Luis Ferreira

• The University of Queensland

This report mainly focuses on the research paper "Traction Power System Simulation in Electrified Railways", this provides some basic parameters of Electric Traction and its whole network. we analyzed San Francisco's primitive Electrical trams from the 1920s and added their information too.

Introduction: Driver behavior related to overtaking maneuvers, which are considered a major safety risk determinant on two-lane two-way highway in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), are an important subject of further analysis. This study evaluates safety risk in terms of nature and severity of probable conflicts during overtaking maneuvers...

Almost all of the past studies in this topic are confined to the lane based homogeneous traffic environments in developed countries using reported crash data (1,2). In this paper, a new model 3 is put forward to predict the most hazardous sections for non-lane based heterogeneous traffic environment using surrogate safety measures considering the p...

There have been number of researches that have developed crash prediction models (CPM) using statistical approaches to explore the relationship between the occurrence of crash and its influencing factors. However, almost all of the past studies are confined to the lane based homogeneous traffic environments in developed countries. Moreover, the pas...

The nature of overtaking maneuvers and associated safety risk on a two-lane undivided highway in heterogeneous traffic environment has been evaluated in this study. Different parameters have been assessed including: overtaking strategies by vehicle types; duration and distance of overtaking; as well as time and distance gaps between involved vehicl...

The modeling of driver speed choice behavior on a rural highway with heterogeneous traffic environment in a developing country is reported. The study explores the application of a latent class model as an alternative methodological approach, to relate factors such as road geometry, roadside environment, traffic mix and operational characteristics w...

Road safety is a global concern particularly in developing countries where some road sections are disproportionately more vulnerable in terms of the frequency and severity of crashes. Other than using historical crash data based reactive approaches, those sections need to be identified proactively, so that mitigation measures can be applied. Moreov...

This paper deals with the speed choice behaviour of driver on a two-lane bidirectional highway in a heterogeneous traffic environment of a developing country. The major contribution of the paper is the identification and quantification of significant attributes influencing speed choice of a driver at micro-level of the road under study. The latter...

Introduction: There have been a number of studies that have led to the development of safety risk assessment models to quantify the probability of crash frequencies on roadway facilities (both at micro- and macro-levels), over a specified time period. However, past research has rarely focused on heterogeneous traffic conditions in developing count...

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT HIGHLIGHTS • Road safety problems of Jamuna Bridge and its approach roads are investigated. • Traffic operational and behavioural characteristics are analyzed. • Hazardous Road Locations (HRL) are identified. • Measures for improving the likelihood of accidents are suggested. • Application of surrogate safety measures as an alter...

In the study reported here, the nature of overtaking manoeuver and associated safety risk on a two-lane undivided highway in an heterogeneous traffic environment has been evaluated. Different parameters have been assessed including: overtaking strategies by vehicle types; duration and distance of overtaking; as well as time and distance gaps betwee...

This paper critically reviews micro-simulation modelling applications for traffic safety evaluation with respect to the use of different simulation tools, the application of surrogate safety indicators under different aspects of road environments and crash considerations. General input variables used to develop the models; key parameters for crash...

Social, economic and infrastructure losses due to road traffic accidents and their consequences are very significant all over the world, particularly in developing countries. The evaluation of causative factors of accidents and the selection of remedial measures continues to be based mainly on traditional approaches. Whereas, accident statistics ar...

Road traffic crashes have significant negative social, economic, and infrastructure consequences, particularly in developing countries. The methods for evaluating the causal factors to identify appropriate interventions and to mitigate the problem are causes of great concern in those countries. One of the major reasons is that the evaluation method...

Although smart card fare data has recently become more prevalent as a rich, comprehensive and continuous source of information, there is still some missing information which inhibits its capability in the research field. One key missing piece of information is the passengers’ trip purpose. This paper investigates the potential of the smart card dat...

Many studies were conducted to evaluate safety at railway crossings equipped with different types of warning devices. In this study, a desktop driving simulator (fixed simulator) and an advanced simulator (moving simulator) were used to identify the impacts of two warning devices namely stop sign and in-vehicle audio warning on alerting drivers at...

Previous studies reveal that a loss in Modulus of Resilience (Mr) has an adverse effect on pavement performances. However, no study investigated this during extreme moisture intrusion at granular and subgrade layers, which may be compared with a flooding situation. This study has aimed to assess the impact of change in Mr due to moisture increase o...

Although several studies observed pavement responses after flooding, no detailed quantification has been done to date. This paper has estimated different pavements’ performances with flooding to identify flood-resilient roads. This was shown through (1) new roughness and rutting-based road deterioration (RD) models, (2) the relationship between cha...

Each road authority requires set maintenance standards and strategies to manage its roads. This paper has achieved that for the Queensland road authority as an example. The 34,000 km road network has been divided in to 27 road groups using pavement type, loading and pavement strength as criteria to set standards and strategies for each of them, whi...

Although there have been a number of recent reviews on the use of traffic conflict techniques (TCTs), none have focused on the use of proximal surrogate indicators. This paper comprehensively reviews the development and application of proximal surrogate safety indicators to address this gap. There is a particular focus on more recent advancements i...

Highway pavements generally perform poorly after flood events. However, no study has addressed this in detail, so the aim of the current research was to evaluate pavement performance before and after a flood. Roughness against time data for the last 10–12 years for 34 000 km of roads in Queensland, Australia, were used to obtain an abrupt jump in r...

Public transport planners are required to make decisions on transport infrastructure and services worth billions of dollars. The decision-making process for transport planning needs to be informed, accountable, and founded on comprehensive, current, and reliable data. One of the major issues affecting the accuracy of the estimated origin-destinatio...

This paper deals with the speeding behaviour of vehicles on a two-lane bi-directional highway in a heterogeneous traffic environment. Data has been collected using the floating car method from a major national highway in Bangladesh. Speed data extracted second by second has been analysed for a range of short road segments. Different attributes rela...

Transit agencies increasingly deploy planning strategies to improve service reliability and real time operational control to mitigate the impacts of travel time variability. The design of strategies to deal with its impacts can benefit from a better understanding of the underlying causes of travel time variability. Despite a significant body of res...

Transit agencies increasingly deploy planning strategies to improve service reliability and real-time operational control to mitigate the effects of travel time variability. The design of such strategies can benefit from a better understanding of the underlying causes of travel time variability. Despite a significant body of research on the topic,...

Jumuna MultiPurpose Bridge (JMB) is playing a vital role in accelerating economic development in Bangladesh by creating significant accessibility and mobility potential between the capital city and Northern and Western parts of the country. However, the increasing frequency of severe road accidents on this corridor looms as a serious concern. On av...

The increasing demand for advanced modelling methods, which can reflect complex travel activities of individuals, requires enhanced travel data collection methods. The introduction of GPS-assisted data collection methods has provided an alternative to the conventional methods of travel data collection. GPS-assisted data collection methods improve t...

This paper has derived a preflood road maintenance strategy. It provides an innovative approach by upgrading pavement strength now (Year 1 of the analysis) with a thin overlay, and then evaluating pavement lifecycle performance if a flood comes in different years. An after-flood treatment strategy would also be a part of this strategy package. The...

Smart card data are increasingly used for transit network planning, passengers’ behaviour analysis and network demand forecasting. Public transport origin–destination (O–D) estimation is a significant product of processing smart card data. In recent years, various O–D estimation methods using the trip-chaining approach have attracted much attention...

Traffic incidents are recognised as one of the key sources of non-recurrent congestion that often leads to reduction in travel time reliability (TTR), a key metric of roadway performance. A method is proposed here to quantify the impacts of traffic incidents on TTR on freeways. The method uses historical data to establish recurrent speed profiles a...

Traditional TSE approaches, based on chronological data including classical before-after studies, mainstream/statistical modelling and/or person judgment based approaches, has a long history. Despite the robustness of this established technique, this has not always been appropriate, as crash statistics are frequently questioned. Poor timeline, ethi...

Traffic incidents are recognised as one of the key sources of non-recurrent congestion that often leads to reduction in travel time reliability (TTR), a key metric of roadway performance. A method is proposed here to quantify the impacts of traffic incidents on TTR on freeways. The method uses historical data to establish recurrent speed profiles a...

Smartphone travel surveys are able to capture accurate details about individuals' travel behavior. However, extracting the required information (e.g., travel mode and purpose) from the data captured by smartphone applications is relatively complex, particularly when relying on the computational power of smartphones and limiting the communications b...

Real-time travel time information is important for proactive traffic management and provision of advanced traveller information systems. Although many approaches have been proposed to predict expected travel times, very few studies focus on the prediction of travel time distribution (TTD). The prediction is more challenging when the travel times ha...

This paper puts forward a method to automatically detect trips/trip-segments based on the instantaneous movement attributes of individuals that can be collected automatically by smartphone sensors. The goal is to enhance the accuracy of collected data by better identifying single mode trips/trip-segments, while minimizing participant’s involvement...

This paper puts forward a method that automatically detects trips and trip segments with data on the instantaneous movement attributes of individuals that can be collected automatically by smartphone sensors. The goal is to enhance the accuracy of the data collected through the better identification of single-mode trips and trip segments while mini...

Currently, no road authority takes into account flooding in road deterioration (RD) models; as a result, post-flood rehabilitation treatments may be sub-optimal. This paper proposes a new approach to the development of a post-flood maintenance strategy. The recently developed roughness and rutting-based RD models with flooding, by the current autho...

Travel time reliability is an important aspect of bus service quality. Despite a significant body of research on private vehicle reliability, little attention has been paid to bus travel time reliability at the stop-to-stop link level on different types of roads. This study aims to identify and quantify the underlying determinants of bus travel tim...

Several intelligent transportation systems (ITS) were used with an advanced driving simulator to assess its influence on driving behavior. Three types of ITS interventions were tested: video in vehicle, audio in vehicle, and on-road flashing marker. The results from the driving simulator were inputs for a developed model that used traffic microsimu...

Improving safety at railway level crossings is an important issue for the Australian transport system. Governments, the rail industry and road organisations have tried a variety of countermeasures for many years to improve railway level crossing safety. New types of intelligent transport system (ITS) interventions are now emerging due to the availa...

Bus travel time reliability performance influences service attractiveness, operating costs and system efficiency. Better understanding of the distribution of travel time variability is a prerequisite for reliability analysis. A wide array of empirical studies has been conducted to model distribution of travel times in transport. However, depending...

Travel time reliability is an important aspect of bus service quality. Despite a significant body of research on private vehicle reliability, little attention has been paid to bus travel time reliability at the stop-to-stop link level on different types of roads. This study aims to identify and quantify the underlying determinants of bus travel tim...

The promotion of active transport has been considered as a fundamental objective of transport planning policies since it can improve passenger's health, relieve traffic congestion, and reduce air pollution. However, the share of active transport in planning studies has not traditionally been estimated accurate enough. One of the main reasons for th...

A number of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) were used with an advanced driving simulator to assess its influence on driving behavior. Three types of ITS interventions namely, Video in-vehicle (ITS1), Audio in-vehicle (ITS2), and On-road flashing marker (ITS3) were tested. Then, the results from the driving simulator were used as inputs for...

This study introduces a new smartphone-based system for performing personal travel data collection. The system, SITSS (Smartphone-based Individual Travel Survey System), is designed to deal with the challenges associated with applying smartphones in real-world travel surveys, including battery depletion, participant’s involvement and privacy concer...

There is a need to match emission estimations accuracy with the outputs of transport models. The overall error rate in long-term traffic forecasts resulting from strategic transport models is likely to be significant. Microsimulation models, whilst high-resolution in nature, may have similar measurement errors if they use the outputs of strategic m...

This paper introduces a smartphone-based system for performing personal travel data collection. The Smartphone-Based Individual Travel Survey System (SITSS), is designed to deal with the challenges associated with applying smartphones in real-world travel surveys, including battery depletion, participant involvement, and privacy concerns. A prompte...

Over the past few years, several techniques have been developed for using smart card fare data to estimate origin-destination (O-D) matrices for public transport. In the past, different walking distance and allowable transfer time assumptions had been applied because of a lack of information about the alighting stop for a trip. Such assumptions can...

The increasing demand for advanced modelling methods, which can reflect complex travel activities of individuals, requires enhanced travel data collection methods. The introduction of GPS-assisted data collection methods has provided an alternative to conventional methods. It improves the accuracy of data collection and captures more details of ind...

Level crossings are amongst the most complex of road safety issues, due to the addition of rail infrastructure, trains and train operations. The differences in the operational characteristics of different warning devices together with varying crossing, traffic or/and train characteristics, cause different driver behaviour at crossings. This paper c...

Traffic incidents are key contributors to non-recurrent congestion, potentially generating significant delay. Factors that influence the duration of incidents are important to understand so that effective mitigation strategies can be implemented. To identify and quantify the effects of influential factors, a methodology for studying total incident...

Currently, there is no road deterioration (RD) model that can address pavement performance with flooding. Therefore, the aim of this work was to develop an RD model that considers flooding and pre- and post-flood strategies. The case study is road group(s) in Queensland, Australia, based on the 34 000 km road database of its main roads authority, a...

Network area-wide impacts due to major traffic incidents can be assessed using a microsimulation approach. A VISSIM microsimulation model for a motorway network has been developed and is used to quantify impacts of a major incident in terms of associated costs. The modelled results reveal that a 65% capacity reduction results in 36% more incident-i...

Bus service reliability has become a major concern for both operators and passengers. Buffer time measures are believed to be appropriate to approximate passengers experienced reliability in the context of departure planning. Two issues with regard to buffer time estimation are addressed, namely, performance disaggregation and capturing passengers’...

Travel surveys are considered to be a fundamental part of transport planning. Traditional travel data collection methods cannot always satisfy recent data intensive transport modelling methods. Conventional travel data collection methods mainly rely on the memory of respondents and impose a significant burden on them which adversely impacts on the...

In this paper a new method to evaluate the network-wide effect of transit signal priority (TSP) is presented. A delay function is developed to estimate the effect of TSP at intersections using parameters such as traffic flow and signal characteristics. The proposed method is tested in two case studies. Firstly, it is applied to a single intersectio...

Natural disasters can cause severe damage to infrastructure such as roads. Currently, there are no road deterioration (RD) models that can address flooding or other natural disasters. It is suggested that a probabilistic RD model incorporating uncertainty of events such as flooding should be used for asset management purposes. Moreover, the derivat...

This paper develops the concept of standard pedestrian equivalent (SPE) factors for converting a mixed pedestrian flow into an equivalent commuter flow. After a comprehensive review of passenger car equivalent (PCE) methodologies, the equal total travel time method is utilised for SPE estimation. A micro-simulation approach is employed for the form...

Railway level crossings have the potential to bring motor vehicles and trains into fatal contact. In Australia there are approximately 9,400 public railway level crossings across the country, protected either passively (64%) or by active/automated systems (28%). Passive crossings provide only a stationary sign warning of the possibility of trains c...

Assessing and prioritising cost-effective strategies to mitigate the impact of traffic incidents on non-recurrent congestion on major roads are currently a major challenge for road network operations. There is a lack of relevant local research in this area. Several incident duration models developed from international research are not considered ap...

Effective traffic incident management is an important success factor in reducing incident duration and the severe resultant congestion impacts. As such by having proper and reliable traffic incident indicators can greatly improve prioritisation and deployment of effective rapid incident response. This research aimed to examine and improve indicator...

Transit oriented developments (TODs) are master planned communities constructed to reduce the dependence on the private car and promote the modes of transport such as public transport, walking and cycling, which are presumed by many transport professionals to be more sustainable. This paper tests this assumption that TOD is a more sustainable form...

This paper proposes an Interactive Multiple Model-based Pattern Hybrid (IMMPH) approach to predict short-term passenger demand. The approach maximizes the effective information content by assembling the knowledge from pattern models using historical data and optimizing the interaction between them using real-time observations. It can dynamically es...

Traffic-simulation models are able to predict emissions for different traffic conditions based on algorithms calibrated with mainly European vehicle data. Such estimates are not likely to reflect Australian conditions, given the significant differences in vehicle fleet composition in terms of vehicle characteristics, age and fuel type used. This pa...

Reliability of transit service has been recognized as a significant determinant of quality of service. Numerous indicators have been proposed by individual operational organizations and the research community dependent on specific objectives and resource constraints. Buffer time based indicators are highly desirable since they enable evaluation...

This paper assesses Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to identify safety systems that are most likely to reduce driver errors at railway crossings. ITS technologies have been integrated in order to develop improved evaluation tools to reduce crashes at railway crossings. Although emerging technologies, knowledge, innovative interventions hav...

The use of state-of-the-art technology to collect and analyse data has significantly improved the effectiveness of safety studies. Currently, despite the fact that there are many safety systems deployed at railway crossings, only limited research has been conducted to evaluate which of these systems is the most effective in terms of costs and safet...

Control at railway level crossings, using either road rumble strips or in-vehicle auditory warning devices, has the potential to improve safety. This article evaluates driver behavior of these two devices and two conventional crossing devices (flashing lights and a stop sign) using a driving simulator. Rumble strips have been seen to encourage driv...

To quantify the level of uncertainty attached to forecasts of CO2 emissions, an analysis of errors is undertaken; looking at both errors inherent in the model structure and the uncertainties in the input data. Both error types are treated in relation to CO2 emissions modelling using a case-study from Brisbane, Australia. To estimate input data unce...

The system considered is a cinema ticketing booth system. A general simulation algorithm is presented as well as the system’s operating characteristics. The results of the experiment were verified by comparing them with video observation data and theoretical values. Finally, with comparative analysis of experiment data, the developed simulation mod...

The design and planning of pedestrian walking facilities must be undertaken in the context of the prevailing and future local traffic composition. The latter is changing rapidly as a result of demographic changes such as aging population and obesity trends. If the traffic consists of a significant proportion of various pedestrian groups, some form...

Assessing and prioritising cost-effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of traffic incidents and accidents on non-recurrent congestion on major roads represents a significant challenge for road network managers. This research examines the influence of numerous factors associated with incidents of various types on their duration. It presents a...

Travel data collection has always been considered as a fundamental part of all transport planning studies, and there has been a continuous effort to employ new approaches in order to increase the accuracy of collected data and reflect the real behaviour of individuals. Many approaches have been utilized for performing travel surveys, but there are...

Planning for traffic related congestion during peak periods continues to be one of the most important challenges facing road managers. Congestion may be thought of as either recurrent or non-recurrent. The latter is caused by factors such as incidents, work zones, weather, and special events. Traffic incidents are reported as the cause of 25 per ce...

Similar to vehicular traffic, pedestrians, despite having diverse capabilities and body sizes, can be classified as heterogeneous. The use of vehicular traffic resolves the diversity issue with a conversion of heterogeneous vehicle flow into an equivalent flow with the use of passenger car–equivalent (PCE) factors. Analysis of pedestrian flow has y...

Safety at railway level crossings (RLXs) is a worldwide issue that increasingly attracts the attention of relevant transport authorities, the rail industry, and the general public. The differences in the operation characteristics of varying types of warning devices, together with differences in crossing geometry, traffic, or train characteristics,...

Improving safety at railway level crossings is costly and as funds are often limited, it is important to search for cost-effective, evidence-based solutions. The effect that the many existing alternative systems have on driver behaviour is not always known. This paper compares driver behaviour towards two novel warning devices (rumble strips and in...

Safety at Railway Level Crossings (RLXs) is an important issue within the Australian transport system. Crashes at RLXs involving road vehicles in Australia are estimated to cost $10 million each year. Such crashes are mainly due to human factors; unintentional errors contribute to 46% of all fatal collisions and are far more common than deliberate...

There is a need to match emissions estimation to the accuracy levels of confidence in the outputs of transport models. The overall error in 20 year traffic forecasts resulting from strategic transport models is likely to be at least 20% to 25%. Micro-simulation models, although more detailed in nature, may have similar measurement errors if they us...

Similar to vehicle traffic, pedestrian flow can also be classified as heterogeneous. This paper introduces the concept of equivalent factors for converting mixed older adults and commuter pedestrian flow into equivalent commuter flow. The methodology employed was derived from vehicle passenger car equivalent (PCE) methodologies. Pedestrian micro-si...

This paper investigates incident duration and identifies contributing variables for Australian conditions. The paper presents a new framework for comprehensive traffic-incident data mining and analysis towards an incident delay model and travel-time reliability modelling. Twelve months of data were collected, analysed and the results are presented...

Pedestrian traffic flow does not always consist of individuals with uniform characteristics. Disparity in walking speed as a result of ageing is becoming more evident in populations of developed countries such as Australia. Unlike vehicular traffic where diversity is tackled by using passenger car equivalent (PCE) factors, pedestrian traffic analys...

Similar to vehicular traffic, pedestrian movements having varied capabilities and body sizes can also be classified as heterogeneous. Vehicular traffic resolves the diversity issue by converting heterogeneous vehicle flow into an equivalent flow using passenger car equivalent (PCE) factors. Pedestrian flow analysis has yet to implicitly incorporate...

Similar to vehicle traffic, pedestrian flow can also be classified as heterogeneous. This paper introduces the concept of equivalent factors for converting heterogeneous pedestrian flow into equivalent base flow derived from vehicle traffic methodologies. The methodology computes equivalent mixed traffic flow and uniform flow for the same performan...

Railway level crossings are amongst the most complex of road safety control systems, due to the conflicts between road vehicles and rail infrastructure, trains and train operations. Driver behaviour at railway crossings is the major collision factor. The main objective of the present paper was to evaluate the existing conventional warning devices i...

A structured approach is required to ensure significant and ongoing improvement in traffic systems strategy and operations. A review of improvement frameworks identified the Capability Maturity Model as a potentially useful approach to assess the current level of ‘capability’ of traffic management systems and identify future trajectories in the sho...

The maintenance of a rail network significantly contributes to the total cost of operating the network. Therefore substantial savings in railway expenditure can be achieved if track maintenance is conducted in the most cost-effective manner. Railways, however, operate under the conflicting objectives of minimising the infrastructure expenses while...

As the percentage of older people (65 years or older) rapidly increases within the population, it becomes more important to provide with innovative transportation alternatives that would help maintain their independence while also assuring the safety and comfort of other public transit users. As a result, public transit providers should examine and...

As the percentage of older people (65 years or older) rapidly increases within the population, it becomes more important to provide with innovative transportation alternatives that would help maintain their independence while also assuring the safety and comfort of other public transit users. As a result, public transit providers should examine and...

E-business (B2B and B2C) is expected to dramatically change the way business is conducted. Assessment of the likely impact of e-business on the transport system, and hence on the natural and built environment, is thus needed. This paper reports some early findings from a study to consider e-business trends and design a procedure for rating and rank...

It is recommended that timber bridges are inspected at a minimum of two year intervals to determine and rate the condition of the structure to enable the scheduling of maintenance and determine the effectiveness of past maintenance treatments. During these inspections it is necessary that a visual inspection be undertaken in conjunction with a dril...

Rail transit with its high passenger capacity and high efficiency has become one of the preferred alternatives to automobile travel. This is evident in the increasing patronage of rail travel especially in urban areas. As a result, many railway stations experience high levels of pedestrian congestion especially during the morning and afternoon peak...

China has a very large population base on which aging will occur. On the other hand, China has one of the fastest-growing fleets of automobiles in the world. The number of private car older users is increasing dramatically in Chinese urban areas. This demonstrates that the Chinese vehicle market needs design research and innovation for local older...

The database on particle number emission factors has been very limited to date despite the increasing interest in the effects of human exposure to particles in the submicrometer range. There are also major questions on the comparability of emission factors derived through dynamometer versus on-road studies. Thus, the aims of this study were (1) to...