TRF - 2019

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://192.248.9.226/handle/123/17956

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item: Conference-Abstract
Accident analysis on A9 road section from Elephant Pass to Pallai
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, 2019-09) Sivagumar, V; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
Accidents considered as major hazard for any highway section. Highway safety can be improved with geometric features such as increasing lane width, improved horizontal and vertical curves, designated U-Turn and vehicle restriction, driver discipline, regulatory action and educational programs to public etc. The study intends to identify major accident causing factors in the particular sections, thus with better understanding of the factors improve safety of all stakeholders. The 20 km of Elephant Pass to Pallai section of A9 road considered as one of the two sections which connects north peninsula with other parts of the country. With the improvement of the sections from 2010 the vehicle entering rate of the section have increased and due to its good road condition vehicles are able to move at higher speeds. Motorcycles, buses, vans are the primary vehicles using this particular section. The accident data were collected from 2010 to 2015 and its locations were identified. Accident which caused fatal impact, hospitalization of victims and property damage more than 0.1 million were selected for this research. Using GIS system, the accidents and its locations were processed. During the study, blackspots were identified by developing weightage by the impacts and number of accidents. The reasons for accidents were analyzed and categorized under human errors, traffic conditions, improper geometric designs, road conditions and environmental factors. Accident causes patterns were identified by analyzing the causes in five years period. Critical reason was identified as geometry design of the section. In order to verify this reason, another 20 km road section was selected in A9 road, where the geometric design is different from the study section. Hypotheses testing was carried out to validate the accident results of the two different sections. From the study, the accident growth rate per km was identified. Remedial measures to reduce the accidents are studied in this research. One of the major limitations was only police recorded accidents were analyzed in this research. Other limitation was reasons for the accident are ambiguous in many cases.
item: Conference-Abstract
Analysis of the level of safety of public transport in a ‘sustainable development goals’ perspective in the national context
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, 2019-09) Thilakshan, T; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
In 2015, Sri Lanka along with 192 member countries of the United Nations identified the timeliness of the concept of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (hereforth referred to as SDGs) and mutually expressed their desire to work individually and collectively to achieve the SDGs by 2030 post the Millennium Development Goals tenure from 2000 to 2015. It can be observed that the diverse nature of the context of the goals and their targets is a cross cutting concern dissecting many sectors and concerns listed by the 17 goals and 169 targets. Sustainable Transportation in the context of the United Nations has been classified into five dimensions: Accessibility, Affordability, Safety, Security and Environmental concerns. In this context, Public Transport plays a significant role in the sustainable transportation spectrum. Public Transport Safety is analyzed in this study in a global and national perspective in the context of the overall safety in transportation. The study narrows down to the concept of Public Transport safety which is identified as the one of the largest negative concerns in the current arena with a large number of commuters using the same mode at a given point of time involving high human intervention. Two targets listed in the SDGs give direct leverage to Road safety which also apply in the case of Public Transport: SDG target 3.6 - Halve the number of road traffic deaths and injuries by 2020 and SDG target 11.2 - Provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all by 2030. The Global Sustainable Transport Conference which was held on the 27th and 28th of November 2016 in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan highlighted the importance of sustainable transport in promoting economic and social development while protecting the environment and the main concern was the large number of annual deaths from road traffic accidents along with the environmental impacts of transportation. In both regards, Public Transport plays an important role and the safety assurance of Public Transport is one of the main dominating factors in attracting people to Public Transport modes, which mainly constitutes buses and trains in the national context. Thus, the study identifies the importance of Public Transport safety to achieve sustainable transportation and SDGs while analyzing the current status of Public Transport using available data and statistics in a national perspective. Apart from studying the pattern of Public Transport in terms of deaths, injuries and related parameters, more concern in the study focusses on the post 2015 SDG timeframe to evaluate the impact of the SDG framework in the context of road safety and the practicality of achieving the SDGs: target 3.6 by 2020 and target 11.2 by 2030 in the perspective of Public Transport. 90 percent of road traffic deaths occur in low and middle-income countries even though the countries count to only 54 percent of the world’s vehicles percentage. Sri Lanka is no different in terms of the crucial impact of road safety and analyzed data from the National road safety council of the Ministry of Transport and the Sri Lanka Police show no decrement in terms of road safety accidents and resulting deaths, injuries and damages. The analysis looks into the impact of Public Transport to the overall safety scenario and the steps that needs to be taken in dealing with Public Transport based safety issues with utmost importance due to the large number of lives involved in the scenario and the attraction factor of people towards using Public Transport as an alternative for their private vehicles. The number of private passenger transport buses and Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) involved in the accidents and their rate of involvement in an annual and monthly timeframe is analyzed along with the accident type. Thus, an analysis on public transport buses is carried out in an individual and overall (Private and SLTB buses) manner for better understanding. An analysis framework of the Railway sector and accidents in a periodic timeframe along with the category of railway accidents involving the railways is included in the study. Thus, the study analyzes the overall Public Transport in the national context with respect to safety and the reasons involved in the accidents along with evaluating the current position of the transport sector in terms of sustainable transportation in terms of public transport and achieving the SDGs in the national context.
item: Conference-Abstract
Analysis on fundamental factors affecting fuel economy of light duty vehicles
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa., 2019-09) Gajanayake, SP; Sugathapala, AGT; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
Fuel economy is one of the two major performance indicators of a vehicle whereas the other key indicator is the emission of mass pollutants. Recent policy related initiatives that have taken in place in vehicle manufacturing countries/regions viz. EU, USA, and Japan depict that a strict attention has been paid to control the fuel economy of the newly manufactured vehicles, especially light duty vehicles (LDVs). In order that, obtaining a better level of understanding on the fundamental factors affecting the fuel economy of vehicles is significant. Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to ensure sustainability and accessibility of energy and as a part of it, target 7.3 aims to double the global rate of energy efficiency, which includes the improvements in vehicle fuel economy. Also Goal 13 of SDGs aims to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Since transport sector is accountable for almost a quarter of CO2 emissions, the improved fuel economy can help reduce it. Factors affecting the fuel economy of LDVs can initially be categorized into 2 main types i.e. vehicular factors and non-vehicular factors. Non-vehicular factors can secondarily be categorized into 5 main types i.e. weather-related factors, traffic related factors, Street environment related factors, Travel behavior related factors and Driver behavior related factors. Vehicular factors can secondarily be categorized into 2 types i.e. Static vehicular factors and Dynamic vehicular factors. Static vehicular factors can be defined as the vehicular characteristics that do not vary in the temporal domain whereas the Dynamic vehicular factors can be defined as vice-versa. During the analysis, the Static vehicular factors affecting the fuel economy can again be listed into 4 sub-categories as mentioned below. Static Vehicular Factors • Power Generation related • Power Transmission related • Traction related • Other Static Factors The sub-factors that can be listed under power generation factors are engine configuration, type of energy/fuel used, number of cylinders, cylinder capacity, type of ignition, firing order, engine valve configuration, camshaft configuration, method of fuel injection, compression ratio, power-boosting mechanisms and engine placement. The sub-factors under the power transmission can be listed as type of transmission, speed ratio configuration, gear-changing mechanisms used and etc. The traction related sub-factors can be listed as type of driving-wheels (i.e. front-wheel drive/rear-wheel driver or all-wheel drive), wheel factors (i.e. size and weight of the wheel, without the tyre), tyre-related factors and brakes-related factors. The other static vehicular factors affecting the fuel economy can be mentioned as vehicular body dynamics and vehicular weight(no-load). The Dynamic vehicular factors can be listed as kinetics related factors (viz. torque, friction, drag, etc.), kinematics related factors (viz. velocity, acceleration etc.) and vehicular maintenance related factors (viz. vehicle-aging, vehicle-mileage, service routines, etc.). Identifying and classifying the fundamental factors affecting fuel economy is primarily significant whereas developing functional relationships between fuel economy and fundamental factors will be performed secondarily. Governing equation(s) for fuel economy will be developed subsequently. Hence, the respective analysis is performed in order to explicitly identify the fundamental factors which affect the fuel economy of LDVs.
item: Conference-Abstract
Development of bus service reliability measures at the stop level
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, 2019-09) Sharic, AHS; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
Bus service reliability, one of the key performance measures, has become a major concern of both transit operators and users because it significantly affects user experience and service quality perceptions. Schedule adherence has been the most important existing reliability measure for infrequent services that operate with headways of more than 10 minutes. For routes characterized by high frequency service namely less than 10 minutes of headways, headway variability has been the most important existing reliability measure. But these measures do not differentiate between the cost of being early versus late. Different unreliability characteristics that cannot be captured by the existing measures calls for a supplementary measure. This research adopts two indices from (Saberi, et al., 2013) that overcome those issues such as Earliness Index (EI) and Width Index (WI). The Earliness Index is defined as the percentile rank of delay/headway deviation of zero. The percentile rank of a particular delay/headway deviation is the percentage of delay/headway deviations in its frequency distribution that are lower or equal to it. EI ranges between 0 and 1. For frequent services, an EI of 0 represents the “all behind schedule” condition and an EI of 1 represents the “all ahead of schedule” condition. For not frequent services, an EI of 0 represents the “all late” condition and an EI of 1 represents the “all early” condition. For infrequent services, the theoretical ideal distribution lays on the y-axis of the cumulative distribution function. Buses that are early can be treated as being one headway late, because passengers who are arriving near the scheduled departure time would have to wait for the next bus. Therefore, the “all late” condition is expected to be the achievable ideal distribution for non-frequent services to avoid early departures. Note that the above statement is true only when the theoretical ideal distribution (all “on-time” condition) is not achievable. The closer the EI is to 0, the more reliable is the service. For frequent services, one cannot argue similarly, since maintaining a fixed headway with a small deviation is more important than being ahead of or behind the schedule. Thus, another measure is required to capture the variation of headways. To capture the width of the distribution of headway deviations in frequent services, the Width Index (WI) is defined as the 95th percentile of headway deviations minus the 5th percentile of headway deviations divided by the average scheduled headway. .Data needed for theses are as follows. Using the existing time keeper records at the bus stops, a number of measures can be simply calculated. The scheduled headway at a particular stop can be computed as the scheduled stop time for trip i at a stop minus the scheduled stop time for trip i-1 at the same stop: Note that the proposed reliability indices are not suggested as replacements for the existing measures; rather, they are complementary.
item: Conference-Abstract
A GIS based methodology to redistribute macro-level origin destination data based on the land use
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa., 2019-09) Weerasinghe, O; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
The Origin-Destination (OD) data are often collected for the transport infrastructure planning projects to study the travel patterns. Conducting OD surveys are expensive and time consuming. Therefore, the practitioners tend to collect OD data according to a macro level zoning system. In Sri Lankan context; OD surveys are conducted based on Divisional Secretariat Division (DSD) boundaries. Further, OD surveys within major towns, such as Colombo, Kandy were conducted, considering the smallest administrative boundaries in Sri Lanka; the Grama Niladhari Division (GND). Since the trip production and attraction is related to the landuse pattern of an area, the landuse can be considered as an independent variable in estimating the trip generation. Two models were developed to demonstrate the relationship between landuse (landuse floor area in m2) and the trip generation as follows; Trip production = 9117.980 + 1.425 (Private offices) + 0.792 (Educational) + 0.174 (Commercial) + 0.466 (Tourism) + 0.007 (Residential) ------(1) Trip attraction = 6914.287 + 0.201 (Commercial) + 0.730 (Educational) + 0.189 (Health) + 0.010 (Residential) + 0.551 (Tourism) ------(2) The research leads to redistribute the macro-level OD data into a modified zoning system based on its landuse character; specifically, DSD level OD data are redistributed among more than 100 zones. The research is based on both spatial and statistical analysis and spatial software, such as ArcMap, QGIS and statistical software, such as SPSS and MS Excel were utilized. The Colombo DSD was considered as the study area and subdivided into 179 modified zones. The number of trips attracted to Colombo DSD from other 330 DSDs was divided proportionately to the trip attraction factor of the modified zones. Likewise, also the trip production was calculated. There were 59,070 OD pairs between 330 DSDs and 179 modified zones. The passenger trip assignment was done assuming that all the passengers travel via the shortest route between origin and destination.
item: Conference-Abstract
Improving pedestrian movements at congested urban areas: a case study of the Rathnapura Town
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, 2019-09) Punchihewa, CS; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
Pedestrians are the main component of urban environment Traffic. Improved corridor for vehicle movements but lack of pedestrian facilities are indifferent identifications of conventional urban environment. Now transport planners considered about pedestrian friendly city environment to achieve sustainable development and encourage green patronage. Unplanned and uncontrolled pedestrian movements result in delays and safety risk at town center. Individual facility development without proper traffic impact study may causes delays to pedestrians, motor vehicles and increase in safety risks. Often, there are lots of public requests for proper network for pedestrian pathways including amenity development. However, it is very difficult to plan and design an efficient pedestrian network without understanding pedestrian movement behavior at such vicinity. This study is focused on developing a methodology to identify pedestrian movement behavior, critical areas and make necessary adoptions to develop such facilities to encourage walkable city environment. Rathnapura town is the capital city of Sabaragamuwa province, where having different terrain condition throughout the city area. One of Main arterial of country connecting South-Eastern side with the capital, induce a lot of vehicular movements into the city. Less development of pedestrian amenities is reflected heavy complexity in behavior of pedestrian movements, and it guided to a congested city environment. Household or occupational purpose utility related trips are commonly identified in such urban environment and it directly relates with land use pattern of town area. This study is to identify specific land use and generated pedestrian trips within urban territory. Schools, educational institutes are specific components where it creates sudden demand for pedestrians. Privet medical centers, banks, commercial buildings, government office attract many pedestrians within town center. Collecting data using google maps, verified those data using field data collection and make GIS land use model is final output for land use identification. Pedestrian movement has a high degree of freedom in origin - destination pair other than any mode of transportation. So, understanding of existing pedestrian route network and their conditions such as lighting, shading, security, other parameters are vital important factor. Preparation of existing pathway condition index and priorities for the optimum pedestrian path is the main objective of this study. After identification of optimum route possible improvements, changes and new adoptions can be introduced without arising further disputes. Major improvement changes from this study are; Improper pedestrian crossing locations shifting to optimum locations in urban proximity and One-way vehicle movement around bus stand for effective vehicle flow and safe pedestrian movements in urban setting.
item: Conference-Abstract
A quantitative review on travel-time reliability measures
(Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa., 2019-09) Vidanapathirana, CJ; Bandara, JMSJ; Pasindu, HR
The time spent on a trip which is termed the ‘travel time’ is a key parameter in effective journey planning. Having an understating about the travel time for a specific journey is crucial when deciding upon the departure time and route choice. With the advancement of technology, services and products have been introduced which provide travel time data and estimations to fulfil the journey planning needs. These are popularly being used by most of the travellers worldwide since the traffic conditions have become fairly unpredictable in the past few decades. A common concern the travellers have today is the accuracy of the estimated travel times. Since the estimations are based on historical data and real-time data, an accuracy of 100% can’t be achieved. Further, travel time depends on parameters which create uncertainty such as traffic composition, junction delays, pavement conditions, roadside accidents, special events (e.g.: a protest march) and weather. Some of these parameters can neither be quantified nor be predicted. Studying the reliability of travel time became a major focus area in the field of transportation engineering with these recent developments. Various studies have been conducted in the interest of developing travel time reliability measures. Most commonly used travel time reliability measures are 95th percentile travel time, buffer index, planning time index and travel time budget. It is important to mention that such measures need to be simple and easily understood by people who aren’t thorough with technical knowledge. If not, the public will not be able to incorporate travel time reliability for journey planning purposes. This study is a review on the usability of travel time reliability measures. What is expressed by each measure, how they can be interpreted and how helpful they are for the users are discussed through this analysis. A large data set of travel times was used to develop reliability measures for a selected set of road links. Verification of the results was done afterwards. Mainly this can be described as a quantitative review with a qualitative analysis on the final outcomes.

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Browsing TRF - 2019 by Author "Bandara, JMSJ"