APRÈN. Portal de la producció docent del professorat de la UPC

The main objective of this project is to present the work carried out for the redesign of the urban bus network in Gijón, operated by EMTUSA. To achieve this goal, the work has been divided into five phases, each addressing key aspects of the design and planning of the new network: Phase I: Analysis of available information This phase focuses on the collection and analysis of relevant data on mobility, the supply and demand of the bus system, as well as the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of Gijón. Additionally, the main issues of the current network are identified. Phase II: Model construction and calibration This phase details the development of a demand simulation model using the PTV VISUM software. The model allows the evaluation of the current network's performance by calibrating it with real supply and demand data, and creating future scenarios to simulate changes in the proposed network. Phase III: Diagnosis of the current situation Based on the indicators obtained from the model and additional data provided by EMTUSA, a detailed diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of the current network is developed. This analysis helps identify the priority areas for improvement. Phase IV: Analysis of alternatives In this phase, different network configurations are designed and evaluated through iterative simulations in the VISUM model. The alternatives are analyzed based on performance indicators such as territorial coverage, commercial speed, and estimated demand. Phase V: Final proposal and results Finally, the optimized network resulting from the alternatives analysis is presented. The proposed changes are described in detail, along with the performance indicators of the new network and its economic feasibility. Additionally, complementary proposals are included, such as demand-responsive transport in rural parishes and measures to improve intermodal integration.

L'objecte d'aquest estudi és l'anàlisi de factibilitat del tren-tramvia de la Costa Brava, centrant-se en la previsió de demanda de diverses alternatives, incloent l'eix principal al llarg de la Costa Brava i les branques Girona-Banyoles-Besalú-Olot i la connexió amb l'aeroport de Girona. Aquest projecte busca millorar la mobilitat sostenible a la regió, fomentant el canvi modal del vehicle privat al transport públic. L'estudi es basa en la construcció d'un model de simulació utilitzant el programari PTV Visum, que permet analitzar com les noves infraestructures de transport poden transformar la mobilitat regional. La metodologia integra dades socioeconòmiques, com la població, la taxa d'atur i l'índex de motorització, amb l'anàlisi de la mobilitat actual, incloent fluxos de desplaçaments interns i de connexió. També es considera l'oferta i la demanda de transport públic i privat per identificar colls d'ampolla i oportunitats de millora. Mitjançant dades reals (big data, aforaments viaris i transport públic), s'han calibrat i validat models que permeten simular escenaris futurs. Es plantegen diferents alternatives per al desenvolupament del tren-tramvia, avaluant factors com el creixement poblacional, el turisme i la captació del vehicle privat. Els resultats d'aquests models ofereixen una previsió detallada de la demanda potencial i el seu impacte en la sostenibilitat ambiental, social i econòmica. Aquesta anàlisi posa en relleu el tren-tramvia com una solució viable per millorar la connectivitat, reduir les emissions i fomentar una mobilitat més equilibrada a les comarques gironines.

This thesis critiques the notion that focusing solely on travel time thresholds, such as the 10- or 15-minute city model, is insufficient for achieving compre-hensive accessibility. It argues for a broader, more integrated strategy that improves infrastructure, service distribution, and housing affordability. Using the PEAI framework, the study emphasizes that accessibility involves more than proximity; it requires inclusivity and functionality for all socio-economic groups.A case study in Vancouver illustrates how gaps in accessibility persist despite favorable travel times, due to car dependency and uneven municipal investment. The research assesses the accessibility of essential urban services by walking and cycling, factoring in amenity capacities to calculate travel times. By identifying accessibility gaps, the study suggests strategies for more equitable service distribution, contributing to sustainable urban planning and the creation of healthier and livable cities

This paper focuses on analyzing management strategies of platoon lanes for connected autonomous vehicles (CAV) and how those strategies impact overall traffic flow and behavior on a urban highway. Various scenarios were run with AIMSUN Vehicle Simulation and a circular highway structure that simulates ring roads of urban areas. Using different levels of demand percentages with CAVs and increasing demand, we collected statistics of traffic flow for 11 hours of simulated highway activity. Results showed that mixed platoon lanes that incorpo- rate both normal vehicles and CAV together improve individual lane capacity significantly. Additionally, as CAV become the majority type of vehicle in terms of demand, more organiza- tion and management becomes evidently necessary. These findings further exhibit how adding lane specific policies and management can impact and improve traffic flow in the future as more vehicles incorporate more technology.

The perspective of autonomous vehicles running on our roads has come closer and closer to reality over the last decades, and this technology might be implemented during the upcoming years. However, this will only be achievable through constant investigation and efforts in all the fields of science covered by the Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV). The present study focuses on the behaviour of CAV platoons in highways, and more precisely experiments an algorithm to get rid of propagating perturbations, such as the bullwhip effect, that affects the proper functioning of the platoon. This algorithm manages to simulate a sequential acceleration where each vehicle is given an individual pattern to follow before it even performs its manoeuvre, thanks to the current and objective parameters that its disposes of. These individual patterns are coordinated and prevent therefore any bullwhip effect. Nevertheless, a misconception in the theoretical model elaborated prevents the vehicles to reach their objective Desired Space Gap (DSG), and modifications must still be made to obtain an operational algorithm in regular driving conditions. Some ideas are mentioned to improve the model in this sense, as well as an alternative method to look into, based on dynamic equations.

Dynamic Network Loading (DNL) models are common algorithms used in transportation modelling to capture traffic dynamics. Despite their common use, DNL models could generate different possible outputs for the same given conditions in specific situations. This phenomenon is called non-uniqueness, and it could lead to completely unrealistic simulations because DNL is a deterministic model. This thesis presents and computes two successful contributions: (1) an Equilibrium Theory that eliminates some non-unique cases from a new point of view and (2) a post-process model based on a continuous-time Markov chain that combines solutions found using the Equilibrium Theory.

This project is intended to understand how to best use latest academic models and knowledge in the practical logistics world. This is especially interesting in logistics, given the high level of objectivity of the problems' nature (compared to for example marketing, which is much more subjective). Reducing network inefficiencies is today increasingly important given that companies' success driver is currently swapping from demand to supply, and also considering the impact on planet's sustainability. This thesis focuses on network design, a complex topic that today is optimized rather locally. The current general business trend here is to use simulation tools that provide best local alternatives assuming the rest of the network to be fixed. This approach fits in a stable environment where changes happen rather slowly and smoothly so that constantly reconsidering the full structure is not needed. Also, today's still existing lack of consistent and solid complete database triggers a necessity to manually obtain and summarize the needed input, hindering the extraction of the end-to-end picture and making those local scenario analyses the only feasible ones. However, both trends are changing: proper digitalization is tackling the data bottleneck, while it is getting more and more clear that the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world we have experienced these last years is here to stay. Given those facts, we shall reconsider how to best pull data insights to provide powerful indications and help addressing management towards proper directions. In this regard, optimization models are proposed as a holistic complement of today's used local simulation ones. The core of this project is the formulation of a linear integer program to optimally design a hub and spoke network to serve the Spanish customers from different EU origins (optimum balance between direct routing and shipment consolidation) and solve it on a small example data set. Given their high computational cost, exact integer programs are not suitable for real logistics problems of real scale. Therefore, the next steps would be to design an heuristic algorithm that, trading some controlled results precision for speed, could cope with the application of this model to real-life problems

Dynamic toll pricing is a useful method of congestion pricing. Highways with High Occupancy Toll lanes or Express Lanes apply tolling schemes to manage the demand and to keep the lanes free-flowing, but tolls are usually implemented as time-of-day tolling or dynamically but based on predefined rules. This work presents a real-time model-free control framework to determine dynamic toll prices in order to optimize a system performance objective, in response to real-time traffic measurement

Sustainable urban planning policies put a strong focus in promoting walkability and public transportation. In this research, an approach is adopted through simple calculations on how urban form parameters can influence mobility flows, and their interrelation with space occupation in street cross sections. With the main objective of providing a simple rule of thumb on how to manage street space and transportation demand inside the sustainability frame, basic theoretical hypotheses will be applied to two street models with different land use distributions. These models are ideal, linear representations of a street but can be adapted to the study of different city morphologies. Results will demonstrate the important role of mixture of land uses in transport efficiency, and the potential of modelling pedestrian demand and flow as a direct function of distance and population density. In addition, a simple set of calculations will be proposed for the computation of space needs, which will show that efficient streets, in general, do not need more than two car lanes per sense of circulation. Results will be put along with perceptual considerations which, according to literature, have been for long omitted in urban planning but, however, can significantly improve walkability and sustainability. The whole set of explored conceptions wins a great importance in the panorama of the post-COVID19 city, which supposes an ideal opportunity for improved approaches in mobility and environmental sectors.

Seville's metro network is projected as a LRT four-line system where one of them is under operation while the rest are only projected. Considering budget limitations and feasibility prospectives, the thesis pretends to evaluate how to develop the construction in a phases schedule as well as exploring alternatives and improvements within the metropolitan multimodal transit system and the urban framework. PTV's software will be the main tool in order to study demand and operation projections starting from a theoretical base.

Machine learning algorithms are used in the transportation field to successfully identify patterns and predict user?s behavior. This study aims to predict the demand of bike sharing services by means of this type of algorithms. The necessary input data and best parameters leading to optimal results will be identified, and a case study based in the bicing system in Barcelona, is going to be presented.

This project aims to analyze the potential of car platooning to improve the overall road system performance. The concept of platooning refers to the linking of vehicles through wireless technology in groups of cars that travel very close one after another in highways. The leading vehicle controls the speed and direction, whereas the following vehicles respond to the leader's movement. Grouping vehicles into platoons might increase road capacity by reducing headways, safety by removing human errors and cost savings by reducing fuel consumption and emissions.

This study will evaluate the real causes of phantom traffic jam by evaluating different continuous car-following models under different conditions. Finding the origins of these instabilities would lead to apply some control measures which may solve or minimize the stop and go traffic patterns and improve the whole road performance.

The objective of the present TFM is to analyze the performance of the Advisory Speed Limit (ASL), which is a control strategy, inside a city's signalized network grid using Newell's simplified car-following model with bounded acceleration. The impacts of ASL will be studied through the obtained Network Fundamental Diagram for both control vs no control configurations. This will give us the possibility to quantify and get a picture of the effects from the system's point of view.

Bike-Sharing Systems (BSS) are spreading over the world at a fast pace. Several reasons base the incentive from a government perspective, usually related to sustainability, healthy issues and general mobility. Although there was a great prioritization in the last years, literature on how to design and implement them are rather qualitative (e.g. guides and manuals) while technical research on the subject usually focus on extensive data inputs such as O/D matrixes and other methods that may not be robust nor extrapolated to other places. Also, lack of data in some regions make them of little use to be easily transferred. The thesis aims to work on an analytical continuum approach model to design a BSS, providing guidelines to a set of representative scenarios under the variation of the most important inputs. It is based on the optimization between Users and Agency, so there is a global outcome that minimizes total costs. In particular, it develops a monocentric approach to capture demand heterogeneity on cities center-peripheries. The model is calibrated on Barcelona's existing BSS and results are within an acceptable error range for an analytical modeling. By optimizing its design, it is possible to see a big gap compared to the actual one. It would require a substantial increase in infrastructure (twice stations and bicycles), but would allow a much better Level of Service. The scenarios results show the importance of demand density to the system. Low densities can rise sharply users' costs. It becomes particularly critical on societies of a lesser economic power (with a low Value of Time - VoT), where the affordability by its citizens or government can even compromise the BSS feasibility. Regarding the central-peripheric relation, demand concentration within the central region benefits from Economies of Scale, although at a low level. Even so, infrastructure do not follow their relation in the same rate. The rise in concentration on the center does not imply in the same increase in infrastructure. The unbalance between zones rise the repositioning costs, but are considerably small compared to the system overall costs. The thesis presents these results as an initial guideline to be used as references along with the modeling that makes them possible. The center-periphery differentiation can be seen both, as a reflect from the different characteristics from a region and also be used as steps to implementation of a BSS in phases, as it usually occurs

L'ús de límits variables de velocitat (VSL) és una estratègia de control del trànsit que pretén evitar, eliminar o endarrerir els efectes del conegut “capacity drop” o pèrdua de capacitat als colls d'ampolla de les autovies. A la literatura podem trobar nombrosos estudis que se centren en algoritmes per adaptar el límit de velocitat a les condicions del trànsit. No obstant això, la localització de les zones d'aplicació d'aquests VSL és un altre paràmetre de disseny important que, malauradament, mai s'ha estudiat en profunditat en la literatura. Només s'han proposat un parell de recomanacions pràctiques en base a uns resultats empírics. Per una banda, s'ha suggerit que els vehicles han d'arribar a la velocitat lliure abans d'arribar al coll d'ampolla. D'altra banda, sabem que l'àrea d'aplicació del control no pot estar molt lluny del coll d'ampolla per evitar congestionar altres sortides (aigües a dalt) de l'autovia. Aquest treball de final de màster desenvolupa una raonament teòric i numèric per determinar la localització òptima de l'àrea d'aplicació del control. En primer lloc, es defineix una estratègia de control oberta (open-loop) i es desenvolupa una eina de simulació en una autovia hipotètica amb reducció de carril basada en un model “carfollowing” (de microsimulació) que considera acceleració limitada (BA) i que captura el fenomen de “capacity drop”. Amb els resultats obtinguts es demostra que es pot evitar la pèrdua de capacitat quan el procés d'acceleració és estacionari i està definit (controlat) pel model de BA. A més a més, es demostra que no és necessari que els vehicles accelerin fins a la velocitat lliure abans d'entrar al coll d'ampolla. Finalment, es desenvolupa una formulació teòrica per determinar la localització `optima de les àrees d'aplicació del control. També es realitza un anàlisis de sensibilitat per concloure quin efecte tenen els diferents paràmetres geomètrics i d'estat del trànsit en la localització òptima de l'àrea d'aplicació del control.