Traffic Impact Assessment, Diversion and Management Plan for Surat Metro Line 1, Package –CS3, Surat

Package CS3 of Metro Line 1 in Surat City includes 3 stations i.e. Surat railway station, Maskati Hospital and Chowk Bazar. As per proposed Metro plan of Surat city, this line will originate from Sarthana station and will terminate at Dream City. The length of Line 1 is 21.61KM of which 14.59km is elevated whereas 7.02km is Underground and consists of 20 Stations. This metro line envisages use of public transport system in Surat city and shall cater the present and future travel demand of the catchment area and shall also reduce load from road based transport system of the corridor. During the construction phase of any Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) running along the Right of Way (ROW) of existing roadway system, Traffic diversion and management plan implementation becomes absolute mandatory to reduce congestion, conflicts increase level of safety and ease construction process. Similarly, for package CS3 of Surat Metro line 1, there is need of preparing an implementing Traffic Diversion and Management plan to create a synergy amongst construction activities, traffic flow, safety of pedestrian and construction worker with minimal impact on surrounding catchment. This study shall provide Traffic diversion and management plan which may help to cater the existing traffic and stir them in a smooth and non-congested flow with the help of signage’s, road markings, etc.

Railway ground vibration and mitigation measures: benchmarking of best practices

Vibration and noise aspects play a relevant role in the lifetime and comfort of urban areas and their residents. Among the different sources, the one coming from the rail transit system will play a central concern in the following years due to its sustainability. Ground-borne vibration and noise assessment as well as techniques to mitigate them become key elements of the environmental impact and the global enlargement planned for the railway industry. This paper aims to describe and compare the different mitigation systems existing and reported in literature through a comprehensive state of the art analysis providing the performance of each measure. First, an introduction to the ground-borne vibration and noise generated from the wheel-rail contact and its propagation through the transmission path is presented. Then, the impact and the different ways of evaluating and assessing these effects are presented, and the insertion loss indicator is introduced. Next, the different mitigation measures at different levels (vehicle, track, transmission path and receiver) are discussed by describing their possible application and their efficiency in terms of insertion loss. Finally, a summary with inputs of how it is possible to address the future of mitigation systems is reported.

Activity of vehicles in the bus rapid transit system Metrobús in Mexico City

In this paper, we analyze a massive dataset with registers of the movement of vehicles in the bus rapid transit system Metrobús in Mexico City from February 2020 to April 2021. With these records and a division of the system into 214 geographical regions (segments), we characterize the vehicles’ activity through the statistical analysis of speeds in each zone. We use the Kullback–Leibler distance to compare the movement of vehicles in each segment and its evolution. The results for the dynamics in different zones are represented as a network where nodes define segments of the system Metrobús and edges describe similarity in the activity of vehicles. Community detection algorithms in this network allow the identification of patterns considering different levels of similarity in the distribution of speeds providing a framework for unsupervised classification of the movement of vehicles. The methods developed in this research are general and can be implemented to describe the activity of different transportation systems with detailed records of the movement of users or vehicles.

Passenger Behavior Simulation in Congested Urban Rail Transit System: A Capacity-Limited Optimal Strategy Model for Passenger Assignment

Optimal strategy, one of the main transit assignment models, can better demonstrate the flexibility for passengers using routes in a transit network. According to the basic optimal strategy model, passengers can board trains based on their frequency without any capacity limitation. In the metropolitan cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, morning commuters face huge transit problems. Especially for the metro system, there is heavy rush in metro stations. Owing to the limited train capacity, some passengers cannot board the first coming train and need to wait for the next one. To better demonstrate the behavior of passengers pertaining to the limited train capacity, we consider capacity constraints for the basic optimal strategy model to represent the real situation. We have proposed a simulation-based algorithm to solve the model and apply it to the Beijing Subway to demonstrate the feasibility of the model. The application of the proposed approach has been demonstrated using the computational results for transit networks originating from practice.

The equity implications of TOD in Curitiba

In this paper we analyze how socio-spatial inequalities have been shaped by transport and land-use planning in Curitiba (Brazil), a city internationally recognized for its Transit Oriented Development (TOD) planning based on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). We examine how the spatial organization of the BRT system is associated with the distribution of population densities, socioeconomic groups, and real-estate values and its implications in terms of inequalities of access to employment and health services. The results show that Curitiba's TOD has had limited influence on population densities, but has shaped the concentration of high-income classes and premium real-estate along its main BRT corridors. These effects contribute to the peripheralization of low-income communities with limited accessibility benefits from the transit system. Our findings suggest that Curitiba’s success story should be seen as a cautionary tale about the consequences of TOD planning, which perpetuate the spatial concentration of resources and reinforce inequalities of access to opportunities.

Understanding Gender, Income and Travel Behavior in Casablanca City – Morocco

Objective: The purpose of this paper is to extend the research on gendered differences in travel behavior in developing countries by analyzing travel behavior variability within as well as across gender and income groups in the case of Casablanca city. Methods: Data from the 2018 Casablanca Travel Survey show that overall, women are less mobile than men, make fewer work-related trips and more household maintenance trips, but these differences are heterogeneously distributed across income groups. With the increase in income, women tend to carry out more trips than men; the inverse is observed for the middle- and low-income categories. Results: While for the lowest income groups, walking is the most predominant mode for both men and women, we notice that the private car has the highest modal share within the highest income groups as with the increase in household income, both genders avoid non-motorized transport modes. The particular status of women in some households as breadwinners and reproducers as well as the socio-cultural context of the city shape their mobility and the choice of their activities. Conclusion: Hence, these findings suggest, from a policy perspective, that the public transit system along with spatial planning strategies need to be improved to help overcome women's mobility constraints, especially when they belong to low-income households so they can fully access the city amenities and opportunities. On the other hand, transport policies need to be not only gender-sensitive but also “vulnerable groups” sensitive as mobility impediments are similarly experienced by males and females in some contexts.

Selection of the Key Segment Position for Trapezoidal Tapered Rings and Calculation of the Range of Jack Stroke Differences with a Predetermined Key Segment Position

It is generally accepted that selecting the key segment position for trapezoidal tapered rings and controlling the shield machine advancement are challenging tasks for shield tunneling projects. In this work, we propose a method for calculating the key segment position based on the shield tail gap, jack stroke difference, and lining trend. To calculate all possible key segment positions other than that corresponding to the straight joint configuration, the shield tail gap that remains after segment assembly and the jack stroke difference corresponding to the advancement of the segmental lining and lining trend were computed; then, values and importance coefficients were assigned to these factors according to current operating conditions. To ensure that the segmental lining can be assembled successfully with the calculated key position, we established a model to calculate the change in the shield tail gap before and after shield machine advancement based on the spatial relationships of the shield machine, the currently installed segmental rings, and the segment to be installed. Further, we propose a method for calculating the range of jack stroke differences when the predetermined “permitted shield tail gap” and key position are provided. The method is based on the change in the shield tail gap calculated with the above model and the positional relationship between the shield machine’s actual axis and the designed tunnel axis after the current segmental ring has been assembled. The calculated range of jack stroke differences may then be used to control the advancement of the shield machine. We validated the viability of our methods by using the data of Phase 1 works on Line 2 of the Ningbo Rail Transit system.