Forme urbaine et mobilité domicile-travail dans 13 aires urbaines françaises : une analyse multiéchelle

This article provides a multi-scale analysis of the links between commuting patterns and urban form by using both morphological and more classical indicators of urban form (like density). Thirteen French urban areas of more than 500,000 inhabitants (excluding Paris) are compared. The findings highlight the complexity of the links between urban form and commuting patterns because the same indicators of urban form do not have the same influence according to the spatial scale. Even if the influence of the morphological indicators is lower than that of more classical socioeconomic variables (income level, motorization rate), our study discusses the various and multi-scale consequences of urban development on daily travel behaviour.     

Probabilistic model for destination inference and travel pattern mining from smart card data

Transportation - Inferring trip destination in smart card data with only tap-in control is an important application. Most existing methods estimate trip destinations based on the continuity of trip...     

Service quality,satisfaction and behavioral intentions towards public transport from the point of view of private vehicle users

Transportation - In order to attract car users towards the public transport services in an urban and metropolitan context, contributing to a sustainable mobility in cities, it is fundamental to...     

New procedure to estimate the brake warping in a roller tester

Vehicle systems such as the steering, brakes and suspension greatly influence vehicle safety. Therefore, these systems must be inspected to guarantee that they are functioning correctly and to certify that the vehicle is functioning at a satisfactory safety level. In disc brakes, warping is one of the principal reasons for vibrations and noise, and it contributes to diminished brake efficiency. Currently, the International Motor Vehicle Inspection Committee (CITA) demands disc brake warping inspections occur during periodic motor vehicle inspections (PMVIs); however, the procedure to carry out this inspection is not well defined. In this investigation, the warping phenomenon has been analyzed, and a new inspection procedure is proposed.     

On the goods-activities technical relations in the time allocation theory

In areas like household production and travel choice, time assigned to the different activities plays a key role in addition to consumption as the main variables in utility within the consumer behaviour framework. However, a comprehensive conceptual structure to understand the technological relations between goods consumption and the assignment of time to activities is still lacking. In this paper the problem is reviewed and all possible relations between goods and time are re-formulated. Two general functions are defined and proposed to account for all these relations, forming a new taxonomy for the technical constraints. The resulting consumer behaviour model is used to obtain general expressions for both the value of saving time in constrained activities like travel, and the value of leisure.     

A traffic analysis zone definition: a new methodology and algorithm

This paper develops a comprehensive approach to the definition of transportation analysis zones (TAZ), and therein, presents a new methodology and algorithm for the definition of TAZ embedded in geographic information systems software, improves the base algorithm with several local algorithms, and comprehensively analyses the obtained results. The results obtained are then compared to these presently used in the transportation analysis process of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. The proposed algorithm presents a new methodology for TAZ design based on a smoothed density surface of geocoded travel demand data. The algorithm aims to minimise the loss of information when moving from a continuous representation of the origin and destination of each trip to their discrete representations through zones, and focuses on the trade-off between the statistical precision, geographical error, and the percentage of intra-zonal trips of the resulting OD matrix. The results for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area case study suggest a significant improvement in OD matrix estimates compared to current transportation analysis practises based on administrative units.

Do maritime passengers’ subsidies in Europe affect prices?

Some European governments subsidize their residents when they travel at sea. This paper seeks to analyze the impact on prices of maritime passengers’ subsidies in Europe. Following a review of the scarce academic literature on this topic and the subsidy scheme in Europe, a sample of firms’ prices and other characteristics of 40 European routes for 2016 are analyzed. Both an estimation of a price equation and a matching approach are applied and reach the same conclusion: prices per kilometer are around 40 per cent higher on those subsidized routes due to subsidies. This outcome reduces the potential subsidy gain to consumers.     

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.     

Changes in size at maturity of European hake Atlantic populations in relation with stock structure and environmental regimes

European hake (Merluccius merluccius) female size at maturity is estimated on an annual basis for Bay of Biscay and Galician coast, which are parts of the distribution of the Northern and Southern stocks, respectively. Clear trends in this reproductive parameter are observed along the time series and the potential factors affecting these trends have been investigated. Total biomass, different indexes of SSB, age diversity index, fishing mortality at age, NAO winter index, upwelling index and temperature were included in multiple regressions models to assess the relative importance of each of them on shifts in size at maturity.Bay of Biscay and Galician coast hake have followed different evolution in patterns of changes in size at maturity. In Bay of Biscay, a steadily decline of 15 cm has been observed from 1987 to 2004, which is well predicted by fishing mortality and age diversity, but also the environment may have played an important role. However, on the Galician coast a drastic decline of 16 cm from 1980 to 1988 was followed by a rapid increase in size at maturity during the next 10 years to original values and a stable period in the last 6 years. Decreasing biomass may explain the decline in size at maturity in the first period. However, total biomass and spawning biomass declined even during the period when size at maturity increased, which is contrary to compensatory theory. Shifts in environmental regime, NAO and upwelling, may have contributed to a decelerated growth during this period that might explain the later maturation.