Short run fare elasticities for Bogotá’s BRT system: ridership responses to fare increases

Transportation - The fare policy of the BRT system in Bogotá, in order to cover its operating costs, has consisted of steadily fare increases, since its creation until 2012. To date, no study...     

A new era for airport regulators through capacity investments

Private and public airports’ optimal actions may not coincide. While private airports usually pursue profit maximization, publicly owned airports look for maximum social welfare. Thus, the prices charged by private airports may differ from the socially optimal charges and public intervention may be needed. In this paper, we analyze airport charges when an increase in frequency produces positive or negative externalities and carriers have market power. We use the methodology of game theory to show that there may exist a level of capacity for which private and social objectives coincide, so no price regulation is needed. Thus, the usual role of regulators and planners could be modified in order to decide the appropriate capacity investments for which airport regulation is no longer necessary.     

Public transport reliability across preferences,modes, and space

Transportation - Reliability is understood in public transport as the certainty travellers have regarding the level of service they will experience when travelling. The travel time, waiting time,...     

Autonomous vehicle control systems for safe crossroads

This article presents a cooperative manoeuvre among three dual mode cars – vehicles equipped with sensors and actuators, and that can be driven either manually or autonomously. One vehicle is driven autonomously and the other two are driven manually. The main objective is to test two decision algorithms for priority conflict resolution at intersections so that a vehicle autonomously driven can take their own decision about crossing an intersection mingling with manually driven cars without the need for infrastructure modifications. To do this, the system needs the position, speeds, and turning intentions of the rest of the cars involved in the manoeuvre. This information is acquired via communications, but other methods are also viable, such as artificial vision. The idea of the experiments was to adjust the speed of the manually driven vehicles to force a situation where all three vehicles arrive at an intersection at the same time.     

An analysis of the Spanish high capacity road network criticality

The analysis of complex networks has been carried out in different fields using an ample variety of method and concepts. Recently, in the general literature of regional economics, the concepts of resilience, connectivity, vulnerability and criticality have been gaining their momentum. The aim of this paper is to provide an analytical framework, using well-known accessibility indicators, in order to calculate the critical links or road sections of the Spanish high-capacity road network. Our analysis will be based on approximately four hundred sections that will be classified in five different groups according to their criticality degree in the whole network. Our analysis will be complemented with the comparison of the results obtained in five different scenarios, namely the average criticality using the effects on the whole country, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Pontevedra. Furthermore, the paper will also analyze what kind of intrinsic characteristics of the sections favor or not the links’ criticality using a method based on a classification and regression tree. This analysis is crucial to understand other important concepts that are recently being studied in network and spatial economics, like, for example, resilience and vulnerability. It is concluded that the number of relations or routes, being a trunk or not, the road density and the time to Madrid capital play an important role in the criticality of the roads section in the high capacity road network.     

Evaluation of the Double Snap-Through Mechanism on the Wave Energy Converter's Performance

Lower efficiencies induce higher energy costs and pose a barrier to wave energy devices' commercial applications. Therefore, the efficiency enhancement of wave ...     

UNCTAD activities in the field of ports and their future

UNCTAD's work in the field of ports started, soon after its establishment in 1964, as a result of a 'Common measure of understanding on shipping questions'. It resulted in a three pronged effort in research, training and technical assistance, carried by the secretariat in close collaboration with the industry. Technical publications were published and are widely used by practitioners throughout the world. Port managers and government officials responsible for ports in developing countries were the beneficiaries of large-scale training programmes. Technical assistance to improve port services was conducted in several developing countries. During the 1990s, new mandates were agreed in the field of transport in which ports are not explicitly mentioned. This paper argues that the stakes in ports are so vital for trading countries, notably those seeking accelerated economic development, that a broad interpretation of the current mandate is needed.     

Structural loads induced in a containership by abnormal wave conditions

An analysis is presented of the vertical bending moments induced in a containership by a set of abnormal waves measured at different locations and on different occasions. A systematic investigation was carried out by using a large set of wave traces that included abnormal waves. In this way it was possible to assess the influence of the height, length, and shape of the abnormal waves on the wave-induced structural loads. The probability distributions of the ship responses to the sea states that included the abnormal waves were also calculated and were compared to the responses induced by the abnormal waves and to fitted distributions. Finally, the structural loads induced by the abnormal waves were compared with rule values and with long-term predictions.     

Comparison of numerical and experimental results of nonlinear wave-induced vertical ship motions and loads

 A nonlinear time-domain procedure is presented which is used to calculate the vertical responses of a container ship advancing in head waves. The method assumes linear radiation forces represented by time convolution of memory functions, infinite frequency added masses, and radiation restoring coefficients. The nonlinear hydrostatic restoring and Froude–Krilov forces are computed exactly over the instantaneous wetted surface of the ship's hull. Forces due to green water on deck are calculated using the momentum method. Nonlinear effects are identified on different vertical ship responses, namely on the heave and pitch motions, the vertical accelerations, and the vertical bending moment. These non-linear effects are expressed by the variation of the transfer function with the wave amplitude, the higher-order harmonics of the time signals, the offset of the time series, and the asymmetry of the peaks. The numerical results and the quantified nonlinear effects are compared with experimental results showing an ability to reproduce the main nonlinear effects. Received: December 17, 2001 / Accepted: January 31, 2002     

Analyzing trade-offs between transportation,inventory and production costs on freight networks

The purpose of this paper is to determine optimal shipping strategies (i.e. routes and shipment sizes) on freight networks by analyzing trade-offs between transportation, inventory, and production set-up costs. Networks involving direct shipping, shipping via a consolidation terminal, and a combination of terminal and direct shipping are considered. This paper makes three main contributions. First, an understanding is provided of the interface between transportation and production set-up costs, and of how these costs both affect inventory. Second, conditions are identified that indicate when networks involving direct shipments between many origins and destinations can be analyzed on a link-by-link basis. Finally, a simple optimization method is developed that simultaneously determines optimal routes and shipment sizes for networks with a consolidation terminal and concave cost functions. This method decomposes the network into separate sub-networks, and determines the optimum analytically without the need for mathematical programming techniques.