Book review

Onshore Planning for Offshore Oil—Lessons from Scotland by Pamela L. Baldwin and Malcolm F. Baldwin The Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1975     

New highways and land use change: Results from a quasi-experimental research design

Understanding links from new highway construction or capacity expansion to regional growth patterns is crucial for transportation planners and policy makers. In this paper, we incorporate a lagged adjustment regional growth model into a quasi-experimental research design to examine the association between new highway investments and land use change in three California counties. Our study areas provide a mix of urban, small town, and exurban highway projects in order to explore the different effects across project types and geographic contexts. The central finding of this research is that while improvements in surface transportation infrastructure can have large impacts on growth patterns, the nature of the effect depends on the context of the highway investment.     

Activity patterns,time use,and travel of millennials: a generation in transition?

Millennials, defined in this study as those born between 1979 and 2000, became the largest population segment in the United States in 2015. Compared to recent previous generations, they have been found to travel less, own fewer cars, have lower driver’s licensure rates, and use alternative modes more. But to what extent will these differences in behaviour persist as millennials move through various phases of the lifecycle? To address this question, this paper presents the results of a longitudinal analysis of the 2003–2013 American Time Use Survey data series. In early adulthood, younger millennials (born 1988–1994) are found to spend significantly more time in-home than older millennials (born 1979–1985), which indicates that there are substantial differences in activity-time use patterns across generations in early adulthood. Older millennials are, however, showing activity-time use patterns similar to their prior generation counterparts as they age, although some differences – particularly in time spent as a car driver – persist. Millennials appear to exhibit a lag in adopting the activity patterns of predecessor generations due to delayed lifecycle milestones (e.g. completing their education, getting jobs, marrying, and having children) and lingering effects of the economic recession, suggesting that travel demand will resume growth in the future.     

Federal‐state revenue sharing and resource management under outer continental shelf lands act section 8(g)

Abstract

Section 8(g) was added to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) in 1978. It mandated sharing of the revenues from tracts that included oil and gas pools underlying the federal‐state boundary 3 miles offshore. Revenues were to be split based on agreements negotiated by the secretary of Interior and the relevant coastal state governor or “fair and equitable”; divisions made by the federal district courts. Only one agreement was concluded. Texas and Louisiana sued to force distribution of their shares of $6.1 billion in 8(g) funds held in escrow. In 1986 Congress divided the escrowed 8(g) revenues approximately 27 percent to the adjacent states and 73 percent to the federal government and legislated the same split for all future 8(g) revenues. This article examines the complex issues that section 8(g), as amended, raises for the management of federal and state submerged lands. Cooperative federal‐state approaches to implementing amended section 8(g) are reviewed. Section 8(g)'s broader implications as the only federal‐state ocean resource, revenue‐sharing mechanism currently in place also are addressed.     

Book reviews

Innovation, organizational capabilities, and environmental values combine to determine institutional change for a major marine port. This conceptual framework is applied to the case of dredged material management for the Port of New York and New Jersey. During the century under review, the institutional setting has changed significantly with: (1) environmental considerations moving from nearly irrelevant to central: (2) the number of interests and organizations increasing; and (3) the decision processes becoming far more complex. Ultimately, the new institutional setting influences organizations and individual decisions. As a result of the changes, the practice of dredged material disposal in ocean waters has been limited based on the level of bioaccumulation of selected contaminants. In response to institutional changes, ports requiring deepened channels must rapidly innovate to meet new environmental obligations for material disposal in order to enhance organizational capabilities necessary to maintain competitive advantages in maritime commerce. Successful marine ports will anticipate and meet new societal expectations related to the environment as a condition for continued legitimacy. Collectively these changes imply that ports have moved beyond a carefully circumscribed mission of transportation and economic development to that of a prominent user of coastal space with broad obligations to the public.     

Modelling the provision of transport with planned or market‐determined public transport services

Implications of the difference between planned and market‐determined public transport services for the modelling of the transport system and its use are examined. In the former case, the task for government seeking to optimise performance of the transport system has a standard bi‐level form, but in the latter case, the lower‐level problem in the bi‐level formulation is to determine mutually consistent solutions to a pair of optimisation problems. The relevance of the mutually consistent solution in this context is contrasted with its sometimes misleading role in the context of optimisation of urban traffic signal control.     

Gas transfer velocities of CO2 and CH4 in a tropical reservoir and its river downstream

We have measured simultaneously the methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) surface concentrations and water–air fluxes by floating chambers (FC) in the Petit-Saut Reservoir (French Guiana) and its tidal river (Sinnamary River) downstream of the dam, during the two field experiments in wet (May 2003) and dry season (December 2003). The eddy covariance (EC) technique was also used for CO₂ fluxes on the lake. The comparison of fluxes obtained by FC and EC showed little discrepancies mainly due to differences in measurements durations which resulted in different average wind speeds. When comparing the gas transfer velocity (k₆₀₀) for a given wind speed, both methods gave similar results. On the lake and excluding rainy events, we obtained an exponential relationship between k₆₀₀ and U₁₀, with a significant intercept at 1.7 cm h^− 1, probably due to thermal effects. Gas transfer velocity was also positively related to rainfall rates reaching 26.5 cm h⁻¹ for a rainfall rate of 36 mm h^− 1. During a 24-h experiment in dry season, rainfall accounted for as much as 25% of the k₆₀₀. In the river downstream of the dam, k₆₀₀ values were 3 to 4 times higher than on the lake, and followed a linear relationship with U₁₀.     

对船舶操纵性标准的急迫需求——休斯敦水道实船操纵性试航的经验

我认为,造船师和轮机师考虑海上环境设计的船舶,它们99.9%的时间在海上渡过。但他们忘了,这些船舶还必须进入河道装卸货物。当某件引起公众高度关注的事故发生,船舶建造者或许会进入公众视线,发现他们犯有疏忽罪,要为建造了动力不足和操纵不良的船舶负责。一位引航员的观点国际