Book reviews

Road haulage licensing and EC Transport Policy. By K. J. Button. (Aldershot: Gower Publishing Co., 1984.) [Pp.127.] £14.50.

Bicycles and Public Transportation: New Links to Suburban Transit Markets. By Michael A. Replogle. (Bicycle Federation, Washington DC, 1983.) [Pp. 171.] US$15.95.

Urban Transport in ASEAN. By V. Setty Pendakur. (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies — Research Notes and Discussions Papers Series No. 43, 1984.) [Pp. 65] $4.50 ISBN 9971–902–67–2.

The World Railway System. By Bernard de Fontgalland (Cambridge Univerisity Press, 1984.) [Pp. 209.] £16.00.     

Intermodal land transportation systems and port choice,an analysis of stated choices among shippers in the Rhine–Scheldt delta

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the research concentrates on the intermodal land transportation systems which link Antwerp and Rotterdam with a shared hinterland in the long and medium distance range. It uses a choice-based experiment which has been calibrated on the basis of real case studies to understand shipper’s choices between end-to-end chains. The stated choices reveal shippers’ preferences when needing to choose between two logistic pathways, which employ a similar multimodal composition of transport modes to bring the container from door-to-door, but which route the container differently through alternative maritime gateways. The study therefore touches upon the topic of port competition applying a value-driven supply chain approach. Despite narrow differences on the main performance criteria of the door-to-door chains, the empirical analysis proves that shippers are not loyal to one of the ports, but give preference to the lowest cost solution. Enhancing the frequency levels of the inland transportation solution is only at the benefit of the more costly chain. The findings reiterate the importance of intermodal land transport systems in the competition between load centres.     

From user equilibrium to system optimum: a literature review on the role of travel information,bounded rationality and non-selfish behaviour at the network and individual levels

Travel information continues to receive significant attention in the field of travel behaviour research, as it is expected to help reduce congestion by directing the network state from a user equilibrium towards a more efficient system optimum. This literature review contributes to the existing literature in at least two ways. First, it considers both the individual perspective and the network perspective when assessing the potential effects of travel information, in contrast to earlier studies. Secondly, it highlights the role of bounded rationality as well as that of non-selfish behaviour in route choice and in response to information, complementing earlier reviews that mostly focused on bounded rationality only. It is concluded that information strategies should be tailor-made to an individual's level of rationality as well as level of selfishness in order to approach system-optimal conditions on the network level. Moreover, initial ideas and future research directions are provided for assessing the potential of travel information in order to improve network efficiency of existing road networks.     

Rail policy in Britain — What next?

The 1974 Railways Act set British Rail (BR) the rather vague objective of providing a passenger service broadly comparable with that then existing within a given level of support. For the first few years under the Act, BR succeeded in operating within the financial constraints imposed, but only by considerable increases in charges and by negotiating wage settlements which implied declining real wages. From 1978 on, rising labour costs and reduction in traffic led to a rapidly developing crisis in BR's financial position.The position of each section of BR's business is discussed briefly. It is shown that the designation of some sectors as being purely commercial is inappropriate, since this means that benefits to users and to the community at large are ignored in decision-making. Similarly, the direction to maintain social passenger services at a given level means that finance and investment are concentrated unduly on preservation of the existing pattern of service, rather than on providing value for money. In both sectors, the likelihood is that in general fares are too high and services too frequent.At an operational level, the criterion of maximising the (weighted) volume of traffic carried is advocated as a practical way of choosing between alternative fare and service-level packages. More broadly based strategic studies would be needed to decide on the weights to be adopted, the level of finance to be made available, and the overall strategy.     

The usefulness of the Sequence Alignment Methods in validating rule-based activity-based forecasting models

This research paper aims at achieving a better understanding of rule-based activity-based models, by proposing a new level of validation at the process model level in the A Learning-based Transportation Oriented Simulation System (ALBATROSS) model. To that effect, the work activity process model, which includes six decision steps, has been investigated. Each decision step is evaluated during the prediction of the individuals?? schedules. There are specific decision steps that affect the execution pattern of the work activity process model. So, the comportment of execution in the process model contains activation dependency. This branches the execution and evaluation of each agent under examination. Sequence Alignment Methods (SAM) can be used to evaluate how similar/dissimilar the predicted and observed decision sequences are on an agent level. The original Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector decision trees at each decision step utilized in ALBATROSS are compared with other well known induction methods chosen to appraise the purpose of the analyses. The models are validated at four levels: the classifier or decision step level whereby confusion matrix statistics are used; The work activity trips Origin?CDestination matrix level; the time of day work activity start time level, using a correlation coefficient; and the process model level, using SAM. The results of validation on the proposed process model level show conformity to all validation levels. In addition, the results provide additional information in better understanding the process model??s behavior. Hence, introducing a new level of validation incur new knowledge and assess the predictive performance of rule-based activity-based models. And assist in identifying critical decision steps in the work activity process model.     

Port competition in Latin America and the Caribbean: the role of concessions and competition policy

Appropriate port regulation and competitive forces tend to be related to higher levels of operational and economic performance of ports. From a policy-making perspective, pursuing efficiency and securing competition in ports to reach a level playing field is a two-step process requiring (1) ex-ante regulations to set the rules that maximize the competition for the market, especially when the policy objective is to attract private operations to ports on competitive concession processes and (2) ex-post competition policy to monitor and preserve competition in the market. This paper studies port regulation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) from a competition perspective, analyzing both ex-ante and ex-post policies implemented in the region. The analysis reveals that the competitive environment in LAC is low, giving room for possible anticompetitive practices in the LAC port sector. Since the end of the 1990s, approximately 80% of container terminals in the region were granted to only five companies. Chile and Mexico have been found to be the best practices in the region, with better conditions assuring robust competition in the market. The main policy implication from this analysis is the need for a stronger involvement of antitrust agencies throughout the port concession processes.     

Workshop report - Benchmarking the outcome of competitive tendering

Workshop 1 was concerned to identify the real results of competitive tendering, and experience on how to make it work better, using evidence from the rail and bus sectors in a large number of countries spread around the world. It was found that competitive tendering had generally been successful in terms of quality and costs, but problems had occurred in a number of cases, so careful attention must be paid to the design of tendering exercises, details of the contract, risk-sharing arrangements and the approach to any re-negotiation found to be necessary. As a result, an important conclusion is that the tendering authority needs a high degree of expertise in these issues; any thought that competitive tendering relieves the public authority of the need for expertise in public transport is mistaken.     

New appraisal values of travel time saving and reliability in Great Britain

Transportation - This paper provides an overview of the study ‘Provision of market research for value of time savings and reliability’ undertaken by the Arup/ITS Leeds/Accent consortium...