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Developing a distress-condition index representative of the roadway has always been a challenge. The development process requires in-depth understanding of the behavior of the pavement system under load and distress, thorough familiarity with the distresses, computational and analytical skill, and, above all, a very comprehensive validation process. When the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) initiated its formal pavement-management operation, VDOT tried the procedure developed and outlined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Soon VDOT pavement-management personnel felt the need to have Virginiaspecific indexes and undertook an extensive effort to develop its own indexes tailored to distresses prevalent on Virginia roads and to VDOT's business objectives. The index is obtained by algebraically aggregating deductions for all the distresses in the section and subtracting that from a perfect score of 100. In 2001, VDOT completed its first-ever comprehensive condition survey on its concrete-pavement primary routes. The initial analysis revealed that the index equations were not producing representative indexes for jointed concrete pavements. Investigation revealed that the calculated condition indexes for jointed concrete were consistently lower than the expected values. It appeared that algebraically aggregated deductions need to be lowered to offset overcounting the common effects of the various distresses present. VDOT developed a relatively simple analytical approach to address this problem and came up with a technique that reduces the algebraically aggregated deductions to reasonable values. The principles and steps behind this technique are outlined and explained.

The private motor vehicles are significantly important means of transportation in modern lifestyle, however, these also contribute to a large proportion of the total air pollution and primary energy consumption. In order to develop green transportation system, it becomes imperative to use integrated technologies to achieve reduced emissions and utilize renewable energy. Electric vehicles (EVs) have been considered as one of these technologies to transform the traditional vehicle mix. However, the uptake of EV has been debated on factors like cost, performance (autonomous mileage), charging point infrastructure construction, energy saving, policy and end users’ adaptation. Present study investigates the technology feasibility (which usually refer to EVs’ cost, EV charging, supplier’s customer services quality, EV travel performance) and users’ adaptation of EV in Beijing, which is a key driver for the EV uptake into the Beijing transportation system. The relevant data have been collected and analyzed in the form of questionnaire survey around all of these factors. While considering the user perception and satisfaction, safety of charging and energy bills have also been investigated. According to the data analysis, it has been found the policy of ‘No traffic restrictions for EVs’ (the traffic restrictions means for certain date, from Monday to Friday the motor vehicles with the last register number of 1 and 6, 2 and 7, 3 and 8, 4 and 9, 5 and 0, are restricted to travel, respectively), the availability of the charging infrastructure and technical support are the most significant factors affecting the users’ opinions on using EVs.

Plug-in electric vehicles can potentially emit substantially lower CO2 emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles, and so have the potential to reduce transport emissions without curtailing personal car use. Assessing the potential uptake of these new categories of vehicles requires an understanding of likely consumer responses. Previous in-depth explorations of appraisals and evaluations of electric vehicles have tended to focus on ‘early adopters’, who may not represent mainstream consumers. This paper reports a qualitative analysis of responses to electric cars, based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 40 UK non-commercial drivers (20 males, 20 females; age 24–70 years) at the end of a seven-day period of using a battery electric car (20 participants) or a plug-in hybrid car (20 participants). Six core categories of response were identified: (1) cost minimisation; (2) vehicle confidence; (3) vehicle adaptation demands; (4) environmental beliefs; (5) impression management; and, underpinning all other categories, (6) the perception of electric cars generally as ‘work in progress’ products. Results highlight potential barriers to the uptake of current-generation (2010) plug-in electric cars by mainstream consumers. These include the prioritization of personal mobility needs over environmental benefits, concerns over the social desirability of electric vehicle use, and the expectation that rapid technological and infrastructural developments will make current models obsolete. Implications for the potential uptake of future electric vehicles are discussed.

Abstract Alternative vehicle technologies have a great potential to minimize the transportation-related environmental impacts, reduce the reliance of the U.S. on imported petroleum, and increase energy security. However, they introduce new uncertainties related to their environmental, economic, and social impacts and certain challenges for widespread adoption. In this study, a novel method, uncertainty-embedded dynamic life cycle sustainability assessment framework, is developed to address both methodological challenges and uncertainties in transportation sustainability research. The proposed approach provides a more comprehensive, system-based sustainability assessment framework by capturing the dynamic relations among the parameters within the U.S. transportation system as a whole with respect to its environmental, social, and economic impacts. Using multivariate uncertainty analysis, likelihood of the impact reduction potentials of different vehicle types, as well as the behavioral limits of the sustainability potentials of each vehicle type are analyzed. Seven sustainability impact categories are dynamically quantified for four different vehicle types (internal combustion, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles) from 2015 to 2050. Although impacts of electric vehicles have the largest uncertainty, they are expected (90% confidence) to be the best alternative in long-term for reducing human health impacts and air pollution from transportation. While results based on deterministic (average) values indicate that electric vehicles have greater potential of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, plug-in hybrid vehicles have the largest potential according to the results with 90% confidence interval.

Electricity supply in India is from a centralized grid. Many parts of the country experience grid interruptions. Life cycle energy and environmental analysis has been done for a 27 kWp photovoltaic system which acts as grid backup for 3 h outage in an Indian urban residential scenario. This paper discusses energy requirements and carbon emission for a PV storage system for five different battery technologies in Indian context. This can be used as a metric for comparative analysis for new batteries, with an undeveloped market. The energy requirements for the components are quantified and are compared in terms of energy payback time (EPBT) and Net Energy Ratio (NER). All the calculations are done for Indian context. EPBT is found to be in the range of 2–4.5 years for all the systems, while NER is in the range of 6.6–2.52. NaS has the highest emission factor of 0.67 kgCO2/kWh and the least for NiCd (0.091 kgCO2/kWh). These factors can be used to select a PV battery option and to target selection of materials and systems based on the reported values.

Air taxis are currently being demonstrated. Few studies have quantified their external effects in reducing on-road vehicle fuel consumption. The hypothesis of this paper is that air taxis may divert some drivers away from congested traffic corridors, improve traffic speed and fuel economy, and reduce congestion-induced energy consumption. A model is developed that links several key components: mode choice, the relationship between travel demand and traffic speeds, the relationship between traffic speeds and fuel economies, and the heterogenous value of travel time. It is applied to the route from downtown Los Angeles to Los Angeles International Airport, where at peak hours 38,200 vehicles attempt to use the route that has an hourly capacity of 17,200 vehicles. The model estimates that, with conservative assumptions and near-term technologies, diverting 3.2% of the traffic to air taxis could produce a 15% reduction in traffic vehicle fuel use. With optimistic assumptions and mature technologies, the study estimates that diverting 20% of traffic could reduce the traffic vehicle fuel use by about 74%. The key insight is that if a small share of congested travelers switched to air taxis, motivated by private benefits of time savings, significant external benefits for other road travelers (time savings and fuel savings) and to society (reduced energy use and emissions), would ensue creating a win-win-win outcome. These estimates (which are not intended as predictions because of the stated limitations) strongly suggest the need to consider the external energy effect in future cost-benefit analyses of air taxi technologies.

As part of continuous efforts to identify effective and durable anodes for use in cathodic protection (CP) of reinforced concrete bridge members, a water-based, electrically conductive paint was evaluated for use as the secondary anode in CP systems for inland concrete piers. The paint was used in two CP systems—one designed and built approximately 6 years ago and the other 8 years ago—to protect the concrete piers of two pairs of twin bridges in Virginia. When adjusted properly, the two systems provided more than sufficient protection to the reinforcing steel. Natural paint deterioration occurred in both systems. In the 8-year-old system, this deterioration ranged from 0 to 0.37 percent. In the 6-year-old system, it ranged from 0 to 0.14 percent. Most of the deterioration occurred at the ends of the pier caps, where the concrete is not sheltered from rain by a deck overhang. The overall performance of the conductive paint in these CP systems was better than expected. Its effectiveness could last for at least 15 years, even longer if minor paint deterioration is touched up as early as possible. This type of conductive paint should, therefore, be considered a suitable secondary anode for use in CP of inland concrete piers.

Abstract This paper presents a study of the combined influence of battery models and sizing strategy for hybrid and battery-based electric vehicles. In particular, the aim is to find the number of battery (and supercapacitor) cells to propel a light vehicle to run two different standard driving cycles. Three equivalent circuit models are considered to simulate the battery electrical performance: linear static, non-linear static and non-linear with first-order dynamics. When dimensioning a battery-based vehicle, less complex models may lead to a solution with more battery cells and higher costs. Despite the same tendency, when a hybrid vehicle is taken into account, the influence of the battery models is dependent on the sizing strategy. In this work, two sizing strategies are evaluated: dynamic programming and filter-based. For the latter, the complexity of the battery model has a clear influence on the result of the sizing problem. On the other hand, a modest influence is observed when a dynamic programming strategy is followed.

Abstract This paper describes a new approach to estimate accurately the battery residual capacity (BRC) of the nickel–metal hydride (Ni–MH) battery for modern electric vehicles (EVs). The key to this approach is to model the Ni–MH battery in EVs by using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) with newly defined inputs and output. The inputs are the temperature and the discharged capacity distribution describing the discharge current profile, while the output is the state of available capacity (SOAC) representing the BRC. The estimated SOAC from ANFIS model and the measured SOAC from experiments are compared, and the results confirm that the proposed approach can provide an accurate estimation of the SOAC under variable discharge currents.