Risk and reward in public transportation contracting

The workshop discusses and documents a number of countries’ experiences regarding risk and reward in the delivery of public transport and determines the way in which competitive pressures actually work (or not) to deliver efficient and effective services. Papers are grouped into three main themes, i.e., public versus private management; negotiated versus competitively tendered contracts; and measures to improve performance. This chapter begins with a brief overview of each of the eight papers. This is followed by a section that out the discussions that emanated from the papers. Finally, the main policy and research recommendations are presented.     

基于USB KEY网络安全系统的研究

分析归纳了局域网内多种可能导致信息泄密的途径,深入研究了密码学理论和公钥基础设施PKI,并在此基础上设计和实现了网络安全系统。该系统以硬件USB KEY产生和管理网内用户的公/私钥对,以符合PKI标准的数字证书来管理用户的公钥及其相关联的身份信息。同时提供数字签名和身份认证功能,在网络环境中确保了文件的真实性、完整性和不可否认性。将USB KEY与客户端软件相结合,通过双因子身份鉴别机制严格管理登录到客户端主机的用户,使得合法用户可以安全的通过Internet网访问内部数据。最终所实现的系统确保了在不影响某研究所所局域网当前业务的前提下,完成对局域网全面的安全管理。保证无论是在本单位的内网或是公网的合法用户在与单位内部资源服务器进行信息交互时,都能确保系统与数据的安全保密,从而提高办公自动化水平和信息管理水平。     

Public transport policy for central-city travel in the light of recent experiences of congestion charging

Excellent public transport which makes the private car a minority mode of central-city travel is a necessary condition for a political process towards the introduction of congestion charges. However, the charging system costs in London and Stockholm have proved to be unexpectedly high. Therefore, before these costs come down to an affordable level, zero-fares for central-city travel and stricter parking policy would be a first-best combination in many cities, always provided that the public transport is really competitive. A bold venture in public transport development is consequently the top priority irrespective of the transport pricing policy direction.     

Comparing operator and users costs of light rail, heavy rail and bus rapid transit over a radial public transport network

A model to compare three alternative forms of public transport - light rail, heavy rail and bus rapid transit - is developed for an urban network with radial lines emanating from the borders to the city centre. The theoretical framework assumes an operation aimed at minimising the total cost associated with public transport service provision, which encompasses both operator and users costs. The decision variables are the number of lines (network density) and the frequency per period for each mode. This approach has no prejudices a priori in respect of whether a specified delivery scenario is aligned with existing modal reputation. Rather, we establish the conditions under which a specific transit mode should be preferred to another in terms of the operator (supply) and user (demand) side offerings. The model is applied using data from Australian cities, suggesting that in most of the scenarios analysed a high standard bus service is the most cost-effective mode, because it provides lower operator costs (infrastructure, rolling stock and operating cost), access time costs (due to a larger number of lines) and waiting time cost (due to larger frequencies of operation). A rail mode, such as light rail or heavy rail, may have a lower total cost only if it is able to run faster than bus rapid transit, and the difference in speed is enough to outweigh the bus advantage on operator cost and access and waiting times.     

The public administrator: Regulating for maritime transport efficiency

One role often fulfilled by public administrators is to regulate private enterprise in the public interest. The academic literature has not developed this area fully because public administration is not always tasked with this function. Nevertheless, when regulation forms a part of the responsibilities of the public administrator, it is among the most important. An essential foundation for effective regulation is a complete understanding of the implications and impact of regulatory action. In the absence of regulation, entrepreneurial awareness is applied in the private sector exclusively to satisfying consumer wants. In a regulated market, the entrepreneur’s focus is shifted toward regulatory imperatives. Regulation offers non-market opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation, as well as imposing new market constraints. This paper examines regulation of the maritime industry by the US federal government as an example.     

The potential role of public–private partnerships in the upgrade of port infrastructure: normative and positive considerations

There is a broad consensus on the need for the major expansion of many ports. Traditionally, ports and related facilities have involved significant levels of direct or indirect government ownership or some degree of government financing. Most governments, however, are reluctant to either borrow money to fund the needed additional capital infrastructure or to fund it directly. Public–private partnerships (P3s) are thus an attractive potential option. But are they the answer? This article examines the normative rationales for P3s and presents a positive theory perspective that focuses on the conflicting goals of public and private partners. It argues that the major government impetus for P3s is likely to be for physical port infrastructure with moderate levels of market failure, such as small to medium sized ports, and not for intangible port activities. Furthermore, small to medium sized port P3s are likely to be successful in terms of having relatively low transaction costs and lower total social costs than alternative provision mechanisms. Nonetheless, even in this situation, the different goals of public and private partners may give rise to conflict. Drawing on the global empirical evidence on P3s, this article proposes some institutional design features that will help to ensure P3 success.     

U.S. public transit earnings, employment and privatization

This paper uses individual worker and municipal information to examine privatization's influence on public transit workers' earnings and employment. OLS findings on labor earnings reveal that privatization is associated with an erosion of the public transit union premium. These labor earning findings do not change when correcting for privatization heterogeneity, as unobserved worker characteristics do not differ with differing levels of municipal privatization of public transit services. The employment findings reveal that union public transit workers are more likely to be employed in the public sector and this union-nonunion employment probability differential, declines with increasing levels of privatization. This employment result is interpreted as suggesting that labor cost savings from privatization can be derived from the enhanced employment of relatively low wage nonunion workers in the public sector of public transit services.     

Overview of public transport policy developments in South Africa

Public transport in South Africa is one of the most burning issues in the transport sector. The government is faced with huge public pressure to improve public transport systems in the face of rising fuel costs, the pending implementation of expensive urban toll road systems in the Gauteng province, and elsewhere in urban environments, public transport safety issues, public transport fleet renewal, especially the commuter rail services, as well as limited resources to fund public transport. As a developing country, the South African Government has pressing funding issues such as funds needed to improve housing for the poor to improve schooling and public health services. Government is also faced with a vocal minibus taxi industry that transports an estimated 65% of all commuters in the country that is also insisting on subsidies for its services.     

Local public transport on the basis of social economic criteria

Applying the welfare economic approach it is demonstrated what the effects of certain supply changes in the local public transport will be and the potential of innovative demand management measures are examined. Straighter bus routes would reduce the average travel time from door to door. The travel time on the buses decreases and the frequency increases, which reduces waiting times at bus stops. Using smaller buses and more of them would also increase the net benefit, but increase the need for subsidisation. The peak within the peak in the morning is hard to handle by price policy alone. Introducing a small variation of the start of the school-day for high-school pupils would make investment- and operation cost savings possible, and the inconvenience costs for the pupils could be limited. It is only during peak hours in the main direction of peak travel and in the critical section of the line that optimal price becomes high relative to the present level. Zero fares in off-peak will be social profitable, but an increase in subsidy is needed. An introduction of these policy changes would give rise to a net social benefit of 30 million SEK per year in Linköping.     

基于BIM技术的项目管理平台研究及应用

针对传统工程项目信息化管理中存在的手段单一、信息分散、协同效率差、决策支持困难、维护更新投入大等问题,进行基于BIM技术的项目管理平台研究,采用云技术和异构系统集成技术,进行私有云部署和异构系统集成,保证不同用户、不同地域协同办公以及不同系统之间BIM信息流通,实现了BIM模型、GIS环境与项目管理体系的深度融合。结果表明,云环境下BIM项目管理平台有效减少企业硬件投入和软件维护成本,在工程进度模拟、质量追溯、安全监控、投资控制等方面创新管理手段和流程,提高了项目管理效率和水平。     

Public goods and the public financing of major European seaports

Seaports are recognized for their importance in facilitating trade growth and associated economic development. These attributes often give rise to the notion that seaports, or infrastructure elements of seaports, are public goods. Public goods are regarded as goods or services which a market acting in isolation might have difficulty in providing, or at least providing in sufficient quantity and/or at a competitive price. An important element of a public good relates to its non-rival consumption, the implication being that it is impossible to exclude anyone, whether they pay or not. Key questions this paper seeks to address are, what constitutes public goods in seaports, to what extent is it necessary for the public sector to provide these goods, and can such intervention lead to market distortion in respect of competing ports? The paper describes the more common examples of public goods in seaports. This is followed by discussion of public and private sector investment at major north European seaports. The paper considers the potential for market distortion due to public sector expenditure on so-called public goods in seaports, and proposes that a more cohesive policy for major ports, particularly those very large containerports serving a common European hinterland, is necessary in order to deliver a sustainable transport system in the long term.     

The Quiet Revolution in Visual Resource Management: A view from the coast

Abstract

This introductory piece traces the growth of knowledge and activity associated with visual resource management in general. A specific framework of questions regarding methods of coastal zone visual resource management is presented. The state‐of‐the‐art in methodological studies is listed for each question, and the methodological questions are related to the major articles with the special issue of the Coastal Zone Management Journal. Major legal federal statutes, state statutes, and court cases are reviewed in light of visual resource management in the coastal zone. The remaining articles within the special issue that deal with integration of VRM into decision‐making are then arrayed against a management framework. This framework includes regulatory situations for (1) public land management and planning, (2) public projects involving private lands, and (3) public regulation of private projects.     

Cost assessment of ship emission reduction methods at berth: the case of the Port of Piraeus,Greece

This paper addresses the problem of ship exhaust emissions at the Port of Piraeus and undertakes the challenge of finding a cost-effective option for its reduction according to the upcoming requirements of the 2005/33/EU Directive, through analysis of port traffic data and the utilisation of the experience gained through previous studies in this field. The Port of Piraeus makes a particularly suitable reference for this type of work, since it is one of the busiest and highly urbanised ports in the world. It is shown that cruise ships calling at Piraeus fulfill the criteria of selection for such an exercise by virtue of their frequency of calling, berth power requirements and time spent at berth. It was found that, according to current practice, cruise ships at berth consume 11 034 tons of fuel and produce 620.1 tons of NO_X, 274.8 tons of SO₂ and 20.7 tons of PM, totalling to 915.6 tons of exhaust emissions per year. This represents an overall annual cost of 21 million euro, divided between private (bunkering) and external (emission damage) costs by 19.4% and 80.6%, respectively. With regard to the upcoming EU requirements for ship power at berth, it was found that, irrespective of whether operating on ultralow-sulphur (0.1% sulphur) fuel or on shore-side electricity, a sizeable reduction in emissions and associated external costs is achieved, whereas private costs were always higher than those of the current practice. Comparing the two options, it was further found that the shore-side electricity presents the lowest external costs but highest private costs, whereas the overall costs are around 25% lower than the onboard use of ultralow-sulphur fuel.     

Incorporation of customer satisfaction in public transport contracts – A preliminary analysis

The design of public transport contracts provides an opportunity to define service quality standards to which an operator can be held accountable. While the specification of service quality standards is a common practice, the relationships between the specifications and customer satisfaction are often methodologically unclear. Based on a South African case study, the paper uses data collected from a group of passengers who have personal cars but choose to use public transport, and a control group of passengers who only use their cars, in the same corridor as the user group, to estimate a service quality conjoint model. The model is used to evaluate the effect of different public transport service packages, defined in terms of different combinations of service attributes, on passenger satisfaction. The paper confirms the need to classify service attributes in terms of their relative impact on passenger satisfaction, at the service design stages, where performance in respect of some attributes has a disproportionate impact on satisfaction, especially where public transport is competing directly with private transport. Practical applications and limitations of the methodology are also discussed.     

The process of capital investment at US public portst

It is virtually impossible for a US public port authority to be totally proactive in its behaviour since there are too many major factors that affect its future that cannot be controlled or even anticipated by the port staff. Conversely, it is also virtually impossible for a public port authority to be totally reactive since the time window between decision and implementation often exceeds the time window of opportunity. For a public port authority to maintain long-term viability, it must constantly review the facilities it owns, the services it offers, and the source of the revenues it generates. This on-going review should determine how well the Port is adhering to its mission and accomplishing its goals and objectives as set out in the Port's strategic plan. Today, a major management challenge for any viable Port is prioritizing goals and maintaining a policy that ensures clear focus on the highest priority goals. Determining priorities amongst capital projects should be high on the list of any public port authority. This paper provides an overview of the decision-making processes used by American public port authorities in evaluating new capital projects and, we hope, an insight into processes for determining the desirability of expanding, contracting, or terminating present facilities and services.     

Securing public values in public transport projects: Four Dutch cases on innovation

Public transport projects, like its operations, most often have a substantial dependence on public funding. The rationale behind the public contribution is that governments on different levels want to secure certain public values by supporting public transport, e.g., mobility, accessibility, sustainability, social inclusion. These are all public values that public transport, projects and operations are expected to support. Evaluations show that the outcomes of the projects are often different than expected. The goal of the research described here was to understand what happens to the public values during the process of project realisation. Four Dutch projects were researched: ZuidTangent (a bus rapid transit project near Schiphol); ParkShuttle (a people mover near Rotterdam); Phileas (guided bus rapid transit near Eindhoven); and RandstadRail (a light rail conversion near The Hague). All the projects were initiated with innovation as one of the key elements/values. Moving away from the traditional ante-post analysis, we saw patterns in the way in which public values shift during the project. First, the projects under study show how too much focus on innovation can harm the project. Second, we see crowding out of values; high ambitions of key values during the early phases of the project lead to neglect of values which were not key to the project. Third, although more innovation was a key reason to introduce competition in the governance of Dutch public transport, it became apparent that introducing competition has complicated execution of these innovative projects significantly.     

Urban transport lending by the World Bank: The last decade

Over the preceding decade, the World Bank committed about US$7.5bn in loans for urban transport projects in its client countries, involving total project costs of nearly US$13bn. Projects are designed by the client city/national governments and the World Bank in an interactive, give-and-take process. As is common in development finance, urban transport projects entail an investment program and a set of policy and institutional initiatives. A majority of Bank-funded operations in this period focused on public transport modes. A clear and overarching strategic thrust is evident, favoring private delivery of services with a strong public role through city-specific regulatory agencies. Depending on the context, projects involved efforts to introduce private operators and competition into an all-public set-up, or tighten up weakly regulated, “informal” public transport markets. A notable feature of many projects in the latter context is the use of investments in bus rapid transit infrastructure to reach multiple goals: improve transport services, maintain affordability for low-income passengers, attract new passengers, reduce negative environmental impacts, and leverage complementary reforms of policies and institutions. The Bank’s program in China, unique in its local context of a dynamic urban society moving away from a near-universal reliance on bicycles, initially did not focus on public transport but on urban roads and traffic management. Towards the end of the last decade, the motorization process and the outlook of decision makers entering a more mature stage, projects in China started to converge towards what the rest of the Bank’s program was doing – searching for a more sustainable path to urban transport development.     

A simulation approach for estimating value at risk in transportation infrastructure investment decisions

Traditional economic analysis techniques used in the assessment of Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects are based upon the assumption that future cash flows are fully deterministic in nature and are not designed to account for risks involved in the assessment of future returns. In reality, many of these infrastructure projects are associated with significant risks stemming from the lack of knowledge about future cost and benefit streams. The fundamental premise of the PPP concept is to efficiently allocate risks between the public and the private partner. The return based on deterministic analysis may not depict a true picture of future economic outcomes of a PPP project for the multiple agencies involved. This deficiency underscores the importance of risk-based economic analysis for such projects. In this paper, the authors present the concept of Value-at-Risk (VaR) as a measure of effectiveness (MOE) to assess the risk share for the public and private entity in a PPP project. Bootstrap simulation is used to generate the risk profile savings in vehicle operating cost, and in travel time resulting from demand-responsive traffic. The VaR for Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is determined for public and private entity. The methodology is applied to a case study involving such a joint venture in India, the Mumbai Pune Expressway/National Highway 4 (MPEW/NH4), and fiscal implications from the perspective of the public and the private entities are examined. A comparison between deterministic and risk based economic analysis for MPEW/NH4 is presented. Risk analysis provides insightful results on the economic and financial implications from each participant's viewpoint.     

Ad Hoc网络中基于身份的密钥管理及认证

提出了在AdHoe网络中一种分布式基于身份的密钥管理及认证方法。每个节点使用其身份作为公钥,主密钥由各节点的私钥分享,从而形成基于身份的门限分布式密钥管理。该方法不仅提供了点对点的认证,而且节省了网络带宽和节点的能量消耗,具有很高的效率和鲁棒性。