ITS Monday: Edition 9, 2022

Development of a practical aggregate spatial road freight modal demand model system for truck and commodity movements with an application of a distance-based charging regime

We start this week with an absolute barnstormer of a paper title! Authors on this are David Hensher, Edward Wei, Wen Liu, Loan Ho, and Chinh Ho. “We promote a view that more attention should be given to the freight sector in order to recognise that many initiatives designed to impact on passenger travel do also impact on the performance of the movement of freight vehicles and hence the ability to distribute commodities from the locations in which they are generated. This paper develops a practical freight demand model system and applies the models within an integrated passenger and freight model system for the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area using a distance based charge for trucks and cars as a way of highlighting the importance of not ignoring truck traffic when assessing road pricing reform in the car passenger sector.”

Mobility as a service (MaaS): Are effort and seamlessness the keys to MaaS uptake?

More David Hensher, this time with Haoning Xi as a co-author of this article about Mobility as a Service (MaaS). “The real MaaS challenge is to design an offer that aligns with levels of effort and seamlessness that matter to an individual and improves on the current movement circumstance. This means that even within different segments of travellers (e.g. the elderly vs young, tech-savvy vs. tech-dummy), the MaaS product will be different as various levels of effort dictate different choices.”

Evaluation of E-Scooter media coverage

Another academic article, this one Hensher-free! In fact it’s from the USA, written by Or Caspi and Michael J Smart, both of Rutgers University. “This study examines the attitudes and common themes of 840 e-scooter news articles from across the US, published between 2017 to 2020. Sentiment analysis suggests that media coverage does not appear to be predominantly in favor or against shared e-scooters. A word count analysis shows that the most discussed themes were conflicts with other road users, safety concerns, and regulation efforts. The findings reveal differences between regions but also common patterns, such as the decline in negative coverage with time.”

Queensland sets target for every new car to be electric by 2036

Back to Australia, and this week Queensland made something of a big announcement. “The Queensland state government has set a target for all new car sales to be electric by 2036, and all new government vehicles to be electric b y 2028, as part of a new Zero Emissions Vehicle Strategy and Action Plan.” The policy’s main points are outlines, so people, let your thoughts and debates begin on the what and the how.

Thinking of buying an electric vehicle for your next car? Here’s the market outlook and what to consider

Speaking of electric vehicles, this piece is by Jake Whitehead, Head of Policy at the Electric Vehicle Council. He paints a bleakish picture of Australia’s chances to push toward a power switch. “The unfortunate truth is unless policy settings in Australia change, we shouldn’t expect a significant increase in the number of electric vehicles (EVs) available to Australians over the coming years. It’s important we all start to make the switch to this cleaner technology, but unfortunately that choice is not available to many Australian households and businesses due to a lack of local, supportive policy.”

Growth of CBD bike lanes a divisive issue for city commuters

It’s almost hard to believe that dedicated road space for bicycles sparks controversy, but he we are. Again. This opinion article concerns Melbourne’s plans, and is written by the city’s Lord Mayor, Sally Capp.

Women driving innovation in mobility and the future of transport

This is by Krishna Desai, of Cubic Transportation Systems. And it sits on LinkedIn, so a heads-up that you might need your LinkedIn logins handy to read the piece. “Mobility is a cornerstone of society that provides the means for much more than just getting to work. It gives people access to nearly every facet of life including healthcare, groceries, recreation, and more. It’s for that reason that Cubic’s mission is centred around the belief that mobility is a fundamental right for all regardless of income, gender, disability, or ethnicity. However, the important question we must ask is: was the current state of mobility designed with that same belief in mind?”

Traffic noise: It sounds ‘like gunshots … it wakes up dogs, it wakes up babies’

Peak hour traffic is noisy. “How noisy?”, you might ask. The University of New South Wales’ Dr Meead Saberi has your question covered as part of a project he carried out in Sydney.

Network traffic instability with automated driving and cooperative merging

And in part 2 of a Dr Meead Saberi quinella, this recently-published paper, as co-author along with Ziyuan Gu, Zelin Wang, and ZhiyuanLiu. “Connected and/or automated vehicles (CAVs or AVs) have been shown to dampen stop-and-go waves in mixed autonomy traffic, thus improving string stability. However, their effects on network traffic instability due to turning and merging maneuvers are less known. In this paper, we characterize such effects using the macroscopic or network fundamental diagram (MFD or NFD).

RideSpace expands to give Victorians more choice

Announced by Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews, is this expansion of real-time bus occupancy information. Listed here are the new bus routes covered, along with a link to the RideSpace website.

Hydrogen-powered airliners: Twiggy teams with Airbus in bid for net-zero travel

And we close this week with a tale of a plan for hydrogen-powered aircraft. Green hydrogen-powered aircraft apparently (side note: Like Henry Ford’s comment about the Model T, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he (2022 edit: they) wants, so long as it is black”, hydrogen ideally is only green). In this air endeavour it’s Australian magnate Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries talking to Airbus.