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.     

Simulation optimization of the berth allocation in a container terminal with flexible vessel priority management

ABSTRACT

Solving the berth allocation problem (BAP) in ports is not trivial where the berth resources are limited and various sizes of vessels arrive with dramatically dissimilar loads. Especially in real scenarios, arriving vessels are accepted for a berth with the first come first served (FCFS) priority rule. This study proposes a decision support system coupled with a simulation optimization module based on the swarm-based Artificial Bee Colony optimization algorithm for solving the BAP. The proposed methodology was implemented for the Izmir port in Turkey. To investigate the influences of the vessel priorities on the BAP, four different experimental scenarios based on the single (SQM) and multiple queue models (MQM) were coupled with FCFS and proposed hybrid queue priority (HQP) rule. The results indicated that SQM scenarios were superior to MQM scenarios in a manner of minimizing the average vessel waiting times and the implementation of a dynamic berth allocation strategy for the MQM significantly decreases the vessel waiting times. Results of the SQM also imply that utilization of the HQP approach further minimizes the average vessel waiting times and increases the berth utilization and port throughput without yielding excessive waiting times for the larger vessels compared with the FCFS priority rule.     

Online and in-store purchase behavior: shopping channel choice in a developing economy

Transportation - Developing economies are still in the stage of e-commerce deployment, unlike in developed countries, where online shopping is already a common purchase channel. This research aims...     

I want to ride it where I like: measuring design preferences in cycling infrastructure

Transportation - Sidewalk cyclists are a major concern to planners in many cities around the world: they are considerable in numbers, and increase the risk of injury not only to pedestrians but...     

An optimization model for integrated transit-parking policy planning

The optimization model proposed in this paper is aimed to assist city councils (or other transport authorities) in the planning of integrated transit-parking policies. The objective is to minimize the joint operating deficit of the transit and parking operators while ensuring given minimum levels of (motorized) mobility in a city. The key decision variables are transit fares and parking fees. The impact of price changes on transit and car modal shares are described by logit functions of the generalized travel costs. The practical utility of the model is illustrated with a case study involving a midsize city in Portugal.

     

基于CML的级联失效下异质多层交通网络节点抵抗特性研究

为了有效刻画拟合实际的多层交通网络级联失效过程，识别多层网络中对整体韧性安全影响显著的对象，提升交通网络抵抗失效的能力，建立一种基于耦合映象格子（Coupled Map Lattice， CML）的级联失效模型。首先，将交通管控措施赋予交通网络节点额外的容纳能力引申为节点抵抗特性，通过为CML添加抵抗参数H，形成考虑抵抗特性的级联失效（HCML）模型，沿常值-拓扑关联-时变拓扑关联的路径深化H的表征方式，并在小世界（Small World， SW）网络上对比3类表征方式的优劣；其次，应用Space H方法建立异质3层公共交通网络，对比度值与介数2种时变拓扑指标关联的抵抗效果，探究不同交通层抵抗系数对网络失效的影响程度；最后，在6组不同的网络结构上进行HCML模型与传统模型的对比，讨论建网方法、网络规模等不同网络性质的差异对模型有效性的影响，并结合实际客运数据验证HCML模型优越性。研究结果表明：3类表征方式中时变拓扑关联可以兼顾其余2类的优点；同等条件中网络在介数关联的抵抗特性作用下失效增速更缓，模型识别得到的对网络整体失效影响更大交通方式符合客流量实际；HCML模型在多种不同类型的多层交通网络中均可以有效实施，相比于传统模型，HCML模型的最终失效比例平均下降了5.78%，与实际交通级联失效过程更加拟合。     

Intermodal exchange stations in the city of Madrid

The City of Madrid is putting into operation Intermodal Exchange Stations (IESs) to make connections between urban and suburban transportation modes easier for users of public transportation. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the actual effects that the implementation of IESs in the City of Madrid has on the affected stakeholders: users, public transportation operators, infrastructure managers, the government, the abutters and other citizens. We develop a methodology intended to help assess the welfare gains and losses for each stakeholder. Then we apply this methodology to the case study of the Avenida de América IES in the city of Madrid. We found that it is indeed possible to arrive at win?Cwin solutions for the funding of urban transportation infrastructure, as long as the cost-benefit ratio of the project is high enough. Commuters save travel time. Bus companies diminish their costs of operation. The abutters gain in quality of life. The private operator of the infrastructure makes a fair profit. And the government is able to promote these infrastructure facilities without spending more of its scarce budgetary resources.