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.     

GPS-based speed collection method for road traffic noise mapping

One of the most difficult and expensive tasks in making noise pollution maps is the collection and processing of the data needed to create acoustic models. In the case of road traffic noise maps, obtaining speed data for light and heavy vehicles a problem that has usually been avoided by using a road’s speed limit or by making assumptions based on experience from similar road types. Here global positioning systems-based techniques are applied for acquiring vehicle speed data and adapted to fulfill the requirements of noise prediction models.     

Inertial waves in the Ibiza channel

Currentmeter data taken in the Ibiza Channel show the almost permanent presence of near-inertial motions below the mixed layer. They correspond to downwards progressing waves with a vertical group velocity of some m/day. The presence of the Balearic Front sensibly affects the propagation of these inertial waves. Although situations exist in which the passage of atmospheric fronts along the Channel is clearly the generating force of these near-inertial motions we find others in which the energy density in mid-depths is higher than in any other depth. These last situations are closely related to the arrival to the Channel of some of the different water masses which flow around there. A clear correspondence between the presence of relatively strong inertial waves and a noticeable vertical shear of the subinertial flow, evidenced by an averaged Richardson number, is also observed. In some circumstances, the vertical shear of the whole flow (inertial plus subinertial) is higher than the stability limit, that is, Ri < 0.25, favoring the braking of the internal waves. This could be a plausible cause of their decay and a reason to explain why they do not penetrate further than certain depths.     

Simulation optimization of the berth allocation in a container terminal with flexible vessel priority management

ABSTRACT

Solving the berth allocation problem (BAP) in ports is not trivial where the berth resources are limited and various sizes of vessels arrive with dramatically dissimilar loads. Especially in real scenarios, arriving vessels are accepted for a berth with the first come first served (FCFS) priority rule. This study proposes a decision support system coupled with a simulation optimization module based on the swarm-based Artificial Bee Colony optimization algorithm for solving the BAP. The proposed methodology was implemented for the Izmir port in Turkey. To investigate the influences of the vessel priorities on the BAP, four different experimental scenarios based on the single (SQM) and multiple queue models (MQM) were coupled with FCFS and proposed hybrid queue priority (HQP) rule. The results indicated that SQM scenarios were superior to MQM scenarios in a manner of minimizing the average vessel waiting times and the implementation of a dynamic berth allocation strategy for the MQM significantly decreases the vessel waiting times. Results of the SQM also imply that utilization of the HQP approach further minimizes the average vessel waiting times and increases the berth utilization and port throughput without yielding excessive waiting times for the larger vessels compared with the FCFS priority rule.     

Wind-induced mesoscale circulation off the Ebro delta, NW Mediterranean: a numerical study

It is well known that the general circulation on the Catalan continental slope is dominated by a quasi-permanent southwestward geostrophic jet associated to the so-called Catalan front [Millot, C., 1987. Circulation in the western Mediterranean sea. Oceanol Acta 10, 143–149; Font, J., Salat, J., Tintoré, J., 1988. Permanent features of the circulation in the Catalan Sea. Oceanol. Acta 9, 51–57]. On the continental shelf, however, the flow is modified by the action of friction which enhances also other nonlinear interactions. Several authors have hypothesized that the shelf circulation is anticyclonic north of the Ebro delta [Salat, J., Manriquez, M., Cruzado, A., 1978. Hidrografia del golfo de Sant Jordi. Campaña Delta (Abril 1970). Investigación Pesquera 42 (2), 255–272; Ballester, A., Castellví, J., 1980. Estudio hidrográfico y biológico de las plataformas continentales españolas: I. Efecto de los efluentes de una planta de energía nuclear en el Golfo de San Jorge (Febrero 1975–Octubre 1976). Informes Técnicos del Instituto de Investigaciones Pesqueras 76, 70 pp.]. A quasi-3D finite element code based on the shallow-water equations has been used to explore the effect of several mechanisms which might be responsible for such a local circulation pattern, and in particular of wind. The obtained numerical results suggest that the basic anticyclonic structure of the mean flow is controlled by the bathymetry and that the clockwise-rotating mean flow pattern is not a permanent circulation feature. It is seen that the characteristic local wind stress fields—computed through interpolation of the records of a local network of meteo stations—may ‘enhance' or ‘delete' the anticyclonic gyre depending on the sign of their relative vorticity. According to the analysis of a 2-yr record of local wind data, the net contribution of wind events with a duration longer than 24 h is to reinforce the anticyclonic circulation (over 70% of these wind fields supply negative relative vorticity to the study area).     

Oceanic CO2 uptake and biogeochemical variability during the formation of the Eastern North Atlantic Central water under two contrasting NAO scenarios

Long-term variability of the biogeochemical properties during the formation of central waters in the Eastern North Atlantic were analyzed between 42–47°N and 10–20°W from the dataset gathered during the Galicia VII (GVII) and C. Darwin 58/59 (CD58/59) cruises. These cruises that showed important changes in the thermohaline properties and the nutrient abundance of the upper layers were carried out under contrasting conditions of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index. The different climate forcing led a meridional shift of the transition zone between the formation regions of subpolar and subtropical Eastern North Atlantic Central Water (ENACWp and ENACWt, respectively). This displacement conditioned the presence of each ENACW in the study region and so the thermohaline and biogeochemical properties. The effect of the observed variability at decadal scale on the air–sea CO₂ gradient (ΔfCO₂) and exchange (F_CO2) was analyzed using 1D model approach throughout 11 weekly-steps that simulated the development of a spring bloom during the shoaling of the mixed layer. The outputs of the model showed an intensification of the ocean CO₂ uptake due to higher biological CO₂ drawdown, during positive NAO conditions and its weakening under negative NAO influence.     

A behavioral choice model of the use of car-sharing and ride-sourcing services

There are a number of disruptive mobility services that are increasingly finding their way into the marketplace. Two key examples of such services are car-sharing services and ride-sourcing services. In an effort to better understand the influence of various exogenous socio-economic and demographic variables on the frequency of use of ride-sourcing and car-sharing services, this paper presents a bivariate ordered probit model estimated on a survey data set derived from the 2014–2015 Puget Sound Regional Travel Study. Model estimation results show that users of these services tend to be young, well-educated, higher-income, working individuals residing in higher-density areas. There are significant interaction effects reflecting the influence of children and the built environment on disruptive mobility service usage. The model developed in this paper provides key insights into factors affecting market penetration of these services, and can be integrated in larger travel forecasting model systems to better predict the adoption and use of mobility-on-demand services.     

The impact of automated transit,pedestrian, and bicycling facilities on urban travel patterns

This article reports on an integrated modeling exercise, conducted on behalf of the US Federal Highway Administration, on the potential for frequent automated transit shuttles (‘community transit’), in conjunction with improvements to the walking and cycling environment, to overcome the last-mile problem of regional rail transit and thereby divert travelers away from car use. A set of interlocking investigations was undertaken, including development of urban visualizations, distribution of a home-based survey supporting a stated-preference model of mode choice, development of an agent-based model, and alignment of the mode-choice and agent-based models. The investigations were designed to produce best-case estimates of the impact of community transit and ancillary improvements in reducing car use. The models in combination suggested significant potential to divert drivers, especially in areas that were relatively transit-poor to begin with.