Mobility is vital for societal wellbeing, economic growth, social inclusion, and access to essential amenities. However, the current system faces significant challenges, including environmental impact, unequal access, and safety concerns. […]@en

To escape a dangerous building emergency occupants may need to respond quickly, assess the environment, plan their actions and tackle possible problems during evacuation. In this study 147 participants were tested in an experimental evacuation design for the effects of three environmental factors (fire alarm, lighting and emergency exit signs illumination) on problem-solving abilities. The experimental evacuation scenarios consisted of: (1) fire alarm, normal lighting conditions and illuminated emergency exit signs, (2) fire alarm, dark environment and illuminated emergency exit signs and (3) fire alarm, dark environment and not illuminated emergency exit signs. The tested problem-solving abilities were the time to plan actions and number of excess moves on the Tower of London test. The main results indicate that the third experimental evacuation scenario led to a decrease of 25.9% in planning time, compared to the control scenario. Age also had a significant effect on planning time. The oldest participants took or needed on average 42 s more planning time than the youngest participants, an increase of 146.9%. Furthermore, the second and third experimental evacuation scenario led to significant more excess moves, compared to the control scenario. However, the older the participants the less excess moves they had. For gender no significant effects on problem-solving abilities were found. In addition, the relationships between problem-solving abilities and building evacuation time were investigated. Longer planning times were associated with longer evacuation times and more excess moves were associated with shorter evacuation times. Practical implications for building and safety managers are to add training in darkness or assume more evacuation time in darkness or for older aged populations in evacuation plans and drills. Future research should collect more quantitative data about effects of various environmental factors and personal characteristics, such as problem-solving styles, age and gender, on building evacuation behaviour.@en

This study proposes a general framework to investigate car-following heterogeneity and its impacts on traffic safety and sustainability. The framework incorporates rigorous driving style classification using a semi-supervised learning technique and a micro-simulation process that includes 66 fine-grained traffic scenarios exhibiting varying degrees of heterogeneity. Validated using two distinct real-world datasets reveals the superiority of S3VM-based classifiers over traditional SVM classifiers in driving style classification. Simulation results show that an increase in driving aggressiveness is correlated with higher safety issues and greater environmental impacts. Further elucidation of these impacts from the mechanism of underlying characteristics of driving behaviour and traffic flow dynamics indicates that less aggressive drivers can lead to the formation of vehicular platoons, thereby encouraging more aggressive drivers to adopt a milder driving style. Importantly, the formation of these platoons is influenced by both the proportion and spatial distribution of less aggressive vehicles. The proposed approach promises advantages in reducing the negative impacts of driving heterogeneity, thus benefiting Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) by improving traffic safety and sustainability.

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To promote urban sustainability, many cities are adopting bicycle-friendly policies, leveraging GPS trajectories as a vital data source. However, the inherent errors in GPS data necessitate a critical preprocessing step known as map-matching. Due to GPS device malfunction, road network ambiguity for cyclists, and inaccuracies in publicly accessible streetmaps, existing map-matching methods face challenges in accurately selecting the best-mapped route. In urban settings, these challenges are exacerbated by high buildings, which tend to attenuate GPS accuracy, and by the increased complexity of the road network. To resolve this issue, this work introduces a map-matching method tailored for cycling travel data in urban areas. The approach introduces two main innovations: a reliable classification of road availability for cyclists, with a particular focus on the main road network, and an extended multi-objective map-matching scoring system. This system integrates penalty, geometric, topology, and temporal scores to optimize the selection of mapped road segments, collectively forming a complete route. Rotterdam, the second-largest city in the Netherlands, is selected as the case study city, and real-world data is used for method implementation and evaluation. Hundred trajectories were manually labelled to assess the model performance and its sensitivity to parameter settings, GPS sampling interval, and travel time. The method is able to unveil variations in cyclist travel behavior, providing municipalities with insights to optimize cycling infrastructure and improve traffic management, such as by identifying high-traffic areas for targeted infrastructure upgrades and optimizing traffic light settings based on cyclist waiting times.

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Although numerous studies used Virtual Reality (VR) to study pedestrian behavior, there is an ongoing debate about the validity of using VR for studying pedestrian behavior. This study aims to contribute toward the validation of immersive VR systems for pedestrian wayfinding behavior studies by conducting a direct comparison of a field experiment and a matched virtual experiment. Both experiments feature three identical wayfinding assignments across multiple floors in a building. To evaluate the ecological validity of VR, three metrics of three different levels of wayfinding behavior are adopted, namely travel time (level: wayfinding performance), wayfinding strategy (level: decision-making), and angular speed of the head (level: observational behavior). Our findings show that VR can be used to study pedestrian wayfinding strategy in buildings with a single floor. However, there are significant differences in pedestrian wayfinding strategy between the field experiment and the VR experiment. Additionally, we found significant differences in the angular speed of the head between the two experiments. It suggests that researchers should take caution when using VR as a research tool to study the wayfinding strategy and the observational behavior of pedestrians in multi-story buildings.@en

The potential lack of realism in stated-preference surveys is particularly acute in contexts where disaggregate real-world data is challenging to obtain. Mobility-on-Demand (MOD) services present one such context. The MOD context is unique due to factors such as service reliability (difference in stated vs. actual travel and waiting time) and current mode inertia which affect the choice of MOD services and are difficult to infer from revealed preference data. Further, travel mode choices are repetitive and constitute a relatively easy choice situation. Consequently, individuals may utilize simple non-compensatory strategies. In this study, we design a survey to mimic real-world choice sets using a joint revealed and stated- (RP-SP) preference survey approach. We construct the complete journey of individuals taking into account departure time, access and egress mode, current primary mode and origin–destination pair. A Choquet Integral (CI)-based choice model with endogeneity correction is employed, thereby allowing to approximate non-compensatory behaviour. Results confirm the presence of non-compensatory behaviour across all mode users (car, public transport and bike). Reliability and inertia effects are most pronounced for car users including the potential for a combined departure time-mode shift towards MOD. Owing to non-compensatory behaviour and inertia, higher travel costs cannot be fully compensated by shorter waiting and travel times and a differential pricing strategy may be required to increase MOD market share. Failure to account for common unobserved factors between the RP and SP choices results in inflated attribute importance.

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Dedicated Lanes (DLs) have been proposed as a potential alternative for the deployment of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) to facilitate platooning and increase motorway capacity. However, the impact of the presence and utilization policy of such a lane on drivers’ preference to use automation and their behaviour has not yet been thoroughly investigated. In this study, a driving simulator experiment is conducted, where participants drive a CAV in the presence of a DL with different utilization policies. Drivers have the possibility to choose between driving in an automated mode or in a manual mode. In automated mode they could adjust the driving speed and time headway and initiate automated lane changes. Two utilization policies were examined: mandatory versus optional use of DLs when driving in an automated mode. The impact of the presence and utilization policy of the DL on drivers’ preference to use automation and their behaviour in car-following and lane changing are investigated. The study found that while the presence of a DL does not increase drivers’ preference for automation use, it encourages drivers to utilize the DL more when the utilization policy is mandatory (i.e., drivers can only use automation mode when driving on this lane). Furthermore, drivers are more conservative in automated mode and when driving in mixed traffic. However, they perform closer car-following and merge into smaller gaps when driving on DLs which on one hand can increase the capacity of the DLs, but on the other hand can increase the risk of collisions. These results are useful for road operators, and in setting-up a more realistically traffic simulation studies.

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As the offer of digital services in transport expands, understanding users’ digital engagement and how it developed over time is important to make informed policy decisions. In particular, we lack an understanding of how both PT (public transport) and car users access and engage with digital technologies and perceive them to be necessary to travel. This article aims at bridging this gap, using a 2022 survey of representative samples from both populations in the Netherlands. There is clear evidence of travellers getting more used to digital technologies over time. In 2022, at most 80% of car and PT users relied at least from time to time on their smartphone to look for travel information. As expected, higher digital skills correlate positively with the likelihood of using smartphone-based travel information. It is worth noting that PT users report higher digital skills than car users, while these samples do not differ significantly in terms of age and education levels. As such, low (perceived) digital skills might be a barrier to switching from the car to public transport. Almost 75% of car and PT users think that travelling is more difficult nowadays without a smartphone, demonstrating a radical shift in societal expectations within a decade and a half. Alternatives like public information displays exist and are still used by the majority, but traditional communication channels are not deemed sufficient anymore to travel worry-free. These perceptions can contribute to shaping reality and may put those with a lower digital access at a disadvantage.

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Drivers initiate a discretionary lane change when they perceive an anticipated improvement in their own driving condition from moving to another lane. However, such a lane change can slow down other vehicles on the target lane, and even worse initiate a disturbance. In this work, we argue that the blocking effect triggered by individual lane changes results from the heterogeneity in the desired speeds of vehicles, and thus using desired speed information of vehicles when regulating lane-changing decisions can improve traffic efficiency. In doing so, our work also exemplifies the usefulness of incorporating user preferences into control decisions. The proposed lane guidance system uses an optimization-based approach to update the target range of desired speeds on each lane in real time, and accordingly recommends individual lane changes. The control system coordinates the lane-changing decisions at the link level, for which the road stretch is subdivided into multiple sections that are controlled independently. We evaluate the performance of the lane guidance system in micro-simulation, for different network demands and desired speed distributions. The results highlight that the proposed approach utilizing the desired speed preferences of drivers results in positive efficiency gains for most traffic compositions in free flow. Moreover, the highest gains are expected in medium to high demand, and when the traffic composition includes a higher proportion of vehicles desiring higher speeds. The gains also increase when the desired speeds of vehicles that want to drive fast and those that want to drive slower are more separated.

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Physical distancing has been an important asset in limiting the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to assess compliance with physical distancing and to evaluate the combination of observed and self-reported data used. This research shows that it is difficult to operationalize new rules, that context affects compliance, that there needs to be a need for compliance, and that rules require upkeep. From a methodological point of view, this study found that the combined methods provide a comprehensive picture of compliance behaviour, that it is challenging but essential to mitigate response fatigue in long-term monitoring studies, and that it would be interesting in future research to learn how actual behaviour is influenced by personal narratives.

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For car traffic it was found that a more crowded area leads to a lower speed and a lower arrival rate. The relation between crowdedness and speed (or arrival rate) can be expressed in a network fundamental diagram, or macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD). Similar concepts have been shown for pedestrian and train traffic. In this paper, we extend the concept to three spatial dimensions. While simulations have explored some concepts, we present for the first time empirical results of the relation between the crowdedness in the air and the performance of the “network.” We base our results on several months of data of airplanes around Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Similar to car traffic, we observe a reduction in speeds as the number of airplanes in the area increases. However, even at the highest observed densities, we do not see a reduction in flows. This is because of active and intensive management (based on departure/landing possibilities), comparable to perimeter control in traffic, as well as a minimum airplane speed. This paper introduces an interesting concept of applying a MFD to three-dimensional (3D) spaces. We also show to what extent the performance reduction is caused by speed reduction and to what extent it is caused by less efficient routes. The MFD concept can eventually be used to also manage 3D airspaces for applications with less strict microscopic air traffic management than the current management around airports.@en

Efficient crowd management is essential for optimizing the performance of pedestrian infrastructures, either in terms of crowd flow or pedestrian levels of safety and comfort. This study investigates the impact of one type of crowd management measure, namely lighting, on pedestrian behavior. Using Virtual Reality experiments, the impact of lighting, both the brightness level and the light color, on pedestrian route choice is studied. A virtual maze was designed, featuring 10 T-intersections, where the light conditions are varied at each T-intersection to study its impact on pedestrian route choice. Our study shows that pedestrian route choice is strongly influenced by the light color in a virtual environment. Pedestrians prefer to follow paths with green-colored lights and avoid paths with red-colored lights, irrespective of the light color on the other path. Moreover, pedestrians slightly prefer to use the path with a higher brightness level. Lastly, the results indicate that pedestrians do have a slight right-handed tendency on average, however, this effect cancels out almost completely when other guidance information is present in the scenario. Altogether, the findings suggest that lighting can impact pedestrian route choice behavior.
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Building fires can be considered a risk to the health and safety of occupants. Environmental factors in building fires might affect the speed of an evacuation. Therefore, in this study participants (N = 153) were tested in an experimental design for the effects of (1) a fire alarm, (2) darkness and (3) the use of emergency exit signs on building evacuation time. In addition, the effects of age and gender on evacuation time were investigated. The main results indicate that the combination of a fire alarm, darkness and not illuminated emergency exit signs had a significant negative influence on evacuation time, namely an increase in evacuation time of 26.6% respectively 28.1%. Another important finding is that age had a significant negative effect on evacuation time. The increase in evacuation time was at least 30.4% for participants aged 56 years or older compared to participants aged 18–25 years. For gender no significant effect was found. Building and safety managers can use these results by including longer evacuation time considerations – based on darkness and older age – in their evacuation plans. Future research should focus further on investigating the effects of personal and psychological characteristics on evacuation behaviour and evacuation time.

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Digitalisation in public transport has become pervasive over the past decade, especially in urban areas. While it benefits many, it also leaves some behind. Previous research shows that older adults, people with a lower education level, people with impairments and people with a migration background are more likely to be negatively impacted by digitalisation in transport services. In order to uncover mechanisms behind digital inequality in public transport, we interviewed 39 people belonging to these groups. They experience difficulties due to low digital skills, not using digital technologies on-the-go, not possessing the right devices and due to a complex design of technologies, among others. Many participants reap some benefits of digitalisation though. In fact, individuals can experience benefits on one aspect and difficulties on another. Nevertheless, experiencing difficulties with digitalisation does not necessarily equal to exclusion from public transport thanks to coping strategies like support from one's social network. Still, many coping strategies come with pitfalls such as hidden work and costs. Digital technologies facilitate a self-service approach that paradoxically makes some people more dependent on others. This study can support practitioners and researchers in developing a better understanding of the (sometimes insidious) consequences of technological innovations on individuals.

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The interest in tradable mobility credits (TMC) is growing steadily. Compared to existing instruments, its cap-and-trade design for the demand side ensures that a limited quantity, e.g., traffic and related emissions, can by design not be exceeded. However, most TMC schemes are market-based financial instruments that can only be successful, if the market ensures the most efficient allocation of resources and if one can rely on the price. Hence, TMC schemes require trading activity and a liquid market that only emerges when participants are able and willing to trade. In this paper, we systematically review the TMC literature for aspects of trading activity and market liquidity, summarize the literature streams, and discuss determinants of participants’ ability and willingness to trade TMCs. During the literature review we separate those into demand-side, supply-side, and market regulation factors. This first coherent discussion of creating liquid TMC markets with substantial trading activity challenges the instrument and allows us to draw valuable conceptual implications for the TMC scheme design, but also implications for stakeholders beyond concept. Generating trading activity and liquid markets is thoroughly possible, but robustly achieving it can be challenging.

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Currently, the research on ship behavior during encounters focuses on evasive behavior during specific situations with existing risks of collision. However, the preliminary selection of encounters to refine the presented ship behavior is biased. To obtain a full understanding of all ship behavior during different encounters in ports and waterways, the encounter is defined from the viewpoint of the spatial-temporal co-existence of ships in the same waterway segments during the same period. Based on this definition, this paper investigates ship behavior through the encounter process with other ships. The proposed approach starts from the moment when the distance in between is minimum as the critical moment to recognize ship behavior change (course alteration and speed change) based on the Sliding Window algorithm. Thus, the encounter process is identified by the key behavior feature point into phases, being before decision-making, before the critical moment, after the critical moment, and after being past and clear. The relative movement factors are calculated according to the behavior status of both ships to describe the conditions, timing, and objective of behavior change during the dynamic process of encounters. The empirical findings based on one-year Automatic Identification System data in the port of Rotterdam are presented. In the overtaking encounters, as the give-way ship, about 14% of the overtaking ships do not take any evasive actions. Among the ships with behavior changes, the preference for course alteration and speed change is equal. As the stand-on ship, about 87% of the overtaken ships take cooperative maneuvers to facilitate the encounter, in which deceleration seems the primary choice. The timing of overtaken ship's behavior change is later than overtaking ship. For overtaking ships, the objective of course alteration is a clear passing distance of about 5 times her beam, 100m for overtaken ships irrespective of her own size. Regarding speed, the overtaking ship aims to reach a relative speed of 0.3 times her own SOG, while the objective for the overtaken ship is fixed at around 2–3 m/s. In the encounters of ships sailing in the opposite direction, most of the ships take maneuvers to change their course or speed. However, within the influence distance of 2 km, over 76% of the ships do not take any evasive behavior, which implies a passing-by situation. Based on the recognized key feature points of behavior change, statistical tests show the objective of clear passing distance has been reached beforehand. The behavior change during head-on situations could be due to the precautionary behavior of officers onboard in case of interaction between ships. The findings enrich the knowledge of ship behavior during different types of encounters in real-life navigation, which can be further applied to simulation models for ship behavior in ports and waterways.

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When do traffic jams emerge? Can we predict, given certain demand levels, when queuing will occur, how long the queues will be, how they will propagate in space and time, and how long it takes for the congestion to resolve? Why does an overloaded traffic network underperform? This chapter gives a basic introduction in traffic flow theory which can help to answer these kinds of questions.@en

COVID-19 significantly influenced travel behaviours and public attitudes towards public transport. Various studies have illustrated complicated factors related to long-term travel behaviour, indicating difficulty in understanding and predicting post-pandemic long-term travel behaviour via traditional methods. In these complex circumstances, it is valuable to take advantage of social media data to obtain real-time public opinions to understand dynamic travel behaviour changes from the passenger perspective. The present study provides a means - leveraging Twitter data and state-of-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies - to interpret the underlying associations among public attitude, COVID-19 trends and public travel behaviour. Concretely, New York City has been selected due to its dependence on public transit for daily commuting. More than 500K tweets have been collected from January 2019 to June 2022. Automated text mining, topic modelling, and sentiment analysis have been implemented in these contexts to identify dynamic public reactions. A consistently negative attitude to public transit is detected and five main topics, including derivative topics from COVID-19, are discovered within the COVID-19 duration. Policy makers and transit managers can use these topics to take onboard the public's concerns. The paper thus exemplifies how social media data and NLP technologies can support policy-making progress and can benefit other tasks in the transportation domain.

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This paper uses stated preference data collected in the city of Rotterdam and discrete choice modelling techniques to study the relationship between public transport and shared micromobility. It assumes a hypothetical condition of integrated systems and studies the relationships of complement and competition between these modes. The findings suggest that shared micromobility modes are viable alternatives as egress modes for metro trips. Shared micromobility can be seen as a complement to metro, yet shared e-mopeds proved to also be a viable option as individual modes for long-distance trips. Different characteristics proved to be important in choices in this context: frequency of public transport use, previous use of shared micromobility, and age. Considering the results obtained, collaboration between shared micromobility and transit operators might benefit them as well as travellers. Collaborations should be designed so that they help travellers to decrease total travel time, even if it implies longer egress legs. However, the costs of these shared modes should not be as high as to prevent travellers to use them as egress alternatives. Finally, young travellers and frequent transit users could be specifically targeted, as they showed to have a better perception of shared micromobility.

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Validation of travel demand models, although recognised as important, is seldom undertaken. This study adds to the scarce literature in this field by undertaking an external validation of a multi-modal transit route choice model. The model was estimated using smart card data for the urban transit network of Amsterdam before the introduction of a new metro line and is used to predict changes in travel behaviour after the network change. To validate, the model was checked for changes in estimated parameters between the two time periods, and predictive ability was evaluated at different aggregation levels. Although most model parameters were found to be unstable between the two contexts, the predictive performance at all levels was similar to the locally estimated model. Moreover, individual choices and transit mode-share predictions were found to be close to the observed ones. The errors were relatively larger for the link and route-level predictions, some of which could be attributed to the assumptions made regarding consideration choice set given as input to the model. On comparing alternative model specifications, using generic instead of mode-specific travel attributes lead to a strong degradation in predictive performance. Conversely, a model incorporating overlap between routes, with a better model fit in the base period, did not offer a clear improvement in prediction performance. The study highlights the need to validate transit route choice models before using them for deriving policy recommendations, especially in this data-rich age in which it can often be undertaken at a relatively low additional cost.

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