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.     

Experience in judging controversial road projects

Abstract

Road construction of all kinds, especially of urban motorways, has in recent years acquired a very bad reputation in industrialized countries. Traffic engineers are, because of their attitude, not entirely without blame for this development. With their attention glued nearly hypnotically to dimensions and technical design, considerations about the meaning and function of the construction are very often neglected, all the more since the engineers might otherwise risk their own jobs. It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that the cause of the scepticism and uneasiness prevailing in the public is the lack of a comprehensive judgement. Using a concrete example, this paper describes how decision‐making can degenerate when such judgement is omitted. Using a second example, it is then demonstrated how such a comprehensive judgement can be integrated in decision‐making from the very beginning. Such an integration sets very high methodological and procedural standards and constructive aids are offered for this purpose. It is shown that, while the substantial findings of a comprehensive judgement should be logically consistent, plausible and up to the latest standard of knowledge, the nature and intelligibility of the presentation and the preparedness for a publicly presented explanation in the form of ‘after‐care’ are of much greater importance for decision‐making in the political sphere. This ‘after‐care’ should accordingly become an indispensable component of the decision‐making process.

All those involved should become aware of the fact that a ‘positive’ result of decision‐making in the field of road construction is not a priori defined as the construction of road and a ‘negative’ one as its prevention. The actual positive result is rather the creation of a consciousness of the problem on hand, which can serve as a basis on which a decision is taken in full realization of all its consequences.     

An overview of transport in Kuwait

Abstract

Kuwait is a relatively small country located at the top of the Arabian Gulf with population in 1980 amounting to 1.355 millions. Kuwait occupies an area of approximately 17 800 square kilometres. Kuwait's main source of national income is oil export. Income from oil export and other sources has resulted in Kuwait having the highest per capita income in the world. Consequently vehicle ownership is very high and traffic is ever growing and extending. Kuwait is self‐sufficient in only a few commodities and has a shortage of local labour. This means that transport has a fundamental role to play at the national and international level for the development of Kuwait's economy.

This paper provides a brief statement of transport in Kuwait. It starts by describing Kuwait's national setting and touches on the economic and social aspects in Kuwait that have an influence on transport patterns and needs. It describes the national transport system and covers road, air, rail and ports. Urban development planning in Kuwait is described and issues related to stages of urban development planning. The Kuwait City Master Plan and new town initiatives are presented. The urban transport system in Kuwait Metropolitan Area is described. In particular the characteristics of the urban road network and public transport facilities are outlined along with recent transport planning studies and new initiatives in the urban transport system.

The paper ends with a statement on organizations involved in the transport sector in Kuwait and a note on transport finance.     

Review of computer software for traffic engineers

The mid‐1970s saw the initiation of several lengthy research and development programmes in the United Kingdom which culminated in a range of software for the traffic engineer. The early 1980s brought cheap, powerful microcomputers, thereby enabling the facilities offered by the software to be exploited to the full. This article describes the range of programs now available and in common usage for the design and appraisal of traffic management schemes in the United Kingdom, and suggests a few of the areas where some research and development effort is still needed.     

The federal republic of Germany: the federal ministry of transport

The continued liberalization of the airline market in the European Community offers the prospect of competition in terms of price, frequency of service and many other attributes. Understanding these factors that influence passenger demand and incorporating them into a demand function poses a substantial theoretical and empirical challenge. A basis for estimating demand functions is the logit model. This paper examines the value of a logit share model in explaining how the share of airlines between airports varies as a function of measured and unmeasured attributes. It shows how demand functions are necessary for understanding a competitive market and evaluates the progress to date in identifying accurate coefficients of the logit function.     

Measuring community reaction to urban transportation impacts using Von Neumann‐Morgenstern utility theory

This paper attempts to measure the impacts of urban transportation system improvements or changes on the community. The community's perceptions of the impacts are represented by its utilities (or disutilities) over various ranges of values of the multiple attributes representing these impacts. The utility technique used in the evaluation is based upon von Neumann‐Morgenstern (vN‐M, 1947) Utility Theory, and is applied using Raiffa's (1970) Fractile Method.

The paper specifically applies the technique to model the perceptions of five subgroups within a community to the impact of a new light rail transit system that is being incorporated in the transportation system of the City of Calgary.

Results of the modeling indicate explicitly how the community changes its perception over ranges of values of the attributes evaluated. Biases of various subgroups within the community over these attributes are also shown. Statistical tests indicate that aggregated utility perceptions can represent the utility perceptions of the individual subgroups quite reasonably.     

Improving the estimation of total and direction-based heavy-duty vehicle annual average daily traffic

Abstract

The estimation of annual average daily traffic (AADT) is an important parameter collected and maintained by all US departments of transportation. There have been many past research studies that have focused on ways to improve the estimation of AADT. This paper builds upon previous research and compares eight methods, both traditional and cluster-based methodologies, for aggregating monthly adjustment factors for heavy-duty vehicles (US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) vehicle classes 4–13). In addition to the direct comparison between the methodologies, the results from the analysis of variance show at the 95% confidence level that the four cluster-based methods produce statistically lower variance and coefficient of variation over the more traditional approaches. In addition to these findings – which are consistent with previous total volume studies – further analysis is performed to compare total heavy-duty monthly adjustment factors, both directions of traffic, with direction-based monthly adjustment factors. The final results show that the variance as well as the coefficient of variation improve on average by 25% when directional aggregate monthly adjustment factors are used instead of total direction.     

Motorway signals and the detection of incidents

A mathematical model of automobile trip tours is presented. Within a framework of eight common restrictions on automobile trip making, all travel behavior is assumed random and all of the ways in which tours can be arranged are assumed equally likely. Three probability distributions are derived from the model: (1) the probability that a household makes a given number of tours in a day; (2) the probability that a household makes a given number of trips in a day; and (3) the probability that a tour reaches a given number of destinations. It is shown that the model agrees with similar probability distributions generated from home‐interview data for Milwaukee.