Evaluating the Impacts of Optimization Horizon on the Shared Autonomous Vehicle Reservation Request System

With the development of technology, shared autonomous vehicles may become one of the main traffic modes in the future. Especially, shared autonomous vehicle reservation system, commuting, and other trips with fixed departure time mostly submit their travel requests in advance. Therefore, it is important to reasonably match shared autonomous vehicles and reservation demands. In this paper, reservation requests are divided into short-term and long-term requests by inputting requests in a more realistic way. An integer linear programming model considering operator scheduling cost and system service level is established. A detailed scheme considering rolling horizon continuity and ridesharing is used to improve the dispatching result. Based on traffic data in Delft, the Netherlands, 164 scenarios are tested in which the parking cost, fuel cost, ridesharing effect, service level, and network size are analyzed. The results show that a better relocation and ridesharing matching scheme can be obtained when the rolling horizon is small, while the overall effect is better when the rolling horizon is large. Moreover, the buffer time, distance, and travel time limit for vehicle relocation should be selected according to the request quantity and the calculation time requirement. The result can provide a suggestion for the dispatching of shared autonomous vehicle reservation system with ridesharing.

Structure Optimization of Mixed-Speed Train Traffic for Cyclic Timetable: Model and Algorithm Development

Trains can be optimally spread over the period of the cyclic timetable. By integrating sequencing issue with headway time together, this paper studies the structure optimization of mixed-speed train traffic for a cyclic timetable. Firstly, by taking it as a job-shop problem with sequence-dependent setup times on one machine, in the type of infinite capacity resource with headway (ICR + H), the problem is transformed to alternative graph (AG) and then recast to the mixed-speed train traffic planning (MSTTP) model. For the multiobjective in MSTTP, three indicators are optimized, i.e., heterogeneity, cycle time, and buffer time, which correspond to diversity of train service toward passenger, capacity consumption of rail network, and stability of train operation, respectively. Secondly, the random-key genetic algorithm (RKGA) is proposed to tackle the sequence and headway simultaneously. Finally, RKGA is coded with visual studio C# and the proposed method is validated with a case study. The rail system considered is a line section encompassing a territory of 180 km with 15 mixed-speed trains in each cycle of the timetable. Results indicate the comprehensively balanced train plan for all stakeholders from random variations of train sequence and headway time. Both the quantitative proportion of heterogeneity/homogeneity (e.g., 2.5) about the optimized distribution of the mixed train traffic and the link between train headway time and the sequence for each traffic scenario are found. All the findings can be used to arrange the mixed-speed train traffic more scientifically.

Method for Designing Robust and Energy Efficient Railway Schedules

The robustness of the timetable is a sensitive issue in the daily realization of railway operations. As shown in the paper, robustness is a function of time reserves that helps to prevent unscheduled stops resulting from traffic disruptions and causing a higher energy consumption. The correct handling of time reserves while scheduling is a multidimensional issue, and it has a significant influence on the energy consumption of railway traffic. Therefore, the paper aims to show a simulation-based method, taking into account failure occurring probabilities and their consequences to get an acceptable level of robustness, that can be quantified by the probability of no delay propagation. This paper presents a method for the addition of time margins to the railway timetable. The iterative time buffer adding method is based on operational data as a knowledge source, to achieve the punctuality target. It was verified on a real railway line. An analysis of energy consumption for unscheduled train stops depending on the added buffer time was conducted after the literature review and the presentation of the evaluation model. The paper ends with discussion of the results and conclusions.

Dynamic recovery actions in multi-objective liner shipping service with buffer times

This paper investigates the dynamic recovery policies for liner shipping service with the consideration of buffer time allocation and uncertainties. We aim to allocate the buffer time at the tactical level and then determine the optimal policy, including speed optimization strategy, port skipping and acceleration rate choice, for recovering from disruptions due to various uncertainties or random adverse events, which cause vessel delays. To achieve this, we attempt to obtain the optimal balance among economic, environmental and service-reliable objectives. A novel mathematical formulation is introduced to solve the robust vessel scheduling problem with short- and long-term decisions. Furthermore, we propose and test two heuristics to solve the proposed model. Experiments on the container liner shipping service show the validity of the model and some managerial insights are gained from them.

Study of Passive Protective Net Protecting the Rockfall Caused by Open-Pit Blasting on High and Steep Slope

In order to prevent rockfall caused by open-pit blasting on the high and steep slope and ensure that the passive protective net structure has sufficient impact resistance, the mechanism of blasting flyrock causing rockfall is analyzed by using ANSYS/AUTODYN to establish the model of rockfall and passive protective net; at the same time, the influences of protective net size, rockfall kinetic energy, and rockfall size to the protective effect were also studied. The results show that under the condition of the same rockfall kinetic energy and rockfall size, the larger the size of the protective net, the longer the buffer time, and the impact force that net can sustain is greater; by assuming the protective net size and rockfall size to be a constant, the greater the rockfall kinetic energy, the less the interaction time between rock and net, and the greater the impulse force that net can suffer; similarly, by keeping the protective net size and the kinetic energy of rockfall to be a constant, it is found that the larger the size of the rockfall, the larger the interaction area and longer interaction time with the net, and the less net will be disrupted; the protective net used in the mine can intercept the rockfall caused by flyrock in blasting process effectively and ensure the safety of villager at the foot of the mountain.

Empirical Analysis for Measuring Travel Time Reliability on Road Network

This research analyses the characteristics of travel time reliability for the road network in Kota Bandar Lampung. Therefore, travel time consists of access, wait and interchange time, while its reliability deals with variations of in-passenger/private cars time. Survey of travel time on each road was carried out for 12 hours (from 06.00 to 18.00) for five working days. Furthermore, the buffer time method was used to measure the characteristics of time travel reliability consisting of five measuring tools, namely planning time, planning time index, buffer time, buffer time index and travel time index. This research found that the temporal effects are the main factor that tends to affect travel time, whereas network effects are the second factor that tends to affect travel time. Furthermore, the regression equation was developed to express the effect of planning time (TPlan) and free-flow travel time on average travel time .

A Robust Expected Makespan for Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Depending on Machine Failure Rate

The environment of Flow Shop Scheduling Problems (FSSPs) to minimize the makespan of n jobs that have to be performed on m machines is considered. In real-world manufacturing systems nowadays, the uncertain circumstances to execute these jobs have an essential effect on the final scheduling scheme. This paper puts forward an integrated optimization heuristics that combine two distinct factors in flow shop scheduling. These factors are the variation in the processing times and the machine's reliability (machine failure rate), which must be considered to obtain optimal scheduling under stochastic assumptions. Two new approaches have been proposed in this work to achieve a robust expected makespan in the stochastic environment. The procedure is to add buffer time depending on the machine failure rate. Hence, the first procedure is to add buffer time to each operation in the mission according to the reliability of all machines (system reliability). The second one is to add buffer time to each operation depending on the reliability of each machine (machine reliability). For solving this problem with consideration to minimizing the expected makespan and maximizing the robustness simultaneously, the well-known (NEH) heuristic is implemented to schedule a set of jobs. Computational simulations are carried out with some well-studied problems taken from the OR-Library. Experimental results show that the proposed methods provide robust and efficient solutions. Moreover, the effects of some parameters on the optimization performance are discussed.

TRAVEL TIME RELIABILITY INDICES FOR URBAN ROUTES IN BAGHDAD CITY

Reliability is one of the main metrics of transport system efficiency and quality of service. For both travelers and transport management organizations, the high variance of road travel times has become a problem. Reliability has been identified as one of the main areas of interest of the Strategic Highway Research Plan II. In order to evaluate congestion and unexpected changes in travel time, reliability metrics are increasingly used. GPS devices provide for exact assessment of travel time for each connection along the routes used for this research. (14 Ramadan arterial street, Al-Karada arterial street and Damascus arterial street). A GPS-equipped instrumented car was used to gather 50 test runs at peak and off peak times. At peak and off peak hours, 50 test runs were obtained using a GPS-equipped instrumented car. Raising the buffer time index results in inferior conditions for reliability. A buffer index of AL- Karada street was created about 53% and 30% for Damascus street and finally for 14 Ramadan street which present a 29% buffer index for north direction. As for its southern direction 14 Ramadan street created a buffer index of about 65% and 33% for AL- Karada street and finally for Damascus street which present a 29% buffer index. In addition, travel time index for (14 Ramadan street, AL- Karada street and Damascus street) respectively is about 2.8 %, 3.3% and 2.6% for north direction, as for its southern direction the travel time index is obtained for (14 Ramadan street, AL- Karada street and Damascus street) respectively were a 3%,3.7%, and 2.5%. Finally, the 95% percentile travel time for observed three selected routes in this study, the extra delay was felt on each route (1627, 2212, and 1192) sec. for (14 Ramadan street, AL- Karada street and Damascus street) for north direction, as for its southern direction the extra delay that perceived on each route (2221, 2132, and 975) sec. for (14 Ramadan street, AL- Karada street and Damascus street) respectively.

A Comparative Analysis of Delay Propagation on Departure and Arrival Flights for a Chinese Case Study

In recent years, flight delay costs the air transportation industry millions of dollars and has become a systematic problem. Understanding the behavior of flight delay is thus critical. This paper focuses on how flight delay is affected by operation-, time-, and weather-related factors. Different econometric models are developed to analyze departure and arrival delay. The results show that compared to departure delay, arrival delay is more likely to be affected by previous delays and the buffer effect. Block buffer presents a reduction effect seven times greater than turnaround buffer in terms of flight delays. Departure flights suffer more delays from convective weather than arrival flights. Convective weather at the destination airport for flight delay has a greater impact than at the original airport. In addition, sensitivity analysis of flight delays from an aircraft utilization perspective is conducted. We find that the effect of delay propagation on flight delay differs by aircraft utilization. This impact on departure delay is greater than the impact on arrival delay. In general, specific to the order of flights, the previous delay increases the impact on flight on-time performance as a flight flies a later leg. Buffer time has opposite effects on departure and arrival delay, with the order increasing. A decrease in buffer time with the order increasing, however, still has a greater reduction effect on departure delay than arrival delay. Specific to the number of flights operated by an aircraft, the more flights an aircraft flies in a day, the more the on-time performance of those flights will suffer from the previous delay and buffer time generally.