A Survey on Formal Specification and Verification of Smart Mass Transit Railway Interlocking System

Nowadays interest in Smart Mass Transit Rail has grown-up to a large extent in a metropolitan area as the need for urban mobility has increased steadily. The reliability of software being used in such mass transit rail is crucial for us, specifically when software crashes may lead to catastrophic loss of human life and assets. For example, when we travel by metro it is essential for us that the interlocking system software controlling the metros are accurate so collisions and derailment are prevented. The reliability and safety of such interlocking systems are made on the precise functional requirements specification and verification respectively. Therefore, the precise functional requirements specification and verification of such interlocking systems represent a challenge in an active research area, so in this paper, we survey various articles in this field and discuss their consequences.

Chasing the city that cannot stop: Exploring transportation and urban co-development in São Paulo’s history

We present a historical analysis of transportation and urban development in São Paulo (Brazil), attempting to discern Granger causal effects using historical land-use and transportation data from 1881 to 2013. Our results align with the hypothesis commonly stated in the literature about the relevance of road transportation in São Paulo’s peripheral urban expansion during the twentieth century. We find, however, more complex relationships, and changes in them, over time. Over the entire 130 years, we find that urban expansion and road development pushed and pulled each other, in a somewhat “orderly” way. On the other hand, while roads are not linked to densification, we find that mass transit infrastructure did lead to building densification. Distinguishing among distinct periods adds further insights. Examining São Paulo’s “streetcar era” we find joint development of streetcar lines and urban expansion – evidence of joint development consistent with “streetcar suburbs.” Streetcars also led to building densification during this early period. In subsequent decades, up until the mid-1970s, mass transit investments are virtually non-existent and road transportation essentially chases urban expansion, not vice versa. Finally, the last four decades reveal a return to “orderly” patterns of road expansion and urbanization but no evidence of mass transit infrastructure’s effects on urbanization or densification. The analysis illustrates how transportation investment choices have important consequences for urban growth, exerting long-lasting influences on its urban form.

Room to Breathe: Designing a framework for medium density housing in Ōtautahi-Christchurch

<p><b>Ōtautahi-Christchurch faces the future in an enviable position. Compared to other New Zealand cities Christchurch has lower housing costs, less congestion, and a brand-new central city emerging from the rubble of the 2011 earthquakes. ‘Room to Breathe: designing a framework for medium density housing (MDH) in Ōtautahi-Christchurch’ seeks to answer the timely question how can medium density housing assist Ōtautahi-Christchurch to respond to growth in a way that supports a well-functioning urban environment? Using research by design, the argument is made that MDH can be used to support a safe, accessible, and connected urban environment that fosters community, while retaining a level of privacy. This is achieved through designing a neighbourhood concept addressing 3 morphological scales- macro- the city; meso- the neighbourhood; and micro- the home and street. The scales are used to inform a design framework for MDH specific to Ōtautahi-Christchurch, presenting a typological concept that takes full advantage of the benefits higher density living has to offer.</b></p> <p>Room to Breathe proposes repurposing underutilised areas surrounding existing mass transit infrastructure to provide a concentrated populous who do not solely rely on private vehicles for transport. By considering all morphological scales Room to Breathe provides one suggestion on how MDH could become accepted as part of a well-functioning urban environment.</p>

Room to Breathe: Designing a framework for medium density housing in Ōtautahi-Christchurch

<p><b>Ōtautahi-Christchurch faces the future in an enviable position. Compared to other New Zealand cities Christchurch has lower housing costs, less congestion, and a brand-new central city emerging from the rubble of the 2011 earthquakes. ‘Room to Breathe: designing a framework for medium density housing (MDH) in Ōtautahi-Christchurch’ seeks to answer the timely question how can medium density housing assist Ōtautahi-Christchurch to respond to growth in a way that supports a well-functioning urban environment? Using research by design, the argument is made that MDH can be used to support a safe, accessible, and connected urban environment that fosters community, while retaining a level of privacy. This is achieved through designing a neighbourhood concept addressing 3 morphological scales- macro- the city; meso- the neighbourhood; and micro- the home and street. The scales are used to inform a design framework for MDH specific to Ōtautahi-Christchurch, presenting a typological concept that takes full advantage of the benefits higher density living has to offer.</b></p> <p>Room to Breathe proposes repurposing underutilised areas surrounding existing mass transit infrastructure to provide a concentrated populous who do not solely rely on private vehicles for transport. By considering all morphological scales Room to Breathe provides one suggestion on how MDH could become accepted as part of a well-functioning urban environment.</p>

Hydrogen as a Rail Mass Transit Fuel

There is a continually growing need for mass transport and along with customer desire for greater comfort and speed, its consumption of energy will grow faster still. The fiscal cost of energy plus global warming has spurred efficiency improvement and thoughts now concentrate on fuels. In the UK for major lines for trains, this is electricity generated in a benign fashion in large facilities nominally remote from the train and track. Electric trains tend to be lighter, hence more efficient and demand less maintenance than their diesel counterpart. Similar arguments, including pollution emissions apply to city mass transit systems. For medium density and lower density routes, whether fuel cells or the next generation of IC or GT engines are employed, hydrogen is a prime energy candidate and here we examine its feed, production, distribution, and application, including generator location. Hydrogen from steam hydrocarbon reformers have even been installed in ships. Other countries have similar desires to those of the UK, including Saudi Arabia, but their problems are different and outline examples from Australia and Saudi Arabia are included.

AN EXAMINATION OF FACTORS LEADING TO THE COLLAPSE OF PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN GHANA: A CASE STUDY OF METRO MASS TRANSPORT

Tax payers money are been used every day in Ghana to establish public sector organizations. This is why the management of public sector organizations is important in sustainable development. The main objective of this study was to examine the factors leading to the collapse of Metro Mass Transit in Ghana. The study revealed literature on transportation, the role of the state in public transportation, the nature of Metro Mass Transit operations, management practice of Metro Mass Transit and challenges of the public transport system. The study purposively sampled sixty (60) respondents which comprises of 30 workers of Metro Mass Transit (10 Professional Drivers, 10 Senior Management Staff and 10 Junior Staff) and 30 passengers (comprising of 15 passengers from Metro Mass Transit, 5 passengers of OA Transport, 5 passengers of VIP Transport and 5 passengers from VISION Transport). The major findings of the study revealed that Metro Mass Transit offers scheduled trips on intercity and intra city route but does not offer quality transport services as private transport like OA, VIP and VISION does in Accra. The study also found out that passengers prefer private transport more to Metro Mass Transit because the workers have good communication skills as compared to the workers of Metro Mass Transit in Accra, Metro Mass Transit officials have inefficient managerial skills and therefore can’t meet the demands of their customers, Metro Mass Transit have inadequate operation buses, there is frequent breaking of Metro Mass Transit vehicles. The study recommends that the management of Metro Mass Transit should make proper use of Public Private Partnership. This can help in securing more buses to boost their operations. The study also recommends that the management of Metro Mass Transit should work on improving their management practices to enhance performance in other to meet the demand of their customers. Again the management of Metro Mass Transit should ensure that there is frequent maintenance of vehicles to enhance effective operations and also management must also try to maintain an optimum level of providing good communication and effective managerial skills in order to improve its operations. Keywords: Factors, Collapse, Public Sector Organizations, Metro Mass Transport, Ghana.

A Joint Passenger Flow Inference and Path Recommender System for Deploying New Routes and Stations of Mass Transit Transportation

In this work, a novel decision assistant system for urban transportation, called Route Scheme Assistant (RSA), is proposed to address two crucial issues that few former researches have focused on: route-based passenger flow (PF) inference and multivariant high-PF route recommendation. First, RSA can estimate the PF of arbitrary user-designated routes effectively by utilizing Deep Neural Network (DNN) for regression based on geographical information and spatial-temporal urban informatics. Second, our proposed Bidirectional Prioritized Spanning Tree (BDPST) intelligently combines the parallel computing concept and Gaussian mixture model (GMM) for route recommendation under users’ constraints running in a timely manner. We did experiments on bus-ticket data of Tainan and Chicago and the experimental results show that the PF inference model outperforms baseline and comparative methods from 41% to 57%. Moreover, the proposed BDPST algorithm's performance is not far away from the optimal PF and outperforms other comparative methods from 39% to 71% in large-scale route recommendations.