Economics and Finance

Tandem Toll Booths for the Golden Gate Bridge

Hall, Randolph W.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
1983

Many toll plazas are constrained in width by buildings or other physical barriers. These barriers may make the cost of adding toll lanes prohibitive. One method for increasing the capacity of a toll facility without increasing its width is to use tandem toll booths. A tandem toll booth consists of two toll takers in a single toll lane both serving alternating sets of vehicles simultaneously. The capacity of tandem toll booths is calculated with time-space diagrams and the cumulative headway distributions of vehicles at a conventional toll booth. The capacity depends on the maximum of...

A Graphical Method for Optimizing a Continuous Review Inventory System

Horowitz, Abraham D
Daganzo, Carlos F.
1986

Assembly Line Job Sequencing Principles

Burns, Lawrence D.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
1987

Assembly line job sequencing establishes the order in which jobs are processed by an assembly line. This research focuses on job sequencing methods for assembly lines with work stations that receive the same fixed job sequence, are coupled together so that there is no work-in-process storage, and are balanced so that jobs move continuously between them at a constant rate. Automobile assembly lines frequently have these characteristics. Simple analytical principles are derived that aid in evaluating trade-offs between different job sequencing objectives. Included are set-up cost objectives...

Reducing Logistics Costs at General Motors

Blumenfeld, Dennis E.
Burns, Lawrence D.
Daganzo, Carlos F.
Frick, Michael C.
Hall, Randolf W.
1987

Automobile and truck production at General Motors involves shipping a broad variety of materials, parts, and components from 20,000 supplier plants to over 160 GM plants. To help reduce logistics costs at GM, the decision tool TRANSPART was developed. In its initial application for GM's Delco Electronics Division, TRANSPART identified a 26 percent logistics cost savings opportunity ($2.9 million per year). Today, TRANSPART II—a commercial version of the tool—is being used in more than 40 GM plants.

Control for Societal-scale Challenges: Road Map 2030

Alleyne, Andrew
Allgöwer, Frank
Ames, Aaron D.
Bayen, Alexandre M.
2023

The world faces some of its greatest challenges of modern time and how we address them will have a dramatic impact on the life for generations to come. Simultaneously, control systems, consisting of information enriched by various degrees of analytics followed by decision-making, are pervading a variety of sectors, not only in engineering but beyond, into financial services, socio-economic analysis, entertainment and sports, and political and social sciences. Increased levels of automation are sought after in various sectors and being introduced into new domains. All of these advances and...

Random Projection Design for Scalable Implicit Smoothing of Randomly Observed Stochastic Processes

Belletti, Francois
Sparks, Evan
Bayen, Alexandre M.
Gonzalez, Joseph
2017

Sampling at random timestamps, long range dependencies, and scale hamper standard methods for multivariate time series analysis. In this paper we present a novel estimator for cross-covariance of randomly observed time series which unravels the dynamics of an unobserved stochastic process. We analyze the statistical properties of our estimator without needing the assumption that observation timestamps are independent from the process of interest and show that our solution is not hindered by the issues affecting standard estimators for cross-covariance. We implement and evaluate our...

An Equitable and Integrated Approach to Paying for Roads in a Time of Rapid Change

Bayen, Alexandre
Shaheen, Susan
Forscher, Edward H.
Lazarus, Jessica
2019

A brief overview of transportation user fees (historically and in a contemporary context) is presented followed by a discussion on how segmenting travel into three categories –long haul, the last mile, and at the curb–creates a new typology for transportation pricing and access mechanisms....

Advancing Road User Charge (RUC) Models in California: Understanding Social Equity and Travel Behavior Impacts

Lazarus, Jessica
Broader, Jacquelyn
Cohen, Adam
Bayen, Alexandre
Shaheen, Susan
2022

The State of California is currently moving forward with a road usage charge (RUC) demonstration program, creating promising research opportunities to examine the potential social equity implications of a shift from a gas tax to a RUC system in California. RUC . To this aim, this study investigates the relative burden of gas taxes and mileage-based RUC across various sociodemographic and geographic dimensions by examining key trends in road use, vehicle ownership, fuel consumption, use of RUC-related technologies, and attitudes/opinions related to RUC adoption. Expert interviews were...

Development of Bus Rapid Transit Performance Assessment Guide Tool

Miller, Mark
Golub, Aaron
2010

This report describes the development process of the Bus Rapid Transit Performance AssessmentGuidebook (BRT PAG) Tool, which provides a decision support means for tool users to understand at a high level the benefits and costs associated with implementing bus rapid transit systems. The BRTPAG Tool is based on a conceptual framework consisting of BRT system strategies; stakeholder groupings; impacts of individual BRT system strategies; measurement methods used to analyze the impacts that BRT system strategies have on different stakeholders; and quantitative estimates of benefits and costs...

Assessing the Benefits and Costs of ITS Projects: Volume 1 Methodology

Gillen, David
Li, Jianling
Dahlgren, Joy
Chang, Elva
1999

In this document a framework for evaluating ITS projects is developed. One of the central issues addressed is whether ITS projects are distinctly different from other more conventional transportation projects and thus the traditional decision methods such as Benefit-cost analysis cannot be used. The answer is mixed. The decision models used in the past are still relevant, however, these have been applied in an environment in which there was a well developed data base. The models identified, selected, assembled and evaluated data to make judgements as to whether the proposed projects were...