Old woman creek,Ohio: The designation of a freshwater estuarine sanctuary

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Office of Coastal Zone Management have proposed the Old Woman Creek estuary on Lake Erie as the nation's first freshwater estuarine sanctuary. Designation as an estuarine sanctuary will preserve 637 acres of marshland, sand bar, a barrier beach, and surrounding forested uplands for public education and research. The original January 1975 grant application required modification following local residents’ objections to purchases of highly productive farmland and land‐use controls on a watershed‐wide buffer zone. A federal grant award was made in July 1977, with full acquisition anticipated by the end of 1978.     

Airlines within airlines: Assessing the vulnerabilities of mixing business models

In this paper we examine two questions; what is it that makes some cases of airlines within airlines apparently successful while in many other cases it is just the opposite? And second, why would a carrier attempt such a strategy, is there a common set of circumstances or is each case unique? In the US, Canada and Europe a number of legacy carriers have sought to respond to LCC entry by creating an LCC within the legacy carriers; most have failed but some have succeeded, most notably in Australia and Germany. We first examine the evolution of the LCC business model and illustrate the different forms it takes today. Following this we provide a discussion of the underlying sources of cost advantage of the LCC and assess which sources are sustainable in the longer term. Finally we examine the conditions under which these apparent successes have occurred and look for common threads. We find market dominance, judicious network planning and co-ordination are necessary conditions for success.     

ELASTIC – A methodological framework for identifying and selecting sustainable transport indicators

There is significant reliance on sustainable transport indicators for monitoring and reporting progress towards sustainable transport. The selection of appropriate sustainability indicators presents a number of challenges however, not least because of the vast number of potential indicators available. To help address these challenges, this paper presents the Evaluative and Logical Approach to Sustainable Transport Indicator Compilation (ELASTIC) – a framework for identifying and selecting a small subset of sustainable transport indicators. ELASTIC is demonstrated with an application to the English Regions, UK.     

Decision support for simulating the car park activity in an urban area

Complexity of car park activity is reproduced from a concurrent execution of behaviour of various drivers. This paper presents a step in the development of a multimodal traffic simulator based on multi‐agent paradigm and designed as a decision aid tool as well as a video game. The user‐player has the opportunity to test different scenarios. We propose an approach for designing the decision‐making rules and the learning mechanism for a car driver agent. For that, a panel of methods such as stated preference modelling, Design Of Experiments and data fusion is used. Initial behavioural models, based on similar preferences, are developed for specified categories. Each agent will adapt its behaviour after executing its learning process. Our approach can be used in order to optimize needs of road network users and those of people in charge of traffic regulation. A demonstrator has been developed to test parking policies in an urban area as well as changes of car park characteristics.     

Parking restraint policy and urban vitality

The aim of the paper is to examine whether parking restraint policies may have impacts on the economic vitality of urban centres. Literature from empirical, attitudinal and modelling studies is reviewed within a structure based around a conceptual framework of parking impacts. The search for relevant material was undertaken both for the UK and overseas, but the discussion and conclusions were related to the UK context. Original modelling was undertaken and is reported here. This review found that as parking restraint policies have not been previously implemented with consistency or longevity, there is a lack of direct evidence, given that land-use impacts typically involve a long-term response. Furthermore, different methods of examining impacts have come to very different conclusions. Attitudinal evidence suggests that there is a high level of sensitivity to parking provision, whereas aggregate statistical studies tend to find only a weak relationship. The reasons underlying these differences are discussed. Land-use/transport models show impacts if there is sufficient change in generalized cost, although the spatial distribution of impacts, and impacts by household or employment disaggregation, vary considerably. Given the inconclusive nature of the evidence to date, only tentative policy implications can be drawn. Recommendations for further research are outlined, both for empirical study and for model enhancements.     

Issue Definition and Planning for Whalewatching Management Strategies in Ensenada,Mexico

The exceptional growth of whalewatching in Baja California Sur (BCS) and other parts of Mexico during the last 10 years motivated the design and implementation of a Mexican whalewatching law based on experiences in BCS. However, recent research in the Ensenada whalewatching area confirms that this law is insufficient in this area because whalewatching boats and other fishing, cruising, or drifting boats influence the behavior (swimming direction and velocity) of migrating gray whales. In the long term, the migration corridor might be displaced offshore, and whalewatching may become infeasible. This study proposes a management planning process to adapt regulations to this area, to promote adherence to regulations by encouraging self-regulation and strengthening law enforcement, and to enhance the tourist service on board. The actors involved were identified.     

Stated preference analysis of travel choices: the state of practice

Stated preference (SP) methods are widely used in travel behaviour research and practice to identify behavioural responses to choice situations which are not revealed in the market, and where the attribute levels offered by existing choices are modified to such an extent that the reliability of revealed preference models as predictors of response is brought into question. This paper reviews recent developments in the application of SP models which add to their growing relevance in demand modelling and prediction. The main themes addressed include a comparative assessment of choice models and preference models, the importance of scaling when pooling different types of data, especially the appeal of SP data as an enriching strategy in the context of revealed preference models, hierarchical designs when the number of attributes make single experiments too complex for the respondent, and ways of accommodating dynamics (i.e. serial correlation and state dependence) in SP modelling.An earlier modified version was presented as the keynote address to the 1993 National Conference on Tourism Research, held at the University of Sydney, 19 March 1993. The comments of Jordan Louviere, Lester Johnson, Paul Hooper, W.G. Waters II and Mark Bradley are appreciated.     

Generating complete all-day activity plans with genetic algorithms

Activity-based demand generation contructs complete all-day activity plans for each member of a population, and derives transportation demand from the fact that consecutive activities at different locations need to be connected by travel. Besides many other advantages, activity-based demand generation also fits well into the paradigm of multi-agent simulation, where each traveler is kept as an individual throughout the whole modeling process. In this paper, we present a new approach to the problem, which uses genetic algorithms (GA). Our GA keeps, for each member of the population, several instances of possible all-day activity plans in memory. Those plans are modified by mutation and crossover, while bad instances are eventually discarded. Any GA needs a fitness function to evaluate the performance of each instance. For all-day activity plans, it makes sense to use a utility function to obtain such a fitness. In consequence, a significant part of the paper is spent discussing such a utility function. In addition, the paper shows the performance of the algorithm to a few selected problems, including very busy and rather non-busy days.