| 1. |
- Brundell-Freij, Karin, et al.
(författare)
-
Accepting charging : a matter of trusting the effects?
- 2009
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The public typically considers urban congestion to be a serious problem. In the scientific community it is considered basic knowledge that pricing is often the only effective way to mitigate such congestion. However, implementation of congestion charging continues to meet hard resistance from the public, and politicians continue to rule out that policy option referring to lack of public acceptance. Many authors have explained the paradox by the public?s (layman) suspicion that charging would not be effective and not reduce congestion. From a number of implemented schemes, we also know that once they have experience from (the effects of) charging, the public tend to change to more positive, which seems to support the hypothesis that lack of experience and erroneous subjective predictions of effects causes ?the problem?.To analyse the hypothesized causal link this study explores how the (i)attitudes towards congestion charging in Stockholm and (ii)the expectancy/understanding of the effects of charging (co-)varied over time and between individuals in the Stockholm public during different phases of the implementation process: before (autumn 2005) and during the Trial (spring 2006), and after permanent introduction of charging (autumn 2007).For the analyses, we have employed ordinal logit models. This allows us to draw conclusions on the simultaneous relation(s) between acceptance on one hand and individual background characteristics, personal experience and understanding of effects on the other. One of the many advantages with the analytical approach employed is that it allows us to control for, for example, car ownership in the analyses of gender differences in attitudes and predicted effects ? which has given new insights compared to the one-dimensional analyses presented earlier.A brief summary of results: The differences between men and women in attitudes and understanding of congestion charging are negligible when difference in car availability is taken into account. The frequently discussed difference between inner city inhabitants and people living in the regional periphery, too, turns out to be largely explained by differences in car ownership.When experience is gained, people do indeed trust that charging mitigates congestion to a higher extent than they did before: Those that agree that ?congestion charges will decrease [have decreased] the queues to and from the inner-city? is a significantly larger proportion of the population during the Trial, than they were before. Also in accordance with previous results, the attitudes towards the charges became more positive after introduction. This was a continuous process over time, so that attitudes were more positive during the Trial than before, and even more positive after permanent introduction than they were during the Trial. However, the results clearly show that the change in attitudes was much stronger, and continued over a longer period of time, than what could be explained by the learning effect leading to a better understanding of the effects on congestion.Thus, based on our results, our understanding of which the influential factors are behind the observed effect from experience on attitudes to charging, has to be modified. The mechanisms clearly go beyond ?demonstrating? that charging may effectively mitigate congestion, which is the reason most commonly given in the literature so far.Our results have important policy implications for which arguments that can be expected to be most effective in building public acceptance for charging, and which subpopulations that are most likely to be influenced by such argumentation.
|
|
| 2. |
- Brundell-Freij, Karin, et al.
(författare)
-
Influence of street characteristics, driver category and car performance on urban driving patterns
- 2005
-
Ingår i: Transportation Research. Part D: Transport & Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 1361-9209. ; 10:3, s. 213-229
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Driving patterns (i.e., speed, acceleration and choice of gears) influence exhaust emissions and fuel consumption. The aim here is to obtain a better understanding of the variables that affect driving patterns, by determining the extent they are influenced by street characteristics and/or driver-car categories. A data set of over 14,000 driving patterns registered in actual traffic is used. The relationship between driving patterns and recorded variables is analysed. The most complete effect is found for the variables describing the street environment: occurrence and density of junctions controlled by traffic lights, speed limit, street function and type of neighbourhood. A fairly large effect is found for car performance, expressed in terms of the power-to-mass ratio. For elderly drivers, the average speed systematically decreases for all street types and stop time systematically increases on arterials. The results have implications for the assessment of environmental effects through appropriate street categorisation in emission models, as well as the possible reduction of environmental effects through better traffic planning and management, driver education and car design.
|
|
| 3. |
- Ericsson, Eva, et al.
(författare)
-
Optimizing route choice for lowest fuel consumption - Potential effects of a new driver support tool
- 2006
-
Ingår i: Transportation Research. Part C: Emerging Technologies. - : Elsevier BV. - 0968-090X. ; 14:6, s. 369-383
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Today, driver support tools intended to increase traffic safety, provide the driver with convenient information and guidance, or save time are becoming more common. However, few systems have the primary aim of reducing the environmental effects of driving. The aim of this project was to estimate the potential for reducing fuel consumption and thus the emission of CO, through a navigation system where optimization of route choice is based on the lowest total fuel consumption (instead of the traditional shortest time or distance), further the supplementary effect if such navigation support could take into account real-time information about traffic disturbance events from probe vehicles running in the street network. The analysis was based on a large database of real traffic driving patterns connected to the street network in the city of Lund, Sweden. Based on 15437 cases, the fuel consumption factor for 22 street classes, at peak and off-peak hours, was estimated for three types of cars using two mechanistic emission models. Each segment in the street network was, on a digitized map, attributed an average fuel consumption for peak and off-peak hours based on its street class and traffic flow conditions. To evaluate the potential of a fuel-saving navigation system the routes of 109 real journeys longer than 5 min were extracted from the database. Using Esri's external program ArcGIS, Arcview and the external module Network Analysis, the most fuel-economic route was extracted and compared with the original route, as well as routes extracted from criterions concerning shortest time and shortest distance. The potential for further benefit when the system employed real-time data concerning the traffic situation through 120 virtual probe vehicles running in the street network was also examined. It was found that for 46% of trips in Lund the drivers spontaneous choice of route was not the most fuel-efficient. These trips could save, on average, 8.2% fuel by using a fuel-optimized navigation system. This corresponds to a 4% fuel reduction for all journeys in Lund. Concerning the potential for real-time information from probe vehicles, it was found that the frequency of disturbed segments in Lund was very low, and thus so was the potential fuel-saving. However, a methodology is presented that structures the steps required in analyzing such a system. It is concluded that real-time traffic information has the potential for fuel-saving in more congested areas if a sufficiently large proportion of the disturbance events can be identified and reported in real-time.
|
|
| 4. |
- Häll, Carl Henrik, 1978-
(författare)
-
A Framework for Evaluation and Design of an Integrated Public Transport System
- 2006
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Operators of public transport always try to make their service as attractive as possible, to as many persons as possible and in a so cost effective way as possible. One way to make the service more attractive, especially to elderly and disabled, is to offer door-to-door transportation. The cost for the local authorities to provide this service is very high and increases every year.To better serve the needs of the population and to reduce the cost for transportation of elderly and disabled, public transportation systems are evolving towards more flexible solutions. One such flexible solution is a demand responsive service integrated with a fixed route service, together giving a form of flexible public transport system. The demand responsive service can in such a system be used to carry passengers from their origin to a transfer location to the fixed route network, and/or from the fixed route network to their destination.This thesis concerns the development of a framework for evaluation and design of such an integrated public transport service. The framework includes a geographic information system, optimization tools and simulation tools. This framework describes how these tools can be used in combination to aid the operators in the planning process of an integrated service. The thesis also presents simulations made in order to find guidelines of how an integrated service should be designed. The guidelines are intended to help operators of public transport to implement integrated services and are found by evaluating the effects on availability, travel time, cost and other service indicators for variations in the design and structure of the service.In a planning system for an integrated public transport service, individual journeys must in some way be scheduled. For this reason the thesis also presents an exact optimization model of how journeys should be scheduled in this kind of service.
|
|
| 5. |
- Kottenhoff, Karl, et al.
(författare)
-
The role of public transport for feasibility and acceptability of congestion charging - The case of Stockholm
- 2009
-
Ingår i: Transportation Research Part A. - : Elsevier BV. - 0965-8564 .- 1879-2375. ; 43:3, s. 297-305
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the Stockholm Trial, congestion charges and the expansion of public transport services were closely linked together in marketing efforts, as well as in political decisions. In this paper, we analyse the role that public transport may have played in increasing acceptability and feasibility of the scheme. We study four aspects of the relationship between charging and public transport provision: (i) the initial modal share, (ii) contribution to modal shift (iii) compensation to losers (iv) revenue hypothecation. Our analyses, based on a combination of primary and secondary data, support the hypothesis that public transport contributed to the successful implementation of congestion charging in Stockholm through all those four mechanisms.
|
|
| 6. |
- Laureshyn, Aliaksei, et al.
(författare)
-
From Speed Profile Data to Analysis of Behaviour
- 2009
-
Ingår i: IATSS Research. - 0386-1112. ; 33:2, s. 88-98
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Classification of speed profiles is necessary to allow interpretation of automatic speed measurements in terms of road user behaviour. Aggregation without considering variation in individual profile shapes easily leads to aggregation bias, while classification based on exogenous criteria runs the risk of loosing important information on behavioural (co-) variation. In this paper we test how three pattern recognition techniques (cluster analysis, supervised learning and dimension reduction) can be applied to automatically classify the shapes of speed profiles of individual vehicles into interpretable types, with a minimum of a priori assumptions. The data for the tests is obtained from an automated video analysis system and the results of automated classification are compared to the classification by a human observer done from the video. Normalisation of the speed profiles to a constant number of data points with the same spatial reference allows them to be treated as multidimensional vectors. The k-means clustering algorithm groups the vectors (profiles) based on their proximity in multidimensional space. The results are satisfactory, but still the least successful among the tested techniques. Supervised learning (nearest neighbour algorithm tested) uses a training dataset produced beforehand to assign a profile to a specific group. Manual selection of the profiles for the training dataset allows better control of the output results and the classification results are the most successful in the tests. Dimension reduction techniques decrease the amount of data representing each profile by extracting the most typical “features”, which allows for better data visualisation and simplifies the classification procedures afterwards. The singular value decomposition (SVD) used in the test performs quite satisfactorily. The general conclusion is that pattern recognition techniques perform well in automated classification of speed profiles compared to classification by a human observer. However, there are no given rules on which technique will perform best.
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
- Winslott Hiselius, Lena, et al.
(författare)
-
The development of public attitudes towards the Stockholm congestion trial
- 2009
-
Ingår i: Transportation Research. Part A: Policy & Practice. - : Elsevier BV. - 0965-8564. ; 43:3, s. 269-282
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A full-scale congestion charging trial was carried out in Stockholm the first months of 2006. Almost half of respondents in a county-wide survey stated that they changed their attitudes towards congestion charges during the trial. Most of them became more positive. An analysis of media shows that the attitudinal change in media towards the trial coincides with the attitudinal change of the public. There was no dramatic change in the proportion of articles expressing a negative view. Instead, the result indicates that the increase in positive views was driven by a shift from neutral to positive articles during the trial. In order to ascertain why the public attitudes swung, we have analysed the anticipated and perceived effects of the trial. Generally, the analysis seems to indicate that improved understanding of the type and magnitude of concrete effects was not a main driving force behind the attitudinal change. Instead, it seems that the public attitude changed because personal experience gave a new understanding of the implications of the charges for the personal well-being. This would imply that trials, generally, may be a more useful tool than information in the process of implementing 'difficult' policy measures, such as congestion charges. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
|
|
