Transport Policy

This paper investigates the relative performance of urban bus operators in Australia. An index of gross total factor productivity (GTFP) for each operator is developed and decomposed to identify the sources of variation across operators, such as the role of different institutional and regulatory ‘constraints’ on relative performance. Data has been compiled from a sample of private bus operations in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and all of the public operators in Australia for the financial year 1991/92. The emphasis is on the cost efficiency and cost effectiveness of private and public urban bus operators in Australia.

In order to deepen understanding of path dependence in urban transport, this article presents a case study of urban passenger transport institutions in Melbourne, Australia over 50 years. The institutional capacity of the roads and public transport sectors are explored separately and the trends are then compared and contrasted. The main components of the analysis are: structural changes to the organisations, participation on planning committees, access to financial resources, accountability frameworks, membership of forums and relationships with other actors. The conclusion is that, whilst the historical picture is complex, the trend is a strengthening of road planning institutions, and weakening public transport planning. This situation appears to be out of alignment with current needs.

Because of the rapid economic growth it sustained over the last 40 years and the small physical space at its disposal, Singapore has had to give special attention to managing the process of motorization--the spread of private motor vehicle ownership and use. Despite the inevitable imperfections of the policies adopted--and, more seriously, of related land-use and resettlement policies--the motorization restraints had no major negative side-effect on economic growth and generated substantial funds for the improvement of social welfare. The package of policies applied merits close examination by developing- and transition-country cities that need urgently to find new ways of raising financial resources to meet the huge needs arising from population growth and resettlement.

Increases in private motorised urban vehicle kilometres of travel are shown to arise from population growth, urban sprawl, increased car ownership and decreases in vehicle occupancy. In particular, the worldwide increase in urban mobility since 1960 has been the direct result of increased affluence and the consequent greater accessibility of private motor vehicles, as well as population growth. Urban sprawl has significantly less influence, although it has been significant in USA, Canadian and Australian cities. Despite this, a number of cities have shown that clear policy initiatives can contain the growth of urban private motorised mobility.

Traditionally, the transport literature reflects the view that traffic volumes, road traffic volumes in particular, are coupled with Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Recently published literature also argues that the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from transport, passenger cars in particular, have not shown any decoupling from transport volumes for some years. This article presents a theoretical framework for decoupling, defining the difference between decoupling, coupling and negative decoupling. These are further broken down to weak, strong and expansive/recessive degrees of decoupling, laying emphasis on the absolute increase or decrease of the variables. The result section presents data of the development of the relationships between GDP, traffic volumes and CO2 emissions from transport in the EU15 countries between 1970 and 2001, including the special case of Finnish road traffic. The aggregate EU15 data show a change from expansive negative decoupling to expansive coupling regarding passenger transport, and from weak decoupling to expansive negative decoupling regarding freight transport. Weak decoupling of transport CO2 emissions from GDP could also be observed. Weak decoupling of all the three aspects (freight, passenger and CO2) could be seen in the UK, Sweden and Finland in the 1990s. In Finland, the statistics show weak decoupling of GDP from road traffic volume and strong decoupling of road traffic volume and CO2 emissions from road traffic between 1990 and 2001. Four hypothetical explanations of the Finnish phenomenon are put forward in this article: policy towards sustainable mobility, green urban lifestyle, increasing income differences, and statistical misinterpretation. Each explanation is backed up with some quantitative evidence in observable trends in Finland during the 1990s.

This research considers vehicle emissions from travel to work trips by car within and through the localities of London. Specific focus is placed on the residential origins of the trips and the analysis is based on 1981 and 1991 Census travel to work data. London is divided into some 24 one kilometre concentric ring bands and the number of vehicle kilometres travelled within each of these is calculated from ward to ward origin-destination worktravel movements by car. The spatial distribution of vehicle emissions from the perspective of the source origin of this type of urban environmental external disbenefit is derived. The research points to the highest concentrations of emissions located firmly in the centre of the city and this confirms scientific survey evidence of air quality. The results also confirm that in Central and Inner London the largest proportionate contribution to total emissions arises from vehicles originating from residences in Outer London.

This paper examines the highway safety implications of the 1982 Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA) which, among its provisions, increased minimum truck lengths and maximum truck widths; required states to allow twin trailers; and barred states from reducing existing weight and size limits if these exceeded the limitations specified in the STAA. Evidence is presented that increases in an index of truck fleet size deteriorate highway safety, all else constant. A 1% increase in this index increases the system-wide fatality rate by 0.31%. Although the relationship between highway safety and size of trucking fleet has implications for policies aimed at achieving productivity gains through further increases in weight and size limits, the specific provisions embodied in the STAA had a small beneficial effect on this relationship. Relative to the pre-law environment, highway safety in the post-law environment was slightly less sensitive to changes in size of the trucking fleet.

Since the early 1980s, energy use in road freight has been rising much faster than overall energy use in the UK. To better understand the factors driving this rapid growth, we carried out an analysis of road freight energy use trends across 14 product sectors from 1985 to 1995. Growth in length and complexity of supply chains, rather than growth of output, is shown to be the main driver of increasing freight energy consumption, with high value products having the highest energy use per tonne lifted. Policy options and a proposal for improved estimation of energy consumption are also discussed.

This paper extends research on urban form and travel behavior beyond adult travel by examining teen travelers aged 13-19 in the Greater Toronto Area. Data from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) survey are used to study four main research questions: (1) How has teen mode choice changed from 1986 to 2006? (2) How do these choices vary as teens transition from the 13-15 age group to being of driving age (16-19)? (3) How do these choices vary across the different urban and suburban regions of the GTA? (4) What are some of the differences between teen travel and adult travel? Results show that in general, active transportation has decreased, while auto-passenger mode shares have increased across the region. The younger group walks more and the older group takes transit more for both school and discretionary travel. Jurisdictions with better transit supply and orientation have higher transit mode shares for school trips, but discretionary trips have very low transit mode shares. Walk mode shares for both school and discretionary travel are similar across all jurisdictions, regardless of whether they are urban or suburban. In contrast to adult travel in the GTA, built form characteristics and transit supply do not appear to have a direct relationship with teen mode choice. Urban form appears to exert an indirect influence on teen travel.

Similar to virtually all formerly socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic has been experiencing a transport revolution since the shift from socialism to capitalism a decade ago. From 1988 to 1998, per-capita car ownership rose by 63% in the country as a whole, and by 93% in the capital city of Prague. Vehicle km of motor vehicle use have more than doubled. Conversely, public transport usage has fallen considerably, by 26% in the country as a whole, and by 19% in Prague. This modal shift from public transport to the private car has resulted from increased incomes, access to Western markets, declining real prices of cars and petrol, removal of restrictions on manufacturing and importing cars, and the car's attraction as a symbol of freedom, affluence, and status. The sharp reduction of subsidies for public transport has forced increases in fares and service cutbacks, which have also encouraged the shift toward the private car. Although the private car is very popular, the sudden surge in car ownership and use has caused significant social and environmental problems: roadway congestion, parking shortages, increased traffic accidents, air pollution, and noise. Given their severe financial limitations, Czech cities are struggling to preserve their public transport systems while accommodating the immensely popular private car.

In France, owing to the railway regionalization process, regional "governments" are finding themselves increasingly involved in transport policy-making. Based on a multidisciplinary comparative study conducted in six French regions, this paper aims to analyze the ways in which regional rail policies are constructed by examining, in particular, the way they are generated as a result of interactions between different institutional actors. These interactions are linked to tensions in three main areas: the financing of transport investments, the financing and nature of rail services and regional governance. We examine these tensions by referring to three configurations of actors: the first includes the Regions and the State, the second, the Regions and the rail actors, and the third, the Regions and other local authorities. Finally, we discuss our findings, emphasizing what they teach us about the regionalization process in France.

At both national and international scales there is increasing policy debate regarding the relationships between transport investment and regeneration. Little detailed empirical work has been undertaken at the local level. Sheffield, an English provincial city, witnessed substantial transport investment in the early to mid 1990s: notably the South Yorkshire Supertram and extensive new/improved roads. A longitudinal study undertaken between 1992 and 1997 examined the effects of this investment on investors and external agents, the local development industry, existing businesses, and households. Few positive findings emerged partly because of the lack of integration amongst, and between, transport providers and development agencies.

Government policy is giving ever stronger support for the idea that freight should be carried by rail and water where possible. However, it can be the case that growth is made difficult due to lack of suitable expansion land. This article reviews how one organisation, the Port of London Authority, sought to safeguard sites that would be required in the future to meet growth targets. Advice is offered to industry practitioners on how to benefit from this experience.

Regulations to be made under the Disability Discrimination Act are likely to require that all buses used in local services, with the possible exception of the smallest vehicles, should be made accessible to wheelchair passengers. The capital and continuing costs of producing and operating buses that meet this requirement are estimated to cost the industry, respectively, some £400 million and £67 million. Set against these costs, there is evidence that fully accessible buses can generate additional passengers, with a consequential increase in revenue. That increase, while exceeding the costs, may not, however, provide what the bus industry would consider to be a reasonable return on expenditure.

This study projects CO2 emissions from car travel in Great Britain over the period of 2000–2030, by building various scenarios based on the ‘I=PAT’ identity. The results reveal the difficulty of achieving a modest CO2 target set in this study by changing either affluence (A) factor or technology (T) factor alone. In addition, even in the most optimistic scenario of changes in Affluence factors and Technology factors, it is very difficult to achieve the CO2 target as early as in year 2010.

This work describes a methodology for determining the average vehicle kilometres travelled by the private national car fleet in Ireland and estimating the disaggregated CO2 and NOx emissions from private vehicles in the Irish road transport sector for the period 2000-2005 using national car test records. The developed methodology facilitates the calculation of greatly improved estimates for vehicle kilometres under a range of constraint variables and thereby enables the disaggregated analysis of specific vehicle fleet groups and their associated activity patterns to support evidence-based policy development. The results indicate that while older vehicles are contributing significantly to car NOx emissions; newer cars produce a higher share of CO2 emissions than older cars in the vehicle fleet.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between travel behavior and immigrant status. The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) allows us to explore the relationships between travel behavior and characteristics that are usually hard to discern in surveys with smaller samples. The correlation between travel behavior and immigrant characteristics such as place of birth and year of immigration in the US was tested while controlling for spatial and socio-demographic variables. The effects of place of birth and year of arriving to the US were found to be significant for some places of birth and for immigrants who entered the US in recent years. Understanding the differences in travel behavior and the possible explanations for these differences can help in modeling travel demand, finding policies best suited to meeting the travel needs of foreign-born communities, and addressing environmental justice concerns.

The concept of ‘Devolution’—the transfer of powers away from the Central Government to more local bodies of Government, has been used across many different areas of policy and by many different national governments. This paper examines the devolution of transport powers to the existing Local Traffic Authorities in England via the 2004 Traffic Management Act. The paper first presents a summary of how several different nations have undertaken this process of devolving transport powers and responsibilities to either new or existing bodies. It then presents research from an electronic survey concerning how English Local Traffic Aut`horities are choosing to use some of the new powers available to them and their opinion on complementary areas of transport policy. Research is also presented from structured telephone interviews, concerning how individual Local Authorities perceive the efficacy and equity of the new legislation. Overall, the results show that only some of these new powers are likely to be used by English Local Authorities, with limited variation in how different types of LTA are choosing to implement these new powers. The structured telephone interviews provided some evidence that rural Authorities in particular are more dissatisfied with the legislation and consider some of the measures unhelpful. The results provide some insights on the formulation of devolved policy applicable to existing Local Government bodies and the varying benefits that can be perceived to apply to different types of Local Authority. Conclusions are drawn on some of the practical difficulties arising from the English experience, and lessons of relevance are drawn for other nations considering a similar devolution of transport powers.

Comments on "The London congestion charge: a tentative economic appraisal" (R. Prud'homme, J.P. Bocajero. The London congestion charge: a tentative economic appraisal. Transport Policy [en ligne]. 2005, vol. 12, issue 3, pp. 279-287.)

Car use and fuel economy are factors that determine oil demand and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Recent data on automobile utilization and fuel economy reveal surprising trends that point to changes in oil demand and CO2 emissions. New vehicle and on-road fleet fuel economy have risen in Europe and Japan since the mid 1990s, and in the US since 2003. Combined with a plateau in per capita vehicle use in all countries analyzed, these trends indicate that per capita fuel use and resultant tail-pipe CO2 emissions have stagnated or even declined.

This paper describes a research study, which explores alternative future scenarios for Great Britain in the year 2030 and the implications these have for travel demand and transport provision. Five alternative future scenarios are represented in the GB national transport model and forecasts are obtained for trip making, traffic levels, congestion and emissions in 2030. For all scenarios it is expected that there will be significant traffic growth. Traffic growth is restricted most in scenarios including distance-based road charging on motorways and trunk roads. However, congestion and carbon dioxide emissions are most effectively limited in scenarios with congestion-based road charging, major improvements to urban public transport and investment in new fuel technologies and in improving engine efficiency.

Transport is a major user of carbon-based fuels, and achievement of the targets set at the Kyoto Protocol and elsewhere means that the EU and national governments must reduce CO2 emissions in all sectors, including transport. This paper reports on a recently completed study for the UK government on the options available to meet a 60% CO2 reduction target by 2030 in the UK transport sector. The study follows a backcasting study approach, developing a business as usual baseline for transport emissions, and two alternative scenarios to 2030. Different policy measures are assessed and assembled into mutually supporting policy packages (PP). Although 2030 seems a long way ahead, action must be taken now if the targets for CO2 reduction are to be met. The achievement of a carbon-efficient transport future, combined with holding travel levels at present levels, is likely to be very difficult. A major transformation in the way transport and urban planning is carried out is required. As transport and urban planners, we need to think very differently in tackling the new environmental and liveability imperative.

A discussion of a paper entitled "Traffic 2042: Mosaic of a Vision" by H. H. Topp, published in this issue of this journal, is presented. This discussion provides a different view of what transportation may be like in the year 2042 than the vision given in Topp's essay. Both visions see most progress in transportation to be the result of technological improvements. However, Wachs believes that the greatest changes in transportation may be those affecting freight movement. He also believes that energy efficiency and environmental protection may be the principle benefits of technological change. Wachs disagrees with the idea that car sharing will decrease car ownership, and believes instead that people will turn to car sharing at the expense of walking, public transit and taxi trips. Wachs' view of the future includes more emphasis on gaps between the rich and the poor, the highly mobile and the highly immobile and industrialized societies and developing countries. He also emphasizes human-centered institutions by which ordinary people collaboratively consider alternative courses of action to manage technological change in transportation.

Published article available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X01000324 A discussion of a paper entitled "Traffic 2042: Mosaic of a Vision" by H. H. Topp, published in this issue of this journal, is presented. This paper provides a wider perspective of what transportation may be like in the year 2042 than the vision given in Topp's essay. The discusser provides an overview of key transport features of cities in high and low income regions to temper the optimism expressed in the original paper for technological innovations solving problems such as energy consumption, emissions and traffic fatalities. Factors such as wealth, urban density, quality of public transport and income spend on passenger transport, will affect how traffic develops in different regions.

This paper presents a view of what transportation and traffic may be like in the year 2042. It is important to consider the future since, even with rapid changes in areas such as communication and mobility, wide-ranging developments can be significantly influenced by political and planning interventions. The author presents possible developments through a mosaic of topics: city, edge city and suburbia development; post-material lifestyles; car use without car ownership; virtual mobility; intermodal transport; hydrogen-powered cars; privatized road network and road fees; and automatic driving. Several of these suggestions may prove to be overly optimistic, but others have already been implemented in some areas.

This paper attempts to provide a better understanding of Japan's sustainable transport policy following growing concern over environmental problems and energy issues. Global warming, air pollution caused by NOx, and the energy situation in relation to the transport sector, are analysed. Possible Japanese strategies for the organization of environmentally friendly transportation are suggested. In particular, stress is laid on the formation of efficient transport systems such as the utilization of railway and bus services. The fact that improvement of fuel efficiency and stringent emission controls have not been enough to solve the problems and issues created by steadily increasing transport demands is discussed.

Relatively little is known about the composition of greenhouse gas emissions from personal, non-business travel at the disaggregate levels. This paper aims to give insights into the distribution of emissions amongst the UK population. When including non-carbon climate effects air travel dominates overall greenhouse gas emissions. There is a huge range in emissions, with the highest 20% of emitters producing 61% of emissions. This '60-20 emission' rule is surprisingly similar across units and scale of the analysis. Disaggregated data tell a different story than aggregated data. While income, working status, age and car ownership are significantly related to overall emissions, factors related to accessibility, household location and gender are not.

In 2004, the UK's aviation industry emitted an estimated 9.8 MtC; a figure that, without direct intervention, is projected to rise to 16–21 MtC by 2030 according to the UK Government. As the UK's 60% carbon-reduction target approaches, so aviation is likely to become a dominant carbon-emitting sector. This paper calculates the proportion of carbon emissions resulting from the Government's projected aviation growth in relation to a contracting carbon budget. It concludes that the Government must urgently address today's very high levels of growth in emissions within the industry, and ensure future growth can be reconciled with the Government's own carbon targets.

Environmental effects of traffic like noise are typically external and typically unpriced. This makes monetisation of these effects difficult. Much work has been spent the last few years on developing methods for monetising these (external) environmental effects. However, the application of these methods does fall short. This paper describes a cost-benefit analysis of a number of (possible) noise abatement measures in the Netherlands. Benefits are calculated according to consumer's preferences for dwellings, and values applied are derived from two different methodologies (hedonic pricing and contingent valuation). Costs are shown to be surpassed by benefits. Some weaknesses are also demonstrated in valuing noise, particularly where issues of equity, benefit transfer and embedding are concerned. Further research on these issues is recommended.

There are claims that service roads (frontage roads) reduce the rent and value of adjacent commercial properties. Using Riyadh, the Capital of Saudi Arabia, as a case study, this research has found no statistically significant relationship between the presence of service roads and land values and shop rents.

Urban road pricing as an instrument of traffic management has generated a great deal of interest in the UK in recent years. Whilst this is the case there is still no urban road pricing scheme in operation in the UK. The reason for this is primarily one of 'acceptability.' This paper, through the use of a national survey, examines the attitudes of key stakeholder groups with respect to urban road pricing. How serious is traffic congestion and traffic related pollution perceived to be by Local Authority Councillors, Officials and the Academic community in the UK? How is urban road pricing viewed by this sub-group of the population in terms of its effectiveness and public acceptance when compared to other policy options? and how could the saleability of urban road pricing be improved? This raises issues in terms of how the revenue raised from urban road pricing should be utilised, the use of urban road pricing as part of a package of measures, the concerns expressed by the stakeholders with respect to urban road pricing, such as the invasion of road users' privacy, and the type of technology which should be considered. Overall, the paper aims to further the debate among policy makers.

This study aims to investigate how the ownership of a private vehicle influences time utilization of university students, and whether it impacts their academic performance. This research analyzes travel/activity patterns of 130 engineering freshman students at a rural university in Thailand. An analysis of travel/activity data shows that vehicle ownership seems to play an important role in university student's time utilization on various activities. It was found that those students who own a vehicle tend to spend less time for academic purposes, and more on leisure and social activities than non-owner students. Nevertheless, a further study using regression analysis on academic performance shows that the ownership of a vehicle does not seem to have a significant impact on the grade point average of students, once the cognitive ability and gender are accounted for. The findings imply that campus policies/measures that restrict the ownership or usage of a private vehicle in rural universities would improve the campus learning environment by influencing university students to put more attention on school-related activities, but such policies do not seem to impact on the academic performance of the college students.

This paper introduces a methodology to analyze the costs and effects of a large-scale light-duty vehicle retirement program, such as the one scheduled for the Los Angeles region beginning in 1999. This methodology allows, for a given number of vehicle retirements, estimates of: the bounty required, the number of retired vehicles that would be replaced, the net effect on vehicle miles traveled and fuel use, the reduction in emissions, and the welfare effects by income level. The paper then presents the results from simulations of two programs in the Los Angeles region in place from 1999 to 2010. It is shown that a program targeting 20-yr and older vehicles is likely to be more cost-effective and have less of an impact on used car prices than a program targeting 10-yr and older autos.

This paper reports the results of a study of a cohort of cyclists to determine their speed and acceleration characteristics relative to gradient and other influencing factors in order to supply data for planners, designers and appraisers of cycle infrastructure schemes. A cohort of everyday cyclists was supplied with a global positioning system device and a heart rate monitor and asked to collect data from their journeys in Leeds, UK.The analysis determines the cyclists’ speeds and accelerations at every point on their journey and elevation data, corroborated by mapping information, was used to determine the gradient. Two linear regression models of speed and acceleration were estimated and show that the influence of a downhill gradient on speed is less pronounced than the effect of an uphill gradient. The results indicate an eighty-fifth percentile speed on the flat of 22 kph, and for a downhill gradient of 3%, 25 kph. The power required to cycle has been estimated and shows that cyclists deliver around 150 W on the flat, but that this rises to around 250 W climbing hills. Mean acceleration on the flat is 0.231 m/s2 and the average power output over the acceleration phase, which is of mean duration 26 s, is approximately 120 W. Air resistance accounts for approximately 70% of the resistive force when cycling at design speed.It is recommended that designers adopt 25 kph as a design speed for gradients less than 3%, but that consideration should be given to design speeds of up to 35 kph for steeper gradients. Free-flow speeds in this range should be used when modelling mode and route choices and in benefit appraisal.

Urban road pricing is regarded as an effective instrument to reduce traffic congestion and environmental-related problems in metropolitan areas. Whereas the overall impact of urban road pricing on car use adaptation and public acceptability is known, there are only inconsistent results concerning the socioeconomic differences in the response towards road pricing. However, this knowledge is necessary for the development of urban road pricing packages. This paper uses a segmentation approach to identify groups of car users with a similar background in relevant socioeconomic variables and compares their responses towards road pricing. Three groups are identified: young families, suburban families, and singles and couples. These groups indeed differ in their car use adaptation towards urban road pricing as well as in their preferred revenues use. While all three groups significantly reduced their private car use, the young families reduced their car use most, followed by the group of singles and couples. Complementary measures are discussed that are believed to facilitate car use adaptation of each group in response towards urban road pricing.

Urban Road Pricing has been proposed many times as a powerful instrument to fight congestion in urban traffic, but has systematically faced a hostile political envirionment, due to lack of confidence on its promised (traffic) results and fear of its political consequences. Lack of action in this front is contributing to stable or even growing congestion problems in most large cities.This paper tries to address the problem with a fresh look at the objectives of road pricing and at the reasons for that political hostility. For managing and developing the urban mobility system, efficiency and equity are normally taken as the basic economic objectives. Sustainability objectives may be integrated in the efficiency objective if we are able to represent adequately the costs of the resources consumed in the process. Political hostility is normally based on having to pay for what was freely available, and on the risk of exclusion for those with little revenue available for the extra cost of driving into the city.Pursuit of efficency leads to suggestion of marginal social cost pricing but this is hard to explain to the public and application of this principle is fraught with pitfalls since some components of that cost get smaller as traffic grows (noise related costs for example). Pricing is still a good option but the objective has to be something easier to understand and to serve as a target for mobility managers. That “new” objective is quality of the mobility system, with a meaning similar to that of “level of service” in traffic engineering, and prices should be managed to across space, time and transport modes in such a way that provision of service is made with good quality in all components.Pursuit of equity leads to some form of rationing, which has often been associated with high transaction costs and abuse by the administrators. But the use of electronic road pricing should allow easy ways to address the rationing process without such high costs. The basic proposition is that all local taxpayers receive as a direct restitution of their tax contribution a certain amount of “mobility rights”, which can be used both for private car driving in the tolled areas and for riding public transport.These principles are easily applicable with a variety of technical solutions for road pricing, from the simplest cordon pricing to the more sophisticated “pay-as-you-go” schemes. The paper addresses this question of implementation and argues for increasingly sophisticated schemes, as people get accustomed to the principles and finer targeting of demand segments may be needed.

The study investigates determinants of private car users' acceptance of road pricing. A model specifying the strength and direction of causal paths between latent theoretical variables was estimated for data from a survey of 524 car owners living in a metropolitan area of Sweden. The estimated model showed that acceptance of road pricing is negatively affected by perceived infringement on freedom and unfairness which in turn increase with intentions to reduce car use. Income is negatively and expectations that others will reduce car use positively related to intentions to reduce car use.

It has been suggested that speed limiters will have the most impact on vehicle speeds and hence road safety in general. Whilst it is technically feasible to develop a functional speed control system, it may be more difficult to design a system that drivers actually wish to use. It is essential that drivers’ acceptability towards speed limiters is gauged in order to establish the most effective way to implement the system. The research reported here used a variety of techniques to evaluate acceptability and concluded that although drivers perceive speed limiters to be effective in reducing accidents, there is a need to change perceptions about possible impacts on comfort and safety.

This paper examines rail access charges for high speed trains on new high speed lines in Europe and the impact these have on the market position of high speed rail. It examines the latest evidence on the marginal infrastructure and external costs of high speed rail, finding that the best evidence is that these are both not more than 2 €/train-km. However, current legislation states that environmental costs should not be charged for unless they are charged for on competing modes. Mark ups based on Ramsey pricing principles might reasonably raise prices by 100–200%, given that infrastructure charges are only a part of the final price of rail. The paper then examines the actual prices charged in the main European countries operating high speed trains and the impact these are likely to have on traffic levels and mode split. It is found that mark ups often exceed even the optimal Ramsey levels, with a significant impact on rail volumes and market share. It is concluded that, whilst it is not surprising that governments wish to recover some of the construction costs of new high speed rail lines from users, they should consider carefully whether the level of charges is actually significantly reducing traffic on and benefits from these lines.

Employee travel to airports is currently dominated by the private car. Road capacity has become a constraint requiring serious action if airports are to accommodate the trebling of air traffic, forecast by 2030. The aim of this paper is to assess the UK Government's policy initiative of making airports produce airport surface access strategies (ASAS's) as a means of addressing employee dependency on the private car for airport trips. A survey of ASAS's and informal interviews with airport managers reveal a wide variety of incentive based measures for dealing with the problem and a need for airports to share best practice.

The paper addresses the recent unsuccessful attempt by shippers to obtain open access to railroad facilities in the United States. Railroad restructuring experiences of the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden, along with the status of and conventional practices in the US railroad industry are discussed. The decision of the US railroad regulatory body, the Surface Transportation Board, to reject shipper concerns regarding monopoly power abuse on the part of bottleneck carriers and to deny the request for open rail network access is reviewed. Based on analysis of the foundations of economic regulation, the separation of infrastructure ownership from operations is seen as essential in providing open access and achieving efficiency gains.

This paper focuses on two lines of investigation with regard to access to railway stations in the Netherlands. Firstly, the profile of the access and egress modes on journeys to and from railway stations is analyzed. We also examine how the availability of car affects the mode choice on journeys to the station. Secondly, the effect of passengers’ perception of the station and of the journey to the station on the overall perception of traveling by rail is estimated. The results show that most of the passengers choose walking, bicycle and public transport to get to or from the railway station and that the availability of a car does not have a strong effect on the choice of access mode to the station. The quality of the station and the access/egress facilities was found to have an important effect on the general perception of traveling by rail.

This research sheds light on the relation of bus rapid transit and residential property values within walking distance to the system. The case study was Bogotá’s Transmilenio (Colombia). This research conducted a city-wide econometric hedonic analysis with 2000 to 2004 Department of Housing Control data across different walking distances, subsystems (trunk, feeder), socio-economic strata and time. The main results showed that, with respect to the value of properties in relation to proximity, the housing market places value premiums on the properties in the immediate walking proximity of feeder lines. The analysis by socio-economic strata showed that middle-income properties were valued more if they fell closer to the system, while there were opposite results for low-income housing. Finally, analysis across time reflects slight average annual increases in property values correlated with the implementation of the system in two specific areas analyzed. Throughout the paper, the author acknowledges some of the challenges of using hedonic modeling for property value impact assessments and emphasizes that the interpretation of the results are case specific.

To ensure more effective integration of development and transport planning, new national planning policy guidance in the UK requires greater consideration of accessibility issues. Although quantitative accessibility analysis is common in research, the practical application of these techniques in land use planning has been rare, and assessment has been restricted to qualitative considerations. The strong policy focus on accessibility increases the need for robustness, but practical quantitative techniques are still evolving. This paper describes a structured approach to accessibility analysis, as part of the development of a new structure plan for Edinburgh and the Lothians, and demonstrates how an ‘integration index’ can be developed from accessibility measures to help compare alternative approaches.