This paper represents an attempt to define the leading topics of recent future-oriented studies on modern economies that could be of special interest for transport specialists.Starting from the hypothesis that electronics constitutes the basis of a possible new global growth period for developed and industrialized countries, ten topics are briefly presented, essentially to foster discussion and better future formulation. They start from the most profound activity-based type of change (organization of working time, of buying behaviour, etc.) and finish with more transport specific potential evolutions (technology of automation, of pricing, evolution of public enterprises).In this recent literature, the future of city structure is often appearing as a basic cultural choice that profoundly interfers with the transformation of economic activi¬ties and with its spatial consequences.
Various methodological approaches have been developed and tested in Switzerland to overcome major conflictual problems associated with the completion of the last remaining links of the Swiss federal inter-state freeway system. The case of the N.9 alpine freeway linking the Geneva Lake area to Northern Italy is presented. A fully new consultative approach of freeway project planning is considered essential in an environment of direct democracy and strong citizen participation. The study procedures are based on iterative sequences of analyses, participative multi-criteria evaluations and design improvements of alternatives generating a dynamic process to attain the broadest local and regional consensus.
Curitiba is a large size Brazilian city rightly famous for the quality of its transport policy. This policy, apparently straightforward and unexpensive, has been quoted very often as an example for the cities of the developing countries. However, up to now, no other city has been able to fully implement it.The explanation holds on two ingredients that have always been neglected in the numerous reports and articles on the Curitiba model: a specific political and institutional framework on the one hand and an unexpected role for the local planning agency on the other hand.This paper describes the Curitiba model; it also explains the rather specific political and institutional conditions that allowed the effective implementation of this policy in Curitiba (namely the absence of strong economic actors and a remarquable continuous filiation between politicians and bureaucrats throughout the period); it finally insists upon two key functions that any local planning agency should no neglect: monitoring and propaganda.
Liner consortia were born with containerization. They are operating agreements between ship-owners. Each member can load the cargo he has booked aboard any of his partners’ ship and load aboard his ships the cargo his partners have booked. They are different from pools and conferences, although they have inherited some features from pools. But they are quite different from conferences which are basically tariffs agreements.We have to distinguish between two main kinds of consortia; joint marketing consortia and separated marketing consortia. Consortia change ship-owners management because of the new framework of reference they create for profit concern. Generally speaking we can consider consortia are a collective mean to improve productivity.
For the past twenty years public funds have been devoted to increasing the R&D contribution of the ground transport rolling stock industry. This paper tries to analyze this experiment and to suggest some proposals for further action, with a view to the implementation of a united European transport front to strengthen the competitivity for the transport industry opposite Japan and the U.S. The interface between technology and competitivity is complex but it should be noted that the technology used by the transport industry is not necessarily particular to this sector. The automobile and rail industries are undergoing a period of mutation with nevertheless one advantage: a market which is still growing, and a chance: Europe which gives a new dimension to this market.
We present a brief overview of the specification, structure and results of the DRAG model of the demand for road use, accidents and their gravity. The model represents the most extensive effort ever made to explain accidents and their severity.
International supply of road transport tends to get deeply organized. Numerous carriers qualify theirs services with complementary activities (like stocking), who allow a development of internationalized production. Anticipating the foreseeable effects of European deregulation, physical distributions become already commercial partners of manufacturers, nationals (export) but also foreigners (import), which risk to destabilize French industry by small importations more intensive.
This paper intends to be state-of-the-art review of the empirical research conducted for the last twenty years, in France, about the social costs, externalities and redistributive effects of policies in the field of passengers’ urban transport. These subjects are now very present in what the transport system managers may.For each of the three themes, social costs, externalities and redistributive effects the following points are discussed:- what are the stakes in the present economic situation?- a critical analysis of the developed methods from both an internal and external viewpoint;- an assessment of the operational potency of these methods and of the difficulties met in their implementation.
This article shows how a combination of spatial econometrics and mathematical programming allows of selecting optimal regional action programmes. The applica¬tion concerns regions of the EC of the nine.
This paper presents some results of a research dealing with low income people behavior in a metropolitan city of Latin America: San Salvador. It analyses the women's mobility, a topic for which the literature is weak, in a special context of civil war which has a high impact on the running of this metropolitan city. The research was based on about twenty interviews of employed women which reveal some unknownnd rich aspects of their mobility. It appears that they would be the only persons who have a "free practice of the central business district". To go window shopping would be taking their mind out of the influence of the dominant parts and rifts of the San Salvador society. The return trip, the slowest, would induce some feeling of freedom and self-sufficiency, out of the restricting circles of the work place and of the home.The San Salvador working class women's way of life may be lighted on by several original orientations: high dependence of public transport and appropriation of their deficiencies, structural dependence and practices of self-sufficiency, bad standards of life and life symbolic perceptions of the urban space.