Ship finance and Euro-markets

Due to the capital-intensive nature of the modern shipping industry, loan finance plays a major role in vessel-acquisition cost. In this paper, J. B. Yolland discusses government-guaranteed finance, ancillary and commercial new building finance and finance for second-hand tonnage. He also examines a new source of funding found in the Euro-market.     

Techniques of land use/transportation planning in Australian cities

With the publication of the Sydney Area Transportation Study, land-use/transportation studies now have been conducted in all capital cities as well as in the majority of other urban areas with populations in excess of 40.000. A review of these studies is made and a qualitative assessment is attempted of the technical phases —land-use planning, trip-generation, trip-distribution, modal-split, traffic assignment and evaluation. Full summary results of this comparative survey are presented in tabular form, although themes developed in the text are illustrated with specific examples from individual studies. The methodology of land-use/transportation studies has been attacked by some Australian writers. An attempt is made to assess the relevance of these criticisms when applied to the practical planning process in Australia.     

Equilibrium holdings distributions in durable asset markets

The stock of durable goods can be represented by its holdings distribution, defined as the joint distribution of age and physical condition of the population of durable goods. This paper derives the holdings distribution which arises under stationary conditions when durable goods deteriorate according to a Markov process. We show that given the scrappage and utilization decisions of consumers, the holdings distribution F(x) is an equilibrium distribution of an associated regenerative Markov process. Using a basic result from the theory of regenerative stochastic processes, we characterize F(x) as the ratio of the expected number of periods the durable's condition is better than x to the expected lifetime of the asset. Using data from the 1977 National Transportation Survey we illustrate these results by estimating a simple two-parameter model of automobile deterioration and comparing the implied distribution of automobile holdings to the actual distribution.     

Bridge and tunnel toll elasticities in New York

In 1992, the authors carried out a statistical analysis of Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) crossings in New York City, to determine the impact of toll increases on traffic volumes and revenue. Using twelve years of monthly time-series data, we developed a set of multiple regression models that estimated traffic volumes on each TBTA bridge and tunnel as a function of the toll level and other explanatory variables. In most cases, the estimated toll elasticities were negative and much less than 1.0 in absolute value; the median toll elasticity for automobiles was found to be –0.10. Our finding that automobile travel demand is highly inelastic with respect to toll rates is consistent with most previous travel demand studies.     

The interaction of tidal advection, diffusion and mussel filtration in a tidal channel

Time series measurements of flow and pigment concentrations (Chl) in the Menai Strait have revealed that the strong residual flow in a tidal channel ( 500 m³ s^− 1) transports phytoplankton from the open sea into the channel where much of it is consumed by suspension feeders, mainly in commercial beds of Mytilus edulis. The progressive depletion of phytoplankton along the channel results in a strong horizontal gradient of plankton and hence Chl. Tidal displacement of this gradient causes large (± 50% of mean) oscillations of Chl in the vicinity of the mussel beds. Vertical mixing by the strong tidal flows is sufficiently vigorous for most of the tidal cycle to ensure that downward diffusion can resupply the near-bed layer although there are indications of some transient depletion around slack water.This paradigm of the interaction of advection, diffusion and filtration determining the distribution of plankton and its supply to mussels has been encapsulated in a series of simple models forced only by boundary values. In the first, a 1-D model of tidal flow in the channel reproduces the principal features of the observed currents including the unusually large spatial change in phase of the currents and the variation of the residual transport with tidal range. The flow field from this physical model is used to drive a second model based on the advection diffusion equation for Chl with a source at the Irish Sea boundary and a sink over the mussel bed. This model illustrates the formation of a strong Chl gradient along the channel and simulates the amplitude and phase of the M₂ oscillations of Chl and the development of the M₄ variation apparent in the observations. This second model has been extended to 2-D over the mussel beds to allow investigation of the effects of water column mixing. The model indicates that only for a short period ( 30 min), close to slack water, is mixing sufficiently reduced to permit the development of a depletion boundary layer and then only within  1 m from the bottom, a result which is consistent with the observations.     

Sentiment analysis of popular-music references to automobiles, 1950s to 2010s

In recent years, there has been a scholarly debate regarding the decrease in automobile-related mobility indicators (car ownership, driving license holding, VMT, etc.). Broadly speaking, two theories have been put forward to explain this trend: (1) economic factors whose impacts are well-understood in principle, but whose occurrence among young adults as a demographic sub-group had been overlooked, and (2) less well-understood shifts in cultural mores, values and sentiment towards the automobile. This second theory is devilishly difficult to study, due primarily to limitations in standard data resources such as the National Household Travel Survey and international peer datasets. In this study we first compiled a database of lyrics to popular music songs from 1956 to 2015 (defined by inclusion in the annual “top 40”), and subsequently identified references to automobiles within this corpus. We then evaluated whether there is support for theory #2 above within popular music, by looking at changes from the 1950s to the 2010s. We demonstrate that the frequency of references to automobility tended for many years to increase over time, however there has more recently been a decline after the late 2000s (decade). In terms of the sentiment of popular music lyrics that reference automobiles, our results are mixed as to whether the references are becoming increasingly positive or negative (machine analysis suggests increasing negativity, while human analysis did not find a significant association), however a consistent observation is that sentiment of automobile references have over time become more positive relative to sentiment of song lyrics overall. We also show that sentiment towards automobile references differs systematically by genre, e.g. automobile references within ‘Rock’ lyrics are in general more negative than similar references to cars in other music genres). The data generated on this project have been archived and made available open access for use by future researchers; details are in the full paper.

     

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加拿大阿尔伯塔省经济的飞速发展，使得为全省制定合理的交通规划成为一项迫切的任务，在这种情况下，本文提出了全省的土地利用交通模型。该模型以PECAS（生产、交易和消费分派系统）结构为基础，实质是在整体经济的前提下考虑基本的交通需求（商品、服务、劳动力交换的流通过程）而进行交通规划。生产、交易和消费分派系统是一种空间经济模拟系统，它侧重交通规划和发展规划，近几年在美国提出并在一些州和城市得到应用。阿尔伯塔省土地利用交通模型受其模型建立基础，尤其是MEPLAN 和TRANUS模型的影响，但该模型在理论基础和行为描述上都做了明显的改进。本文从数据源和标定方法方面介绍加拿大阿尔伯塔省的土地利用交通模型的建立和发展。     

An exact modelling of the uniform control traffic delay in undersaturated signalized intersections

The average delay experienced by vehicles at a signalized intersection defines the level of service (LOS) at which the intersection operates. A major challenge in this regard is the ability to accurately estimate all the components underlying the overall control delay, including the uniform, incremental and initial queue delays. This paper tackles this challenging task by proposing a novel exact model of the uniform control delay component with a view to enhancing the accuracy of the existing approximate models, notably, the one reported in the Highway Capacity Manual 2010. Both graphical and analytical proofs are employed to derive exact closed‐form expressions for the uniform control delay at undersaturated signalized intersections. The high degree of accuracy of the proposed models is analysed through extensive simulations to demonstrate their abilities to exactly characterize the performance of real‐life intersections in terms of the resulting vehicle delay. Unlike the existing widely adopted uniform delay models, which tend to overestimate the LOS of real‐life intersections, the delay models introduced in this paper have the merit of exactly capturing such a LOS. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding connectivity to international markets: a systematic review

Improving freight connectivity is increasingly a topic at the centre of the international trade and transport policy agendas. An examination of available documents and studies in both the policy-making and the academic fields shows that the concept of freight connectivity has often been defined in different ways, and thus has taken a variety of meanings. This poses the question on what connectivity is and what are its determinants in the context of international trade. We are not aware of any studies that have analysed, in a systematic way, the different perspectives and determinants of freight connectivity so as to increase access to international markets. This paper seeks to fill this gap by performing a systematic literature review that spans disciplines such as Transport Engineering, Transport and International Economics, and Supply Chain Management. The outcome of this examination is a multidisciplinary framework that hopefully will help stakeholders to understand freight connectivity to international markets better, as well as guide future research and analysis in policy-making.