Search Results (45)

Effective maintenance and management of road infrastructure are essential for community well-being, economic stability, and cost efficiency. Well-maintained roads reduce accident risks, improve safety, shorten travel times, lower vehicle repair costs, and facilitate the flow of goods, all of which positively contribute to GDP and economic development. Accurate intersection mapping forms the foundation of effective road asset management, yet traditional manual digitization methods remain time-consuming and prone to gaps and overlaps. This study presents an automated computational geometry solution for precise road intersection mapping that eliminates common digitization errors. Unlike conventional approaches that only detect intersection positions, our method systematically reconstructs complete intersection geometries while maintaining topological consistency. The technique combines plane surveying principles (including line-bearing analysis and curve detection) with spatial analytics to automatically identify intersections, characterize their connectivity patterns, and assign unique identifiers based on configurable parameters. When evaluated across multiple urban contexts using diverse data sources (manual digitization and OpenStreetMap), the method demonstrated consistent performance with mean Intersection over Union greater than 0.85 and F-scores more than 0.91. The high correctness and completeness metrics (both more than 0.9) confirm its ability to minimize both false positive and omission errors, even in complex roadway configurations. The approach consistently produced gap-free, overlap-free outputs, showing strength in handling interchange geometries. The solution enables transportation agencies to make data-driven maintenance decisions by providing reliable, standardized intersection inventories. Its adaptability to varying input data quality makes it particularly valuable for large-scale infrastructure monitoring and smart city applications. Full article

The generation of road interchange networks benefits various applications, such as vehicle navigation and intelligent transportation systems. Traditional methods often focus on common road structures but fail to fully utilize long-term trajectory continuity and flow information, leading to fragmented results and misidentification of overlapping roads as intersections. To address these limitations, we propose a forward and reverse tracking method for high-accuracy road interchange network generation. First, raw crowdsourced trajectory data is preprocessed by filtering out non-interchange trajectories and removing abnormal data based on both static and dynamic characteristics of the trajectories. Next, road subgraphs are extracted by identifying potential transition nodes, which are verified using directional and distribution information. Trajectory bifurcation is then performed at these nodes. Finally, a two-stage fusion process combines forward and reverse tracking results to produce a geometrically complete and topologically accurate road interchange network. Experiments using crowdsourced trajectory data from Shenzhen demonstrated highly accurate results, with 95.26% precision in geometric road network alignment and 90.06% accuracy in representing the connectivity of road interchange structures. Compared to existing methods, our approach enhanced accuracy in spatial alignment by 13.3% and improved the correctness of structural connections by 12.1%. The approach demonstrates strong performance across different types of interchanges, including cloverleaf, turbo, and trumpet interchanges. Full article

The goal of “double carbon” puts forward higher requirements for the control of transport carbon emissions, and the exploration of transport carbon emission modelling driven by big data is an important attempt to reduce carbon accurately. Based on the land Vehicle Miles Traveled data (VMT) and the sea Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, this study establishes a refined, high-resolution carbon emission measurement model that incorporates the use of motor vehicles and ships from a bottom-up approach and analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics of land and sea transport carbon emissions in Tianjin using geospatial analysis. The results of the study show that (1) the transportation carbon emissions in Tianjin mainly come from land road traffic, with small passenger cars contributing the most to the emissions; (2) high carbon emission zones are concentrated in economically developed, densely populated, and high road network density areas, such as the urban center Binhai New Area, and the marine functional zone of Tianjin; (3) carbon emission values are generally higher in the segments where ports, airports, and interchanges are connected. The transportation carbon emission measurement model developed in this study provides practical, replicable, and scalable insights for other coastal cities. Full article

Sparse road networks in high-risk geological disaster areas, characterized by long segments, few nodes, and limited alternative routes, face significant vulnerabilities to geological hazards such as landslides, rockfalls, and collapses. These disruptions hinder emergency response and resource delivery, highlighting the need for enhanced resilience strategies. This study develops a dynamic resilience assessment framework using a two-layer topological model to analyze and optimize the resilience of such networks. The model incorporates trunk and local layers to capture dynamic changes during disasters, and it is validated using the road network in Tibet. The findings demonstrate that critical nodes, including tunnels, bridges, and interchanges, play a decisive role in maintaining network performance. Resilience is influenced by disaster type, duration, and traffic capacity, with collapse events showing moderate resilience and debris flows exhibiting rapid recovery but low survivability. Notably, half-width traffic interruptions achieve the highest overall resilience (0.7294), emphasizing the importance of partial traffic restoration. This study concludes that protecting critical nodes, optimizing resource allocation, and implementing adaptive management strategies are essential for mitigating disaster impacts and enhancing recovery. The proposed framework offers a practical tool for decision-makers to improve transportation resilience in high-risk geological disaster areas. Full article

Riverine environmental information includes important data to collect, and the data collection still requires personnel’s field surveys. These on-site tasks still face significant limitations (i.e., hard or danger to entry). In recent years, as one of the efficient approaches for data collection, air-vehicle-based Light Detection and Ranging technologies have already been applied in global environmental research, i.e., land cover classification (LCC) or environmental monitoring. For this study, the authors specifically focused on seven types of LCC (i.e., bamboo, tree, grass, bare ground, water, road, and clutter) that can be parameterized for flood simulation. A validated airborne LiDAR bathymetry system (ALB) and a UAV-borne green LiDAR System (GLS) were applied in this study for cross-platform analysis of LCC. Furthermore, LiDAR data were visualized using high-contrast color scales to improve the accuracy of land cover classification methods through image fusion techniques. If high-resolution aerial imagery is available, then it must be downscaled to match the resolution of low-resolution point clouds. Cross-platform data interchangeability was assessed by comparing the interchangeability, which measures the absolute difference in overall accuracy (OA) or macro-F1 by comparing the cross-platform interchangeability. It is noteworthy that relying solely on aerial photographs is inadequate for achieving precise labeling, particularly under limited sunlight conditions that can lead to misclassification. In such cases, LiDAR plays a crucial role in facilitating target recognition. All the approaches (i.e., low-resolution digital imagery, LiDAR-derived imagery and image fusion) present results of over 0.65 OA and of around 0.6 macro-F1. The authors found that the vegetation (bamboo, tree, grass) and road species have comparatively better performance compared with clutter and bare ground species. Given the stated conditions, differences in the species derived from different years (ALB from year 2017 and GLS from year 2020) are the main reason. Because the identification of clutter species includes all the items except for the relative species in this research, RGB-based features of the clutter species cannot be substituted easily because of the 3-year gap compared with other species. Derived from on-site reconstruction, the bare ground species also has a further color change between ALB and GLS that leads to decreased interchangeability. In the case of individual species, without considering seasons and platforms, image fusion can classify bamboo and trees with higher F1 scores compared to low-resolution digital imagery and LiDAR-derived imagery, which has especially proved the cross-platform interchangeability in the high vegetation types. In recent years, high-resolution photography (UAV), high-precision LiDAR measurement (ALB, GLS), and satellite imagery have been used. LiDAR measurement equipment is expensive, and measurement opportunities are limited. Based on this, it would be desirable if ALB and GLS could be continuously classified by Artificial Intelligence, and in this study, the authors investigated such data interchangeability. A unique and crucial aspect of this study is exploring the interchangeability of land cover classification models across different LiDAR platforms. Full article

Linear spatial data are primarily used in Geographic Information Systems (GISs) to represent spatial data in the form of roads, rivers, railways, and utility lines. Linear spatial data are mostly composed of one-dimensional linear elements, incorporating geometric attributes such as location, direction, and length, as well as the interconnections of these elements. In the case of roads, this information is used to map and analyze traffic data, such as vehicle movements, on the road network. This study aims to propose an area-based spatial analysis method that allows for the flexible application of analysis scales using individual vehicle data, as opposed to node and link generation for linear road networks. The analysis focused on nine expressways, conducting a microscopic analysis of speed-homogeneous sections. The final analysis showed that out of 375 cells, 91 cells in the final 12 division cells did not meet the homogeneity criteria. This discrepancy was ascertained to be due to vehicles decelerating or accelerating when entering or exiting highways at ramps or interchanges, not due to directional speed differences but lane-specific speed variations. The final cells with large speed deviations were found to be influenced by connections to highway on-ramps or off-ramps. In contrast, sections with small speed variations within a cell were influenced by traffic factors such as connection points and traffic volume, which hindered normal driving. As a result, this study validated that traffic information from highways, typically provided as linear data, could be divided into cells based on real-time GPS speed data and presented on an area-based scale. While dividing regions based on fixed intervals does not pinpoint exact speed change points, this study found that reasonable segmentation is possible based on spatial size and speed-homogeneous sections. Full article

Urban transportation systems, particularly underground interchanges, present significant challenges for sustainable and resilient urban design due to their complex road geometries and dense traffic signage. These challenges are further compounded by the interaction of diverse road users, which heightens the risk of accidents. To enhance both safety and sustainability, this study integrates advanced driving simulation techniques with machine learning models to improve driving safety and comfort in underground interchanges. By utilizing a driving simulator and 3D modeling, real-world conditions were replicated to design key traffic safety features with an emphasis on sustainability and driver well-being. Critical safety parameters, including speed, acceleration, and pedal use, were analyzed alongside comfort metrics such as lateral acceleration and steering torque. The LightGBM machine learning model was used to classify safety and comfort grades with an accuracy of 97.06%. An important ranking identified entrance signage and deceleration zones as having the greatest impact on safety and comfort, while basic road sections were less influential. These findings underscore the importance of considering visual cues, such as markings and wall color, in creating safer and more comfortable underground road systems. This study’s methodology and results offer valuable insights for urban planners and engineers aiming to design transportation systems that are both safe and aligned with sustainable urban mobility objectives. Full article

Tunnel-interchange sections are characterized by complex driving tasks and frequent traffic conflicts, posing substantial challenges to overall safety and efficiency. Enhancing safety in these areas is crucial for the sustainability of traffic systems. This study applies behavior adaptation theory as an integrated framework to examine the impact of environmental stimuli on driving behavior and conflict risk in small-spaced sections. Through driving simulation, 19 observation indicators are collected, covering eye-tracking, heart rate, subjective workload, driving performance, and conflict risk. The analysis, using single-factor ranking (Shapley Additive Explanation), interaction effects (dependence plots), and multi-factor analysis (Structural Equation Modeling), demonstrates that driving workload and performance dominate the fully mediating effects between external factors and conflict risk. High-load environmental stimuli, such as narrow spacing (≤500 m) and overloaded signage information (>6 units), significantly elevate drivers’ stress responses and impair visual acuity, thereby increasing task difficulty and conflict risk. Critical factors like saccade size, heart rate variability, lane deviation, and headway distance emerge as vital indicators for monitoring and supporting driving decisions. These findings provide valuable insights for the operational management of small-spacing sections and enhance the understanding of driving safety in these areas from a human factor perspective. Full article

A visual workload model was constructed to determine and evaluate drivers’ visual workload characteristics in high-density interchange-merging areas. Five interchanges were selected, and a real-vehicle driving test was conducted with 47 participants. To address the differences in drivers’ visual characteristics in the interchange cluster merging areas, the Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) objective weighting method was employed. Six visual parameters were selected to establish a comprehensive evaluation model for the visual workload in high-density interchange-merging areas. The results show that the average scanning frequency and average pupil area change rate are most strongly correlated with the visual workload, whereas the average duration of a single gaze has the lowest weight in the visual workload assessment system. Different driver visual workloads were observed depending on the environment of the interchange-merging areas, and based on these, recommendations are proposed to decrease drivers’ workload, thereby increasing road safety. Full article

Road congestion in Amman City has been increasing yearly, due to the increase in private car ownership and traffic volumes. This study aims to (a) evaluate the toll road’s effects on society and the economy in Amman, Jordan, through a survey questionnaire using statistical software (SPSS), (b) assess the impact of the toll road on reducing congestion and delays using micro-simulation (VISUM), (c) identify the optimal toll price for a selected road using VISUM and (d) validate the simulated models with the optimal revenue. Traffic, geometric, and cost data about the toll technique of two sections on the Airport Highway (from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Madaba Interchange; and from the Madaba Interchange to the Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) Interchange) were used for simulation purposes. The toll road (across seven different scenarios at different prices) was evaluated for optimal revenue. The survey questionnaire was made based on all scenarios, including the AM peak hour. The operation cost for the toll road was determined based on the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM). The best scenario was determined based on the value of revenue (JOD). The results indicate that higher acceptance is achieved when applying road pricing during the AM peak hour and that users prefer the charging method based on travelled distance (54.02%). Additionally, the total cost of the manual toll collection (MTC) method is 126,935 JOD. Road pricing can reduce traffic delay (or speed up traffic flow) by 4.61 min in the southbound direction and by 9.52 min in the northbound direction. The optimal toll value is 0.25 JOD (34.08%), with revenues of 1089.6 JOD for 2024 and 1122.6 JOD for 2025. Eventually, applying road pricing on the airport road is shown to be effective and economically feasible only when using the manual method. Full article

Bus lanes are an important measure for improving the quality of bus service and the efficiency of transportation systems. A scientific and reasonable evaluation of the overall traffic operation efficiency of the bus priority road section is helpful to fully understand the improvement effect of the introduction of bus lanes on traffic operation. To comprehensively and objectively evaluate the traffic benefits of bus lanes, the Delphi and grey correlation methods were used to construct a comprehensive weight calculation model of the indicators. The weights of eight traffic benefit evaluation indicators at the two levels of buses and general traffic were calculated, and the weights were then optimized using the target optimization model. Combined with different weight indexes, the evaluation of the traffic benefit level of the bus lane was realized using the matter-element extension model based on the improvement in the sticking progress. The bus lanes of the Daping-Yangjiaping, Huanghuayuan interchange-Luneng turntable, and Dashiba-Hongqihegou routes in the main urban area of Chongqing were used for verification. The results show that the traffic benefits of the three case areas have been improved to a certain extent after the construction of bus lanes, but the benefit level has not changed. Through the analysis of various operating indicators, the weaknesses that affect the traffic efficiency can be obtained, and then the decision-making basis for the implementation and improvement of the bus lane optimization scheme can be provided. Full article

In this paper, we develop a multi-objective integrated optimization method for feeder buses of rail transit based on realistic considerations. We propose a bus stop selection method that considers the influence of shared motorcycles, which can score the importance of alternative bus stops and select those with the highest scores as objectives. The objective of the model in this paper is to minimize both the travel costs of passengers and the operating costs of the bus company. This is achieved by optimizing feeder bus routes, the frequency of departures, and interchange discounts to enhance the connectivity between feeder buses and rail transit. In addition, to ensure the feasibility of generated routes in the real road network, a genetic algorithm encoded with priority is used to solve this model. We use the Xingyao Road subway station in Kunming as an example, and the results show that the optimization method is effective. Full article

Due to the different driving characteristics of different vehicle models, inappropriate mandatory lane changes (MLCs) by heavy vehicles at interchanges often lead to serious traffic accidents. Therefore, this paper focuses on the impact of road geometric design on the MLC duration of heavy trucks by using full time-domain trajectory data. Specifically, we use the generalized additive time-varying Cox model to establish the MLC duration model of heavy trucks at interchanges, then analyze the combined influence of geometric elements. The results show that the consistency index of the model is 0.9, indicating that it has advantages in building models in complex environments. The length of the deceleration lane, ramp type, and curve radius have a significant impact on the validity and duration of MLCs. This finding provides a theoretical and methodological reference for the safety analysis of interchange areas and the refinement of road geometric design. Full article

Tunnel–interchange connecting sections pose significant safety challenges on mountainous expressways due to their high incidence of accidents. Improving road safety necessitates a comprehensive understanding of driver behavior in such areas. This study explores the influences of road characteristics, signage information volume, and traffic conditions on drivers’ car-following and lane-changing behavior in tunnel–interchange diverging areas. Utilizing driving data from 25 subjects of 72 simulated road models, driving performance is assessed using the Friedman rank test and multivariate variance analysis. The results highlight the significant influence of both connection distance and signage information load on driving behavior. In tunnel–interchange scenarios, the reduction in velocity increased by 62.61%, and speed variability surged by 61.11%, indicating potential adverse effects on driving stability due to the environmental transitions. Decreased connection distances are associated with reduced lane-changing durations, larger steering angles, and increased failure rates. Furthermore, every two units of increase in signage information leads to a 13.16% rise in maximum deceleration and a 5% increase in time headway. Notably, the signage information volume shows a significant interaction with connection distance (F > 1.60, p < 0.045) for most car-following indicators. Hence, the study recommends a maximum connection distance of 700 m and signage information not exceeding nine units for optimal safety and stability. Full article

The introduction of connected automated vehicles (CAVs) on freeways raises significant challenges, particularly in interactions with human-driven vehicles, impacting traffic flow and safety. This study employs traffic microsimulation and surrogate safety assessment measures software to delve into CAV–human driver interactions, estimating potential conflicts. While previous research acknowledges that human drivers adjust their behavior when sharing the road with CAVs, the underlying reasons and the extent of associated risks are not fully understood yet. The study focuses on how CAV presence can diminish conflicts, employing surrogate safety measures and real-world mixed traffic data, and assesses the safety and performance of freeway interchange configurations in Italy and the US across diverse urban contexts. This research proposes tools for optimizing urban layouts to minimize conflicts in mixed traffic environments. Results reveal that adding auxiliary lanes enhances safety, particularly for CAVs and rear-end collisions. Along interchange ramps, an exclusive CAV stream performs similarly to human-driven ones in terms of longitudinal conflicts, but mixed traffic flows, consisting of both CAVs and human-driven vehicles, may result in more conflicts. Notably, when CAVs follow human-driven vehicles in near-identical conditions, more conflicts arise, emphasizing the complexity of CAV integration and the need for careful safety measures and roadway design considerations. Full article