The treatment of traffic in the Dutch environmental outlooks: the role of science in policy making and policy evaluation

The Dutch National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection publishes Environmental Outlooks in which 25‐year projections are made. These Outlooks quantifying the environmental problems, form the scientific basis for Dutch environmental policy. Traffic and transport is one of the main sectors causing environmental problems. The emissions and energy use of all relevant categories (road traffic, non‐road traffic) are based on model simulations with models. This paper describes the main models used.

If present policy is implemented only a minority of the environmental targets will be met.

If a sustainable transport system for the Netherlands means a large reducton in CO₂ emissions and energy use after 2010 a stronger emphasis on both technical and non‐technical measures (such as land‐use planning combined with public transport improvements) for the period until 2010 is needed than proposed in the Second Transport Structure Plan, unless a sustainable energy source becomes available.     

An artificial neural network based method to uncover the value-of-travel-time distribution

Transportation - This study proposes a novel Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based method to derive the Value-of-Travel-Time (VTT) distribution. The strength of this method is that it is possible...     

液压减振器动态数学模型的研究

采用一种全新的数学模型描述液压减振器的阻尼力,建立完整的液压减振器数学模型。模型含有8个参数。这些参数具有明确的物理含义,可以完整描述如第1阻尼系数、泄载点以及第2阻尼因子等减振器外特性曲线。同时,这些参数直接反映减振器液压阀的结构配置和阻尼特性之间的关系。这种液压减振器动态数学模型,可为改进和优化减振器性能提供有效的数字设计工具,适用于车辆系统动力学的深入研究。该模型在专业实验室进行了充分的验证试验。试验数据和模型计算结果非常吻合。     

Multimodal traveling and its impact on urban transit network design

Multimodal trip making, that is trips using a combination of several modes between origin and destination, is expected to be beneficial to society and might offer advantages to the traveler as well. This article looks at some of the implications of multi‐modality in trip making for the design of urban transit systems since these play an important role in multi‐modal transportation systems. In this respect, the article looks at the strategic design characteristics of urban transit networks, that is line density, stop density and service frequencies for the case of multimodal access to urban transit networks and for hierarchical network structures in urban transit systems. The analyses show that multimodal access does not require alternative network structures. For hierarchical network structures it is concluded that these are primarily determined by the hierarchy in demand densities and thus by hierarchy in urban structures.     

Low-aspect ratio appendages for wind-assisted ships

Journal of Marine Science and Technology - Wind propulsion for commercial ships has been identified as a key component in the energy transition for the maritime industry. The sailing hybrid ship...     

When strike comes to town… anticipated and actual behavioural reactions to a one-day,pre-announced,complete rail strike in the Netherlands

We conducted secondary analysis on data collected among rail users, days before and after a national rail strike in the Netherlands. Our aim was to compare anticipated and actual behavioural reactions to the rail strike, investigate associations with traveller and trip characteristics, and perceived behavioural control and satisfaction with the chosen alternative. Forty-four percent of the people who had anticipated to travel by train on the day of the strike abandoned their trip, 24% switched to car as driver, 14% switched to another mode (as passenger), 18% stayed with the train and rescheduled the planned activity to another day. Almost half of people who had anticipated travelling by car expected to change behaviour as well. Multinomial logistic regression showed low preference for car among rail users. Considerable marginal effects were found for several variables, e.g.: young people and females were less likely to switch to car; short and middle distance trips were less likely abandoned or switched to another day; commute and business trips were more likely done by car, and business trips less likely cancelled. Despite high levels of perceived behavioural control and satisfaction with the chosen alternative, permanent modal shift as result of this strike is not expected.     

Multi‐criteria analysis for evaluating the impacts of intelligent speed adaptation

Road safety is a policy priority due to the high casualties and costs associated with road accidents. Since speed is a major cause of road accidents, in‐vehicle speed limiters or Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA), seems a promising solution. ISA implementation, however, is hindered by large uncertainties, for example about the impacts of ISA, the way users might respond to ISA, and the relationship between speed and accidents. Traditional Multi‐Criteria Analysis (MCA) has limitations in handling these uncertainties. We present an MCA approach based on exploratory modeling, which uses computational experiments to explore the multiple outcomes of ISA policies (safety, emissions, throughput, and cost) across a range of future demand scenarios, functional relationships for performance criteria, and user responses to ISA. As an illustration, by testing the impacts of different ISA penetration levels on two driver groups, we show that when compliance with ISA is expected to be low, a policy aimed only at novice drivers outperforms other ISA policies on safety improvement.     

Understanding bikeability: a methodology to assess urban networks

Transportation - A fully separated bicycle network from vehicular traffic is not realistic even for the most bicycle-friendly cities. Thus, all around the world urban cycling entails switching...     

Strategic beliefs of port authorities

Over the last decade, insights from the strategic management discipline have increasingly been applied to ports. A review of literature shows that in the analysis of port authority strategy, mainly outside-in approaches are applied. This paper adds to the emerging understanding of the port authority’s strategy by applying a cognitive perspective. Specifically, the strategic cognition of firms’ executives is one of the explanatory variables behind firms’ strategic decisions. Furthermore, cognitions are influenced by the organisational contexts in which port authority executives have worked. As a result, managerial “mental maps’ may vary across industry contexts and over time. This research investigates the strategic cognition of a global set of port authority executives through a survey-based instrument. The results show that, to a large extent, PAs resemble “regular” for-profit companies, but that they possess some specific beliefs that distinguish them from “regular” companies.