The efficient movement of freight trucks is vital for modern logistics, where the organization of truck tours is central to optimizing supply chain operations and minimizing transportation costs. The truck tour patterns embody a complex interplay of diverse decision-making factors, reflecting the effectiveness of transport and logistics planning initiatives. Despite previous research efforts, an in-depth analysis of understanding how various decision-making factors, such as time of the day and product type, interact and their heterogeneous effects on shaping truck tour patterns is still lacking. This limitation hinders the development of more effective and sustainable strategies for freight transportation. In this paper, by leveraging large-scale carrier and shipment dataset in the Netherlands, we capture and analyze the heterogeneity of over 1000 diverse tour patterns of freight trucks in terms of temporal, spatial, and shipment requirements characteristics. We further introduce a novel modeling approach using random parameters logit models with heterogeneity in means and variances to uncover the heterogeneous effects of various factors on the choice of truck tour patterns. The model results highlight the multifaceted nature of truck travel behaviors, offering practical implications for logistics operations, policy development and freight planning.

Lacking protection compared to drivers of other vehicles, motorcyclists accounted for most casualties and fatalities. This study explores how non-motorcycle drivers affect motorcyclists’ injury outcomes in motorcycle-vehicle collisions. The motorcycle-vehicle crashes from the United Kingdom for 2016–2020 are used to estimate two alternative logit models to account for possible unobserved heterogeneities. The models are a latent class multinomial logit with class probability functions and a random threshold-parameter generalized ordered logit. With three possible injury severity levels (fatal injury, severe injury, and minor injury), the characteristics of motorcyclist, driver, roadway, environment, vehicle, and collision are considered potential determinants. Then, the temporal instability issues are revealed through the likelihood ratio tests and out-of-sample predictions based on the two models. Showing good (Formula presented.) values of over 0.370, the latent class model’s estimation results are leveraged to quantify the effects of the contributing factors. Moreover, the marginal effects are also calculated to reveal the existing temporal instability, while some variables reflect the temporal instability in the influence trend and degree. The critical factors increasing the risk levels are male motorcyclists, higher speed limit, older ages of motorcyclists and vehicles, fine weather, single carriageway, and head-on collision type. Overall, subtle variations in the injury severity predictions exist in alternative heterogeneity modeling approaches, suffering from the modeling mechanism of different structural frameworks in capturing the unobserved heterogeneities.

The configuration of the urban built environment is critical for promoting sustainability and achieving carbon neutrality. However, existing studies mostly use linear and spatial econometric models to investigate the relationship between urban built environments and traffic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, in-depth studies exploring the heterogeneous impacts of related features on traffic CO₂ emission by interpretive machine learning models are scarce. Hence, we extract four dimensionless features to depict the size, compactness, irregularity, and isolation of built-up areas, and road network-related features (i.e., average cluster coefficient, road topological density, and road geometric density), respectively. Subsequently, we develop an interpretive machine learning framework based on the extracted features related to the urban built-up areas and road networks. The interpretive results of the proposed framework uncover that urban morphological features, especially population density (POP), GDP per capita (GDPpc), and urban physical compactness (UPC), have a heterogeneous impact on the per capita traffic emission (PCCE) across different cities. GDPpc is more like a linear relationship with PCCE, and UPC has a significant influence on PCCE when its value is between 62% and 78%. Our results also reveal the nonlinear relationships and interactive effects between these features, providing the implications of urban morphological planning and carbon emission reduction.

Traffic barrier crashes have been a major concern in many prior studies in traffic safety literature, especially in the crash-prone sections of mountainous regions. However, the effect of factors affecting the injury-severities resulting from crashes involving different types of traffic barriers may be different. This paper provides an empirical assessment of the performance of ordered and unordered discrete outcome models for examining the impact of exogenous factors determining the driver injury-severity of crashes involving two types of traffic barriers in mountainous regions: w-beam barriers and cable barriers. For the ordered framework, the alternative modeling approaches include: the generalized ordered logit (GOL) and the random thresholds random parameters generalized ordered logit model (RTRPGOL). Whereas, for the unordered framework, the alternative modeling approaches include: the multinomial logit (MNL), the random parameters multinormal logit (RPL), and the random parameters multinormal logit model with heterogeneity in the means and variances (RPLHMV). Using injury-severity data from 2016 to 2019 for mountainous regions in Guiyang City, China, three injury-severity categories are determined as outcome variables: severe injury (SI), minor injury (MI), and no injury (NI), while the potential influencing factors including drivers-, vehicles-, road-, and environment-specific characteristics are statistically analyzed. The model estimation results show: (a) that the MNL model statistically outperforms the GOL model in terms of goodness-of-fit measures; (b) the RTRPGOL model is statistically superior to the MNL and RPL models; and (c) the RPLHMV model is statistically superior to the RTRPGOL model, and therefore the preferred option among the model alternatives. To that end, the RPLHMV model is leveraged to quantitatively describe the impact of explanatory variables on the driver injury-severity and explore how these factors change over the years (between 2016–2017 and 2018–2019). The results further show that the factors affecting driver injury severities and the effects of significant factors on injury severity probabilities change across traffic barrier crash models and across years. In addition, the results of the temporal effects analysis show that some variables present relative temporal stability, which is important for formulating long-term strategies to enhance traffic safety on mountainous roads. Most importantly, the effects of the explanatory factors that exhibit relative temporal stability are found to vary across traffic barrier crashes. For example, trucks, daylight, curved section segments, and high-speed limit (greater than 55 mph) are some of the factors that have opposite effects between traffic barrier crash models. The findings from this paper are expected to help policy makers to take necessary measures in reducing traffic barrier crashes in mountainous regions by forming appropriate strategies, and by allocating properly their available resources at the pre-planning phase.

Truck-involved crashes, especially truck-car crashes, are associated with serious and even fatal injuries, thus necessitating an in-depth analysis. Prior research focused solely on examining the injury severity of truck drivers or developed separate performance models for truck and car drivers. However, the severity of injuries to both drivers in the same truck-car crash may be interrelated, and influencing factors of injury severities sustained by the two parties may differ. To address these concerns, a random parameter bivariate probit model with heterogeneity in means (RPBPHM) is applied to examine factors affecting the injury severity of both drivers in the same truck-car crash and how these factors change over the years. Using truck-car crash data from 2017 to 2019 in the UK, the dependent variable is defined as slight injury and serious injury or fatality. Factors such as driver, vehicle, road, and environmental characteristics are statistically analyzed in this study. According to the findings, the RPBPHM model demonstrated a remarkable statistical fit, and a positive correlation was observed between the two drivers' injury severity in truck-car crashes. More importantly, the effects of the explanatory factors showing relatively temporal stability vary across different types of vehicle crashes. For example, car driver improper actions and lane changing by trucks, have a significant interactive effect on the severity of injuries sustained by drivers involved collisions between trucks and cars. Male truck drivers, young truck drivers, older truck drivers, and truck drivers' improper actions, elevate the estimated odds of only truck drivers; while older car and unsignalized crossing increase the possibility of injury severity of only car drivers. Finally, due to shared unobserved crash-specific factors, the 30-mph speed limit, dark no lights, and head-on collision, significantly affect the severity of injuries sustained by drivers involved in collisions between trucks and cars. The modeling approach provides a novel framework for jointly analyzing truck-involved crash injury severities. The findings will help policymakers take the necessary actions to reduce truck-car crashes by implementing appropriate and accurate safety countermeasures.

Background: Existing studies mainly focus on the relationship between real-time weather and traffic crash injury severity, while few scholars have investigated the operation risk levels caused by traffic incidents. Identifying weather-related factors that affect the incident-induced delay is helpful for estimating the delay levels when an incident occurs. Accordingly, the present study profoundly explores the relationship between weather conditions and traffic delays caused by traffic incidents. Methods: The traffic incident and weather datasets from January 1 to December 31, 2020, in New York State are used. To that end, the hazard-based duration and multinomial logit modeling frameworks are employed to determine the effect of weather conditions on the duration of traffic delay and the delay severity, respectively. More importantly, to account for multiple layers of unobserved heterogeneity, a random parameter with heterogeneity in means approach is introduced into the above two models. Results: (1) The strong breeze (wind speed over 8 m/s) and low visibility (visibility under 5 km) significantly affect the duration of delay. (2) Hot day (between 20 and 30 °C) has a 344.03 % greater probability of minor delay. A strong breeze has a higher probability of severe delay. The low visibility is found to increase the estimated odds of moderate delay and severe delay by 51.15 % and 13.39 %, respectively. In comparison, the normal visibility (between 10 and 20 km) significantly decreases the estimated odds of severe delay by 119.17 %. Conclusions: Compared with other weather factors, wind speed, temperature, and visibility have the greatest impact on the traffic delay levels after a traffic accident, and there are significant differences in the impact under different delay severity. Findings from this study will help policymakers to establish comprehensive differentiating security measures to resolve traffic delays.

Knowledge of the hierarchical organization of urban heavy truck flows is important for understanding the structure of urban freight system and underlying interactions dynamics, providing insights to assess and develop freight policies. The complexity and dynamic nature of urban freight system pose significant challenges in comprehensively capturing structured arrangement of heavy truck movements. In this paper, we uncover the hierarchical organization of urban heavy truck flows by using complex network theory. We use large-scale heavy truck GPS data and urban freight location point-of-interest (POI) data to construct urban heavy truck mobility networks, and detect their community structure. The empirical results suggest different sets of locations are closely linked to each other to form multiple clusters. By integrating the categories of locations, we reveal the cluster-specific industry concentration and industry-specific location roles, informing evidence-based policy formulation. To capture the interaction dynamics of locations, we develop a spatial network growth model that considers the spatial agglomeration of industrial clusters and interaction pattern of locations. The model provides a mathematical tool to simulate the formation process of real-world networks for logistics planning and management.

Heavy trucks which undertake the majority of freight volume play an important role in urban freight systems. By analyzing heavy truck trip data, we find a superlinear scaling relationship for heavy truck trips and a sublinear scaling relationship for heavy truck numbers relative to urban population size. Although these allometric scaling relationships that widely appear in nature and social systems have been explained by many models, a simple model that can cover a wide range of scaling exponents in these systems is still lacking. Here, we develop a partially mixing city operation model by quantifying the mixability of the urban population to explain why the superlinear and sublinear scaling exponents are in the range of 1 and . This simple model not only helps us understand the mechanism of allometric scaling of urban freight systems, but also provides a new framework for other superlinear and sublinear scaling relationships in cities.

Accurate estimation of intercity heavy truck mobility flows is of vital importance to urban planning, transportation management and logistics operations. The inaccessibility of big data related to intercity transport systems and the heterogeneity of trucking activities pose challenges for the reliable estimation. Recently, the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides a potential solution to this problem. However, most previous studies focused on the estimation of inter-regional passenger mobility. In-depth studies of estimating intercity heavy truck mobility flows by using deep learning techniques are still scarce. To fill in the gaps, we construct a deep neural network based on the Deep Gravity framework, an advanced predictive model for human mobility. We collect a wide range of data related to heavy truck movements, freight locations, road networks and land uses to train the model, and validate its high performance by comparing to traditional gravity model. Furthermore, we use an explainable AI technique to interpret how the city features contribute to the determination of intercity heavy truck movements, and the results can provide valuable policy implications for logistics operations, businesses and urban planning.

Knowledge of the core structure and inherent dynamics of urban freight transport systems is important for the development of policies, aimed at improving the livability and sustainability of cities. The past decade has witnessed a great deal of efforts into analyzing the geographic structure of urban freight transport systems. However, in-depth studies on the system core structure and underlying dynamics are still absent. This study contributes to the field by analyzing large scale freight truck trip data from Chinese cities, using complex network analysis. We empirically reconstruct and characterize the urban freight truck mobility networks and reveal the underlying spatial interaction patterns. We develop a spatial network growth model which explains how hub-and-spoke core structure of urban freight transport systems are formed. The developed model captures the essential interaction dynamics of freight locations, and explains the effects of spatial distance, economic size and business pattern replication. Inspired by the model, we provide policy implications for land-use planning, transportation planning and sustainable urban development.

The universal scaling relationship between an attribute and the size of a system is widespread in nature and society and is known as allometric growth. Previous studies have explained that the allometric growth exponent of single-source systems is uniquely determined by the dimension. However, the phenomenon that the exponent shows diversity in some systems, such as rivers, freight transportation and gasoline stations, lacks a reasonable explanation. In this paper, we hold the view that allometric growth may originate from efficient delivery from sources to transfer sites in a system and propose a multisource transportation network model that can explain diversified allometric growth exponents. We apply this model to some multisource systems, and the results show that our model successfully reproduces the diversity of the allometric growth exponent.