The economics and geography of regional airline services in six countries

Do the determinants of service and pricing on “regional” routes – linking towns and smaller cities to main trunk routes and/or to each other – differ from the established results from the literature? We study all flights (about 3000) on all regional routes (about 250) with scheduled airline service from one of about 130 regional towns or cities, in regional airline markets in six countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and a sample of three U.S. states which closely resemble the other regions studied. For each flight we have observations on up to five prices offered at different times before flight date. We also have equipment type and social-economic data. Overall, our results give qualified support to the standard gravity model of the extent of service between city pairs, though with two interesting differences: operators on regional routes have greater flexibility in the size of aircraft they can deploy, which results in a finer-grained variability of service offerings and, the presence of competition on regional routes has a large effect on the total supply of seats. We are able to successfully estimate a well-specified airfare model, which shows strong effects of competition on prices, quite substantial intertemporal price discrimination, and interesting differences between regional and main trunk route pricing.     

Air express network design based on express path choices – Chinese case study

Due to the shortage of cargo aircraft, Chinese express companies have to provide transportation services with a hybrid method that consists of “rented bellies and self-owned cargo aircraft”. Because the bellies are rented from air passenger companies and because the cargo aircraft are owned by the express companies, it is important for the express companies to use their cargo aircraft as effectively as possible. This paper constructs a bi-level model to optimize the flight transportation network of an express company. The upper model designs the network and allocates the transportation capacity with the objective of minimizing the total transportation cost, and the lower model calculates the link flows in user equilibrium. Data from ShunFeng (SF) Express Company (China) are used to conduct the case study. Using the model outputs, the flows on links and at nodes are analyzed to illustrate the transportation and transshipment situations.     

Analyzing the impact of intermodal-related risk to the design and management of biofuel supply chain

This study presents a mathematical model that designs a reliable multi-modal transportation network for a biofuel supply chain system, where intermodal hubs are subject to site-dependent probabilistic disruptions. The disruption probabilities of intermodal hubs are estimated by using a probabilistic model which is developed using real world data. We developed an accelerated Benders decomposition algorithm to solve this challenging NP-hard problem. Numerical analysis show that the model selects to use intermodal hubs located in areas with low disruption probabilities. In case of a disaster, the reliable solution results in 6.21% savings over the minimum cost solution.     

Urban Sensing by Crowdsourcing: Analysing Urban Trip behaviour in Zurich

The research on which this essay is based sought to provide a deeper understanding of live urban activities. The main idea was to obtain in‐depth trip information by integrating sensing technology with crowdsourcing‐based methods. Location and acceleration sensors embedded in smartphones can deliver useful trip information. Research had previously been conducted to find an accurate data analysis algorithm for high‐level data mining, an efficient sensing method for power saving. As a proof of concept, this essay presents a case study of Zurich that successfully implemented previous research achievements in the real environment. It established that urban travel behaviour can, in fact, be collected by sensors embedded in mobile devices, and that the data thus obtained can be used to measure the characteristics of trip behaviour in cities by means of an advanced classifying algorithm and analysis. The strength of this research is its pioneering role in clearing the ground for future urban data collection methods and planning strategies. Specifically, this study could provide answers to the following key questions: How can crowdsourcing be applied to the collection of urban transportation data? What kinds of information can be extracted from the crowdsourced mobile sensing platform? What kinds of knowledge, within the transportation domain, can be derived from the above?     

浅谈丘陵地区市政排水管道的设计思路

本文主要探讨丘陵地区市政排水管道的设计思路,着重分析了丘陵地区排水系统的特点及相应的工程设计方案,确保丘陵地区市政排水管道建设具有可行性。     

Combinatorial clock-proxy exchange for carrier collaboration in less than truck load transportation

A carrier collaboration problem in less-than-truck load transportation is considered, where multiple carriers exchange their pickup and delivery requests in order to improve their operational efficiency. We extend the clock-proxy auction proposed by Ausubel et al. (2006) to a combinatorial clock-proxy exchange for the problem. This mechanism combines the price discovery of the clock exchange designed based on Lagrangian relaxation with the efficiency of the proxy exchange determined based on the information observed in the clock phase. Numerical experiments on randomly generated instances demonstrate the necessity of the proxy phase and the effectiveness of the clock-proxy exchange.     

Making dynamic ride-sharing work: The impact of driver and rider flexibility

We conduct an extensive computational study to quantify the impact of different types of participants’ flexibility on the performance of a single-driver, single-rider ride-sharing system. Our results consistently show that small increases in flexibility, e.g., in terms of desired departure time or maximum detour time, can significantly increase the expected matching rate, especially when the number of trip announcements in the system is small. The insights gained from our study can provide the basis for the design of information campaigns and incentives schemes aimed at increasing the performance and success of ride-sharing systems.     

A MILP model for planning the trips of dynamic positioned tankers with variable travel time

The transportation of the crude oil produced in offshore oilfields to onshore terminals is performed by vessels, known as shuttle tankers. Scheduling shuttle-tanker operations entails solving complex problems to ensure a timely offloading of the platforms, taking into account several logistics and inventory constraints. This work proposes a new MILP formulation that advances previous works by considering variable travel time between platforms and terminals. The combination of the MILP formulation with an optimization solver constitutes a decision-support tool to aid engineers reach optimal decisions for a planning horizon. To handle large-scale instances, rolling-horizon and relax-and-fix strategies are proposed.     

A multi-objective sustainable load planning model for intermodal transportation networks with a real-life application

Growing importance of intermodal transportation necessitates modeling and solving load planning problems by taking into account various complex decisions simultaneously like transportation mode/service type selection, load allocation, and outsourcing. This paper presents a mixed-integer mathematical programming model for a multi-objective, multi-mode and multi-period sustainable load planning problem by considering import/export load flows to satisfy transport demands of customers and many other related issues. Several multiple objective optimization procedures are utilized in order to handle conflicting objectives simultaneously under crisp and fuzzy decision making environments. A real-life case study is also performed to present application and usefulness of the proposed model.     

Travel and tourism competitiveness index: The impact of air transportation,railways transportation,travel and transport services on international inbound and outbound tourism

The objective of the study is to examine the impact of air transportation, railways transportation, travel and transport services on international inbound and outbound tourism in a panel of 19 tourists - oriented countries, over a period of 1990–2014. By applying principal component analysis, the study constructs travel and tourism competitiveness index for inbound and outbound tourism. The main constructs of inbound tourism index include international tourists' arrival, tourism receipts, receipts of passengers' transports items and travel items while the constructs of the outbound index include international tourists' departure, tourism expenditures, and expenditures for passengers transport and travel items. The result of panel Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) regression shows that the presence of air transportation, railways transportation, and trade openness positively affect inbound tourism index, while travel and transport services negatively affect tourism competitiveness index. The causality results confirm the bidirectional relationship between inbound tourism, air transportation, railways passengers carried, trade openness and travel and transport services, while there is a unidirectional causality running from inbound index to railway goods transported, from air transport freight to trade factor, and from travel services to air transport freight. Outbound tourism index confirmed the bidirectional causality relationship with air transportation, railways transportation, and travel and transport services, while the causality running from outbound index to trade factor, from air transport passenger carried to travel services, and from railway goods transported to trade and transport services, which support the unidirectional causality relationship between them. The variance decomposition results show that air transportation freight is the contributor that largely influences inbound-outbound tourism, while railways passengers carried and trade openness has the least share to influence inbound and outbound tourism index for the next 10-year period. The impulse response function indicates that air transportation, railways transportation, trade openness and travel services will positively impact on inbound truism while travel and transport services will positively affect outbound tourism for the next 10-year period. The study concludes with the importance of transportation sector that deem desirable to promote tourism worldwide. The concentration of different modes of transportation including air transportation, railways transportation, and travel and transport system would helpful to advance international tourism.