Handbook of transportation science. (Q1422052)

The book comprehends all main parts, which constitute the transportation science. It starts with the elements, which concern short-time traveller behaviour as followed routes, time of travel and the choice of destination or mode. In this part the authors have summarized the fundamental aspects of the discrete choice theory and they referenced on recent model developments. They acquaint the readers with sequence of models as logit, nested logit, general extreme value and probit. They point out that the discrete choice methods are evolving to accommodate the individual requirements of particular application. These elementary decisions underlie to some broader activities of planning and organizing, what is the keystone of Chapter~3. The issues connected with transportation safety together with the way of vehicle operating are gathered in Chapter 4. The synergy of individual behaviours, which forms properties of traffic flows with all the accompanying effects as delays and congestions, is the topic of the next two chapters. These are devoted to system design and system control of transportation networks in which travel time depends on traffic flows (Chapter 5). The traffic flow theory is tackled here to elucidate origins of congestions and interaction of vehicles. Special attention is devoted to movement along links. The next two chapters cover both automated techniques for controlling of trajectories and the control at the macroscopic scale of flow regulating. The transportation system design problems are studied from two points of view. The first approach employs continuous-space models based on spatial economic theory and continuous models in physic. The authors provide an illustrative introduction to this branch of traffic modelling. They show several specific cases of solvable problems and demonstrate that this approach leads, above all, to an understanding of the economics of the studied situation rather than to answering questions of engineers. The second approach is based on a more natural discrete description of possible decisions, which should be done e.g. on terminal or other facility location. This chapter comprehends a broad spectrum of classical facility location models, exact and heuristic methods for solving the associated problems, and after this introduction to location theory it contains a substantial discussion on new directions in this field of science. There are mentioned multi-objective models, stochastic input data, and the possibility of integration of vehicle routing and location. Issues of dynamic location and network design are mentioned. These chapters (9 and 10) include together with modelling techniques even the solution techniques, which enable to obtain an optimal solution of the problems. Optimization methods are used also in the following chapter, to predict the consequences of traveller behaviour. A big portion of this handbook (chapter 12--15) deals with routing in transportation networks. Problems concerning vehicle and terminal assignment and route stop sequencing are studied in Chapter 12. Short-term decisions are considered here, meanwhile the decisions, which form tours that last more than one day, are reported in Chapter 13. Chapter 12 gives an overview of various attempts to exact solving of the vehicle routing problem. Most of these approaches are mentioned in the form of references only, but some non-traditional models are presented. It is highlighted here that till now all the exact approaches are fed from needs of current practice. The real-world problems have much bigger size and their feasibility constraints laid on solutions are more complex than those which can be coped with by these exact approaches. The concluding part of this chapter is focused on a special type of vehicle routing problem, which is called street routing problem. This specific problem distinguishes from the general ones by an enormous number of stops per route, by the absence of time-window constraints but requirement on balance of route workload is accented here. A man-machine approach to this problem is outlined in the end of this chapter together with some remarks on the future development in this field. In Chapter 13, the author introduces the problem of Long-haul Freight Transportation with its whole complexity, which includes strategic and tactical decision levels. These decisions consider the hub location problem and network design problem rather than vehicle routing. There is given a survey over particular problems connected with the network design problem and this survey is completed by a large set of references. Chapter 14 is concerned with crew scheduling meanwhile the next chapter addresses the design of transportation networks and supply chains, including the use of vehicles and terminals for shipment consolidation. The author exhibits a broad variety of logistic systems with many types of their arrangements and functionalities. He distinguishes two main types of transportation networks, what are ``for-hire network'' and ``private network''. Great attention is devoted to the description of various types of distribution systems, which can operate on these networks. Besides moving goods through transportation network, other associated activities as accumulation and sorting are studied here. The author provides an explanation of the historical development of logistic chains and connects their particular stages with technological inventions. The final section of the book addresses transportation economics. The associated chapters are focused on ways how transportation companies maximize their returns of investment. The next topic of this part is spatial interaction and the whole part is concluded by a general view of transportation economics. To conclude this review, it can be stated that this book covers all directions of current transportation research and it constitutes a useful guide for researcher and practitioners in the field of transport.