Travel-time information could be applied in various fields and purposes. From the travellers' v'iewpoints, the travel-time information helps to save travel-time and improve reliability through the selection of travel routes pre-trip and en-route. In the application of logistics, travel-time information could reduce the delivery costs, increase the reliability of delivery, and improve the service quality. For traffic managers, travel-time information is an important index for traffic system operation.A review of the literature has indicated that travel-time can be predicted through a number of alternative methods using various input data. This paper provided a systematic review and comparisons in the field of travel-time prediction. The purpose is to broaden the perspective of research beyond the individual techniques and then provide a detailed overview of travel-time prediction information for future researchers concerning this area. In addition, the paper also provides some finding from field survey data in the later part.

The paper presents the development of a computerised decision support system for the operational management of the transportation of sugar cane to the mills. A simulation model was developed to serve as a basis for a heuristic, which assists the operator with the dispatching of the available resources to the different destinations. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E206301.

Dual-mode transport systems can be regarded as a hybrid of today's road transport system, some elements of the current crop of ITS technologies and personal rapid transit (PRT) systems. In this paper we compare the personal transport characteristics of today's system with an example-the simple platoon advancement (SPA) model-of future ITS deployment, and with PRT systems. Then we present dual-mode systems-for example the rapid urban flexible (RUF) system-as possessing characteristics of the above three systems.

At present, lower urban speed limits (LUSL) have been applied to residential areas in most jurisdictions in Australia including parts of Adelaide, South Australia, Tasmania, South East Queensland, areas of New South Wales, Western Australia and the whole of Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. Given the current high degree of community support that the anticipation and implementation of such schemes enjoy, what is the emerging evidence to indicate if they are effective in terms of various measures. This paper seeks to present evidence quantifying the impacts of LUSL in terms of measured speeds and volumes, community attitudes, environmental impacts, travel times and road safety outcomes based on published and emerging evidence. Much of the evidence is based on research into the city-wide Unley 40 km/h scheme in Adelaide and computer simulation modelling of the mobility and environmental effects of LUSL. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E206014.

Computer simulation can be used as a means of experimentation and evaluation of both truck allocation and dispatching problems especially when analytical methods are not suitable. The development of the model resulted from a need to gain an understanding of the impact of changes in transport resources on performance indicators of the system. The paper describes the operation and characteristics of the model and presents an example of an actual application, This particular model translates a complex harvesting-transport-processing situation into a user oriented interactive digital model using the programming capabilities of Microsoft Visual FoxPro.

Lower urban speed limits (LUSL) are being applied to residential areas in many jurisdictions in Australia including parts of Adelaide, South East Queensland, areas of New South Wales and, more recently, Victoria. LUSL are seen as having significant road safety advantages - if they can be made to work - through traffic calming outcomes and therefore could greatly contribute to 'vision zero'? This paper presents evidence quantifying the impacts of LUSL in terms of measured speeds and volumes, community attitudes, fuel and environmental impacts, travel times and road safety outcomes based on published and emerging evidence. Much of the evidence is based on research into the city wide Unley 40km/h scheme in Adelaide and the computer simulation modelling of the mobility and environmental effects of LUSL as comparisons with safety benefits. It indicates that LUSL can achieve sustainable speed reductions, although the results for traffic performance and environmental impact are more complicated. Under different conditions emissions may be reduced or increased by the use of LUSL. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E205861.

In order to maintain its international competitiveness the Australian sugar industry has to look at ways of reducing its freight transport costs. The objective of this study is to develop and validate a dynamic model for sugar cane transport by road. The cane harvesting-transport-processing system is very complex, comprising an integrated chain of activities that stretch from the grower through to transport and mill processing. This combination of a complex logistics network generates an extremely large number of alternative scenarios to be evaluated. Usually, the objectives of the problem can be to minimise the number of trucks required, minimise the number of bins required, while maintaining uninterrupted crushing at the forecast capacity during the whole harvesting season. For long term planning the simulation model could be potentially used in a number of what-if scenarios to evaluate different combinations of harvesting and transport - that is, to determine the effects of increasing or decreasing resources, and giving indicators as to what is the optimal fleet size for various conditions. The simulation model will provide the cane traffic inspectors with a method for optimising the resources of the harvesting-transport-processing system over large horizons (entire harvesting season) while at the same time planning the day to day operation. This will lead to productivity gains in the mill cane supply operations by minimising operating expenses and the maximum utilization of capital. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E205861.

Traffic assignment models have a central place in transport planning, for they provide necessary information on the traffic and congestion loads to be borne across a network and how these loads may vary depending on network configuration, design standard traffic control regime and travel demand distributions. The paper focuses on static equilibrium assignment models because of their relevance in transport policy analysis, as models of congested traffic networks that may be used to examine the effects of policy alternatives for land use-transport interactions and for environmental and energy management, travel demand management, traffic claming, and congestion management and road pricing. The paper formulates and applies a family of equilibrium assignment models with separate objective functions for travel time, travel time reliability, energy and emissions, for both individuals and the community. It also incorporates elastic travel demands and trip timing analysis, enabling the study of alternative network configurations, travel demand management policies, and population and land use distributions.

This paper is the second of a pair of papers discussing two main themes concerning dense network modelling. These themes are: (1) the changing nature of traffic management technology and the underlying objectives behind traffic management practice, and (2) the use of measures of network reliability in models, especially as an element of the evaluation of alternative network configurations. This paper develops and applies the second theme, the use of network reliability concepts in the evaluation of traffic networks, through consideration of variations in travel times, distinction between local street and arterial road networks, and the definition and application of a set of reliability indices that may be used to study different trip movements in a network. It indicates how these indices may be used in appraising different traffic management plans for a dense network of local streets and arterial roads, using a case study application.

A microcomputer-based model, 'Spatial Intelligent Multicriteria Environmental Sensitivity Evaluation Planning Tool' (SIMESEPT), has been developed to evaluate the environmental impacts of urban road networks. It is an integration of information technologies (knowledge-based expert system (KBES), geographical information system (GIS), and fuzzy set theory (FST)), decision making methods (analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and fuzzy multiattribute decision making (FMADM)), and a traffic environmental impact evaluation method (environmental sensitivity methodology (ESM)). SIMESEPT has been applied to several areas. The results of these case studies indicated the potential utility of SIMESEPT for assessing the environmental impacts of urban road networks at a local level, identifying potential problem locations, and specifying the possible causes and key contributing factors to those problems. The residents in the City of Unley, Adelaide are gradually becoming more aware of these negative impacts due to road traffic. SIMESEPT is therefore applied to investigate and evaluate the environmental impacts characteristics of the Unley road network. This paper presents the following topics: (i) Environmental Sensitivity Methodology (ESM) concept; (ii) fundamental structure of SIMESEPT; (iii) the Unley case study; (iv) interpretation of results; and finally (v) the conclusion. In addition, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology, introduction to fuzzy set theory, fuzzy relation and fuzzy compositional evaluation method are described in the appendix. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD 895316.

The Transport Systems Centre at the University of South Australia was asked by the Office of Road Safety at the then Department of Transport, to conduct a study into red light running in Adelaide, South Australia. The study had two specific objectives: to determine quantitatively the extent of signal non-compliance at a sample of Adelaide intersections, and to attempt to establish an offender profile from personal observation at these sites. The project involved the observation of violations from 12 signalised intersections located within the Adelaide Central Business District and metropolitan area. In total, 1668 violations were recorded over 96 hours of observation equating to a violation every three and a half minutes. Violation rates ranged from 1.8 percent of total flow to 0.03 percent for individual surveys. Two intersections with Red Light Cameras installed ranked third and fourth respectively out of the total of 12 intersections. Pedestrian crossings were not immune to red light runners and showed high degrees of non-compliance at certain times. The offender profile was quite marked with most of the violations caused by passenger cars with a middle aged male driver who was wearing a seatbelt. The majority of violations occurred with the through movement from either the first or second left-most signalised lane and immediately after the onset of the red signal during the all-red signal phase. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD abstract no. 492019.

This paper highlights a couple of examples where GPS has been used not just for vehicle location but where its functionality has been extended further to provide the users with more accurate details about vehicle movements. These examples highlight the fact that GPS is only one component of a total system that is needed for users to get an understanding of efficient vehicle movement. The first example shows how Macmahons mining contractors have utilised GPS to track their dump trucks to get an overall picture of mine efficiency. This project has been developed in conjunction with the Transport Systems Centre (TSC) of the University of South Australia and has now matured to such an extent that its scope is broadening with the advent of more accurate and reliable GPS techniques. These techniques include the application of differential GPS that enable the real time accuracies of GPS to increase to within five metres. To achieve these increased accuracies there are a number of techniques that can be implemented. The advantages and disadvantages of these techniques are discussed together with an assessment of how the most appropriate technique will be implemented in the mining application. The paper also highlights the use of differential GPS in public transportation applications such as demand responsive public transport. The application highlights the real time integration between GPS and a geographical information system (GIS), together with computer aided dispatch (CAD) software to form part of a real time system. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD abstract no. 899454.

With increasing emphasis placed on environmental evaluation for new and current infrastructure, many methods have been derived to obtain measures of environmental impact. Despite this, there is a lack of readily available tools which allow the user to quickly assess the environmental consequences of road traffic at a suitable network scale. The authors present a prototype model which can evaluate the effects of noise from a road traffic network. A set of decision rules are integrated with a network traffic noise prediction model (NetNoise) and a geographic information system (Maplnfo) to provide an effective tool for reviewing and rating the environmental impact of traffic noise. The tool is intended for use by engineers and planners in planning new infrastructure and maintaining current infrastructure to environmental criteria. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD abstract no. 890658.

Multicriteria environmental impact evaluation is an important process which can lead to the better understanding of complex road/environment interactions on an urban road network. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), using both the principle of hierarchic composition (compensatory) methods and the fuzzy compositional evaluation (noncompensatory) method, was applied to determine the combined environmental sensitivity characteristics (based on the Environmental Sensitivity Methodology (ESM)) of the road network of central Geelong. It was found that AHP can operate as a powerful tool for the multicriteria decision making environment. The compensatory method performed better than the non-compensatory method in differentiating road links according to their composite environmental sensitivity characteristics. However, the latter can also be used as a more conservative multicriteria decision making tool. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD abstract no. 890658.

This paper examines the use of GPS in real-time vehicle tracking, congestion monitoring and vehicle performance monitoring, for both private vehicles and public transport. It addresses these issues from a practical point of view and provides some results on accuracy and reliability issues for GPS in urban traffic situations. The paper indicates how GPS data can be used to derive a number of parametric measures of congestion and in automatic vehicle identification and location. The paper demonstrates the value of integration of GPS with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software, especially for fleet management and traffic systems control. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 887751.

This paper introduces the results of a research project on the pollutant emissions and fuel consumption characteristics of mixed traffic streams under different levels of congestion. The project involved extensive testing of a number of vehicles, both on-road and in the laboratory, to determine their fuel consumption and emissions characteristics under different traffic conditions. A set of models for different vehicle types were then assembled, based on the hierarchical family of models for fuel consumption presented by Biggs and Akcelik (1986), which was also capable of describing vehicle emission rates. The model family consists of models at four levels, from an 'instantaneous' model for individual vehicles driven in traffic, through an 'elemental' model suitable for studies of intersection behaviour, a 'link' model suitable for transport network analysis, and a 'journey' model suitable for land use planning applications. The models for individual vehicle types may be combined to yield models for the performance of a traffic stream. These models may then be incorporated into transport network analysis performance, as tools for use in the prediction of environmental and energy impacts of road transport projects. One such integration of the models into a super-model (IMPAECT) for environmental impact analysis of transport planning decisions is described. The focus is on the development and application of the energy and emissions models, which are made up of three sub-models: (1) traffic stream composition sub-models, to determine the emissions or fuel consumption of a traffic stream as an aggregate of the vehicles in that stream, (2) congestion functions, to relate travel conditions (delays, queuing and speed-time trajectories) to traffic flows on particular types of roads, and (3) sub-models of vehicle energy and emissions performance under different traffic conditions. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 886400.