Designing optimal urban transport strategies: The role of individual policy instruments and the impact of financial constraints

This paper presents a methodology for the design of optimal transport strategies and the case study results of the methodology for the City of Edinburgh, using the two multi-modal transport/land-use models MARS and TPM. First, a range of policy instruments are optimised in turn and their relative impacts explored. Second, optimisations with and without financial constraints are performed and compared. Although both models produce similar optimal policies, the relative contribution of the instruments differs between models as does the impact on outcome indicators. It is also shown that by careful design it is possible to identify a strategy which costs no more than the do-minimum but which can generate substantial additional benefits. The optimisation methodology is found to be robust, and is able to be used with different transport models, and with and without financial constraints.     

Privacy policies of air travel web sites: a survey and analysis

Numerous airlines and online intermediaries are using their web sites to sell airline tickets to passengers. From consumer's perspective as well as from regulator's perspective, privacy policies adopted by the online vendors are receiving critical attention. A survey of privacy policies of US air travel web sites indicates that significant differences exist among majors, nationals and intermediaries. Further, air travel industry seems to lag behind other industries in implementing fair information practices. Overall, results suggest that the air travel industry has a long way to go in addressing privacy concerns shared by consumers as well as regulators.     

A conceptual business model framework applied to air transport

The adoption of business models in different sectors has been disseminated exponentially as a result of organizational strategies, allowing the identification and definition of paths to be followed, and enhancing capture and value creation for consumers and the enterprise. In the case of the air transport sector, specifically the airlines, the proposition of new business models can contribute to creating competitive advantage. This study develops a conceptual business model framework applied to air transport, which prioritizes key components identified in the literature for designing business models for airlines. With the exploration of different aspects of business models and the identification of the main models used by airlines, the results demonstrate the need for the adoption of new models in this sector.     

Cycling down under: a comparative analysis of bicycling trends and policies in Sydney and Melbourne

The purpose of this paper is to document and explain differences in cycling between Australia’s two largest cities. Our comparative case study analysis is based on a wide range of statistical datasets, secondary reports, and interviews with a panel of 22 bicycling policy and planning experts. The main finding is that cycling levels in Melbourne are roughly twice as high as in Sydney and have been growing three times as fast in recent years. The difference is due to Melbourne’s more favorable topography, climate, and road network as well as more supportive public policies. In particular, Melbourne has more and better integrated cycling infrastructure as well as more extensive cycling programs, advocacy, and promotional events. Melbourne also benefits from safer cycling than Sydney, which suffers from a lack of traffic-protected cycling facilities and aggressive motorist behavior toward cyclists on the road. While cycling has been increasing in Australia, it remains at very low levels relative to northern Europe, where both land use and transport policies are far more supportive of bicycling while discouraging car use through numerous restrictions and financial disincentives.     

Multidimensional analysis of perceived risk in commercial air travel

This study attempts to assess the role of perceived risk in air passenger behaviour. A survey of 889 respondents is used to investigate a multidimensional concept of perceived risk and to analyse the differences between socio-demographic characteristics regarding passengers’ risk assessment. The results indicate that financial risk and temporal risk are the most important in the context of commercial air travel. All perceived risk dimensions differ according gender, age, cultural background, income, previous experience, and reason for travelling.     

What comes next after recession? – Airline industry scenarios and potential end games

While airline managers learned lessons from the 2001/2003 “double dip” economic crisis, the post 2008 downturn has been more extreme. Airlines reacted quickly in 2008 and adjusted capacities and cost levels but recovery in profits has been slow for many airlines. The dynamics of the downturn has enlarged the gap between successful and less successful business models, and fostered shakeouts of the latter. Furthermore, the occurrence of new business models has accelerated. In 2001, it was the European continental low cost model; this time, we may see new attempts to change the rules of the game in international long-haul traffic. Long-term non-cyclical trends such as deregulation or consolidation will also shape potential end game scenarios, We briefly examine the differences between the last (2001/03) and the recent (2008/09) aviation crises, and evaluate the impact on different types of carriers.     

铁路运输企业主辅分离相关理论问题研究

介绍交易费用定义和交易费用理论的主要观点,通过交易费用理论在铁路主辅分离改革中的应用,提出铁路主辅分离的实施条件是国家有关制度的健全与完善,以及按市场经济要求理顺相关关系。同时应根据行业特性,对不同类型企业制定不同的分离策略,妥善解决产权界定、企业改制、市场生存和人员安置等问题。     

Environmental and financial sustainability of air transport: Are they incompatible?

Many would consider that the current reliance on air transport is environmentally unsustainable, especially given its impacts on climate change and its use of non-renewable resources. In addition, financial sustainability is often seen as inconsistent with environmental sustainability. The conclusions here are otherwise. Air transport does contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but the climate change problem is a general one, and while addressing it has a cost, this cost is minimised when air transport is required to bear the environmental costs that it imposes. The reliance on non-renewable resources does give rise to a sustainability problem. There is not likely to be a problem of lack of financial sustainability of the industry, though addressing environmental objective will lead to a reduction in performance in the short run. Both environmental and financial sustainability of air transport can be achieved, as long as efficient policies are adopted.     

A method for reducing information asymmetry in destination–airline relationships

We propose a measure of business risk in air travel demand at the route level that can reduce information asymmetry during route development negotiations between tourism destinations and airlines. Aviation-exposed risk (AER) conveys information about the level of uncertainty with regard to air travel demand from an airline’s perspective. Using AER, tourism destinations and air service development teams can evaluate their risks from the perspective of the airline and its network. From there, an assessment can be made as to the value of air services in certain circumstances, including whether a direct underwrite or risk share between airlines and destinations is viable and necessary. By applying a portfolio analysis to an airline’s network, we find evidence that AER does indeed mimic the actual capacity distribution of the network. This provides support for AER as a useful risk measure to be used in practice.     

Developing a set of decision-support tools for sustainable urban transport in the UK

There is now an increased understanding of the need to design urban transport and land-use systems to be more sustainable, and of the policies which are needed to achieve this. However, work by the European Conference of Ministers of Transport has highlighted the institutional, acceptability, financial, information, regulatory and process barriers to implementing them. These barriers are evident in the UK, even though it has a particularly developed approach to local transport planning. As a contribution to overcoming them, a 4-year research programme has been conducted to develop decision-support tools for local government. The paper describes the international background to this research programme, its objectives and overall structure and its interaction with local authorities. The barriers to sustainability identified by the programme's local authority partners are presented, the development of the selected products from the research programme is outlined and the challenges in transferring them into practice are discussed.     

铁路客票发售与预订系统风险评估研究

随着科学技术的发展,我国铁路互联网售票日益重要,随之而来的安全风险问题日益突出。信息安全风险评估的3个要素包括:资产、威胁和脆弱性。我国铁路客票发售与预订系统主要面临的安全威胁包括:基础环境的风险、外部威胁的风险、业务系统的风险、管理和人员问题的风险因素集合。基于铁路客票发售与预订系统的架构和业务特性,提出了一种适用于铁路客票发售与预订系统的风险评估模型,通过对某铁路局集团公司铁路客票发售与预订系统子系统实际测试,表明该模型具有良好的可操作性。     

The information content of earnings releases by global airlines

This paper provides a systematic assessment of the usefulness of earnings releases by global airlines. Utilizing a standard event study methodology, it is found that the sample as a whole does not possess significant information content. The information content of earnings is found to be related to the size of the releasing firm but no clear differences are detected for airlines from different accounting clusters. Several possible explanations are offered for the lack of strong earnings information content in the context of global airlines.     

Impact of economic policy on international tourism demand: the case of Abenomics

Since the 2008 global financial crisis and resulting recession, many countries have been following unconventional monetary policies. Little information is known on how these policies may influence tourism demand. This study starts to fill this gap by investigating the impact of the Japanese economic policy known as Abenomics on South Koreans’ travel to Japan, the largest inbound market for Japan. Per capita gross domestic product, relative prices, and exchange rates are significant determinants of Japanese inbound tourism. As these variables have been influenced by Abenomics, one can infer that Abenomics is associated with a significant increase in tourist arrivals from South Korea. Findings highlight the importance of government economic policy in stimulating international tourism demand through its impact on the economy.     

Towards a maturity model for big data analytics in airline network planning

The evaluation, acquisition and use of newly available big data sources has become a major strategic and organizational challenge for airline network planners. We address this challenge by developing a maturity model for big data readiness for airline network planning. The development of the maturity model is grounded in literature, expert interviews and case study research involving nine airlines. Four airline business models are represented, namely full-service carriers, low-cost airlines, scheduled charter airlines and cargo airlines. The maturity model has been well received with seven change requests in the model development phase. The revised version has been evaluated as exhaustive and useful by airline network planners. The self-assessment of airlines revealed low to medium maturity for most domains. Organizational factors show the lowest average maturity, IT architecture the highest. Full-service carriers seem to be more mature than airlines with different business models.     

兰州局集团公司财务集中管控平台设计研究

兰州局集团公司在传统的"分散型"财务管理模式下,财务管理职能作用发挥受限。为提升铁路企业财务管控效能,最大限度提高财务综合管理水平。通过阐述兰州局集团公司财务管理现状,从统计分析层、业财共享服务平台层、业务规范层、支撑环境层4个层面,提出兰州局集团公司财务集中管控平台总体架构。在此基础上,分析财务集中管控平台"协同中心"功能,发挥兰州局集团公司财务集中管控平台大数据分析优势和集中管控作用,不断提高铁路企业财务管理水平。     

Unobserved heterogeneity in transportation equity analysis: Evidence from a bike-sharing system in southern Tampa

Assessing the equity impacts of transportation systems/policies has become a crucial component in transportation planning. Existing statistical modeling approaches for transportation equity analysis have typically assumed that parameter estimates are constant across all observations and used data aggregated to certain geographic units for the analysis. Such methods cannot capture unobserved factors that are not contained in the dataset, i.e., unobserved heterogeneity, which is likely to be present in the increasingly popular disaggregated datasets. To investigate whether there is unobserved heterogeneity in transportation equity impacts, this study carries out an empirical study focusing on the distribution of individual accessibility to activity locations via bike-sharing in southern Tampa. A disaggregated dataset containing information on individual bike-sharing accessibility and socio-economic factors is modeled with a random parameters logit model that allows for the investigation of possible unobserved heterogeneity. Further, models are estimated using data aggregated to parcel- and TAZ-levels to explore the impacts of data aggregation on model estimation results. The models unveil the unobserved heterogeneity in bike-sharing accessibility among populations in different groups defined by different sociodemographic factors in southern Tampa. These results shed insights into how the inconsistent disparity direction of transportation outcomes across individuals in a population group can be measured from the heterogeneity effects. Finally, a comparison between different models show that to capture such inconsistency, the use of disaggregated data with heterogeneity models is highly recommended for transportation equity analysis.     

Evaluating the impact of organizational patterns on the efficiency of urban rail transit systems in China

Over the past few decades, to help alleviate surface road congestion and protect environment, the enthusiasm for constructing Urban Rail Transit systems (URTs) is booming in many megacities of China. Owning to the distinct characteristics, the URTs in different Chinese cities exhibit different organizational patterns, which can be classified into three models (i.e., Publicly owned-operated model, Contemporary commercialization model and Innovative privatization model). The application of the proposed SM-NDEA model indicates the average overall efficiency of Chinese URT systems is relatively low, which is more influenced by the financial and construction inefficiencies than the production and consumption inefficiencies. The detailed comparisons among three organizational models show there exists some differences in terms of the overall efficiency and efficiency scores of four stages across three organizational patterns.     

The role of market research and consultation in developing parking policy

There is a demonstrable link between parking availability, price and mode choice, and parking policy has been shown to be a powerful demand management tool. Parking however is clearly an area of policy conflict since using it to manage demand may reduce revenue generation, or (be perceived to) damage the local economy. In terms of on-street and off-street parking there are a wide range of users who often have conflicting opinions, which have to be taken into account in its management, invariably leading to parking policies and measures that do not maximise the demand management potential of parking.This paper presents a range of public and business opinion data, from the case study of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, collected as part of the consultation for its parking strategy in 2005–2006. The strategy covers a wider geographical area than simply the city centre, and whilst this paper makes reference to this wider area it primarily deals with the city centre since that is where the majority of the parking strategy issues are to be found. After setting the policy and political context, the paper goes on to present these data. It then shows how the city's parking policies were changed in response to the consultation. These policy changes are compared with parking policies that would solely manage travel demand, to demonstrate how the political process leads to compromise in the formulation of parking policies and measures.     

The effects of use agreements on airport efficiency

Bilateral contracting is integral to the working relationship between airports and airlines. In the U.S., the three common types of airport use agreements are the residual method, the compensatory method, and the hybrid method. Under a residual agreement, the financial risk of the host airport is borne by the signatory airlines, and in return, the signatory airlines pay reduced user fees. Under a compensatory agreement, however, airports bear their own financial risks in the absence of a signatory airline. A hybrid agreement combines the features of residual and compensatory agreements. For example, under a hybrid agreement, airports usually bear their own financial risks in terminal operations while the signatory airlines take over the financial risks in airfield operations. The aim of this paper is to determine whether these three types of business agreements affect airport operational efficiency. Using 2009 to 2016 yearly data of 59 U.S. hub airports, we find that airports with residual-type agreements tend to have lower operational efficiency. This implies that, although under a residual agreement, the signatory airlines pay favorable airport fees and charges, increased airport inefficiency may undercut any potential benefits of the agreement.     

The negative effects of travel friction among road warrior salespeople

Dubbed as road warriors in the popular press, there is a select group of business traveling dealmakers that take at least four trips by commercial airline and stay in hotels at least thirty-five nights in a given year. These high value employees have often been subjected to cost-focused travel policies potentially to the detriment of their well-being. From a theoretical viewpoint, the boundaries of the existing sales literature are expanded to show how this unique group of salespeople, road warriors, face stressors and how these relate to major sales focused outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions). Further, this study adds an additional construct, travel friction, into the literature, yielding support for the importance of developing our understanding of this construct. Travel friction is found as a significant antecedent to both work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion. Moreover, through emotional exhaustion both travel friction and work-family conflict ultimately manifest in reduced job satisfaction, diminished organizational commitment, and increased attrition risk. The lack of business travel in the short-term due to the global pandemic offers corporate travel managers a unique opportunity to pause and recalibrate their travel policies to focus more on traveler well-being. Practical suggestions from travel experts that can potentially help to mitigate travel friction among road warriors are offered.