Scientific Journal of Silesian University of Technology. Series Transport

10

Authors: Lamiya NABADOVA

In the article, the problem of detecting a suspicious object in the control by unmanned air vehicle (UAV) and tracking it by reaching and changing its direction in the shortest period of time is explored. To solve this optimal control problem, it is considered that the flight of UAV is described with simple motion equations. In the beginning, known quantities are current coordinates and speed of UAV, equation of motion of detected suspicious object.

12

Authors: Mulugeta GIRMA

To make decisions and exercise managerial control over the degree of input utilization, and produce desired outputs, it is important to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the municipality-owned public transit service operators. This study uses the Data Envelopment Analysis approach to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the public transit companies operated by the city administration in Addis Ababa. The size of the fleet and the total number of personnel serve as inputs, and covered vehicle kilometers and the number of passengers carried annually serve as outputs. Based on secondary information gathered from each firm, the technical efficiency and operational effectiveness of service providers are then examined. The study's findings show that the Anbessa city bus was efficient in using resources to produce output in 2019/20 and 2021/22, but wasteful in other years. In the same way, the Sheger City Bus was efficient in 2017/18 and 2021/22 but ineffective in all other years. However, the aggregate findings show that both research's efficiency levels are rising annually. Besides, with mean scores of 0.85 and 0.874, respectively, Anbessa and Sheger Bus were technically flawed. On the other side, operational effectiveness reveals that the Anbessa city bus was only effective in 2021/22. Furthermore, the Sheger city bus' effectiveness result has improved and started to be effective in 2017/18, 2018/19, and 2021/22. In conclusion, the Anbessa and Sheger city buses' efficiency and effectiveness ratings improved year over year and peaked in 2021/22. Hence, to support the business and boost its operational capabilities, the city administration should encourage public bus transit operators in the city and offer subsidies and other incentives to them based on their existing performance.

13

Authors: Laksanee BOONKHAO, Pirawan WINTACHAI, Supasinee PONGAREE, Pongsak RATTANACHAIKUNSOPON, Warisin BAUKEAW, Wannee KAEWSUK, Thitima SAENRUEANG

Thailand had a decline in traffic fatalities even though the estimate is only approximate. This study aims to examine the factors related to the motorcycling riding performance of 69 motorcyclists aged 60 and older in Khi Lek Subdistrict, Muang District, Ubon Ratchathani Province. Data were collected from interviews on driving behavior with the participants and their driving performance from the tests modeled on the Thai driving license test. Fisher’s Exact Test was used to analyze the data. The results showed that the elderly exhibited good motorcycle driving behavior (91.30 %); however, their riding ability was at the level of “need to be improved” (85.51%). They showed poor performance on the reflex test (72.46%) and the depth perception test (69.57%). The tests the participants passed were the color blindness test (100%) and the peripheral vision test (61.82%). This study also found that the average daily motorcycle driving distance (p-value = 0.045) and motorcycle driving experience (p-value = 0.036) of the older motorcycle riders were determined to be statistically significant factors. The findings are useful for responsible organizations to decide on road safety policies to lower the risks of accidents involving elderly motorcycle riders in Thailand. They could consider revoking lifetime driver’s licenses, providing training to promote safe driving techniques, and taking into account how the elderly’s riding performance is correlated to their average daily driving distance and driving experience.

14

Authors: Elżbieta MACIOSZEK, Saša AHAC

Currently, the branch of air transport is one of the most dynamically developing branches of transport. Modern air transport systems provide relatively high quality of services in terms of satisfaction, preferences, and tastes of potential recipients, passengers, and freight operators. Air transport systems use highly advanced technologies, equipment, infrastructure, and appropriate rules and procedures in order to ensure the desired quality of services. The article presents an analysis of the volume of passenger and cargo transport in air transport on the example of the Warszawa Okęcie International Airport (Poland). The analysis covered the years from 2011 to 2021. In addition, the market of air services, and air connections with Warszawa Okęcie International Airport were characterized.

15

Authors: Marcin ŚWITAŁA

This paper presents the results of research conducted among 100 local government units performing the duties of road network administrators, i.e., administrators of municipal roads (AMR), county roads (ACR) and those operating within the boundaries of cities with county rights (ACCR). The aim of the research was to identify and assess management problems related to the implementation of statutory measures related to the protection and development of respective road networks. A hypothesis was formulated about the existence of statistically significant differences between the AMR, ACR and ACCR groups, which was verified by quantitative analysis of the data obtained from the online survey. They were analysed and interpreted using the SPSS package and using measures of descriptive statistics, the correlation coefficient and the Kruskal–Wallis test by ranks. The results of the study indicate that the difficulties of providing and maintaining an efficient road network pavement, as well as the challenges of developing draft financing plans for the construction, reconstruction, and rehabilitation of the road network, are currently the main points of focus for all road administrators. The lack of statistical significance of intergroup differences was observed in the vast majority of measurements. The exceptions to this were the differences that occurred in the total number of difficulties reported, which were greater among the members of AMR and ACR than ACCR, as well as the differences related to the implementation of measures undertaken for the maintenance of roadside greenery, which were more onerous for ACR.

18

Authors: Anna BORUCKA, Edward KOZŁOWSKI

The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically affected the transport sector, because of the restrictions introduced to limit the spread of the threat. They concerned primarily passenger traffic, but trade in goods also faced completely new challenges, related to increased consumption and the dynamic development of e-commerce on the one hand and restrictions related to the pandemic and sealing borders on the other. One of the most susceptible to fluctuations in international trade is the maritime economy, which has been analysed in this article. It was checked how the global threat affected sea traffic in terms of gross weight of goods handled in main ports. The aim of the study was to characterize the impact of the pandemic on sea transport depending on the type of ship and to evaluate the current state of sea transport in the context of the level shaped by forecasts based on observations from before the coronavirus pandemic. The authors' assumption was to check whether the rail transport market has already reached the level it could reach in the absence of the virus threat. The use of a polynomial function was proposed for the study. Time series containing observations up to the outbreak of the pandemic and forecasts based on them, as well as time series containing additional observations from the pandemic period were analysed. The study results obtained allowed to conclude how the global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic affected the cargo traffic in the sea transport, expressed by the mass of goods transshipped in major ports, depending on the individual types of ships.

19

Authors: Emilian SZCZEPAŃSKI, Piotr GOŁĘBIOWSKI, Barbara KONDRACKA

Shunting stations play an essential role in ensuring the proper functioning of the railway transport system. The proper organisation of their work allows trains to be dispatched on time and compensates for delays in other areas of the railway network. This paper presents a method for evaluating the technological process of wagon processing at shunting stations based on the author's formulation of evaluation measures and using a simulation model developed in Flexsim. A variant computational example was developed to verify it and demonstrate its capabilities. The method has many applications in assisting decision-makers in organising shunting station operations, adapting the shunting station layout to the tasks or identifying bottlenecks.

20

Authors: Halil Ibrahim KAZICI, Selahattin KOSUNALP, Muhammet ARUCU

Short-term traffic flow prediction plays a significant role in various applications of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), such as road traffic control and route guidance. This requires the development of intelligent prediction approaches for accurate and timely traffic flow information. To handle this issue, this paper emphasizes the potential of a new idea to propose a high-quality and intelligent prediction of short-term traffic flow in ITS. The proposed model, referred to as ITS-Pro-Flow, takes the benefits of the well-known Profile-Energy (Pro-Energy) as a landmark solution, relying on past observations and current conditions to forecast future short-term traffic flow volume. ITS-Pro-Flow has an effective prediction mechanism due to its unique enhancements over Pro-Energy. The distinctive feature of ITS-Pro-Flow is that it dynamically adjusts the contributions of past predictions and current observations for a particular prediction, which is equally performed in Pro-Energy. We prove the performance of ITS-Pro-Flow through extensive simulations with 2 datasets, in comparison to Pro-Energy and IPro-Energy. Performance results clearly indicate that ITS-Pro-Flow provides more accurate predictions than other schemes.

23

Authors: Sagar DHAMONE, Arun PADMAKUMAR

The main motive of this research is to develop an energy absorber system for automobiles and perform an experimental disquisition by applying different parameters to check the effect of the crash on the machine’s front cushion by perfecting energy-absorbing capacity for the passenger safety aspect. Considering automobile vehicle speed limits similar to (Low, Medium, and High), the speed limits in India vary by state and vehicle type. In Karnataka, there is no limit (60 km/hr for buses in Bangalore except on Airport Road where it is 80 km/hr and 100 km/hr for buses only on NH and 66 km/hr between Mangalore and Udupi). Transport vehicles have a limit of 66 km/hr. This data is set with cooperation between the state and the ministry of highway department for light motor vehicles and buses. My exploration: considering the norms as per international safety regulations, and the purpose of an automobile's safety systems, the experimental set-up was designed so that a straight pendulum would strike the bumper system, and the front, and rear impacts would hit at 4.5 to 5 km/h, and the loaded or unloaded car would hit at 3 km/h and 46 cm above the front and back corners. To achieve this goal and to develop the energy absorber system, we used appropriate parameters such as CAD, CAM, CAE, testing, Simulink, and hand computation, enforcing the criteria in a unique development perspective by adding crash capability with a spring-loaded system, minimising crash effects, increasing immersion capacity, and implementing it on the SUV front cushion system.