OCS development: A new law and a new beginning

Abstract

This article reviews the conflicts that led to the establishment of a special Congressional Committee on offshore oil and gas exploration, development, and production and the attempted resolution of various issues by that Committee and the Congress in the 1978 Amendments to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. A short review is provided of the history of Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) development, of the conflict between the federal government and other interested entities and persons, and of the Congressional mechanism to respond to these conflicts. A more detailed analysis is provided of the most significant OCS issues. The article describes the various risks and benefits of offshore activity and the various benefits and risks of proposed changes in the law concerning such development. A review of the Congressional mechanism to assess these risks and benefits and balance them is included in a discussion of the various issues and legislated solutions. Finally, the article notes the need for continuing oversight and review of the benefits and risks and how effective the 1978 Amendments are in balancing them.     

The influence of transportation improvements on interregional trade in Brazil

In this study the impact of transportation improvements on Brazilian interregional commodity flows are considered. The decreasing friction of distance is measured by two variants of the gravity model. First, distance coefficients are calculated for trade among all states in 1942 and 1962. Second, distance coefficients for each state's imports are calculated separately and then related to state per capita income, for the year, 1962. Both the time-series and cross-section results indicate a significant diminution in the friction of distance in the course of Brazilian development. The degree to which trade has integrated the national economy is assessed by the convergence of agricultural prices. Not only have interregional price differentials tended to diminish, but regional price structures are becoming more similar. The interrelation of these price structures provides a method of regionalizing the Brazilian space-economy.Most of the data for this study were collected during the author's tenure as Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at Instituto de Pesquisas Economicas, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Milton Fund and the Department of City and Regional Planning, both of Harvard, sustained the completion of this research. Milton Campanario and Abby Rashid provided invaliable assistance in assembling the data. Jeffrey Dutton of the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics provided a program for calculating distances. William McAuliffe suggested some imaginative interpretations of the factor analysis.     

Impacts of an emission based private car taxation policy - First year ex-post analysis

This paper assesses the impacts of a targeted policy designed to influence car purchasing trends towards lower CO₂ emitting vehicles. Vehicle registration tax and annual motor tax rates in Ireland changed in July 2008 from being based on engine size to emissions performance of cars. This paper provides a one year ex-post analysis of the first year of the tax change, tracking the change in purchasing trends arising from the measure related to specific CO₂ emissions, engine size and fuel, and the implications for car prices, CO₂ emissions abatement, and revenue gathered. While engine efficiency improvements had been offset by purchasing trends towards larger and generally less efficient cars in the past, with the average MJ/km remaining constant from 2000 to 2007, this analysis shows that in the first year of the new taxation system the average specific emissions of new cars fell by 13% to 145 g/km. This was brought about, not by a reduction in engine size, but rather through a significant shift to diesel cars. Despite an unexpected reduction in car sales due to a recession in 2008, the policy measure has had a larger than anticipated impact on CO₂ emissions, calculated to be 5.9 ktCO₂ in the first year of the measure. The strong price signal did however result in a 33% reduction in tax revenue from VRT, in financial terms amounting to a drop of €166 million compared to a baseline situation.     

Putting the blue pencil away and taking down the name board

This paper, indeed the complete Issue, is a personal indulgence, but one I think I am allowed as my last contribution to Transportation, after 40 Volumes, first as Editor then Editor in Chief; covering the whole of the life of the Journal to date. I open with a history of the Journal, first is its ownership, followed by a record of those who have wielded a blue pencil over its first 40 Volumes and then recognise some of the many others who have contributed to our work, our success, over the Volumes. I next reflect on my experience as Editor in the hope of being able to pass on some of what I have learned to my successors and to others editing like journals, before explaining the rationale for the other papers I have selected for inclusion. Finally, and here is the real indulgence, I express some personal views on transport education, research, policy and planning.     

Partial productivity measures and total factor productivity in the air transport industry: Limitations and uses

In recent years the measurement of productivity has increasingly focused on measuring total factor productivity or TFP. Additional research has investigated the reasons for differences in TFP between firms. The implicit assumption behind this work is that simpler measures of industry productivity (such as revenue ton-miles per employee) can seriously misstate both the level and growth rate of productivity. As a result, accurate analysis of productivity requires information on TFP. While this argument is not open to debate on a theoretical basis, the extent that simple measures of productivity inaccurately portray TFP has not been investigated in anything but a cursory manner. This paper investigates the relationship between typical industry measures of productivity and TFP using a data set of U.S. and non-U.S. airlines for the period 1970–1983. The paper examines both levels of productivity and growth rates. The results indicate the extent to which industry measures accurately or inaccurately reflect the more comprehensive measure of productivity (TFP). To the extent that industry measures are inaccurate, this paper investigates the possible sources of error in order to determine if slightly altered industry measures might more accurately reflect TFP.     

Travel time ratio: the key factor of spatial reach

An important aspect of reach and accessibility is the time people are willing to spend on reaching activity places. In this paper we see the issue of travel time in an alternative way. Instead of looking at travel time separated from time spent on activities, we examine the relation between travel time and stay time. We operationalize this relation with the concept “travel time ratio”. A hypothetical framework underlying these travel time ratios is displayed. We show that for similar types of activity places the value of travel time ratio are in accordance with each other. We find large differences between trips for mandatory activities and trips for discretionary activities. The results indicate the stability of the travel time ratios. Finally, some implications for future research and policy will be mentioned. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Analyzing time sensitivity to discomfort in the Paris subway: an interval data model approach

We analyze individual travel discomfort-time tradeoffs in the Paris subway using stated choice experiments. The survey design allows to set up in a willingness-to-pay space to estimate the distributions of elasticities of values of travel time to crowd density and time multipliers. Several formulations of a generalized travel cost function are tested. Accounting for heterogeneity in preferences, the econometric models all take the form of an ordered probit with known bounds. We derive several estimates that could be used for fine-tuning of traffic simulation systems and more general transportation policy analysis.     

Analytical formulae for predicting the surf-riding threshold for a ship in following seas

Making use of Melnikov’s method, a generalized formula for predicting the surf-riding threshold is developed as an extension to the applications of Kan and Spyrou. A new analytical formula for calculating the surf-riding threshold of a ship in following seas is also proposed in light of nonlinear dynamical system theory. By applying a continuous piecewise linear approximation to the wave-induced surge force, a heteroclinic bifurcation point is obtained analytically with an uncoupled surge equation. Results calculated using these formulae are presented, and they show good agreement with those obtained utilizing numerical bifurcation analysis. Further, it was confirmed that the surf-riding threshold obtained using the proposed formulae agrees reasonably well with that obtained experimentally for an unconventional vessel.