On July 10, 2016, Zhejiang University-COTA Summit Workshop was held in the Yuanzheng-Qizhen Hotel, on campus of Zhejiang University. The workshop was jointly organized by the Traffic Control Research Laboratory (TCRL) of Zhejiang University and the Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA). The theme of the workshop is Urban Traffic Congestion Mitigation: Advanced theories, solutions and challenges. It is aimed at deepening the communications between domestic and international transportation institutes in the fields of research, education and technology transfer, in order to promote the development of transportation studies in China.
The Chairs of this workshop are Professor DianHai Wang, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Zhejiang University, and Associate Professor Yu Zhang, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida. Chairs of the Organizing Committee are Hundred Talents Program Professor XiQun (Michael)Chen, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Zhejiang University, and Assistant Professor Shanjiang Zhu, Department of Environment, Civil Engineering and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University. The topics of this summit workshop include: traffic demand management, transportation planning and modeling, international experience and judgment for China, smart city, big data and intelligent transportation, transport economics and policy, traffic control, communication theory and application, urban traffic congestion monitoring, urban traffic system operation and management.
Professor Yaozhi Luo, Dean of the College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a welcoming remark to workshop participants on behalf of the college. Professor Luo then introduced the college developments in terms of research subjects and international communications.
Professor DianHai Wang, Director of TCRL, presented an overview of transportation studies of Zhejiang University in the research areas of traffic control, traffic planning, traffic data research and applications in recent years, and overlooked future collaborations.
First of all, Associate Professor Yu Zhang, President of COTA, addressed a wonderful speech entitled Free Floating Public Bike: To Solve Real-life Large-scale Static Rebalancing Problems. Dr. Zhang analyzed the current operation mode of public bicycles internationally, as well as some existing problems. Through theoretical analyses, she came up with a new method to solve the real-life operation of the bicycle scheduling problem.
Professor Michael Walton delivered a speech entitled New Technologies and New Frontiers for Surface Transportation. Despite its fast development, connected and autonomous vehicles continue to raise discussion of issues concerning associated technological, economic, social and policy issues. An overview of this development is given to highlight the potential mobility and safety benefits of connected and autonomous vehicles, major barriers of implementation in the mid-and long term, and implications towards smart and responsible city traffic management.
Professor Lei Zhang delivered a speech entitled Integrated Travel Behavior and Dynamic Traffic Models for Real-time Congestion Mitigation. This presentation showcases the next-generation integrated travel behavior and dynamic traffic models, which are based on multimodal agent-based simulation (SILK and DTALite) and capable of supporting real-time decisions on large-scale networks. The integration framework considers both day-to-day learning and within-day dynamic behavior adjustment sin response to traffic conditions. Data feeds and cloud computing setup that support such state-of-the-art methods are also discussed. Applications include transportation planning, integrated corridor management, active traffic management, advanced traveler information system, and transportation network optimization with smart phone apps and crowd sourced solutions.
Professor Xiaoguang Yang delivered a speech entitled Version 2.0 of Traffic and Transportation Engineering: Exploration Research. Traffic engineering is a typical cross-disciplinary subject. Boom in the 1930s, traffic engineering was once part of the civil engineering. Though its main research objects and methods, with the development of the elements of transportation systems and change, but its subject is still limited to the category of civil engineering and mathematical. In fact, after 80 years’ development, especially along with the growth of computer science and communication technology, varieties of advanced technology, such as the intelligent transportation systems, Smart city, the Internet of Vehicles (Connected Vehicle), unmanned vehicle, as well as the cloud computing, big data, and the artificial intelligence, are now able to record the movement in a track level for both people and objects. Meanwhile, traffic management and control can also provide with a high degree of initiative service. Therefore, the object of traffic and transport will no longer be limited to a general sense of traffic flow and personal safety, but the sustainable development of multiple targets becomes more desirable. This speech mainly discussed the connotation and denotation of the 2.0 version of traffic engineering, including several new research methods.
Professor Kay Axhausen delivered a speech entitled Autonomous Vehicles: The Next Step in Accessibility? The gains in accessibility of the last 150 years have been impressive, but in the OECD countries further gains have become very expensive due to construction and political costs of any new infrastructure. Autonomous vehicles promise massive capacity and speed gains at little costs for the infrastructure operators. The Talk discussed the concept of accessibility and its impact on productivity and then trace its history using Switzerland as an example. It showed the possible gains due to AVs employing an aggregate model in the first instance. The talk discussed the induced demand effects and the expectations for the final gains in accessibility.
Professor Juan de Dios Ortuzar delivered a speech entitled Road Pricing: An Impeccable Policy - How Can We Sell It? Congestion in a road is evident when the ratio between its sustained flow and its capacity (degree of saturation) exceeds 0.7. On the basis of traffic engineering basics and reviewing a couple of traffic paradoxes, it is argued that congestion pricing is indeed an impeccable. The main criticisms found in the literature about this important policy are presented, and a response provided for all of them. Finally, a study is discussed where using Delphy methods, focus groups and data from an interesting stated choice survey, we were able to model the response of car drivers to different road pricing scenarios, leading to the definition of key pointers required to sell the policy to the community.
The afternoon sessions were in the form of round-table discussions. Professors Yibing Wang and Xiqun (Michael) Chen served as Chairs. The first discussion topic was Road Traffic Management and Control in China, the second one was Big Data Analytics: Understanding Urban Mobility, Support for Transportation Planning, and Research Problems. Panelists actively put forward valuable suggestions for the construction, operation, management of urban transportation systems.
As the moderator, Professor Xiqun (Michael) Chen presided over the morning plenary session.