Public–private partnerships: a review of economic considerations with particular reference to transportation projects

The paper sets in context some of the more recent work that has been conducted on public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the provision and operation of infrastructure. PPPs essentially involve a government or its agent signing an agreement with a private company or consortium to supply it with services with the private sector actor involved in major elements of designing, building, temporarily ‘owning’, and running the physical assets; basically they are long-term development and service contracts between government and a private partner. The paper outlines the development of economic thinking regarding the rationale behind PPPs, the extent to which unbundling is optimal and the forms that it may take, the nature of the contracts that are enacted and their renegotiation, the awarding of contracts, and matters of possible corruption. By way of focus, it also provides some indication of what empirical studies in the transportation have thrown up regarding the outcomes of PPPs.     

Daily Generation Strategies with Consideration of Electricity Contract and Spinning Reserve

When programming the daily generation strategies, power plants consider not only the competitive bids in spot market and the original purchase contracts with distribution companies or users, but also the spinning reserve. Aiming at this goal, the paper puts forward a daily generating model, which is a nonlinear programming model containing integral and continous variables, to coordinate the power volumes of competitive bids, contract and the spinning reserve of power plants and thus to maximize their profits. Then, the model is simplified to ease its solving process, and solved by priority ranking method based on efficiency and quadratic programming. The simulation result of a case study shows that the proposed scheme is reasonable and practicable.     

ITS共用信息平台的研究

针对目前智能交通各子系统独立应用,存在大量信息孤岛,信息无法充分利用的现状,分析了共用信息平台在数据交换、数据共享以及数据融合挖掘等方面的功能,提出了一种共用信息平台的体系结构,并着重分析了平台各模块的功能。该共用信息平台在实现智能交通系统各子系统的集成上具有良好的灵活性和可扩展性。     

我国航运企业发展现代物流的战略思考

世界经济一体化进程不断加快,一些国际航运公司实施全球承运人战略,纷纷抢占包括我国在内的世界物流服务市场。我国航运企业面临着如何对日益激烈的市场竞争局面。现就我国航运企业发展物流服务的必要性。开展物流服务的机遇与挑战以及对策等三个方面作系统的研讨。     

钦州市公交的现状及发展思路

文章根据钦州市公交的基本情况,从管理体制、经营模式、营运服务、经营环境四方面分析了当前钦州公交存在的问题,提出了加强行业管理、创新管理模式、优化公交线路的公交发展思路。     

基于层次-主成分分析法的常规公共交通系统综合评价

建立各种常规公共交通方式的综合评价模型,对优化城市交通结构,缓解城市交通拥挤具有重要的意义.本文考虑了各种公共交通方式的优缺点,从社会、经济、技术和生态四个方面建立了公共交通方式综合评价指标体系.构造了一种基于层次-主成分分析法的综合评价模型,并利用实例,对四种常规公共交通方式进行了综合评价.结论表明,基于层次-主成分分析法的综合评价模型,能有效地对复杂的常规公共交通系统进行科学的评价,结论同时也说明了BRT系统的优越性,为BRT的建设实施提供了科学而又准确的依据.     

On the development of public transit in large cities

This article presents a summary of the analyses and set of recommendations given by a committee of transit specialists gathered by the Minister of Transport of Chile aiming at improving Transantiago, the new transit system recently inaugurated for Santiago. This summary focuses on those recommendations directed towards improving the efficiency, service quality and sustainability of mass public transportation systems in major cities in the developing world and that could be implemented in a short term (within two years). Three broad dimensions of public transit are considered: competition and regulation; investment, financing, fares and subsidies; and the operation and use of infrastructure, design, inspection and control. Although the study grew out of the needs and characteristics of a city such as Santiago (Chile), and of the virtues and deficiencies of Transantiago, much of the analyses and recommendations could be adopted and implemented in the major cities of developed countries in Europe, North America and Asia.     

Analysis of the economic and social parameters of the Three-Wheeler Taxi service in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has an extensive Three-Wheeler Taxi service comprised of around 300,000 vehicles. These vehicles, which first made an entry to Sri Lanka’s roads in the early 1980s, account for around 15% of the active motor vehicle fleet at present. Three-Wheelers Taxis also account for around 6% of the passenger kilometres. These vehicles are mostly individually operated with some owned by the operator and others hired on a monthly or daily basis. The industry is unregulated with vehicle registration and driving licenses being the only instruments of regulation. Fares are unregulated. However, most operators belong to associations which are loose collections of operators found in a given locality. These associations impose a degree of self regulation with respect to fares. They also tend to demonstrate oligapolistic behaviour.The paper is based on a survey of 200 operators and 100 passengers from a Divisional Secretariat area in Colombo District. The survey covered a number of details pertaining to ownership, management and fare structures, as well as opinions on the service attributes by users. The survey also covered perceptions of operators to determine the social, economic and transport implications of the services provided. Details were also obtained on the profiles of the operators and their expectations.The paper provides the results of the analysis of this data and draws a number of conclusions on the economics of the industry as well as the social aspects associated with it. It also discusses the characteristics of the users of these three wheelers as well as their typical use. The analysis also investigates complementarily of service provision between three wheelers as an access mode to buses and railways. This analysis has been used to develop an understanding of the manner in which the industry has grown over the last two decades and how it is being operated today. It also identifies areas wherein the industry has become inefficient and assesses the degree of over pricing that exists due to this. The data also helps to determine the relationship between unemployment and provision of self-employed transport services.The paper concludes with a synopsis of the profile of the industry and its role within the wider transport sector and with respect to ownership. It also discusses the positive and negative impacts of the lack of regulation on the industry.     

Securing public values in public transport projects: Four Dutch cases on innovation

Public transport projects, like its operations, most often have a substantial dependence on public funding. The rationale behind the public contribution is that governments on different levels want to secure certain public values by supporting public transport, e.g., mobility, accessibility, sustainability, social inclusion. These are all public values that public transport, projects and operations are expected to support. Evaluations show that the outcomes of the projects are often different than expected. The goal of the research described here was to understand what happens to the public values during the process of project realisation. Four Dutch projects were researched: ZuidTangent (a bus rapid transit project near Schiphol); ParkShuttle (a people mover near Rotterdam); Phileas (guided bus rapid transit near Eindhoven); and RandstadRail (a light rail conversion near The Hague). All the projects were initiated with innovation as one of the key elements/values. Moving away from the traditional ante-post analysis, we saw patterns in the way in which public values shift during the project. First, the projects under study show how too much focus on innovation can harm the project. Second, we see crowding out of values; high ambitions of key values during the early phases of the project lead to neglect of values which were not key to the project. Third, although more innovation was a key reason to introduce competition in the governance of Dutch public transport, it became apparent that introducing competition has complicated execution of these innovative projects significantly.     

Competition in Brazilian bus and coach services - The results of recent competitive tendering processes

This paper analyses the terms and the results of a sample of some recent Brazilian bidding processes for the concession of public passenger transport services: namely, urban and metropolitan bus or regional coach services. The analysis is based on selected issues relating to competitiveness and upon the legal framework that applies in this sector. It was concluded that, given the lack of bidding processes for concessions in the bus and coach sector in Brazil, the fact that some bidding processes have been carried out should be considered a sign of progress. However, these auctions have not necessarily prioritised competitiveness, since many barriers to entry into the systems were imposed by the bidding terms. Future competitive tendering processes should seek to abide by stricter principles of competitiveness, if they wish to avoid the entire effort expended on conducting such processes serving only to mask nothing more than formal obedience to the law and to discredit the bidding process in the eyes of Brazilian citizens.