Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has sponsored research, conducted by the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center of the U.S. DOT Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), aimed at integrating Positive Train Control (PTC) and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies. The objective...

Associations between road traffic noise and hypertension have been repeatedly documented, whereas associations with rail or total road, rail, and air (RRA) traffic noise have rarely been investigated. Moreover, most studies of noise in the environment have only taken into account the residential neighborhood. Finally, few studies have taken into account individual/neighborhood confounders in th...

The long trends of fuel price increase along with increasing transit ridership over the past few decades has been established by past transit research. However, in 2008, there has been a drastic drop in the prices of oil, which has had significant effects on consumption patterns of gasoline. The objectives of this paper are two folds; firstly to ascertain the nature of the gasoline-transit ride...

With reduced environmental impact becoming an increasingly important benefit of the rail transportation mode, continual improvement in efficiency and reduced energy consumption has become a major concern to rail transit operators. For electrified rail transit operations, regenerative braking is one practical way for saving energy because it enables the kinetic energy of a train to be transmitte...

Nowadays, the development of „smart cities‟ with a high level of quality of life is becoming a prior challenge to be addressed. In this framework, promoting the model shift towards more reliable, greener and in general more sustainable transportation modes, namely towards a „smart mobility‟ could significantly contribute to achieve this goal. The aim of this paper is to provide users with more ...

Title of Document: IMPROVING RESILIENCE OF RAIL-BASED INTERMODAL FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS Xiaodong Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Professor Elise Miller-Hooks, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering With the increasing natural and human-made disasters, the risk of an event with potential to cause major disruption to our transportation systems and their components ...

As a sustainable means of public transportation, urban rail transit system undergoes rapid expansion in China. How to provide a safe and reliable service has been the subject of growing attention in this context. However, such work is challenging because rail transit systems are quite vulnerable and influenced by a set of interacting factors. Studying these vulnerability factors will contribute...

The widespread high-speed rail has become an important transportation mode for tourists in China, who travel primarily in groups. With more attractive price, railway operators may be able to expand ridership, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately increase revenue. The traditional pricing method for passenger groups, however, is relatively simple, inflexible, which may lead to profit los...

1School of Urban Rail Transportation, Soochow University, P. R. China, 215131 2School of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University, P. R. China, 215006 3Department of Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology, United States, 60616 4Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNLIST), Tsinghua University, P.R. China, 100084 5School of Computer Science ...

Urban rail transit systems are rapidly developing around the world. Due to a great deal of urban traffic pressure, improving the efficiency and capacity of urban rail transit systems is an increasing demand. Because it is a key subsystem of urban rail transit systems, communication-based train control(CBTC) is an automated train control system that makes use of train–ground wireless communicati...