The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review of the articles published in “les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport” since 17 years. This work focuses on the place and role of French research in the transport field. The analysis presents a classification of topics in transportation, identifies the authors as well as the most active centers and emphasizes -through an analysis of the bibliography- the traditional and emerging axes of reflections in transport.
Nowadays we are rightly more aware of environmental preoccupations, and naturally this is also the case for the consequences and impacts of Transport. The matter is to have at one’s disposal some adequate tools of evaluation and information about the resulting impacts. In general such tools and indicators do exist, but sometimes one may feel today that these indicators are very numerous, and at the same time that they are disparate, inhomogeneous and respectively ignorant of each other from one environmental profession to another. Firstly, it is thus necessary to step back, to clear up the set of existing indicators and to propose a more structured and coordinated approach in order to attain more suitable impact tools. Next, the text focuses on the “impact law” step, say the relation between an objective input variable describing exposure to pollution and an adapted new impact variable having to characterize the consequences of transportation on environment in “ad-hoc” units (say the related end-points responses). This step is essential, many users and professions have requested “a major effort” for it, and it is again useful to step back. We note that there is a strong connexion between the impact variable status and the associated impact law. The text intends to make an inventory of different methods used to do this, and then to classify and comment on them. Some other developments are also proposed, new or extracted from the vast mathematical arsenal, as […]
This paper reports the findings of an Interactive Stated Response Survey, conducted on a small sample of households in France that examined carbon rationing scenarios for transport, involving either a carbon tax or tradable personal carbon allowances. Changes in travel behaviour that are envisaged preferentially by households are identified, with the resources and constraints at stake for these behaviour changes. Household attitudes towards the carbon tax and personal carbon allowances are analysed. Finally, a typology of the households is drawn up, based upon the strategies they employ in response to the scenarios.
Negative externalities of transports in urban area are usually regarded as a collection of perfectly distinct nuisances. Each nuisance is identified, then isolated, only the direct impacts are really taken into account and indirect impacts estimated negligible. This results in a separate treatment of each nuisance causing unintended effects. Negative externalities are in fact a system of interdependent nuisances that converge at the level of indirect impacts, with the formation of synergies and significant negative spirals. So it is better to prevent the nuisances rather than having to treat them. And that is why the traffic calming is an interesting solution. As for the socio-economic appraisal of nuisances, it is no longer simply a sum of individual costs.