Environmentally-friendly electric vehicles: a silent menace to vulnerable road users?

Prediction models have been extensively used in the field of road safety, however, none of these models have been particularly applied to zero-emission electric vehicle (EV) related injuries so far; which may lead to different outcomes due to their inaudible engines. Using an optimizable classification tree, this first-ever study aims to predict the likelihood of personal injury severities stemming from EV-related crashes on Britain's roads. The prediction model was found to be capable of detecting significant and insignificant factors. The factors provide important insights into how the severity of injuries can be reduced in the future deployment of EVs. Although there was an increased risk for injuries classified as ‘slight severity’, particularly at lower urban speed limits, several predictors are suggesting that EVs do not pose more of a risk to a certain group. Contrary to popular belief, no convincing evidence has been found to suggest that eco-friendly EVs are ‘silent killers’ for vulnerable road users.

Freight Distribution Analysis and Modelling of Inland Waterway Transport along the Yangtze River Economic Belt using Big Data

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) serves as the main east-west axis of China to promote economic development and environmental protection along the Yangtze River. This paper analyses the factors that affect the freight distribution of major types of cargo transported through the Yangtze River, using data from the automatic identification system (AIS) and ship visa data. First, a set of freight impedance functions are developed for different types of links of the waterway network, by considering a number of factors such as cargo types, delays at ship locks, water levels and flows at different waterway segments and upstream and downstream shipping speeds. Both the distance- and time-based impedance matrices of different types of cargo are computed, respectively. After that, gravity model (GM) and intervening opportunity model (IOM) are estimated to simulate the distribution of different types of cargo based on the computed impedance matrices. Meanwhile, a trip length distribution (TLD) method is applied to validate the estimated distribution models. The results indicate that GM with a power term outperforms other models, and the time-based models are superior to the distance-based ones for the prediction of freight distributions over large geographies like the YREB. This work offers an in-depth understanding of the freight characteristics of inland waterways and therefore it should be helpful for relevant authorities in formulating their port and inland waterway plans and policies.

Full-scale Test on Emergency Repair Pavement under Airplane Loading

In order to reveal structural response law of emergency repair pavement under the airplane loading and verify the backfill material and structural applicability, two craters (Crater 1 composed of 2.4 m thick flying objects (FO) + 0.4 m thick graded crushed rocks (GCR) + 0.2 m thick roller compacted concrete + fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) course, and Crater 2 composed of 2.4 m thick FO + 0.6 m thick GCR + FRP course) were backfilled. Static and dynamic loads were applied using two airplanes. Results show that, laying FRP pavement layers reduced the maximum deflection of Crater 2 by 21%. Crater 1 and concrete pavement were both slightly rigid structures with a strong load transfer ability. The dynamic deflection basin curves of Crater 2 could be fit using a Gaussian function; while the curves of Crater 1 and concrete pavement could be fit using a quartic polynomial. Under static loading, the earth pressures of Crater 2 at −0.6 m, −0.4 m, and −0.2 m sites were 4.3, 9, and 9.6 times of those of Crater 1, respectively. At the −0.2 m site, the earth pressure of Crater 1 was 0.11 MPa, while that of Crater 2 reached 1.06 MPa. The research results can guide the rapid quality inspection and optimization design of emergency repair pavement structure and material.

Review of the Land Use Variables Affecting the Transportation Behaviour, Review paper

The aim of this paper is to review research conducting the impact of land use variables on the travel behaviour. It is focused on the density as an important measure of land use that reflects the interaction with the transportation system. The effect of density has been addressed years ago; therefore, papers have been published since 1960s were reviewed in this paper. These papers are classified into two groups according to the most common measure of the density and the most common variables of the travel behaviour considered in these researches. The first group contains about 26 papers published before 2000 while the second group contains about 45 papers published after 2000. It has been noticed that the population density is the main term of density used in the first group while the employment density and the configuration of densities are integrated as measures in the papers published after 2000. The direct relationship with mode choice and travel length has been approved. However, there are some gaps are identified in the discussion and conclusion sections, such as the effect on the trip production rate, the type of trips according to its purposes, internal and external, and weekdays and weekend.