new academic paper, co-authored by Michiel C.J. Bliemer, Allister Loder, and Zuduo Zheng.

Abstract:

“Building on the analogy between electrical energy and mobility, we propose a novel mobility consumption theory based on the idea of the required reserved space headway of vehicles while driving. In this theory, mobility is “produced” by road infrastructure and is “consumed” by drivers in a similar fashion to power that is produced in power plants and consumed by electrical devices.

The computation of mobility consumption only requires travel distance and travel time as input, as well as two physical parameters that are readily available, namely vehicle length and reaction time. We argue that mobility consumption is a more comprehensive measure for road use than travel distance (or travel time) alone as it captures road use over both space and time. One application area for our mobility consumption theory that we look at in this study is road user charging. We propose mobility consumption as the basis of a new charging scheme, which we refer to as mobility-based charging.

Impacts of mobility-based charging and distance-based charging are compared in two case studies. When considering only departure time choice in a simple bottleneck model, we show that mobility-based charging can reduce congestion akin a congestion pricing scheme, unlike distance-based charging. Further, when considering route choice, we show that distance-based charging can increase congestion as it encourages drivers to take shortcuts through routes with low capacity, while mobility-based charging mitigates this effect.

The proposed mobility-based charging scheme is further capable of considering technological innovation in vehicle automation and carbon charging.”

A Multi-stage Spatial Queueing Model with Logistic Arrivals and Departures Consistent with the Microscopic Fundamental Diagram and Hysteresis

Staying in academic paper land, this from Professor Professor David Levinson and Yang Gao.

Absstract:

“This paper introduces a spatial queueing model for a single bottleneck during morning peak hours. Utilizing the logistic function and after appropriate calibration, it articulates the arrival and departure flows in continuous, differentiable terms. By validating the model across different peak periods and locations, the demand model’s robustness is superior to other commonly used functions.

This model also incorporates constant or varying capacity scenarios. It effectively captures key aspects of morning peak traffic, including the emergence of hysteresis loops in fundamental diagrams (FDs) of density and flow. The model’s multi-stage approach recognizes three distinct phases in traffic flow: freeflow, transition, and queued segments, ensuring spatial consistency in flow and density across these stages. It accounts for the growth of the queued segment and vehicle spillback under various bottleneck intensities, with the resulting FDs for speed and density also displaying hysteresis loops.

The calibration of model parameters utilizes time-series data of traffic flow and density space–time maps derived from real-world data. The validation results accurately reflect real traffic scenarios, emulating the counterclockwise hysteresis loops observed in density and its heterogeneity, and provide both planar and three-dimensional FDs at different points along the traffic link, each mirroring real-life traffic patterns.

Additionally, a comparison with the cell transmission model (CTM) reveals that the proposed model exhibits superior generalization and robustness.”

The walkability of Copenhagen, Denmark

This article is written by Ben Cebuliak, transport planner and city shaper, and appeared on his LinkedIn profle. He is currently the Manager of Movement and Place at Transport for NSW,

“Instead of pretending to address the question of what made Copenhagen walkable, I will talk to my experience of what has become one of my favourite cities in the world through a couple of visits almost 30 years apart.”

Related iMOVE articles:

• Micromobilty: Info, Projects & Resources
• Active Transport: Info, Projects & Resources
  

Related iMOVE projects:

• OneDock: Supercharging e-micromobility
• Road use activity data: Cyclists, pedestrians and micromobility
• Impacts of eRideables on the transport task in WA

The 40 bus routes that Sydney needs, according to experts

“A rapid bus network comprising 40 routes across Sydney will be critical to boosting public transport in ill-served areas, according to a wide-ranging report from an urban think-tank, which argues it will deliver better bang for taxpayer dollars than rail projects.”

Toll roads charge too much yet we don’t have enough of them. To fix both things, NSW should buy their private owners

Another article from The Conversation, in what is a busy little period of publishing by David Levinson. “There’s nothing wrong with tolls on roads. Designed well, they can both pay for roads and ensure they are used efficiently. But as drivers in Australia’s three largest cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane know especially well, Australia’s tolls are exceedingly poorly designed.”

Atlanta e-bike rebate lottery selects first round of winners

“An impressive 8,888 people signed up last month in the Atlanta Regional Commission’s lottery to compete for $500,000 in rebates. 413 people were selected for the first round, according to the ARC. $375,000 of the funding is reserved for “income eligible” applicants, or people living on low- to middle- incomes.”

How viable are trackless tram systems?

“Touted as a lower-cost option than light rail, trackless trams need to attract intensified development around station locations for the systems to justify capital costs. The idea of mid-tier transit is to link a city’s activity centres together, plus all the points in between. Trackless trams offer an alternative mid-tier transport option to more established technologies such as bus rapid transit (BRT) and light rail transit (LRT), incorporating facets of high-speed rail into an autonomous, tram-like battery-operated vehicle.”

Link-based full cost analysis of travel by automobile

I mentioned earlier that it has been a busy publishing week for David Levinson, and here’s his third mention in this week’d ITS Monday. This paper is co-authored with Mengying Cui and Zhe Dai

Abstract:

“This paper develops a link-based full cost model for auto travel, which identifies both internal and external costs of travel, and gives a link-based cost estimate for the Minneapolis – St. Paul (Twin Cities) metropolitan region. The key cost components are time, emissions, crashes, user monetary, and infrastructure.

The estimates show that the average full cost of travel is a $0.694/veh-km traffic-weighted average over the study area, of which the time and user monetary costs account for approximately 70% of the total.

Except for the infrastructure cost, highways are more cost-effective than other surface roadways considering all the other cost components, as well as the internal and full costs. Quantifying the full costs of auto travel is essential for making sustainable investments.”