Priority Berthing For Congested Ports: rationale and a model

Adverse effects on a national economy of port congestion are identified. The rationale underlying a system of priority berthing for awaiting vessels is described and contrasted with the operational system of first‐come, first‐served. A system of priority berthing is capable of minimizing the generalized social cost of congestion and this is structured mathematically as a multi‐attribute, decision‐making problem. A worked example is outlined and a computer program described.     

Workshop 4: Designing contracts/concessions: What has worked and what has not and why?: 12th International Conference Series on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport

A contract establishes a mutual relationship between an authority and an operator. From the point of view of the authority, it is a tactical level mechanism to achieve the strategic objectives of government. Management of contractors translate the requirements of contracts into operational practices to guide the day-to-day work of staff for the delivery of services. Much can go wrong with contracts for the provision of public transport services. Workshop participants identified and ranked 25 potential risk factors. The five most important factors, which relate to objectives, tender assessment, allocation of risks, financial viability and dispute management, were examined drawing on the 11 papers presented to the workshop. Matters that work, that do not and would make the most difference to the success of contracts were identified.     

Maritime Statistics: a new forum for practitioners

This paper analyses the past, present and future of the maritime transportation industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian seaborne trade and the shipping capacity are analysed for the past 15 years. Relationships between the declining Saudi shipping capacity and other economic measures are identified. Analysis of the Saudi Arabian maritime transportation is performed with respect to the world carrier fleets and models are developed to determine the theoretical shipping capacity required for transportation of the national seaborne cargo. Forecasts of the future shipping capacity requirement for the Kingdom are also presented. This paper illustrates the general approach for analysing a country's maritime industry and thus could help other researchers in that respect.     

Tanker cost elasticities revisited

This paper re-examines the literature on ship economies of scale, and presents the results of re-estimating a model of tanker costs for 2007. The results are interesting for two reasons. First, they are remarkably similar to those estimated for tankers in the 1960s and 1970s, despite the transformations in the tanker market since that time. Second, the results imply that tanker size is not driven by scale economies, but by factors that relate to demand and other considerations. This paper concludes by noting some limitations in the approach used in the study.     

Can bus really be the new tram?

BRT appears to be less expensive to build and operate than tram systems but can it really approach the performance level of a tram system and what is the environmental performance of comparable systems?     

篮球巨人新形象

01.Oliver Peoples眼镜姚明的外形是属于满有个性的种类,如何将篮球场上的高昂战意转化成圆融的商场智慧是一项新挑战。架上一副来自美国好莱坞品牌Oliver Peoples的眼镜,就马上能增添几分温文尔雅和书卷气了。     

被遗忘的经典 皇家御驾

上世纪60年代正是欧洲风生水起的黄金十年,伦敦是当之无愧的流行文化中心。每一款英系车的推出必有名人相伴:低调实用的迷你车有喜剧演员Peter Sellers和女星Britt Ekland保驾;一流的捷豹E-Type有超模Twiggy和披头士成员之一George Hamison护航。然而,Reliant Scimitar GTE却只有一位名人随行——尊贵的安妮公主殿下。     

Estimating daily vehicle usage distributions and the implications for limited-range vehicles

Understanding the potential market for limited-range vehicles is important to planning research and development programs for electric and hybrid vehicles and for gaseous-fueled vehicles as well. Studies of consumer preferences and perceptions have shown vehicle range to be a very important vehicle attribute. Studies of household vehicle use, on the other hand, have suggested that the range requirements most households place on vehicles are quite modest. The latter, however, have been severely limited by the absence of longitudinal data on the usage of individual vehicles. Instead, they have relied on single-day surveys on many vehicles, an inappropriate data source. This study develops a method for estimating daily travel distributions for individual vehicles and applies it to a recent longitudinal survey of miles and days between refuelings for over 2000 vehicles. Every vehicle in the sample has at least 30 consecutive refueling intervals. A variety of measures of “range requirement” are defined and calculated. The results confirm the existence of a substantial potential market (20–50% of all household vehicles) for vehicles with ranges on the order of 100 miles. Future research using these data and this method could describe the nature of vehicles with limited-range needs and the households which own them.     

Productive efficiency and ownership of urban bus services

The established ownership mix of urban bus operations in Australia provides a unique opportunity to investigate the productivity differences between public and private bus service supply. Using duality theory in economics which links economic indices of factor productivity to the cost structure of a firm, we develop empirical measures of total and partial productivity of inputs, and adjust the differences for the effects of ownership status and operating environment. The evidence supports the notion that private supply of public passenger transport in general has performed more efficiently in the past than public supply, although the differences in productivity need not continue in the future.