Competition and ownership in land passenger transport: the fourth international conference — Part 2

In the rail industry worldwide, there has been a search for new solutions, including restructuring, corporatization, and outright privatization, but the complexity of the rail industry offers special problems. In the Workshop we looked in detail at the British, Swedish, German, Australian (New South Wales) and New Zealand experiences, as well as considering more general issues such as cost structures, vertical separation and competitive tendering. Whilst it was agreed that some developments, such as greater contracting out, were clearly beneficial, other developments such as the separation of infrastructure from operations remained of uncertain value until the issues of efficient pricing and slot allocation were resolved.     

Automatic ticketing on London underground

London Underground is currently going through a revolution in its fare collection systems. Magnetically encoded tickets are being introduced, obtainable from ticket office or self‐service machines, which are then checked automatically at start or finish of journey in the Underground's central zone. The microprocessor controlled equipment handles all accounting aspects of fare collection, because it is all part of a computer‐based network with centralized monitoring and control. The machinery was progressively installed from April 1987 to December 1988. This paper describes the history of the system, describes the new ticket and issuing machines, as well as discussing the development and project management tasks involved.     

Sub‐optimal decision‐making and the transportation problem

A modification to the transportation problem is outlined that aims to improve the quality of predictions of trip matrices, and at the same time, allow some behavioural and economic insights. A framework is suggested within which this modification may be made and a suitable statistic and iterative process are described. A simple example demonstrates the validity of the modification and suggests some areas of difficulty with the approach.     

Grant aiding rural local roads—an alternative approach

The paper points first to the significance of rural road expenditure in Australia and to the limited success of attempts to place grants for these roads within a framework of economic efficiency. Attention is then drawn to the merit good issue and to the findings of recent research which suggest that spatial equity and changing levels of aspiration are important determinants of road user attitudes. From this the authors conclude that disequilibrium between expected and actual road performance levels will be a salient characteristic and that road grants should be directed to reducing this discordance. A methodology for distributing grants is suggested and illustrated by reference to South Australian data.

     

Extracting driving characteristics from heavy goods vehicle tachograph charts

European Union regulations require haulage companies of member states like the UK to keep records of their drivers’ hours of work. All heavy goods vehicles (HGV's) over 7.5 tonnes are fitted with tachographs which record a driver's operating activities (periods of driving, other work and rest). These records are etched onto a laminated chart by various styli, one of which records the vehicle's speed. This paper describes the development and testing of a new technique for extracting individual driving characteristics from the speed trace of an HGV tachograph chart to calculate four parameters: distance travelled, average speed, time travelled and speed variability.

The average speed, time travelled and speed variability were analysed statistically using one‐way analysis of variance tests. Speed variability was found to be particularly useful for identifying differences between individual driver's behaviour. Once differences in behaviours can be identified it may be possible to link certain driving habits to factors such as component wear, accident rates and excessive fuel usage.     

An analysis of destination choice for opaque airline products using multidimensional binary logit models

We investigate how customers respond to an opaque airline product offered by a European carrier. In this opaque product design, customers are randomly assigned to travel to one of approximately ten destinations; however, for a fee they may exclude one or more destinations from the choice set (or a particular package design) prior to learning which destination they will travel to. We use a multidimensional binary logit model to predict the probability that one or more alternatives will be chosen by a customer. Results show that customers are more likely to pay to exclude destinations located close to the origin airport and destinations that speak the same language as the origin airport. Length of stay, cost of living at the destination, and measures of destination attractiveness are also found to be significant predictors for some package designs. Based on these findings, we offer general recommendations for how to design opaque packages for airline customers.     

Transport economics: A personal view

The field of transportation attracts individuals from diverse backgrounds, seeking to make contributions to policy, planning, operations and strategy. Economists are one of the more visible subsets of players, who bring a specific focus to the transport problem. The key theme of this paper is economic efficiency and ways that transport economics seeks to achieve efficient outcomes in the presence of markets and institutions that to varying degrees distort the potential to fulfil this primary goal. We review some of the recent contributions to the literatures on institutional and market reform, travel choice and demand. As we enter the next century, there is a sense of promoting ‘back to basics’ (and redefinition of what skills transport specialists will require) in seeking a better understanding of the role of markets and institutions in guiding the destiny of the transport sector.     

Value of travel time reliability: A review of current evidence

Travel time reliability is a fundamental factor in travel behavior. It represents the temporal uncertainty experienced by travelers in their movement between any two nodes in a network. The importance of the time reliability depends on the penalties incurred by the travelers. In road networks, travelers consider the existence of a trip travel time uncertainty in different choice situations (departure time, route, mode, and others). In this paper, a systematic review of the current state of research in travel time reliability, and more explicitly in the value of travel time reliability is presented. Moreover, a meta-analysis is performed in order to determine the reasons behind the discrepancy among the reliability estimates.     

Socially and environmentally appropriate urban futures for the motor car

In its relatively short life, the automobile has provided a level of mobility unlikely to have been feasible with a reliance on conventional forms of land based public transport. It has contributed in both a positive and negative way to the quality of life, transforming our cities, our way of life, and giving us a greater command over time and space. Concern over the undesirable social and environmental impacts has increased over time, with calls for governments to take action to reduce the automobile's dominant role. New investment in fixed-track public transport and bus priority systems together with strategies to discourage travel have been proposed to improve accessibility and to aid in cleaning up the physical environment. This paper reviews some of the issues facing society as it works to identify policies to achieve an economically and environmentally sustainabie future. There is a need for a broader set of policies to facilitate alternative land use-transport lifestyles while facing appropriate pricing signals. Some of the key issues are adjustments in the relative prices of location and transport, spatial incentives to make public transport economically viable (i.e. changing urban densities, zoning/incentive changes to allow more infill), road pricing (i.e. charging cars the economic cost of using the roads), new information technology systems (e.g. IVHS) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of transport infrastructure, major improvements in the fuel efficiency of fossil fuelled vehicles, and alternative-fuelled vehicles (clean-air vehicles).     

Sea Cucumber Moratorium and Livelihood Diversity in Papua New Guinea

Livelihood diversity factors such as flexibility within fisheries, geographical mobility, reallocation of fishing effort into the broader economy, and the non-material benefits that fisheries provide are important areas of research in marine policy. We use two small-scale fisheries related socio-economic surveys of communities in the Tigak Islands of Papua New Guinea. The first conducted 5 years before a ban on the harvesting of sea cucumbers was imposed and the second from the present day, 5 years after the initiation of the ban—with the objectives of exploring changes in household fishing strategies (types and numbers of species targeted) and to identify any important socioeconomic factors that help explain those changes. Fishing's contribution to total household income has increased significantly (p = 0.019) up from 61% in 2004 to 73% in 2014 with the percentage of female residents living in a household now positively and significantly (p = 0.018) associated with fishing income. The average number of species categories targeted per household increased insignificantly while households with more women are significantly (p = 0.018) less likely to target more species than households with more men. Moreover, customary management practices contribute to this difference. Together, these results show that households are not worse off financially 5 years after the ban on sea cucumber harvesting and that gendered seascape use has implications for the role of livelihood diversity as a marine policy tool.