Widening the Panama Canal and U.S. ports: historical and economic impact analyses

ABSTRACT

The economic history of the U.S. illustrates how the role of many cities has been changed by being seaports or located on navigable rivers or lakes. Based on the widening of the Panama Canal in 2016, the West Coast ports that include the west coast seaports of California, Oregon, and Washington were expected to become less important, while the freight shares of the East Coast and Gulf ports would increase. By how much it has been not easy to measure or predict so far, but this study attempted to define some of the key parameters in the measurement. As well as several relevant background topics, both the demand- and supply-side versions of the National Interstate Economic Model, have been applied for the measurement of economic impacts. U.S. port authorities and policy makers at the local and national levels who respond and develop plans for coping with the new realities of the Panama Canal are able to understand the extent to which changes in shippers’ and land-mode transporters’ behaviors would undermine the logistics and the costs of their activities. Therefore, this study is important for a diverse spectrum of port development strategies in the U.S. to respond to the Canal expansion.     

Teleworking in the Netherlands: an evaluation of changes in travel behaviour

This article describes the first experiment on teleworking in the Netherlands, and presents the results of an analysis of the impact of teleworking on the travel behaviour of the participants in the experiment and their household members. It was concluded that teleworking has resulted in a significant decrease in the total number of trips by teleworkers (–17%). Peak-hour traffic by car has been reduced even more (–26%). An unexpected result was that the household members of the teleworkers also appeared to travel less than before the experiment.     

Context-dependent influence of road attributes and pricing policies on route choice behavior of truck drivers: results of a conjoint choice experiment

In this paper, we report the results of a stated choice experiment, which was conducted to examine truck drivers?? route choice behavior. Of particular interest are the questions (i) what is the relative importance of road accessibility considerations via-a-vis traditional factors influencing route choice behavior, (ii) what are the influences of particular personal and situational variables on the evaluation of route attributes, (iii) how sensitive are truck drivers for possible pricing policies, and (iv) is there a difference in impact if environmental concerns are framed as a bonus or as a pricing instrument. The main findings indicate that road accessibility characteristics have a substantial impact on route preferences which is of the same order of magnitude as variation in travel times. This suggests that provision of adequate travel information in itself can be an effective instrument to prevent negative externalities of good transport associated with shortest routes. Furthermore, the results indicate that truck drivers/route planners when choosing a route are relatively sensitive to road pricing schemes and rather insensitive to environmental bonuses.     

卡尔斯鲁厄交通公司和科隆交通公司新型中地板城轨车的比较

详细介绍了卡尔斯鲁厄交通公司GT6－70D／N系列车辆和科隆交通公司2000系列城轨车，并从技术和价格上对这2种车辆进行了比较。     

Regimes in social–cultural events-driven activity sequences: Modelling approach and empirical application

In this study we propose and apply a Bayesian-network model to predict and analyse the factors that influence activity-travel sequences that are triggered by social–cultural events. The study is motivated by the intention to examine the wider context in which activity-travel decisions are made and to model such decisions under longitudinal time horizons. We assume that social events trigger a series of interrelated activities and corresponding trips. Data about events and related activities are collected using a month-diary and involving a large sample of households in the Eindhoven region, The Netherlands. A learning algorithm is applied to derive a Bayesian-network model from the event diary. The results show that indeed many travel choices are influenced by particular events, that these influences vary by socio-demographic variables and that the learned Bayesian-network model is able to represent these interdependencies among all these variables. We demonstrate how the model can be used to predict event-driven activity-travel sequences in a micro-simulation.     

An integrated model system and policy evaluation tool for maximizing mobility under environmental capacity constraints: A case study in Dalian City,China

This paper presents an integrated model system for mobility maximization based on a quantified specification of environmental capacity, and evaluates policy interaction and effectiveness by simulating a number of policy scenarios. The system is designed to specify the maximum level of car ownership and number of trips by private and public modes subject to an environmental capacity constraint defined as the frontier emission under maximum system efficiency. Four types of hypothetical policies (population change, urban sprawl, land-use pattern and network improvement) are designed and the effects of 13 policy scenarios are simulated using data of Dalian City, China. Results reveal that the integrated model system reacts sensitively to policy interventions. The urban sprawl reflected in a changing residential distribution from central to suburban areas is most instrumental from the perspective of pollution alleviation. If the goal is to simultaneously reduce emissions while accommodating mobility, two combinational policy scenarios outperform all others.     

PRELIMINARY STUDY OF OMENTUM TRANSPOSITION TO BRAIN FOR TREATMENT OF ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

Objective To learn the effect of omemtum transposition to the brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Methods Ten consecutive patients, aged 58 - 81 years old, underwent graft of their elongated pedicled omentum onto their left frontal-temperal-parietal cerebral cortex. Those patients, who had more than five years of dementia with low mini mental-state examination (MMSE) scores of 2 -15, were diagnosed by a neurologist. All subjects underwent single photon evoked computer tomography (SPECT) pre- and post-operatively.SPECT results were analyzed semi-quantitatively by calculation of the left/right radioactivity counts symmetry index (Si). The patients were followed up to one year. The outcome was evaluated by the neurologist with a modified scale of activities of daily living (mADL) as well as the MMSE. Results Three months following the surgery,the Si of SPECT increased from ( 98. 7 ± 1.9) % to ( 103. 9 ± 2.3 ) % ( P = 0. 0307). The neurological and neuropsychological testing scores increased insignificantly during the follow-up period. By the one year, the MMSE score rose from 8. 7 ± 1.4 to 10. 7 ± 1.8 ( P ＞ 0. 05 ), while the mADL from 13.3 ± 1.8 to 16. 9 ± 2. 0 ( P ＞ 0. 05 ). One of the patients suffered a heart attack, two had epileptic episodes postoperatively. Conclusion We believe that omental transposition to the brain augments cerebral blood flow, which might be helpful to decelerate the processing of Alzheimer's disease. However, it is still a potentially risky procedure for the elderly.     

Comparison of advanced imputation algorithms for detection of transportation mode and activity episode using GPS data

Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies have been increasingly considered as an alternative to traditional travel survey methods to collect activity-travel data. Algorithms applied to extract activity-travel patterns vary from informal ad-hoc decision rules to advanced machine learning methods and have different accuracy. This paper systematically compares the relative performance of different algorithms for the detection of transportation modes and activity episodes. In particular, naive Bayesian, Bayesian network, logistic regression, multilayer perceptron, support vector machine, decision table, and C4.5 algorithms are selected and compared for the same data according to their overall error rates and hit ratios. Results show that the Bayesian network has a better performance than the other algorithms in terms of the percentage correctly identified instances and Kappa values for both the training data and test data, in the sense that the Bayesian network is relatively efficient and generalizable in the context of GPS data imputation.     

The prevalence of context-dependent adjustment of activity-travel patterns in energy conservation strategies: results from a mixture-amount stated adaptation experiment

People’s adaptive behaviour to increasing energy prices has been studied at length in transportation research. Prior research however has not addressed research questions concerning the contribution of travel-related changes in more encompassing energy conservation strategies. Moreover, context-dependency and choice under constraints has not been studies at any length. In this paper, we therefore report the results of a context-dependent elaboration of a mixture amount choice experiment to measure context-dependent responses to accumulative energy charges under budget constraints. Accounting for consumer heterogeneity in adaptive response behaviour, mixed logit analysis is used to analyse the extent and nature of adaptations of activity-travel behaviour and resource allocation in response to increasing energy costs. The results indicate that individuals are inclined to compensate for increased expenditures on energy due to price increases. Moreover, results show the existence of significant heterogeneity among respondents in terms of their adaptation strategies to various energy-saving choices.