Adjusting supply to demand is a constant issue for public carriers, especially at seasonal changes in timetables and when studying proposed futures services for the medium or long terms. In this article can be found a method of analysis dealing with the interaction between supply and demand in rail passengers services on medium and long distances for standard days only (off-peak days).The proposed model is based on the assumption, that for a given type of route with a specific distance, there exists an hourly distribution for the daily passenger demand and that the user's decision process for selecting a train on departure can be described in terms of probability, provided the various train characteristics of a daily timetable were introduced.From observations on the actual loading factor of trains for a lar¬ge number of routes, hourly distributions of passenger demand were calibrated together with relevant parameters in the selection between several trains. Finally, the model was validated after evidence, that it reproduced fairly accurately the loading factor of trains running on routes with rather different timetables.
This paper reviews the "state of the art" in car ownership modeling in Great Britain. The techniques can be divided into two classes, those of demand and those of supply: the former include aggregate and disaggregate models, whilst the latter include models of production of new vehicles and scrapping of old. The analysis of budgets, both of the expenditure of money and of time by households and individuals, shows promise in the reconciliation of these different classes of techniques.During the last decade, the development of official statistics in Great Britain and the rapid changes in the price of petrol has enabled us to study in more detail the way that car ownership is developing, and in particular the different influences in the short and long term on its growth. This has clearly shown that some models are appropriate for one or other of these time spans but not both : attempts within the structure of such models to predict car ownership growth for periods for which they are not appropriate are doomed to failure and, moreover, will in general be misleading for policy analysis. This is particularly important, since policies designed to promote energy and resource conservation in the long term are inflationary in the short term, as is clearly shown by budget analysis. A proper understanding of the difference between the short term and long term responses is therefore essential for policy analysis.
Apart from the price fixing market mechanisms the goods transport activities can be analyzed according to the socio-economic relationships taking place between members of the transport organization, particularly between shippers and carriers. The "transport mastership" sanctions an economic agent's ability to structure, according to his own needs, a transport chain whole organization: whether he seeks after financial targets (to provide his capital a higher income than other capitals involved in the goods production/circulation channel) or technical targets (e.g. for an industrial shipper, put into place a transport organization adequate to the industrial production needs). Making a link between industry and transport economics, the transport mastership concept does not replace the traditional production/consumption of transport economic analysis categories, but appears as a preliminary characterization of them.
The important changes experienced by urban transport in the seventies (explosion of car mobility, renewal of mass transit, development of local and not simply national management of transport problems) necessitate some thought about developments in the coming years. This paper proposes a set of crucial questions which one should be aware of when considering the future of transport systems, rather than a set of scenarios.Urban transport is first conditioned by the evolution of its social environment, which leads to three types of question: will the difficulties of employment continue and affect residential mobility as well as trip behaviour and cost? What new segregation will the evolution of urban areas reveal? What will be the energy cost?Increased mobility and the use of transport modes partly depend on the answers to such questions. But many uncertainties remain about the increase in bimotorization, the social status of the car, the efficiency of bus networks for peripherical and home-to-work trips and, more generally about possible transfers from the car to other more energy saving modes.In this respect, the role of the institutions will be essential to prevent urban transport from irreversibly moving towards an organization which would make it vulnerable to strong external constraints: this implies carefully calculated investments, more attentive management of central public areas and a reinforced unity of thinking and decision-making in the agglomerations. Thus we are […]
The West German socio-economic research in urban transport can be featured as follows: a great variety of the research structures, a power of both pragmatism and Engineers, their focusing on modelization.In this field, the interest of human scientists is reduced to data collecting, the contestation is put into "alternative" projects not yet theorized. The good health of local life (Federalism) and that of urban transport (wide railroad networks) on one hand, the strategies and speculations from the miscellaneous concerned professional groups on the other hand, are the main reasons to this lack of sociological investigation in urban transport.The new economic background and the energy crisis should stir up a demand ready to fill this scientific gap.