The traffic structure of the French seaports has quite drastically changed during the 1979-1989 period, with less liquid bulk and more general cargo. The paper aims at identifying the structural changes that took place in the whole system and in the main ports. The computation of a series of analytical and synthetical indexes in a tune perspective is its chief originality.
In Tinbergen-Bos system for general location analysis, the spatial dispersion of economic activities is studied; the model leads to an optimal location pattern of production centers, based on the criterion of minimum-transportation cost. In this exemple with two industrial sectors, a number of simulations show location patterns of production centers in a well defined area, consisting of a set of squares, and using different variables as, transported quantities, distances between centers, transportation tariffs, and market areas.In the paper a number of general conclusions, concerning optimal location patterns are presented; the influence of the value of the transportation tariffs on the degree of concentration of both industrial sectors is showed in a number of computations.
In many countries, the training of planners and managers for the trucking industry is a real problem. The difficulties of experimentation in this field, together with some resistance to technological change, are two other related problems.This paper presents the work underway for the development of a motor freight carrier simulator which is intended to help in dealing with these problems.
In France, the Road Directorate does not have a centralized inventory of the bridges it manages; only its local agencies (the District Public Works Agencies) have a rough inventory of the bridges they manage. There does not exist any inventory of deficient bridges. This paper examines the bridges which have received funds from the Major reparations program of the Road Directorate, between 1986 and 1989. It can be thought that bridge management reflection is insufficient in France, and that the bridge management is suboptimal.
The economic effects of new motorway have always been a major preoccupation of decision makers. After more than twenty years of investigation, it clearly appears that new transport infrastructures have no automatic effects, but that they depend on the strategic decisions taken by politic and economic actors as well as on the measures that come with these decisions. The effects of new motorways will be stronger and stronger, as they reinforce the effects of the already existing motorways. The increase of speed and the massifïcation of flows in the new motorways networks may conduct to a dualisation of space.
This paper tries to find out wether there are economies of scale in urban bus transportation in developing countries or, to put it otherwise, wether unit costs in large bus companies are lower than unit costs in small companies. The paper discusses methodological choices that have to be made for such a study, it examines previous work done on this issue, and proposes a model. This model is derived from a production functions rather than form a cost function. It is then applied to the cases of Seoul, Pusan and Shanghai. The results of the calculations made suggest a negative answer to the initial question.
The transport activity is, in the same time, very specific from the technical and organizational point of view, and closely linked with all other agricultural, manufacturing and commercial industries. The various notions of field, sector, industry, industrial channel, eventually system of freight, have a different content, to which correspond different economic parts in the productive system. This paper tries to make these notions more clear, and to measure their corresponding weights. The public freight sector appears to be the emerged part of a much larger freight channel requiring, in France, several millions of jobs! The distinction between these various notions is a scientific clarification, it has also more immediate consequences, as it helps designating the relevant field and the legitimate economic actors likely to take part to the conception and the implementation of public transport policies.
During the seventies, France had a lucky period of socio-economic research on urban transport. In fact, concurrently with policies of promoting urban public transport, government had created incitative financing procedures. Teams of sociologists and geographers, etc., were mobilized producing often original works, in particular on the theme of mobility. The professional urban transport milieu profited indirectly from this intellectual excitement. But the political changes in the last few years have not allowed the perpetuity of this scientific community, like the one existing in transport economics in Anglo-Saxon countries. Socio-economic research is from now on reduced to play the marginal part of accompanying technical progress.