ci370 coursework 2011

7/31/2019 Ci370 Coursework 2011

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CI370 COURSEWORK 2011

The coursework consists of one essay and numerical exercises. Equal weight will be given to the essay

and the numerical exercises. The deadline for submission is 10:00 on Wednesday 14 December 2010.

The essay and your numerical exercises should be submitted as two documents, as the essay and

numerical exercises will be marked separately.

Essay

Please research and write an essay on one of the topics in the box below. Marks will be given for:

1. Content (extent and depth of the research; clarity and force of the argument; strength of

conclusions)

2. Presentation (clarity of the structure; any examples; any diagrams or figures; accuracy of

language, which should be in the 3rd

person; accuracy of citations and references, which should be in

Harvard style)

Equal weight will be given to content and presentation. The essay, to be written in the 3rd

person, should

have no more than 2000 words excluding figures, tables, diagrams and any equations. It should begin

with an Abstract, followed by a section headed Introduction, and ending with a section headed

Conclusions. Following the Conclusions there should be a section headed References, where all the

papers, articles, books or websites cited in the essay (and no more!) should be listed. In your essay, back

your arguments with evidence, citing sources as appropriate. Citations and references should conform

to Harvard style1. Tables should numbered and have headings (located above the table) while figures

should also be numbered but with captions (located below the figure). When referring to a particular

figure or table in the text, use a capital (for example, “As can be seen in Figure 5 ...”).

Please provide a word count on the cover sheet. While there is no objection to you sharing source

material, the essay should be your own work written in your own words. Plagiarism is an offence taken

very seriously by the College.

The topics are:

1. Describe the logistical problems that constructing Crossrail will generate and discuss how these

may be mitigated or overcome.

1There is some variation in Harvard style, but fundamentally references are identified in the essay by author

surname(s) and year of publication in brackets. The brackets enclose either just the year of publication or author

surname(s) comma year of publication. If there are more than two authors the convention is to give only the first

author and replace the others by et al. In some cases, the author may be an organisation. In the list of references

after the essay, a paper, article, book chapter, or entire book is identified by all its author(s) with initials, year of

publication, title of the paper or chapter, title of the journal or book, volume if a journal, editor(s) if an edited

book, publisher and city of publisher if a book, and range of page numbers if a paper or chapter. Websites are

identified by their URL and the date of access. Guidance to Harvard style may be found on the internet.

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2. “Crossrail can be expected to play a significant role in reducing the environmental impact of

travel and transport in London”. Discuss with reference to the major mechanisms through which these

impacts occur.

Numerical exercises

Both questions should be answered completely. Equal weight will be given to each question. Answers to

the numerical questions should be given in a second document.

QUESTION 1

The activity system in a city is represented by eight zones. A zonal regression based trip generation

model estimates the number of trips Pi that will be produced by zone i and the number of trips A j that

will be attracted to zone j . The results are as follows:

P1 = 500 A1 = 3000

P2 = 500 A2 = 3000

P3 = 500 A3 = 2000

P4 = 1500 A4 = 2000

P5 = 4000 A5 = 500

P6 = 2000 A6 = 2000

P7 = 2000 A7 = 500

P8 = 4000 A8 = 2000

A traffic survey is undertaken to measure the origin-destination travel times in the system. This gives the

following results (all travel times are measured in minutes).

Destination Zone

Origin Zone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 20 29 30 36 30 34 25 25

2 29 30 23 35 36 35 34 30

3 57 23 30 44 48 41 40 25

4 36 67 44 20 36 37 41 43

5 60 55 48 36 20 41 45 47

6 37 44 41 37 41 30 40 40

7 25 34 34 41 65 40 30 60

8 25 30 27 43 47 40 30 20

This matrix is available on Blackboard under the name CI370_CostMatrix.xls.

(a) Use the Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) algorithm to compute the trip matrix { }ijT that solves

the following doubly constrained gravity model:

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( )ij i i j j ijT Pr A s f c

whereir and

js are balancing constants such that ij i j

T P i andij ji

T A j ,ij

c is the

travel time from origin i to destination j and the deterrence function ( ) exp( 0.02 )ij ij f c c . You

may stop when the row and column constraints are satisfied to within 1%.

(b) On the basis of your solution to (a) above, calculate the average travel time in the system.

QUESTION 2

The Mayor of a city is considering two alternative policies to improve the overall quality of travel. At

present, 100,000 trips are made daily in the city with 20,000 trips being made by metro while the

remaining trips are made by car. The total trips are assumed to be fixed and any changes will result in a

mode shift.

The metro fare is £3 per trip while the operating cost per trip by car is £6. On average, the travel time

per trip using both metro and the car is 30 minutes. The value of travel time is £4 per trip-hour for metro

and £8 per trip-hour by car. Consider the following policies and their outcome:

a. Implement a fare subsidy of £2 per metro trip. The policy will also reduce road congestion, reducing

car travel time by 50%. Use the own-price elasticity of metro demand of -0.5 to estimate the mode

shift taking place.

b. Implement a toll scheme by charging £5 per car trip costing the city a one-off implementation

charge of £100,000. The policy is expected to reduce car travel time per trip by 25% but increase

travel time per trip on the metro by 50%. Use the cross-price elasticity of metro demand of 2.0 to

estimate the resulting mode shift.

Professor Michael G H Bell

Sunday, 12 October 2011

ci370 coursework 2011

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