Department for Transport

Recent policy discussions about information technology in transport and traffic demand management have increased interest in activity‐based approaches to the analysis of travel behaviour, in particular in the modelling of household activity scheduling which is at the core of many of the required changes in travel behaviour. This paper is a state‐of‐the‐art review of conceptualizations and models of activity scheduling with special regard to issues raised by the new policy instruments. In the course of the review, the validity of behavioural assumptions is examined critically and several needs for future research identified.

UNLABELLED: Airborne disease transmission has always been a topic of wide interests in various fields for decades. Cough is found to be one of the prime sources of airborne diseases as it has high velocity and large quantity of droplets. To understand and characterize the flow dynamics of a cough can help to control the airborne disease transmission. This study has measured flow dynamics of coughs with human subjects. The flow rate variation of a cough with time can be represented as a combination of gamma-probability-distribution functions. The variables needed to define the gamma-probability-distribution functions can be represented by some medical parameters. A robust multiple linear regression analysis indicated that these medical parameters can be obtained from the physiological details of a person. However, the jet direction and mouth opening area during a cough seemed not related to the physiological parameters of the human subjects. Combining the flow characteristics reported in this study with appropriate virus and droplet distribution information, the infectious source strength by coughing can be evaluated. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: There is a clear need for the scientific community to accurately predict and control the transmission of airborne diseases. Transportation of airborne viruses is often predicted using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. CFD simulations are inexpensive but need accurate source boundary conditions for the precise prediction of disease transmission. Cough is found to be the prime source for generating infectious viruses. The present study was designed to develop an accurate source model to define thermo-fluid boundary conditions for a cough. The model can aid in accurately predicting the disease transmission in various indoor environments, such as aircraft cabins, office spaces and hospitals.

UNLABELLED: The exhaled air of infected humans is one of the prime sources of contagious viruses. The exhaled air comes from respiratory events such as the coughing, sneezing, breathing and talking. Accurate information on the thermo-fluid characteristics of the exhaled airflow can be important for prediction of infectious disease transmission. The present study developed a source model to provide the thermo-fluid conditions of the exhaled air from the breathing and talking processes. The source model is a set of equations obtained from the measurements of the flow rate, flow direction, and area of mouth/nose opening with human subjects. It was found that the exhaled flow rate over time can be represented as a sinusoidal function for breathing and a constant for talking. The flow rates can be calculated by physiological parameters of a subject. The direction of the exhalation jet did not vary much between subjects and the area of mouth/nose opening could be regarded as a constant. Though the mouth/nose opening size varied among subjects, they were not correlated with the physiological parameters of the subjects. If combined with appropriate virus and droplet distribution information, the model can be used to describe the disease source due to breathing and talking. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Accurate prediction of airborne disease transmission, and the infection prone zones, can aid in identifying and implementing the control strategies. With the recent advancements, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a powerful tool in predicting the disease transmission. Accurate prediction of the transmission by these CFD simulations requires information on sources and sinks of infectious viruses and models for dispersion of these viruses. The exhaled air of an infected human is one of the prime sources of disease viruses. In the present study, measurements of the flow were conducted on human subjects to develop models for the flow boundary conditions for the exhalation and inhalation during breathing and talking.

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) involves the vendor making the replenishment decision for products supplied to a customer based on various inventory and supply chain policies. Information sharing between supply chain members is required in VMI. Sometimes VMI decisions are delayed and/or the information shared is inaccurate. This research examines the effects of information delay and accuracy, and the sharing of sales and forecast information in a VMI environment facing stationary and nonstationary demand. The simulation experiments show the impact of information delay, information inaccuracy, and information sharing on a variety of performance measures, including inventory levels and fill rates.

We assess the strengths and weaknesses of strategies for creating nanoporous hydrogen storage sorbents.

In this paper, we represent a systematic review of stated preference studies examining the extent to which cycle infrastructure preferences vary by gender and by age. A search of online, English-language academic and policy literature was followed by a three-stage screening process to identify relevant studies. We found 54 studies that investigated whether preferences for cycle infrastructure varied by gender and/or by age. Forty-four of these studies considered the extent of separation from motor traffic. The remainder of the studies covered diverse topics, including preferred winter maintenance methods and attitudes to cycle track lighting. We found that women reported stronger preferences than men for greater separation from motor traffic. There was weaker evidence of stronger preferences among older people. Differences in preferences were quantitative rather than qualitative; that is, preferences for separated infrastructure were stronger in some groups than in others, but no group preferred integration with motor traffic. Thus, in low-cycling countries seeking to increase cycling, this evidence suggests focusing on the stronger preferences of under-represented groups as a necessary element of universal design for cycling.

Based on the recent World Bank urban transport strategy review "Cities on the move", the paper examines the critical differences between the urban transport problems facing cities in the developing and industrialized worlds. Premature congestion and deteriorating environmental safety and security conditions are seen as endemic in the developing country cities. Although the proportion of urban space devoted to movement is often relatively low in the developing world, rates of motorization are seen to be not untypical of those experienced in industrialized countries at similar average income levels. Hence rather than explaining the differences primarily in terms of natural endowments, the paper emphasizes the different and weaker policy and institutional contexts in which urban transport is typically performed in developing countries. It argues that the industrialized world, and particularly the multilateral banks and aid agencies, can make their most effective contribution to development by concentrating on assisting developing countries to overcome these institutional impediments to successful urban development.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in a range of transport policy initiatives which are designed to influence people’s travel behaviour away from single‐occupancy car use and towards more benign and efficient options, through a combination of marketing, information, incentives and tailored new services. In transport policy discussions, these are now widely described as ‘soft’ factor interventions or ‘smarter choice’ measures or ‘mobility management’ tools. In 2004, the UK Department for Transport commissioned a major study to examine whether large‐scale programmes of these measures could potentially deliver substantial cuts in car use. The purpose of this article is to clarify the approach taken in the study, the types of evidence reviewed and the overall conclusions reached. In summary, the results suggested that, within approximately ten years, smarter choice measures have the potential to reduce national traffic levels by about 11%, with reductions of up to 21% of peak period urban traffic. Moreover, they represent relatively good value for money, with schemes potentially generating benefit:cost ratios which are in excess of 10:1. The central conclusion of the study was that such measures could play a very significant role in addressing traffic, given the right support and policy context.

This editorial overview of the Special Issue on ‘Peak Car’ previews the seven papers, drawing out common themes and differences. It starts with a brief overview of the emergence and characteristics of the ‘peak car’ idea, including recent research and discussions. It draws out the key themes from each of the seven papers in turn and discusses implications for research and policy. It concludes that there is now little doubt that young peoples’ car use has reduced, but there is still doubt about how younger people will travel as they age, or how the next generation will travel; that location and settlement density effects are very important, meaning that future population distributions will be significant; and that while ‘economic’ factors are still seen to be important, elasticities with respect to price and income are falling, with signs of differential responses by population categories and location. In policy terms, it concludes that with the current level of uncertainty about future car use levels, rather than developing policy based on one forecast, we should be developing policy for a range of plausible scenarios.

UNLABELLED: The droplets exhaled by an index patient with infectious disease such as influenza or tuberculosis may be the carriers of contagious agents. Indoor environments such as the airliner cabins may be susceptible to infection from such airborne contagious agents. The present investigation computed the transport of the droplets exhaled by the index patient seated in the middle of a seven-row, twin-aisle, fully occupied cabin using the CFD simulations. The droplets exhaled were from a single cough, a single breath, and a 15-s talk of the index patient. The expiratory droplets were tracked by using Lagrangian method, and their evaporation was modeled. It was found that the bulk airflow pattern in the cabin played the most important role on the droplet transport. The droplets were contained in the row before, at, and after the index patient within 30 s and dispersed uniformly to all the seven rows in 4 minutes. The total airborne droplet fraction reduced to 48, 32, 20, and 12% after they entered the cabin for 1, 2, 3, and 4 min, respectively, because of the ventilation from the environmental control system. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: It is critical to predict the risk of airborne infection to take appropriate measures to control and mitigate the risk. Most of the studies in past either assume a homogenous distribution of contaminants or use steady-state conditions. The present study instead provides information on the transient movement of the droplets exhaled by an index passenger in an aircraft cabin. These droplets may contain active contagious agents and can be potent enough to cause infection. The findings can be used by medical professionals to estimate the spatial and temporal distribution of risk of infection to various passengers in the cabin.

UNLABELLED: Real-time flow simulation is crucial for emergency management in buildings, such as fire and accidental or intentional release of chemical/biological agents (contaminants). The simulation results can then be used to impose proper measures to minimize casualties. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is accurate, but too time-consuming. Nodal models are fast, but not informative. To obtain a quick and informative solution, this study proposes an intermediate approach between nodal models and CFD by introducing a fast fluid dynamics (FFD) method. This investigation used the FFD methods with and without turbulence treatments to study systematically four basic flows in buildings, and compared the numerical results with the corresponding CFD results and the data from the literature. The results show that, on one hand, the FFD can offer much richer flow information than nodal models, but less accurate results than CFD. On the other hand, the FFD is 50 times faster than the CFD. The results also show that the FFD with the laminar assumption has the best overall performance as regards both accuracy and speed. It is possible to conduct faster-than-real-time flow simulations with detailed flow information by using the FFD method. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The paper introduces a fast fluid dynamics (FFD) method, which can simulate airflow and contaminant dispersion in buildings with real-time or faster-than-real-time speed and provide informative solutions. As an intermediate approach between nodal models and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the FFD can be a very useful tool for emergency management in case of fire and accidental or intentional release of chemical or biological agents in a building or around the buildings. The FFD can also be used as a preliminary test tool for quick assessment of indoor airflows before a detailed CFD analysis.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the factors determining household car travel,
\nand specifically the effects of household income and the prices of cars and motor fuels, and
\nto explore the intertemporal pattern of adjustment. The question of asymmetry in the
\nresponse to rising and falling income is also addressed. Such asymmetry may be caused by
\nhabit or resistance to change or the tendency to acquire habits to consume more easily than
\nto abandon them. The impact of prices, the speed of adjustment and the resistance to
\nchange will be important in determining the possibility of influencing travel behaviour and
\nspecifically car use. The study utilises repeated cross-section data from the annual UK
\nFamily Expenditure Surveys and employs a pseudo-panel methodology. The results are
\ncompared with those for car ownership estimated on the basis of similar models.

Optimal control of enclosed environment requires detailed information of air distribution that could be obtained by numerically solving Navier-Stokes equations with a suitable turbulence model. This investigation evaluated the performance of eight turbulence models for transient airflow in an enclosed environment using experimental data obtained in a room. The study used the room to create three cases with gradually added flow features, which were jet, separations, and thermal plumes. The flow regimes were transitional. The study found that some Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) models were good for simple but not complicated flows. The large-eddy-simulation (LES) model was the most accurate and stable. The detached-eddy-simulation model (DES) model underpredicted turbulence kinetic energy near the walls. If the DES model include the subgrid-scale turbulence kinetic energy, the results can be significantly improved. This study shows the advanced features of LES and DES models for solving airflow in enclosed environment.

UNLABELLED: Passengers in an aircraft cabin can have different risks of infection from airborne infectious diseases such as influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and tuberculosis (TB) because of the non-uniform airflow in an aircraft cabin. The current investigation presents a comprehensive approach to assessing the spatial and temporal distributions of airborne infection risk in an aircraft cabin. A case of influenza outbreak was evaluated in a 4-h flight in a twin-aisle, fully occupied aircraft cabin with the index passenger seated at the center of the cabin. The approach considered the characteristics of the exhalation of the droplets carrying infectious agents from the index passenger, the dispersion of these droplets, and the inhalation of the droplets by susceptible passengers. Deterministic and probabilistic approaches were used to quantify the risks based on the amount of inhaled influenza virus RNA particles and quanta, respectively. The probabilistic approach indicated that the number of secondary infection cases can be reduced from 3 to 0 and 20 to 11, for influenza cases if N95 respirator masks are used by the passengers. The approach and methods developed can easily be implemented in other enclosed spaces such as buildings, trains, and buses to assess the infection risk. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Airborne infectious disease transmission could take place in enclosed environments such as buildings and transport vehicles. The infection risk is difficult to estimate, and very few mitigation methods are available. This study used a 4-h flight as an example in analyzing the infection risk from influenza and in mitigating the risk with an N95 mask. The results will be useful to the airline industry in providing necessary protection to passengers and crew, and the results can also be used for other enclosed spaces.

The repeated interactions and exchanges in formal and informal networks, e.g. family, firms, associations, friendship circles, regulars of a bar, are central to our daily life. There is no reason to assume that the geography of the members of the networks, to which one belongs, has not been affected by the seminal drop in transport and telecommunication costs since 1950. The article will develop a conceptualisation of the dynamics of the interaction between the geographies of the social networks and of activity space growth. Against this background more detailed, testable hypotheses about the change of the geographies, of the contact intensity distributions and numbers of contacts will be derived. The hypotheses will be illustrated with results from a number of surveys, in which first attempts have been undertaken to obtain the necessary data to test the hypotheses. The final section will discuss the impact of the hypotheses, if found to be true, on both transport modelling and transport policy.

Twice over the past 30 years Britain has suffered severe paralysis of its road freight system. This paper explores the likely consequences of a complete cessation of trucking services over the period of a week. By analysing inventory levels, lead times, dependence on road transport and opportunities for substitution in critical sectors, it forecasts a rapid rate of economic collapse.

Funding Information: Laurent Charlin and Andrea Lodi would like to thank Didier Chételat and Mizu Nishikawa-Toomey for reading and commenting on drafts of their subsection (§2.1) and the CIFAR AI Chair and the CERC programs for funding. Funding Information: The Office for National Statistics (ONS) played a vital role during the pandemic in monitoring infection rates. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection survey estimates how many people across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland would have tested positive for a COVID-19 infection, regardless of whether they report experiencing symptoms. This study was a collaboration with academic partners and funded by Department of Health and Social Care. This major study involved asking people up and down the country to provide nose and throat swabs on a regular basis. These are analysed to see if they have contracted COVID-19. In addition, some adults are also asked to provide blood samples to determine what proportion of the population has antibodies to COVID-19. Further details of the methodology can be found in Office for National Statistics (). Funding Information: David Canca’s work was supported by the University of Sevilla, the Regional Government of Andalucia (Spain) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grant US-1381656. Funding Information: Silvano Martello, Paolo Toth and Daniele Vigo were supported by Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grants no. FA8655-20-1-7012, FA8655-20-1-7019, FA9550-17-1-0234 and FA8655-21-1-7046. Funding Information: Rafał Weron’s work was partially supported by the National Science Center (NCN, Poland) grant no. 2018/30/A/HS4/00444. Funding Information: Salvatore Greco wishes to acknowledge the support of the Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Universita e dellaRicerca (MIUR) - PRIN 2017, project “Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis and Multiple Criteria Decision Theory”, grant 2017CY2NCA. Funding Information: Dimitrios Sotiros’s work was partially supported by the National Science Center (NCN, Poland) grant no. 2020/37/B/HS4/03125. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In October 2010, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization. One impetus behind the Nagoya Protocol was the mandate to address the unjust impacts—such as the loss of access to resources, exploitation of traditional knowledge, and expropriation of rights to resources—of the global demand for genetic resources on indigenous peoples and local communities (ILCs). Using collaborative event ethnography, this article demonstrates the limited nature, scope, and engagement of the ILC justice discourse in the negotiations, despite the supposedly inclusive nature of the CBD. I attribute the constrained discourse in part to the existence of a justice metanorm as evidenced through the emergence of shared meanings and prescriptive status of justice instruments.

This article analyses how informal labourers fare under flexible labour markets and economic liberalization, through a case study of transport workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It highlights the mainstream conceptualization of urban informality as self-employment and its influence on policy. The article stresses the importance of class differentiation in the Dar es Salaam transport sector and the predominance of informal wage employment, the uneven degree of power commanded by bus owners vis-à-vis informal unskilled wage workers and the pernicious consequences of the lack of regulation of the employment relationship on the workforce itself and on society. It then interrogates the criminalization of the workforce and shows how labour over-supply, its fragmentation and geographical dispersion explain workers’ lack of response to their plight. The longitudinal study of the rise and fall (1998–2005) of a labour association within the sector further highlights the tensions among the workforce and the forms and limits of their solidarity. The conclusion of this study suggests some policy implications.

A unified methodology has been proposed for the quantification of congestion, incorporating the volume and operational characteristics of traffic movement. The level of congestion has been modeled to relate to the causal influences of traffic movement. Modeling congestion has provided a quantitative basis for understanding the contribution of different vehicle types in overall congestion, and it is useful for evolving the policy for congestion mitigation. Quantified congestion level has been used as a logical and improved measure of effectiveness to account for the conceptual definition of level of service in a quantitative manner. Based on the congestion level, 10 levels of service have been proposed, with 9 in a stable flow zone (presently designated as A–E), and 1 representing an unstable operation (presently designated as F). The philosophy has been demonstrated by developing congestion models and assessing the effect of roadway width on congestion levels and service volumes. While it is possible to assess the realized benefits from an increase in roadway width, the required number of traffic lanes for a desired level of service can also be estimated.