Assessing the Operation of a Multimodal Hub: A Traffic Impact Microsimulation Analysisâ€
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is an interesting paper with strong practical implications. Nevertheless, this practical asset could endanger the scientific soundness of the manuscript. To be clearer, the existing condition of the paper relates more to a specific case study rather than a solid scientific work where the outcomes could be meaningful to other areas and contexts as well. Therefore, I am suggesting some recommendations that will improve the contribution and the overall quality of your article.
First, please enhance the research contribution in the abstract. It is very crucial to catch the readers’ attention from the abstract, so that they examine your work further.
The introduction seems good, presenting a brief research problem conceptualisation and the objective of the research. For clarity purposes, you may separate the paragraph where the main objective is presented. Furthermore, please indicate that are going to use scenarios (existing, formal planning and some self-created). Regarding the structure, it would be useful to refer to the sections. For instance, “design principles of multimodal hubs (Section 2)”.
I really like section 2; nevertheless, a conceptual diagram and one or two pictures of best practices could be extremely helpful. Furthermore, a small table depicting the man policy instructions would be beneficial as well.
Moving to Section 3, please provide the sources in the text. I assume that one of them is “Thessaloniki Transport Authority”. Date is also necessary. What about some more attributes of the area? What about the surrounding land uses? Moreover, where is it situated in the entire area of Thessaloniki? Please add a small map. What is the distance between the nodes of the hub? Figure 2 is not readable.
About section 4, it would be valuable to rename it to “Data and methods”. Plus, 4.1 introduction could be replaced by 4.1 Traffic simulation process or something similar. This section should be enriched with some words about VISSIM and why you chose that certain software instead of others. Moreover, justify why you chose those specific peak hours. With respect to sub-sections 4.2, 4.3, it would be definitely important to distinguish in a transparent way, which scenarios are proposed by the transport authority or are self-created. Also, what is this red line? This should be clearly indicated in the legend of each picture.
Section 5 could be renamed plainly as “Results”, as you describe your outcomes. The comparative analysis is a part of the results section.
SIGNIFICANT! Where is the discussion? This is major drawback of the paper. I urge you to add a proper discussion section which will compare your results with the existing knowledge. This will strengthen your contribution to the current corpus and will enhance the applicability of your research to other contexts. Please be careful when justifying the worth of your work. Furthermore, in this section you may share some limitations of the method, future research endeavours.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
English are ok! Some minor checks could be useful.
Author Response
Please see in attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper gives, in this form, an example of application of traffic microsimulation model in the process of traffic infrastrcture optimisation. It is written correctlly even they are some parts of introduction that should be reprashed.
IThe problem of this paper is thatt is not elaborated what are specifics (or new approach or some other benefit) when the traffic microsimulation method is applied on, in this case, transportation hub. In my oppinion it is also not clear what is ment by transportation hub because the model considers 3 intersections and the road in between and only motorised traffic is considered.
I would suggest to authors to rethink the aim of the paper and if it will still be optimisation of transportation hub to upgrade the paper with better explanation on what transportation hub means, what are different models (types) of hubs, what need to be considered when hubs are analysed.
The analyses and optimisation of the case study hub should possible include analyses of other traffic modes or at least analyses of the influence of motorised traffic on other modes. The conclusions should be more general so that the optimisation model can be applied also on other similar situations.
I would suggest maybe to combine multicriteria anlyses with traffic microsimulation in order to develop model that can be used for hub optimisation or to narrow the research to optimisation on intersections. In both cases more solid analyses of state of art as well as more general conclusions are needed.
Author Response
Please see in attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAdvantages.
Good practical research in the field of optimization of the transportation system for concrete local areas. The topic of this article is interesting and meaningful for traffic planning simulation modeling.
The main question of this research is on the assessment and optimization of the transportation system. The research is original – the authors developed five different simulation models.
The conclusions are general, and it is necessary to specify more detailed future research directions.
There are no significant criticisms about the research methodology.
The design of the manuscript is well structured:
- Introduction part is given.
- Materials and method part is given (Design principles of multimodal hubs, Thessaloniki’s multimodal hub).
- The experimental part is given (Traffic simulation scenarios)
- The analysis part is given.
- Conclusion part is given.
Disadvantages:
Some comments:
- References should be numbered in order of appearance.
- The conclusion part could be more detailed in future research directions.
Some questions:
- Line 150. Why do you perform exactly 10 iterations for each scenario?
Author Response
Please see in attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors, here are some minor remarks regarding your paper.\
To the best of my knowledge I would put Traffic Demand instead of Supply in the following text:
4.3.1. Scenario 1.1 – Future network (Supply)
The future demand was based on some assumptions, it might be a good ideas to mention at least some of this assumptions that led to the future traffic demand values.
The calibration and validation process was barely mentioned. It might be appropriate to add some more sentences regarding to it.
Otherwise, the paper is appropriate to the journal topic, the terminology and the approach are relevant. The conclusions are also relevant. The structure of the paper is as expected for a scientific paper. English is readable.
Author Response
Please see in attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI would like to thank you very much for addressing all my comments.
Great job!
Just one minor comment, conclusions should be moved to the end of your paper.
Author Response
We would like to thank you as well for your comments and suggestions. They helped us significantly to revise our paper and include all the essential information of the analysis.
Thank you for your comment. In the revised version we moved the “Conclusions” section at the end of the paper (Page 12)
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper manuscript is significantlly improved, however, there is need to clrify discussion and conclusions. Discussion should reflect the results of presented reserch more in detail and conclusions should be at the end of the paper and more general. Plese do this upgrade before publication.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNo comment.
Author Response
Thank you for your comment.
In the revised version we moved the “Conclusions” section at the end of the paper (Page 12).
Moreover, we added a paragraph at the beginning of the “Discussion” section, that reflects the results of the analysis more in detail (Section 6, Pages 12-13, Lines 352-361).
