Satellite and resort offices in Japan

Environmental and qualify-of-life issues are taking on an increasing social and political significance the world over. Even in Japan, a country so often criticized for its economic-dominated outlook, talk is turning to these issues. Advances in telecommunications and a growing awareness of the need to change how we live and function in an increasingly threatened environment has brought telework to the forefront of the debate on the nature of work and how our cities function.After setting the broad Japanese social context, this paper will look at the progress of telework in Japan to date with especial emphasis on several current satellite and resort office pilots. It will summarize the findings and proposals of several available reports, and will also attempt to identify the overall outlook for telework in Japan.     

Parking policies in large cities in Germany

This article deals with highly motorized large West German cities of about 200,000 inhabitants and more, which usually provide reasonable public transport systems. Illegal parking with shares of about 40 to 50% of the total parking is widespread in the parking problem areas of those cities, especially in the inner-city residential and mixed-use areas. Parking spaces are demanded by residents, employees, customers and visitors, and by delivery and service traffic. The different characteristics of parking demands by different user groups are discussed. The total parking supply consists of public and private spaces. The share of private spaces is about 40 to 50% of the total parking spaces in German cities. The amount of car traffic generated by a parking space depends on parking duration and parking turnover, as well as on search traffic. So the change of a space from long-duration use of an employee to short-duration of customers — as often discussed in parking concepts — generates at least five-fold car traffic. The measurements and effects of parking control of public spaces as well as the parking regulations in zoning ordinances, restrictions on the construction of new private parking spaces and park-and-ride are discussed. Finally, a parking concept methodology — using the example of Frankfurt am Main — is discussed.     

Regulatory reform and freight mode choice

Reform of trucking Vehicle Weights and Dimensions (VWD) regulations in Canada is now underway. The effect these reforms will have on the freight transportation industry are only recently the subject of research. This paper is part of this new research effort, aimed at understanding how regulatory reform in the trucking sector will affect the existing competitive relationship between trucks and the railways. The paper presents the results of study and research into modelling the relationship between mode choice and the service characteristics that are affected by VWD reform.Using several periods of data, a series of econometric models are developed which help to elucidate the relative relationships between the mode service characteristics for both of the principal interprovincial freight modes. A technique is developed and presented to model railway user costs in order to overcome the complex and often unrepresentable pricing activities of Canadian railways.The strength of the developed econometric models is presented, including their significance and statistical reliability. This is further reinforced by the similarities exhibited by all the models in the series. The selected model is applied to predict market service responses required of the railway industry in order to compete with the trucking sector now adapting to the new regulations.The impact of the newly implemented vehicle weight and dimension reform on the rail transportation industry is analyzed and railway industry improvements aimed at maintaining its market share are presented. The results predicted by the model show that railway user cost reductions should be moderate, and likely less than the level of inflation over the period of time when trucking converts its fleet to take advantage of the new regulations.Abbreviations AASHTO American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials - CCMTA Canadian Conference of Motor Transport Administrators - EPI End products, inedible commodity classification - GVW Gross Vehicle Weight - NA 1988 VWD National Agreement - RTAC Roads and Transportation Association of Canada - VWD Vehicle Weight(s) and Dimension(s) - WA 1988 VWD Western Agreement     

Performance indicators for transit management

Transit performance can be evaluated through quantitative indicators. As the provision of efficient and effective transit service are appropriate goals to be encouraged by federal and state governments, these goals are used to develop performance indicators.Three efficiency and four effectiveness indicators are described, together with two overall indicators. These nine indicators are analyzed for comparability utilizing operating and financial data collected from public transit agencies in California.Performance indicators selected for this study should not be viewed as final. Twenty-one performance indicators proposed by previous studies were reviewed. Theoretical considerations and unavailability or unreliability of data caused omission of several useful measures like passenger-miles. Circumstances such as improved data, emphasis upon goals other than efficiency and effectiveness, and local conditions might warrant the inclusion of indicators deleted from this research.This paper is based on work conducted for the Urban Mass Transportation Administration under University Research and Training Grant CA-11-0014, Development of Performance Indicators for Transit. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the University of California or the United States Government. We are indebted to John Feren for assistance with the statistical processing and data gathering.     

What are we going to do about public transportation?

Traffic congestion in the world's metropolitan areas is going from bad to worse. Urban/suburban transportation has become like the weather; people talk a lot about it but shrug it away as something they can't do much about. This is a world-wide phenomenon, as motor vehicle use grows, and as urban sprawl continues.     

Privatisation and the quality of rail services

Using the concept of generalised costs to reflect quality in rail services, we consider the level of provision and quality of these services in the various forms they may take in a privatised environment within a model where we assume linear and separable demand and cost functions for analytical simplicity. Using the Pareto-efficient output and quality outcomes under a fully integrated system for reference (as well as those for a fully integrated profit-maximising monopolist) we show that if either bilateral monopoly or complementary monopoly emerge as a market structure the output of train services and their quality will generally fall. In the case of the emergence of both bilateral monopoly and complementary monopoly our analysis again suggests poor welfare outcomes. The implication that can be drawn from our analysis is that a regulator of a privatised rail system faces some severe problems if she is to attain the appropriate welfare targets.     

Effects of information in road transport networks with recurrent congestion

This paper aims to gain more insight into the implications of information provision to drivers on the performance of road transport networks with recurrent congestion. For this purpose, a simulation program consisting of three components has been written. The first component is the traffic simulation model, the second component is the information provision mechanism, and the third component monitors the behavioural decision-making process of the drivers, which is modelled using a utility-based satisficing principle. Three types of information provision mechanisms will be considered: information based upon own-experience, after-trip information and real-time en route information. The findings in this paper, obtained in a hypothetical context, underline the important relationship betweenoverreaction, thelevel of market penetration and thequality of the information. High quality information allows a high level of market penetration, while low quality information, even when provided at low levels of market penetration, induces overreaction. Furthermore, real-time en route information is in particular beneficial during the process leading to a steady state; it reduces the variance in travel time considerably. The paper concludes with a discussion on the market potential of motorist information systems when commercially marketed.