Assignment of Freight Truck Shipment on the U.S. Highway Network

With the ever-increasing demand for freight movements, nationwide freight shipments between geographical regions by freight trucks need to be investigated since they comprise the largest share of total freight movements in the United States. To this end, the procedures for freight truck shipment demand network assignment on the entire U.S. highway network considering congestion effect are discussed, and the results are explained in detail, with visual illustrations. A fundamental traffic assignment model with a convex combinations algorithm is proposed to solve the nationwide freight truck shipment assignment problem under the user equilibrium principle. A link cost function is modified, considering the traffic volume that already exists on U.S. highways. A case study is conducted using big data including the entire U.S. highway network and freight shipment information in 2007. Total and average freight shipment costs for both truck and rail transportation for a specific origin–destination pair in the database are computed to compare the characteristics of these two major freight transportation modes in the United States. Application of the proposed model could be possible to address many other related problems, such as improvement of highway infrastructure, and reductions in traffic congestion and vehicle emissions.

Equilibrium Inefficiency and Computation in Cost-Sharing Games in Real-Time Scheduling Systems

We study cost-sharing games in real-time scheduling systems where the server’s activation cost in every time slot is a function of its load. We focus on monomial cost functions and consider both the case when the degree is less than one (inducing positive congestion effect for the jobs) and when it is greater than one (inducing negative congestion effect for the jobs). For the former case, we provide tight bounds on the price of anarchy, and show that the price of anarchy grows to infinity as a polynomial of the number of jobs in the game. For the latter, we observe that existing results provide constant and tight (asymptotically in the degree of the monomial) bounds on the price of anarchy. We then turn to analyze payment mechanism with arbitrary cost-sharing, that is, when the strategy of a player includes also its payment. We show that our mechanism reduces the price of anarchy of games with n jobs and unit server costs from Θ(n) to 2. We also show that, for a restricted class of instances, a similar improvement is achieved for monomial server costs. This is not the case, however, for unrestricted instances of monomial costs, for which we prove that the price of anarchy remains super-constant for our mechanism. For systems with load-independent activation costs, we show that our mechanism can produce an optimal solution which is stable against coordinated deviations.

Assessing Urban Road Network Capacity considering Parking Supply and Parking Pricing

To enhance the assessment of the network capacity for a given urban road system, the effects of the parking management strategies at destination areas are supposed to be considered in the network capacity assessment model. This study provides an extended road network capacity model which takes into consideration both the parking supply and parking pricing at each traffic zone. The network capacity model is formulated as a bilevel programming problem, with the maximization of total trip generation in the upper level and the combined trip distribution and traffic assignment (CTDTA) problem in the lower level. To reasonably characterize the impacts of the parking pricing and parking delay due to the congestion effect, two classes of travel demand are involved in the CTDTA model. An efficient and practical algorithm is provided for the solution of the bilevel network capacity model. Numerical experiments show the advantages of the proposed model and also demonstrate the effect of the parking supply and parking pricing on the assessment results of the road network capacity.

Habit Formation, Public Capital Congestion Effect and Economic Growth

This paper constructs an endogenous growth model including habit formation and public capital congestioneffect, and analyzes the influence of fiscal policy and public capital congestion effect on economic growth under theframework of habit formation. It is found that under decentralized economy, there exists a unique equilibrium growthrate, and the growth rate increases with the improvement of private production efficiency, public capital productionefficiency and the reduction of public capital congestion effect. The influence of habit-forming parameters on theequilibrium growth rate depends on the relative risk aversion coefficient. In the social arrangement economy, habitformation and public capital jointly determine the problem of multiple equilibrium, similarly, the increase of publiccapital congestion effect will also reduce the equilibrium economic growth rate.

Congestion Management and Transmission Line Loss Reduction using TCSC and Market Split Based

Due to increasing power demand in a deregulated power system, the stability of the power system may get affected and sometimes it may also cause congestion in the transmission lines of power networks. It is a major issue for a deregulated power system and its management provides a competition environment to different market players. In this paper, market split based approach is used to tackle the problem of congestion which split the system into zones. Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP) method is used to access the prices at different buses. The objective is to minimize the congestion effect. DC optimal power flow based system is used to solve such type of problem. TCSC (Thyristor-Controlled Series Compensation), FACTS (Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System) device is used to reduce the losses in a transmission system. Market splitting based approach is effective to manage the prices at different buses and system stability is increased by using TCSC. The whole work is carried out on IEEE 14 bus system.

Port’s Role as a Determinant of Cruise Destination Socio-Economic Sustainability

This article argues that the cruise terminal ports play a crucial role in the economic and socio-cultural sustainability of destinations, bridging the onshore tourism offered among cruise companies, global operators, and local business and infrastructures. They support the promotion of local brands and reduce congestion. The impact of crowds on the identity of coastal cities triggered the attention of academia and media, alerting for their negative impact, specifically from the Mediterranean cruises. In parallel, it raised the research interest on cruise tourism carrying capacity and ports planning the integration of cruise tourists’ flow. However, previous studies focused on the residents’ and passengers’ perception of a specific destination, neglecting the port management role. This study aims to clarify the underneath dynamics that allow sustainable cruise–land visit. Employing a qualitative case study approach, it compares data obtained from secondary sources and port executives’ structured deep interviews from two leading transit ports connected with the Mediterranean. Lisbon is amongst the most popular tourism destinations and international cruise terminals; Livorno is a gateway port to Tuscany, mainly Florence and Pisa. Despite their different patterns, in both ports of call, a strong concern with sustainability and a reduced congestion effect are observed from the management actions on promoting the local offer and on revitalizing the terminal infrastructures in order to provide comfort shopping and entertainment amenities to passengers.

Level of Service of Roads in Vijayawada

One of the most challenging problems in city management in a developing city like Vijayawada is Traffic Congestion. Being a part of the proposed capital city of Andhra Pradesh Amaravati, the vehicular population in Vijayawada as recorded the tremendous growth. With increase of Vehicular population (2015) as 3.32% of Transport vehicles and 7.97% of Non-Transport vehicles (as of data.gov.in) it has now became an alarming issue to develop the demand based transportation infrastructure. The traffic congestion not only disrupts the business activities but also reduces productivity level of the city. The traffic congestion, effect the increase in possibility of accidents because of weak traffic management in the city. So it is now very essential to give the solution to ill effects of traffic congestion in Vijayawada. This paper describes the traffic congestion problem for the busiest roads of the Vijayawada city i.e.., Eluru and Bandar road. The traffic congestion of these roads is determined by the level of service of the arterial roads (LOS) through Average speed, Traffic volume and Traffic Capacity. Also the topological features of the city and solution to the problems triggering traffic congestion are suggested