Perceptions of the performance of state coastal zone management programs in the United States. II. Regional and state comparisons

A mail survey of coastal user groups, academics, and state coastal zone management program managers was conducted to determine the perceptions of the performance of state coastal zone management programs relative to the protection of coastal resources, the management of coastal development, the improvement of public access, and the management of coastal hazards. Information on the perceived importance of the selected issues to each of the 24 states being studied was also solicited. Findings on the perceptions of various categories of interest groups, academics, and program managers with respect to the overall performance of state coastal zone management programs in the four issue areas were presented in an earlier article, “Perceptions of the Performance of State Coastal Zone Management Programs in the United States”; (Knecht et al., 1996). The present article draws on a subset of these data—the responses from the coastal user groups and the academics—and presents the findings at the regional and individual state level. In terms of perceived performance of state coastal zone management programs on a regional basis relative to the selected issue areas, the highest rating went to the Great Lakes region for its management of public access. However, the North Atlantic region received the highest performance rating for the three other issue areas: protection of coastal resources, management of coastal development, and management of coastal hazards. Looking at state performance with regard to the coastal issues judged to be of most importance to the states—the protection of coastal resources and the management of coastal development—respondents indicated that states should improve their performance in both areas, with the greatest need related to the management of coastal development. Overall, the states of the North Atlantic, Great Lakes, and South Atlantic regions were perceived to be performing somewhat better relative to the four issue areas than the states in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico regions. While the data do not shed light on the reasons for these regional differences, we suggest that, in the case of the Pacific region at least, the differences could be associated with higher expectations among the resident population with regard to environmental quality in general and coastal management in particular.     

Evaluating competitiveness using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process—A case study of Chinese airlines

With the development of a national market economy, the Chinese aviation industry is now confronted with international competition. Therefore, it is necessary to research the competitive status of Chinese national aviation, as well as advice on how to enhance the competitiveness of the Chinese aviation industry. The main objective of this paper is to propose FAHP as an effective solution for resolving the uncertainty and imprecision in the evaluation of airlines' competitiveness. In this paper, we review the research of industrial international aviation competitiveness at both home and abroad, discuss a theoretical framework for the study of aviation competitiveness, establish an index system with five first‐order indicators and 17 second‐order indicators, set up a Chinese aviation competitiveness model based on simple fuzzy numbers from the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, and evaluate the competitiveness of five major Chinese airlines. The results showed that this model and these indicators are scientific and practical, with a wide range of application prospects for the purpose of improving and increasing Chinese airline competitiveness in the international market. The effective approach presented in this paper is especially applicable when subjective judgments on performance ratings and attribute weights are not accessible or reliable, or when suitable decision makers are not available. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adoption of Internet Services in Liner Shipping: An Empirical Study of Shippers in Taiwan

Abstract

The Internet service attributes desired by shippers were examined as well as a model that seeks to explain the intention of shippers to use Internet services in liner shipping. Using data collected from a survey of a group of shippers in Taiwan, the relationships among the constructs in the model were tested, namely: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, security and use intention. The results suggest that shippers perceive tracing to be the most important service attribute of Internet services, followed by checking for customs clearance, vessel schedules and electronic document services. The findings indicate that perceived ease of use is the major factor affecting the intention of shippers to use Internet services, and that perceived ease of use has a strong positive effect on perceived usefulness. The results also indicate that security has a positive effect on a shipper’s perception of ease of use. However, the influence of security on use intention and perceived usefulness was not supported in this study. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings on the intention of shippers to use Internet services in liner shipping are discussed.     

Traffic Performance Models for Dynamic Traffic Assignment: An Assessment of Existing Models

Abstract

This paper provides a review of the traffic performance models for dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) and it identifies the strength and weakness of existing models. Requirements for traffic performance models are identified and various forms of existing traffic performance models for DTA are reviewed and analysed according to the requirements. Non‐linear travel time models are shown to have some deficiencies that make them unsuitable for the analysis of time‐varying transportation networks. Even though linear‐type travel time models are identified as good candidates for the analysis of dynamic transportation networks, they have limitations from the practical point of view that travel time increases only linearly with the amount of traffic on the link. This poses a dilemma and it seems to be one whose resolution is an imminent precondition for DTA modelling to progress in a way that is both theoretically coherent and plausible in practical terms.     

A disaggregate stochastic freight transport model for Sweden

Transportation - This paper presents estimation results for models of transport chain and shipment size choice, as well as an implementation of the estimated disaggregate models (for two commodity...     

A GIS‐based traffic analysis zone design: implementation and evaluation

The purpose of this paper is to implement an efficient method for GIS‐based traffic analysis zone (TAZ) design in order to evaluate and validate such a method. The method was developed by the authors.

Moran's I spatial autocorrelation coefficient and sample variance are used for evaluating the generated TAZs using the Champaign‐Urbana, IL region as a case study. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted to explore the fluctuations in TAZ generation outcomes. The evaluation, the validation as well as the TAZ design have been implemented with ARC/INFO GIS software on a UNIX workstation platform.     

The development of urban bus regulatory policy in Korea reviewed

The urban bus industry in Korea used to be controlled to provide stable transport services and enable operators to secure proper profits, but there were adverse effects within the industry such as inadequate business management and a downward spiral of low quality services resulting from lower fares. The government began easing restrictions on entry, operation, fares, and some conditions and procedures for licensing in the late 1980s, until in 1993, the government published a package of deregulatory measures that were considerably more drastic than those previously seen, such as freely adjusting the number of vehicles within 10%, easing the restrictions and requirements for operators’ employing staff and drivers, and improving the fare system. However, these measures seem to have been introduced too late and too luke‐warmly to encourage new entrants to the industry. Therefore, to gain the desirable effects of deregulation and to secure the development of the urban bus sector, there needs to be provision of a market atmosphere and greater scope for free competition; a positive attitude among operators for efficient business management and new services; and alert observation and monitoring by passengers.     

Measuring the energy efficiency for airlines under the pressure of being included into the EU ETS

In 2008, European Union (EU) announced that from 2012, each international flight taking off and landing in EU would be given an emission permit. Therefore, the period of 2008–2012 can be regarded as a buffer period for global airlines. Although EU formally decides to exclude non‐EU airlines from the EU Emission Trading System on March 4, 2014, it is necessary to investigate the impacts of the policy on airline energy efficiency in this period. Airline energy efficiency is divided into three stages—operations stage, service stage, and sales stage—and Greenhouse gas emission is treated as an undesirable output of service stage. Two models, network range‐adjusted measure model with weak disposability and network range‐adjusted measure model with strong disposability, are established to evaluate the efficiencies of 22 international airlines from 2008 to 2012. The results show that (i) most airlines' efficiencies have decreased in the period, and the EU Emission Trading System is not effective for the efficiency improvement; (ii) the average efficiency of European airlines is almost the same as that of non‐European airlines; and (iii) the model with weak disposability is more reasonable in distinguishing efficiency differences, while strong disposability is a more reasonable way in treating undesirable outputs. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Train design features affecting boarding and alighting of passengers

Accurately predicting train dwell time is critical to running an effective and efficient service. With high‐density passenger services, large numbers of passengers must be able to board and alight the train quickly – and within scheduled dwell times. Using a specially constructed train mock‐up in a pedestrian movement laboratory, the experiments outlined in this paper examine the impact of train carriage design factors such as door width, seat type, platform edge doors and horizontal gap on the time taken by passengers to board and alight. The findings illustrate that the effectiveness of design features depends on whether there are a majority of passengers boarding or alighting. An optimum door width should be between 1.7 and 1.8 m. The use of a central pole and platform edge doors produced no major effects, but a 200 mm horizontal gap could increase the movement of passengers. There is no clear effect of the type of seats and neither the standbacks between 50, 300 and 500 mm. Further research will look for the relationship between the dwell time and the characteristics of passengers such as personal space. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Urban traffic flow prediction: a spatio‐temporal variable selection‐based approach

Short‐term traffic flow prediction in urban area remains a difficult yet important problem in intelligent transportation systems. Current spatio‐temporal‐based urban traffic flow prediction techniques trend aims to discover the relationship between adjacent upstream and downstream road segments using specific models, while in this paper, we advocate to exploit the spatial and temporal information from all available road segments in a partial road network. However, the available traffic states can be high dimensional for high‐density road networks. Therefore, we propose a spatio‐temporal variable selection‐based support vector regression (VS‐SVR) model fed with the high‐dimensional traffic data collected from all available road segments. Our prediction model can be presented as a two‐stage framework. In the first stage, we employ the multivariate adaptive regression splines model to select a set of predictors most related to the target one from the high‐dimensional spatio‐temporal variables, and different weights are assigned to the selected predictors. In the second stage, the kernel learning method, support vector regression, is trained on the weighted variables. The experimental results on the real‐world traffic volume collected from a sub‐area of Shanghai, China, demonstrate that the proposed spatio‐temporal VS‐SVR model outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.