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.     

The role of public transport for feasibility and acceptability of congestion charging – The case of Stockholm

In the Stockholm Trial, congestion charges and the expansion of public transport services were closely linked together in marketing efforts, as well as in political decisions. In this paper, we analyse the role that public transport may have played in increasing acceptability and feasibility of the scheme. We study four aspects of the relationship between charging and public transport provision: (i) the initial modal share, (ii) contribution to modal shift (iii) compensation to losers (iv) revenue hypothecation. Our analyses, based on a combination of primary and secondary data, support the hypothesis that public transport contributed to the successful implementation of congestion charging in Stockholm through all those four mechanisms.     

打折的公共汽车票--闲话"外宾"

改革开放初期的时候,我和几个年纪稍长的朋友在一起聊天.那哥儿几个下海特早,按当时的标准看,已经可以被称作大款了.不知道是谁先抻的茬儿,说起砍价这件事儿来了.其中有个朋友年纪最大,见多识广,嘴上俏皮话也多.他为砍价这个话题作了一个精辟的总结,"如今这年月,除了公共汽车票不能砍价,剩下的全都能砍价儿."     

The organization of public transport in Denmark

The sharp contrast between the public transportation needs of Greater Copenhagen and provincial Denmark has led to significant differences in policy and organizational structure for public transport in the two regions. Outside Copenhagen the period 1965–1975 saw a rapid decline in rural public transport supply and a rise in special services (school buses, etc.). A 1978 law requiring county councils to prepare comprehensive regional transport plans reversed this trend. Most counties now have economically responsible transport corporations which contract with public and private operators for service. School routes have been opened, train and bus schedules have been coordinated and zonal fare systems have been introduced. In Greater Copenhagen urban sprawl has promoted a gradual public take-over of most transport services in the region, culminating in an almost all-pervasive “public works” type of transport corporation under regional authority in the late 1970s.     

The demand for public transport. part II. supply and demand factors of public transport

Abstract

This two‐part article, concerned with the way public transport ridership is affected by the various relevant factors, is based on the Executive Summary of The Demand for Public Transport (Webster and Bly 1980), the report of the TRRL‐sponsored International Collaborative Study on Factors Affecting Public Transport Patronage. Part I of the article, which was concerned with the social and economic conditions in which public transport operates, showed the importance of the background factors such as income, car ownership and land use on public transport usage: it also indicated how the longer‐term impacts of the more direct demand factors (fares, service levels) often show themselves in changes in car ownership levels, activity patterns (i.e. where people live, work, shop, socialize, etc) and land‐use development.

Part II reviews the current state of knowledge on the effects of changes in fare levels and quality of service and of the introduction of various traffic and transport measures (traffic restraint, bus priority, etc): it outlines current methodology on costing public transport services and draws the supply and demand sides together in a consideration of particular strategies which are at the disposal of the operator, the planner and the policy maker.     

The politics of collective public participation in transportation decision-making

Citizen involvement in transportation planning is typically modeled on a liberal democracy in which individuals express their preferences about a project. In this paper we present an analysis based on interviews with stakeholders whose involvement was grounded in a complementary model of public participation, one in which an organized community used collective action (instead of only individual expression), and worked both within and outside of the formal public involvement process to influence the design of an arterial highway in their neighborhood. This case reflects a commonplace context for public participation: residents opposing a highway expansion and the negative effects of heavy traffic in neighborhoods. The problem presented in this case is that the process for citizen involvement was not designed to fully utilize the community’s collective capacity. Three aspects of collective action—representation, the ability to shape a policy agenda, and methods of engagement—were contested in the public participation process. We argue that these conflicts around collective action in the public participation process exposed its “one-way communication,” and enabled a different kind of political process in which neighbors’ organizing was powerful and influenced decisions.     

The Gini index of demand imbalances in public transport

Transportation - The paper studies a general bidirectional public transport line along which demand varies by line section. The length of line sections also varies, and therefore their contribution...     

The possibility and potential of public policy on accessibility

The development of measures of accessibility has proceeded largely independently of concern for the ways in which public policy makers respond to analytic research. Academic interest in accessibility is not necessarily paralleled by a public interest and the former cannot be expected to have a ready-made market or to promote public policy of its own accord. Public policy on accessibility will only be forthcoming if accessibility is a well politicized issue. If improved accessibility can be achieved as part of other programs, then there is little likelihood of public policy being addressed to accessibility exclusively. If conditions are such that public policy on accessibility is a possibility, sound policy-relevant research is still not a guarantee of program success. Successful implementation of public policy relies in part on identifying those who have actual and not merely nominal control over outcomes. Political viability is also vital to the working of accessibility. Public policy imposed from above is unlikely to succeed in the context of a pluralist society honeycombed with special interest groups committed to participatory problem solving. Reflecting on the possibility of formulating and implementing an effective policy on accessibility suggests the importance of giving as much attention to the development of a conceptually robust and incisive notion of accessibility as to the improvement of accessibility measures.     

The formulation of marketing strategy in urban public transport

This paper prescribes the parameters of marketing strategy formulation in the context of urban public transport and emphasises in particular the usefulness of the marketing mix and segmentation concepts. A marketing mix comprising the two primary dimensions of service attributes and promotion is advocated, the service attributes to include price, in-vehicle time, mesh density, frequency, reliability and comfort. Three primary trip purpose segments are identified viz. journey-to-work, shopping, and leisure/social trip segments, but these may be expanded into a twenty-four cell matrix once origin-destination and car access factors are included. The sensitivity of demand in these segments is examined mostly by reference to demonstration and experimental project data drawn from the United States and the United Kingdom. For the three primary trip purpose segments demand elasticity is shown to be greater for non-price than for price features; for both price and non-price service features elasticity is shown to be a function of journey purpose being least elastic for journey-to-work trips and most elastic for social/leisure trips. The role of promotion is examined and its importance to the successful marketing of public transport clearly demonstrated.This paper is a condensation of material appearing in The Management of Urban Public Transport: a marketing approach, by P. J. Hovell, W. H. Jones, and A. J. Moran, to be published by Saxon House and Lexington Books in 1975.     

The impact of “free” public transport: The case of Brussels

Public transport subsidies play an important role in the present Belgian mobility policy. The introduction of “free” bus transport in Hasselt in 1997 was an important event. Later, the Flemish government in cooperation with the regional public transport company elaborated the so-called “third-payer system” for target groups. The price of public transport is not paid by the user or the provider, but partly or completely by a “third party”. In how far these measures contribute to a more sustainable mobility system has caused much debate.In the academic year 2003–2004, a “free public transport” initiative was introduced for the students of Flemish colleges and universities in Brussels. These students had the opportunity to obtain a refunded annual season ticket on Brussels public transport. Brussels was selected for the case study, because in the same city there is a group of students that benefits from the measure, and another group (students from French speaking universities and colleges) that does not. In order to examine the effects of this measure, we conducted a survey among the students to examine their present travel behaviour (number of trips, motives, modal choice …) and the changes with the travel behaviour of the previous year. In addition we compare the current travel behaviour between the students benefiting from the measure, and those who do not.     

The limits of analyzing service quality data in public transport

In recent years, management and academics have increasingly focused on quality management in public transport. In particular, many public transport operators regularly monitor their service quality over time and use these data to assess quality performance (e.g., for performance-based quality contracts) and to determine managerial decisions (e.g., budget allocations for service improvements). However, despite the widespread applications of service quality data in practice, it is unclear whether cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data provide valid insights for quality management purposes. In this study, we investigate the usability of cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data by conducting an empirical study that tracked a panel’s perceptions of the service quality of public transport and its choice over the course of three consecutive years. The results demonstrate that cross-sectional analyses provide valid insights for quality management. However, cross-temporal comparisons should be interpreted carefully because the results of these comparisons are surprisingly unreliable. In fact, we find that service quality data do not provide reliable results over time and therefore conclude that cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data must be interpreted with caution for quality management in public transport.     

The development of public attitudes towards the Stockholm congestion trial

A full-scale congestion charging trial was carried out in Stockholm the first months of 2006. Almost half of respondents in a county-wide survey stated that they changed their attitudes towards congestion charges during the trial. Most of them became more positive.An analysis of media shows that the attitudinal change in media towards the trial coincides with the attitudinal change of the public. There was no dramatic change in the proportion of articles expressing a negative view. Instead, the result indicates that the increase in positive views was driven by a shift from neutral to positive articles during the trial.In order to ascertain why the public attitudes swung, we have analysed the anticipated and perceived effects of the trial. Generally, the analysis seems to indicate that improved understanding of the type and magnitude of concrete effects was not a main driving force behind the attitudinal change. Instead, it seems that the public attitude changed because personal experience gave a new understanding of the implications of the charges for the personal well-being. This would imply that trials, generally, may be a more useful tool than information in the process of implementing ‘difficult’ policy measures, such as congestion charges.     

The effects of public transport subsidies on demand and supply

The results of statistical analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal public transport operating statistics from 16 countries aimed at identifying the relationships between subsidy, on the one hand, and fares, service, passengers, unit costs and output per employee on the other, are reported. This study updates earlier work carried out in 1979 for the European Conference of Ministers of Transport, and uses a greatly expanded data set covering 117 individual cities in 11 countries, and aggregate national data from 16 countries, over the period 1965–1982. The statistical correlations identified between year-on-year changes in subsidy and changes in a wide range of operating indicators show that the subsidy has reduced fares and increased the amount of service operated, and each extra 1% of cost covered by subsidy probably attracts a 0.2 to 0.4% increase in passengers. However, the study also finds highly significant relationships between increases in subsidy, on the one hand, and increases in unit costs and wages and reductions in output per employee, on the other. It seems that as much as one half of subsidy has been consumed by higher costs and time-lagged regressions suggest that, in part, the increases in unit cost tend to follow subsidy rather than precede it, giving some cause for concern that the uses of subsidy are not being controlled as tightly as they might.     

The effect of crowding on public transit user travel behavior in a large-scale public transportation system through modeling daily variations

In this paper, the crowding effect in a transit vehicle is modeled in a time-expanded network that considers the daily variation in passenger flows. The study models the daily variation of in-vehicle crowding in a real large-scale transit system. A transit assignment for this real network is modeled and implemented by constructing a crowding cost function that follows the valuation of crowding and by using the reliable shortest path finding method. The direct application of the crowding model to a real network for the Utah Transit Authority indicates that crowd modeling with multi-user classes could influence public transportation system planning and affect the revenues of transit agencies. Moreover, the addition of the disutility factor, crowding, does not always appear to cause an increase in disutility for transit users.     

The impact of fare and gasoline price changes on monthly transit ridership: Empirical evidence from seven U.S. transit authorities

This paper presents eight empirical models of monthly ridership for seven U.S. Transit Authorities. Within the framework of these models, the impacts upon monthly ridership from changes in the real fare and gasoline prices are examined. Important findings are: (1) the elasticities of monthly transit ridership with respect to the real fare are negative and inelastic, ranging from 0.042 to 0.62; and (2) the elasticities of monthly transit ridership with respect to the real gasoline price are positive and inelastic, ranging from 0.08 to 0.80. Such results have important policy implications for decisions based on the relationships of price, revenue, and ridership; and for assessing the impacts of changing gasoline prices upon urban modal choice.     

The effects of AVL accuracy upon public service bus system performance

Through an examination of the dependence of several key performance parameters of a public bus system upon Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) estimation accuracy, it becomes possible to place in perspective the value of AVL technology to improved public conveyance performance. Important bus transportation system performance measures dependent upon AVL estimation accuracy are: (1) Headway Control Error; (2) Time-Of-Passage Error, and (3) Required Layover Reserve. An analytical model of the dependence of these bus system performance measures upon AVL estimation error has been constructed. In addition, error models of three basic types of AVL systems, i.e., dead reckoning, proximity, and radio location have been developed and validated by experimental comparisons. By employing both sets of models, i.e. for the bus transport and AVL systems it becomes possible to recommend appropriate AVL technologies that best meet the performance requirements of a public bus service. The accompanying text synopsizes the noted models and provides an example of their use.     

The role of expectations on automobile demand

This study investigates the influence of adaptive expectations on the purchase of automobiles by income quintile. Through maximum likelihood estimation, it is found that the coefficients of adaptation to income exhibit a trend towards faster rates in the upper quintiles. The effects of a “truncation remainder” and of serial correlation are also noted.     

The asymmetric effects of gasoline prices on public transportation use in Taiwan

This study investigates the asymmetric effects of gasoline prices on public transportation use in Taiwan. The empirical results obtained are as follows. First, we verify that gasoline price is an important determinant of transit demand. Gasoline prices have significantly positive effects on bus and mass rapid transit (MRT) use. Second, MRT ridership is more sensitive than bus and railway ridership to gasoline price and income. In the face of oil prices escalation and economic growth, the MRT system should have higher priority in public transportation planning. Third, the effects of gasoline prices on bus and MRT use are asymmetric. Bus and MRT use increases faster when gasoline prices rise than it decreases when gasoline prices fall. The transit agencies should adjust operating strategies faster in the rising of oil prices than in the falling of oil prices. It is important for transit planning to use oil prices as signals and increase the flexibility of operation in dealing with the changes in ridership. Some strategies, such as enhancing the availability of transfer information and updating transit information timely, are helpful to move passengers efficiently.     

The methodology of multiple criteria decision making/aiding in public transportation

The paper presents methodological overview of the application of Multiple Criteria Decision Making/Aiding (MCDM/A) in public transportation. It explains why MCDM/A methodology is so important while dealing with different categories of decision problems that arise in mass transit systems. Major features and basic notions of MCDM/A methodology are presented. Different categories of MCDM/A methods are characterized and classified. Two case studies demonstrate possible applications of MCDM/A methodology in public transportation. In the first case study multiple objective evaluation of the mass transit system developments' scenarios is carried out. Four variants of the mass transit system are evaluated by a consistent family of criteria with an application of ELECTRE III method. The second case study refers to optimization of the crew size in the mass transit system operated by a public transportation company (PTC). Multiple objective mathematical programing problem is formulated and solved by a combination of an original, customized heuristic procedure implemented in a computer software PEOPLE and the Light Beam Search (LBS) method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.