Sociologists have suggested that being on the move entails a complex choreography, comprised of passenger comportment, signage, announcements and posters. Employing insights from mobility theory, Transporting moments provides an account of railway culture from a passenger’s perspective. The book uses the context of commuting in Sydney, at a time when elements of its intra-urban rail network were being upgraded as its principal case study. This upgrade covers its rolling stock, infrastructure and linguistic landscape. It is argued that understanding the rationale behind these changes requires an understanding of the historical and policy context in which the railways of Sydney’s, New South Wales and Australia are embedded. This is also the case with the nation’s long distance trains, whose operators have fought hard to stave off competition from airliners and cars. Transporting moments, therefore, presents strong case for preserving public transport as a more equitable and sustainable form of mobility. Governments, Australian or otherwise, can use these insights for productive investment in their rail networks and public transportation service in general, and for reducing the nation’s addiction to the automobile. With its invaluable insights into travelling on trains, Transporting moments is a fascinating addition to the growing corpus of literature on day-to-day mobility.

This e-book details state-of-the-art drive by wire technology. Readers are made aware about the challenges ahead that need be addressed in order for this technology to gain a foothold in the automotive industry. The eBook presents a systematic analysis of these issues and points out the fundamental reasons for the limited applications of these systems to date. It also discusses how recent technological advances in fault tolerant control can address these current challenges facing drive by wire application in automobiles. Non-technological issues such as consumer perception of drive by wire systems, trade-off analysis of drive by wire system from Automotive OEMs and suppliers’ perspective are also reviewed in this volume. This book will enhance current understanding of this technology amongst practicing automotive engineers and researchers alike.

Mechatronics Series I: Intelligent Transportation Vehicles brings the latest advances and developments in intelligent vehicles to readers on the basis of their significance and quality. Wider dissemination of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing field. This Ebook series includes key contributions presented by different researchers. These contributions represent a wide coverage of the state-of-the-art and the emerging research directions in intelligent transportation vehicles.

Railway is a form of public transport which serves the society, and its aim is to transport passengers and freight safely, rapidly, reliably, accurately and economically. With an implementation of railway great-leap-forward development, the realization of new-generation rail transport system- Railway Intelligent Transportation System (RITS), whose purpose is to ensure security, improve transport efficiency, elevate service quality and achieve the international standards, has become the inevitable development trend. Aiming to provide high security, high efficiency, and high quality service to the rail transport, for the first time the authors put forward the concept of " RITS ", and systematically discussed its connotation and substantive characteristics, structural model, development framework and core technology, developmental pattern etc; they deeply analyze the service framework, logical framework and physical framework of typical subsystem of RITS --- Intelligent Emergency Rescue and Safety System, and execute optimization design. The purpose of optimization design for RITS is to coordinate system target-oriented designs and realizations among various subsystems, making the entire work better, to achieve a system with best overall performance, the construction of RITS system in China. Combining years’ research and practical experience in RITS, we proposed the "The Theory and Method of Design and Optimization for Railway Intelligent Transportation Systems (RITS) ", presenting it in the form of a book to meet the urgent needs of theory and methods of intelligent transport systems for railway transport. We hope that this book can play the role of throwing a brick to allure a gem, and accelerate further expansion research and application of RITS. The authors of the book engaged in research work of RITS and related fields for many years, successively undertaking and completing the key project of National Natural Science Foundation of "Research on Integrated Information System and Key technologies of High-speed Railway Intelligent Transportation", Ministry of Science and Technology research project "Railway Geographic Information System", "Research on Railway Intelligent Transportation System Standard System", "National Railway GIS Application Service Platform" and "Research on Development Strategy of Railway Intelligent Transportation System", Ministry of Railways research project" Railway Geographic Information System Design and Development", "Research and Development on Qinghai-Tibet Railway Emergency Rescue System and Emergency Rescue Command & Management Information System", "Research on the Railway Emergency Preplan Management" and "Research on Railway Intelligent Transportation System (RITS) Framework", China Postdoctoral Science Foundation-funded project" Research on RITS Framework Design and Optimization Method", faulitating the development of application systems, granting achievements in these projects . We sincerely express our gratitude to the National Natural Science Foundation of China, The Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and The Ministry of Railway of China for their financial support. We would also like to thank Dr. Li ping, Dr. Meng yan, Dr. Qinyong, Master Jia Tianli and Master Shao Yikun etc, for their valuable advice, selfless support and assistance for completion of the book. In the process of writing the book, we reviewed a large number of references, to seek clear concepts, using familiar examples to illustrate various theories and methods, which may enable various types of readers to have a clear understanding and knowledge of the optimized design of RITS. With the limitation of the authors’ knowledge level and the depth as well as the breadth of research, there must be some irregularities of views, methods and theories in the book, which the readers may duly criticize. This book combines theories and applications closely, and is convenient for readers’ self-study. The book is also adequate for colleagues engaged in work and research in the rail transportation field, as well as colleges and universities, graduate students and scientific researchers in interrelated fields.