Forme urbaine et mobilité domicile-travail dans 13 aires urbaines françaises : une analyse multiéchelle

This article provides a multi-scale analysis of the links between commuting patterns and urban form by using both morphological and more classical indicators of urban form (like density). Thirteen French urban areas of more than 500,000 inhabitants (excluding Paris) are compared. The findings highlight the complexity of the links between urban form and commuting patterns because the same indicators of urban form do not have the same influence according to the spatial scale. Even if the influence of the morphological indicators is lower than that of more classical socioeconomic variables (income level, motorization rate), our study discusses the various and multi-scale consequences of urban development on daily travel behaviour.     

Competing Visions for Marine Tenure and Co-Management: Genesis of a Marine Management Area System in Chile

Chile has been attempting to establish a Management Area (MA) system that melds the use of marine protected areas with marine tenure. The process has brought to the fore the competing interests of various user groups: artisanal fishermen, marine science professionals, government managers, tourist developers, and the Navy. We explore the core relationships among fishermen and the ecologists and biologists whose work is essential for establishing and maintaining a MA. The MA system's creation and implementation raise the key question of whether a marine tenure system can work under the conditions imposed by the Chilean government. There is a need to recognize and reconcile contradictions in a government management model that strives simultaneously to be a conservation zone and a financially profitable co-management zone. This article examines the MA management system's fault lines in the context of Chile's political economy, and the intimate interaction of management with fishermen's cultural survival strategies.     

An analysis of the Spanish high capacity road network criticality

The analysis of complex networks has been carried out in different fields using an ample variety of method and concepts. Recently, in the general literature of regional economics, the concepts of resilience, connectivity, vulnerability and criticality have been gaining their momentum. The aim of this paper is to provide an analytical framework, using well-known accessibility indicators, in order to calculate the critical links or road sections of the Spanish high-capacity road network. Our analysis will be based on approximately four hundred sections that will be classified in five different groups according to their criticality degree in the whole network. Our analysis will be complemented with the comparison of the results obtained in five different scenarios, namely the average criticality using the effects on the whole country, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Pontevedra. Furthermore, the paper will also analyze what kind of intrinsic characteristics of the sections favor or not the links’ criticality using a method based on a classification and regression tree. This analysis is crucial to understand other important concepts that are recently being studied in network and spatial economics, like, for example, resilience and vulnerability. It is concluded that the number of relations or routes, being a trunk or not, the road density and the time to Madrid capital play an important role in the criticality of the roads section in the high capacity road network.     

Do maritime passengers’ subsidies in Europe affect prices?

Some European governments subsidize their residents when they travel at sea. This paper seeks to analyze the impact on prices of maritime passengers’ subsidies in Europe. Following a review of the scarce academic literature on this topic and the subsidy scheme in Europe, a sample of firms’ prices and other characteristics of 40 European routes for 2016 are analyzed. Both an estimation of a price equation and a matching approach are applied and reach the same conclusion: prices per kilometer are around 40 per cent higher on those subsidized routes due to subsidies. This outcome reduces the potential subsidy gain to consumers.     

Latent lifestyle and mode choice decisions when travelling short distances

In the quest for sustainable travel, short distances appear the most amenable to curbing the use of the automobile. Existing studies about short trips evaluate the potential of shifting from the automobile to sustainable travel options while considering the population as homogeneous in its preferences and its tendency to accept these alternative travel options as realistic. However, this assumption appears quite unrealistic and the current study offers a different perspective: the mode choices when travelling short distances are likely related to lifestyle decisions. Short trip chains of a representative sample of the Danish population in the Copenhagen Region were analysed, and more specifically a latent class choice model was estimated to uncover latent lifestyle groups and choice specific travel behaviour. Results show that four lifestyle groups are identified in the population: car oriented, bicycle oriented, public transport oriented and public transport averse. Each lifestyle group has specific perceptions of travel time (with extremely different rates of substitution between alternative travel modes), transfer penalties in public transport trip chains, weather influence (especially on active travel modes), and trip purpose effect on mode selection. Consequently, when thinking about measures to increase the appeal of sustainable travel options, decision-makers should look at specific individuals within the population and more sensitive individuals to comfort and level-of-service improvements across the lifestyle groups.     

Port choice in container market: a literature review

As a result of the intense changes occurring in port environment over the last decades, new models of competitiveness have been developed, where port authorities try to increase their attractiveness. In this context, one of the most debated issues in this area of research is still the role played by port authorities in defining port competitiveness. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of port choice literature enabling to identify the main port choice’s criteria in order to define the role played by Port Authorities and to point out future lines of research that should be undertaken to fully incorporate current ports’ environment and performance. The results show that although some studies point out the importance of geographical factors in port choice, a larger number of studies defend the increasing role played by port authorities in determining the competitiveness through investing in port infrastructure, improving port efficiency or hinterland accessibility. Despite the existing models contributing on this topic, there are still some gaps in terms of measuring the port performance, including port strategies and studying the port choice for specific industries.     

GPS-based speed collection method for road traffic noise mapping

One of the most difficult and expensive tasks in making noise pollution maps is the collection and processing of the data needed to create acoustic models. In the case of road traffic noise maps, obtaining speed data for light and heavy vehicles a problem that has usually been avoided by using a road’s speed limit or by making assumptions based on experience from similar road types. Here global positioning systems-based techniques are applied for acquiring vehicle speed data and adapted to fulfill the requirements of noise prediction models.     

Between-mode-differences in the value of travel time: Self-selection or strategic behaviour?

Using stated preference survey data, we measure the value of travel time for several transport modes. We find, like many before us, that the value of travel time varies across modes in the opposite direction of what would be the consequence of differences in comfort. We examine three candidate causes for the observed differences: Comfort effects, self-selection and strategic behaviour of respondents. Using experiments with both the current and an alternative mode we find that the differences in the value of travel time are consistent with self-selection and comfort effects. Moreover, respondents having bus as the current or the alternative mode seem not to value comfort differently across modes. Strategic behaviour seems to play no role.