Evaluating road network damage caused by natural disasters in the Czech Republic between 1997 and 2010

Road networks play a vital role in maintaining a functioning modern society. Many events perceptibly affect the transport supply along these networks, especially natural disasters such as floods, landslides, and earthquakes. Contrary to more common disruptions of traffic from accidents, or maintenance closures, natural disasters are capable of destroying large numbers of roads and usually cover vast areas. When evaluating network damage no single measure alone is able to describe the full extent of network destruction. In this study, we investigated six highly damaging natural disasters, which occurred in the Czech Republic between 1997 and 2010. They were all induced by extreme rainfall or by rapid snowmelt and resulted in floods and landslides. Their impacts are evaluated with respect to the damage to road networks and decreased serviceability. For mutual comparison of the impacts and their analysis we used several criteria, described in the paper, related to economic impacts, physical harm to individuals and infrastructures, and the effects on connectivity and serviceability. We also introduced a new measure based on the network efficiency index which takes into account the importance of nodes based on their population. Moreover, we provide a detailed analysis of one such event in July 1997 that significantly affected the road network of the Zlín region.     

Productivity change in transport: a survey

Because of the importance of transport in promoting economic development, there has been a long‐standing interest in the performance of transport industries and in the conditions which are likely to promote productivity growth. Fundamental to any debate on the subject, though, is the need to advance a satisfactory account of production and a way of deciding when productive performance has changed. This paper points out that there are pitfalls in the common practice of using measures such as output per man‐hour as an indicator of productivity and argues that a thorough understanding of the relationships between inputs and outputs can proceed from a knowledge of the economic theory of production.

The paper describes the relevant theoretical concepts and then examines applications of that theory in transport industries. It transpires that there is a growing literature on the subject, demonstrating a worldwide and multimodal interest in developing more rigorous and satisfying ways of measuring and analysing productivity difference. The techniques employed range from the more complex models at the forefront of economic theory, to rudimentary methods which are, at best, capable of testing only the simplest types of hypotheses. Nevertheless, it is argued that these studies have achieved a remarkable degree of success in enhancing analysis.

There can be no doubt that techniques will undergo further developments. However, it is likely that the greatest successes will come about through improvements in data which will permit applications of more complex, but proven techniques of analysis in relatively neglected areas such as road and maritime transport.     

百色市农村客运站经营管理实践

农村客运站场网络是公路客运站场网络的重要组成部分,是发展农村客运、促进农村地区经济社会发展和城乡商品交流的重要平台.文章结合当前百色市农村客运站经营管理现状,分析经营管理中存在的问题,提出了相关的对策和措施.为规范当地农村客运市场秩序、加快农村客运网络建设、提高社会主义新农村建设水平提供参考.     

Comparison of road freight transport trends in Europe. Coupling and decoupling factors from an Input–Output structural decomposition analysis

Decoupling road freight transport from economic growth has been acknowledged by the European Union as a key means to improving sustainability. It is therefore important to identify both the coupling and decoupling drivers of road freight transport demand in order to determine possible factors that may contribute to reduce road transport in the future without curbing economic development. This research proposes an Input–Output (IO) structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to explain road freight transport in terms of a set of key factors that have strongly influenced road freight demand in recent decades in European countries—such as economic growth, economic structure and the evolution of road transport intensity (including improvements in both supply and transport systems). This methodological approach allows us to quantify and compare their contribution in different European countries to either increase or decrease road freight transport demand. The empirical basis for this analysis is a dataset of nine European countries which have IO tables and road transport data available from 2000 to 2007, comprising data on domestic production, imports and exports as well as tonne-kms for 11 types of commodity classes. The results show that, as a whole, aggregate road transport demand has grown—driven mainly by economic activity—but this growth has been strongly curbed in some countries by changes in road freight transport intensity and moderately by the dematerialization of the economy. International transport has been also proven to be a key factor driving road freight transport volumes. Moreover, the increased penetration of foreign operators in national haulage markets appears to have reinforced the final decoupling levels observed in some cases.     

Long-term impacts of transport infrastructure networks on land-use change: an international review of empirical studies

Improvements in geographical information systems, the wider availability of high-resolution digital data and more sophisticated econometric techniques have all contributed to increasing academic interest and activity in long-term impacts of transport infrastructure networks (TINs) on land use (LU). This paper provides a systematic review of recent empirical evidence from the USA, Europe and East Asia, classified regarding the type of transport infrastructure (road or rail), LU indicator (land cover, population or employment density, development type) and outcome (significance, relationship’s direction) as well as influential exogenous factors. Proximity to the rail network is generally associated with population growth (particularly soon after the development of railway infrastructure), conversion to residential uses and the development of higher residential densities. Meanwhile, proximity to the road network is frequently associated with increases in employment densities as well as the conversion of land to a variety of urban uses including commercial and industrial development. Compared with road infrastructure, the impact of rail infrastructure is often less significant for land cover or population and employment density change. The extent of TINs’ impact on LU over time can be explained by the saturation in TIN-related accessibility and LU development.     

Do Public Transport Improvements Increase Agglomeration Economies? A Review of Literature and an Agenda for Research

Public transport improvements may increase economic productivity if they enable the growth and densification of cities, downtowns, or industrial clusters and thereby increase external agglomeration economies. It has been argued that the potential agglomeration benefits are large; if so, understanding them better would be useful in making funding decisions about public transport improvements. We reviewed theoretical and empirical literature on agglomeration as well as a small number of articles on transportation's role in agglomeration. The theoretical literature is useful in understanding possible avenues by which transportation improvements might affect agglomeration, although there is little discussion of public transport specifically. Relevant empirical studies tend to focus on metropolitan regions and use a generalized measure of transportation cost. But public transport impacts on agglomeration are likely to be different from road investment impacts. We identified several ways of conducting research building on this literature that would help evaluate the agglomeration impacts of public transport proposals: tracing the links between transport, agglomeration, and productivity; better motivating research using theories of agglomeration mechanisms; taking scale and redistribution into account; exploring the functional form of agglomeration economies; accounting for endogeneity in model structure; and considering development context.     

Impacts of Transport Infrastructure on Productivity and Economic Growth: Recent Advances and Research Challenges

ABSTRACT

The paper provides an update of the survey focusing on estimating the contribution of transport infrastructure to productivity and economic growth. The central questions addressed are possible reasons behind the conflicting results reported in the literature on the elasticity of economic output with respect to transport infrastructure investment. After providing a systematic review of recent empirical studies on the effects of transport infrastructure on productivity and economic growth, the paper notes that controversial results can be attributed to ten causes (grouped into three categories for distinguishing): (1) related to different contexts: research period, geographical scales, and country's capability in enabling economic development; (2) related to different phenomena that are being measured: different economic sectors, different types of transport infrastructure, and different quality levels of transport infrastructure; and (3) related to distinct ways of measuring a similar phenomenon: measures used to describe the dependent variable and explanatory variable, functional specification, and estimation method of the econometric model. Strong network externalities of transport infrastructure may result in nonlinearity of the relationship between transport infrastructure and economic growth. Moreover, the absence of spatial concerns in infrastructure's impacts is another important source of inconclusive results. Finally, building on recent literature, the paper has discussed policy implications and identified several research avenues for further research.     

Generalized transport costs and index numbers: A geographical analysis of economic and infrastructure fundamentals

We rely on the economic theory approach to index numbers to improve the existing definitions and decompositions of variations in generalized transport costs (GTCs). As a value index, we decompose GTCs into price and quantity indices associated to economic—market—costs and infrastructure variables—distance and time within a network. The methodology allows the accurate identification of the sources of GTCs decline. We illustrate it for the case of road freight transportation in Spain between 1980 and 2007 and at a highly detailed geographical level. Average GTCs weighted by trade flows have decreased by 16.3%, with infrastructure driving that reduction. We find large territorial disparities in GTCs, but also significant geographical clusters where the market and network indices show spatial association.     

Effects of road network on vegetation pattern in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, Southwest China

The paper presents the results of a case study carried out in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China, to examine the relationship between vegetation dynamics and road network extension. We find that lower level roads had more effects on vegetation patches. Minor roads, including Class IV and Class V roads, contributed most to regional landscape fragmentation while high level roads had larger effect on vegetation dynamics in road effect zone. Further, road classes have close relationships with village distribution, topography fluctuation and landscape fragmentation. Topography, however had no direct relationship with vegetation pattern.     

A spatial autoregressive panel model to analyze road network spillovers on production

The production function approach is used to introduce the effect of public infrastructure on economic growth focusing on its spillover effects. We improve the existing literature both from a conceptual and methodological perspective. As regressors we incorporate variables related to the new concepts of internal and imported transport infrastructure capital stocks, which are actually used in commercial flows, calculated by network analysis performed in GIS. The internally used capital stock represents own infrastructure that benefits accessing markets within the region itself, while the imported capital stock captures the spillover effect associated to the use of the infrastructure situated in neighboring regions. From a methodological perspective, we introduce spatial interdependence into these models, applying the most recent spatial econometric techniques based on instrumental variables estimation in spatial autoregressive panel models in comparison with Maximum Likelihood estimation methods. We illustrate the methodology with Spanish provincial panel data for the period 1980–2007. Results support the hypothesis that the imported capital has a positive spillover effect on production.     

Impacts,management and functional planning criterion of forest road network system in Turkey

In this study are proposed impacts, management and functional planning criterion of forest road network system in rural and urban landscapes of Turkey. Road spacing and road density have been inspected concerning forest roads in production, reforestation, national parks and protection forests of rural and urban landscapes of Turkey. The forest road network was the most expensive human activity in the forests both in terms of economics and environmental effects. Public opinion about the environment has increased in recent years. Sustainable land use planning creates a great challenge for rural and urban road network planning. Further improvements of the network are necessary, to provide for people’s needs in the near future. Harmful effects of road network conflict with the principles of sustainability. When making use of the forest ecosystem for various purposes, care must be taken not to spoil the forest structure. To achieve this, forests must be used according to forestry techniques. So, there is a need for a new planning approach, serving the interests of both accessibility and sustainable environment. In rural landscapes, forest road planning standards (slope, width, pavement, drainage etc.) are different in production, forestation, national parks and protection forests. The need for total forest roads in Turkey was 201,810 km, and that 133,693 km portion of which, corresponding to 66.25%, was constructed by the end of 2005. With a view to be capable of conducting modern forestry activities, our country’s forests should be provided with a systematic road network by completing as soon as possible the construction of the remaining portion of such roads.     

Effect of advanced traveler information systems and road pricing in a network with non-recurrent congestion

The effect of the application of advanced transport information system (ATIS) and road pricing is studied in a transportation system under non-recurrent congestion. A stochastic network deterministic user equilibrium model (SNDUE) with elastic demand is formulated and used to evaluate the welfare and private impacts of different market penetrations of ATIS, together with road pricing for a simple network. Both marginal first-best road pricing and a second-best fixed road pricing are considered. The incentives of private users to use ATIS are analyzed and the characteristics of optimum tolls as a function of ATIS market penetration are shown. We conclude that ATIS is an efficient and necessary tool to reduce the effects of non-recurrent incidents in a transportation network, especially when non-recurrent congestion causes a significant deterioration of operational conditions of the network. If the impact of non-recurrent incidents on free flow costs is small or is reduced only to congestion effects, the use of road pricing would be more efficient. Social benefits obtained when jointly implementing ATIS and road pricing are practically the same whether first-best or second-best road pricing is used. Considering the private costs perceived by the network users, and the benefits experienced by equipped users, the maximum level of market penetration achieved could be limited because private benefits disappear after certain market penetration is obtained.     

Has the transport-led economic growth effect reached a peak in China? A panel threshold regression approach

Using China’s province-level panel data from 1987 to 2010, this study explores the optimal level of transport infrastructure accumulation maximizing the growth rate. We investigate under what circumstances can additional transportation infrastructure capacity positively affect economic growth, based on panel threshold regression models. Our empirical findings suggest that there is a non-monotonic relationship between the stock of transport infrastructure and the long-run growth rate. The magnitude of transport-led economic growth effect significantly depends on the level of the existing transport network. The empirical results identify two endogenous cut-off points of efficiency of transport-led economic growth effect. When the highway network density is lower than 0.17 km/km², an insignificant positive relationship between highway infrastructure accumulation and economic growth was found. When the highway density is estimated between 0.17 and 0.38 km/km² or higher than 0.38 km/km², expanding the highway network has a significant positive effect on economic growth, but the magnitude of the impact is weaker in the latter, with the estimated coefficients equal to 0.23 and 0.09 respectively. Although China still enjoys a positive economic growth effect led by building more large-scale highway infrastructure, the magnitude of the effects of most provinces in China has already passed the saturation point and continuously expanding the highway network is not very productive.     

The vehicle platooning problem: Computational complexity and heuristics

We create a mathematical framework for modeling trucks traveling in road networks, and we define a routing problem called the platooning problem. We prove that this problem is NP-hard, even when the graph used to represent the road network is planar. We present integer linear programming formulations for instances of the platooning problem where deadlines are discarded, which we call the unlimited platooning problem. These allow us to calculate fuel-optimal solutions to the platooning problem for large-scale, real-world examples. The problems solved are orders of magnitude larger than problems previously solved exactly in the literature. We present several heuristics and compare their performance with the optimal solutions on the German Autobahn road network. The proposed heuristics find optimal or near-optimal solutions in most of the problem instances considered, especially when a final local search is applied. Assuming a fuel reduction factor of 10% from platooning, we find fuel savings from platooning of 1–2% for as few as 10 trucks in the road network; the percentage of savings increases with the number of trucks. If all trucks start at the same point, savings of up to 9% are obtained for only 200 trucks.     

On the existence of stationary states in general road networks

Our daily driving experience and empirical observations suggest that traffic patterns in a road network are relatively stationary during peak periods. In numerous transportation network studies, there has been an implicit conjecture that stationary states exist in a network when origin demands, route choice proportions, and destination supplies are constant. In this study, we first rigorously formulate the conjecture within the framework of a network kinematic wave theory with an invariant junction model. After defining stationary states, we derive a system of algebraic equations in 3-tuples of stationary link flow-rates, demands, and supplies. We then introduce a new definition of junction critical demand levels based on effective demands and supplies. With a map in critical demand levels, we show that its fixed points and, therefore, stationary states exist with the help of Brouwer’s fixed point theorem. For two simple road networks, we show that the map is well-defined and can be used to solve stationary states with a brute-force method. Finally we summarize the study and present some future extensions and applications.     

Toxic air pollutants and trucking productivity in the US

This paper introduces toxic air pollutants into the measurement of trucking productivity to obtain true productivity growth. Our results show that omitting or ignoring toxic air pollutants in measuring trucking productivity yields statistically significant biased productivity estimates in for 2002-2005. Trucking productivity growth was understated by the traditional productivity measure, because the latter did not account for reductions in truck air pollution over time. We also find that the difference between traditional and environmental efficiency scores was negligible, suggesting that environmental constraint did not distort efficiency in the trucking sector.     

Social welfare analysis of investment public–private partnership approaches for transportation projects

This paper has two objectives: (i) to introduce a new approach in order to gain widespread support for road pricing; and (ii) to develop a detailed social welfare analysis for road pricing schemes. We first describe our novel approach that stimulates public support for road pricing, which we refer to as an investment public–private partnership, or IP3. This approach returns a significant portion of the economic value created by road pricing back to the citizens who own the newly priced facility. We then present a social welfare framework that estimates the benefits and costs of using the IP3 approach on an urban transportation network. A P3 project’s impact on overall social welfare provides a more comprehensive evaluation criterion than the often-used Value for Money (VfM) analysis. Apart from several theoretical studies, a detailed social welfare analysis that includes all major P3 project stakeholders is absent from the literature. We use Fresno, California as our case study in order to conduct a welfare analysis on IP3s. Our results show that system-optimal tolling favors average users, but that government—and consequently taxpayers—should pay for costly tolling systems (negative profits). In contrast, unlimited profit-maximizing tolls raise substantial profits for government, for the infrastructure’s citizen-owners, and for the private sector, but the average user is worse off. From a social-welfare perspective, one should search for a Pareto improvement under which all major stakeholders are better off. Our estimates indicate that a mixed public and private tolling scheme offers such an improvement.     

小件快运中的最短运输时间问题

小件快运经过多年的发展,已经成为公路客运一个新的经济增长点,越来越多的公路客运企业和汽车客运站加入到经营小件快运的行列,小件快运也逐渐由单个企业的独立运营发展到多个企业联合的网络化运营。对中转运输中多条运输线路进行分析,得到最短运输时间线路,从而提高运输效率。     

Fuel demand,road transport pollution emissions and residents’ health losses in the transitional China

In recent years, China’s rapid economic growth resulted in serious air pollution, which caused substantial losses to economic development and residents’ health. In particular, the road transport sector has been blamed to be one of the major emitters. During the past decades, fluctuation in the international oil prices has imposed significant impacts on the China’s road transport sector. Therefore, inspired by Li and Zhou (2005), we propose an assumption that China’s provincial economies are independent “economic entities”. Based on this assumption, we investigate the China’s road transport fuel (i.e., gasoline and diesel) demand system by using the panel data of all 31 Chinese provinces except Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. To connect the fuel demand system and the air pollution emissions, we propose the concept of pollution emissions elasticities to estimate the air pollution emissions from the road transport sector, and residents’ health losses by a simplified approach consisting of air pollution concentrations and health loss assessment models under different scenarios based on real-world oil price fluctuations. Our framework, to the best of our knowledge, is the first attempt to address the transmission mechanism between the fuel demand system in road transport sector and residents’ health losses in the transitional China.     

Maximum car ownership under constraints of road capacity and parking space

This paper presents a model for determining the maximum number of cars by zones in view of the capacity of the road network and the number of parking spaces available. In other words, the proposed model is to examine whether existing road network and parking supply is capable of accommodating future zonal car ownership growth (or the reserve capacity in each zone); i.e. the potential maximum zonal car ownership growth that generates the road traffic within the network capacity and parking space constraints. In the proposed model, the vehicular trip production and attraction are dependent on the car ownership, available parking spaces and the accessibility measures by traffic zones. The model is formulated as a bi-level programming problem. The lower-level problem is an equilibrium trip distribution/assignment problem, while the upper-level problem is to maximize the sum of zonal car ownership by considering travellers’ route and destination choice behaviour and satisfying the network capacity and parking space constraints. A sensitivity analysis based heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the proposed bi-level car ownership problem and is illustrated with a numerical example.