Recent experiences and divergent pathways to transport decoupling

This study examines the transport decoupling pathways of the 16 selected countries from 1990 to 2015. Transport carbon emissions (i.e. decarbonisation) and road traffic fatalities (i.e. defatalisation) have been chosen as proxies of environmental and social decoupling respectively. Real GNI in purchasing power parity (based to 2011) is used to reflect the decoupling experience. To frame the transport decoupling pathways, we have applied three decision rules and assigned rankings to the eight decoupling categories identified for richer and poorer countries. Each country has five data points for the ranking (five time periods in the 25-year horizon), meaning that a total of 80 data points have been identified and mapped. Four types of decoupling pathways are derived: Improving, Stable 1, Stable 2 and Unstable. Decoupling policies have then been extracted and analysed to identify the different approaches used in each pathway type. The results show that (i) there is no single pathway to transport decoupling, meaning that a wide range of policies have been adopted by individual countries, (ii) most pathways belong to the ‘Stable’ categories with mild fluctuations in the ranks over time and (iii) defatalisation is more successful than decarbonisation in achieving absolute decoupling. The value of this paper is in its novel methodology that has been used to identify the different pathways for decoupling, its application to 16 key countries, and the use of a database that extends over 5 time periods. It makes a clear contribution to our understanding of the complexity of decoupling, the different pathways adopted, and the difficulties of achieving substantial reductions in transport carbon emissions and traffic fatalities.     

Evaluating the strategic design parameters of airports in Thailand to meet service expectations of Low-Cost Airlines using the Fuzzy-based QFD method

The proliferation of Low-Cost Airlines (LCA) has phenomenally increased across the globe bringing a paradigm shift in the business model of airports specifically integrating the requirements of LCA. The current study attempts to evaluate the strategic design parameters of the airport integrating the requirements of LCA. The Fuzzy based Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach has been utilized to conduct a House of Quality analysis for the integration of the voice of LCA in the design characteristics of the airport. The findings of the study identify evaluated design parameters of the airport for integrating the LCA requirement. It has been observed that the studied airport has been fulfilling the LCA requirements. However, few minor improvements are expected especially with regard to airside facilities, aeronautical tariff and other criteria. The study demonstrates and signifies that the Fuzzy based QFD method is a promising and pragmatic decision-making tool for customer-oriented airport strategic planning.     

New urban rail systems: a policy-based technique to make them more successful

The objective of this paper is to describe a methodological framework that can be used to make new urban rail systems more successful. Eight systems are used in the design of the framework. Previous research and impact studies about the systems as well as information provided through interviews with planners and operators have been used to establish which of the systems have been successful. The information is also used to identify the factors which have influenced the degree of success or otherwise of the eight systems. Based on the identified links between various factors and success, the methodology provides predictions about how successful an urban rail system is likely to be and suggestions on how its success can be enhanced. The framework has been validated against data supplied in response to a written questionnaire for nine other systems. It has been found to give convincing results.     

Segmentation by benefits sought: the case of rural tourism in Madeira

Rural tourism has been promoted as an effective catalyst for growth in rural areas severely hit by the rural structuring process. However, with regard to islands, rural tourism has been mainly advertised and promoted as a counterpoint to mass tourism. While in most Western countries rural tourism has been in place for decades, islands have been pursuing a rural tourism agenda only since the 1990s. Consequently, we face a dearth of research regarding motivation factors that attract tourists to the rural hinterland on islands. The purpose of this study is to segment and profile rural tourists based on benefits sought in order to gain a better understanding of the current demand trends. The data collection procedure were based on a self-administered survey applied to a sample of 180 tourists, and four clusters were identified. The relaxer cluster which comprises individuals attracted by opportunities to relax and recharge batteries, are the most dominant, suggesting that the sector mimics, to a large extent, the main tourism market. This is a problematic outcome because the sector is failing to attract a more diverse and wealthy clientele. Due attention should also be paid to other clusters. The ruralist segment values relaxation in natural segments to escape from daily routine, the ‘want it all segment’ is composed of tourists interested in all kind of activities and the family-oriented cluster is mainly interested in socialising with the family. Implications of our preliminary conclusions for theory and practice are discussed.     

Factors contributing to injury severity in work zone related crashes in New Zealand

Roadworks take place frequently on existing roads in New Zealand. The adverse effects of poor road conditions and reduced road width due to the presence of a work zone on the safety of road users and workers at the work zone have been a matter of concern. Several studies have been conducted to examine the risk factors contributing to the occurrence of road crashes in work zones in different countries. Slow-moving and stopped vehicles near work zones have been found to be the primary cause of crashes and casualties in the work zones. Excessive speed of passing traffic has also been recognized as a crucial factor contributing to work zone related crashes in New Zealand. This study examined the effect of possible risk factors contributing to severe injury and fatality in work zone related crashes in New Zealand. A multinomial logistic regression model was established to determine the association between crash severity and factors such as road environment, vehicle attributes, driver behavior, and crash circumstances, based on the information available on 453 road crashes during the period from 2008 to 2013. The results indicated that the time period, vehicle involvement, and presence of vulnerable road users were the factors that determined the crash severity in work zones. This implies that improvements are required in traffic control and management measures in work zones to enhance road safety in the long run.     

Airline route developments: a review of history

Airline route networks can carry growing traffic volumes by using larger airplanes, by adding frequencies on existing routes, and by adding new routes. The natural expectation has been that growth will come in all three dimensions in the listed order of importance. The last 15 years of route growth suggests otherwise. Growth has been accompanied by shifts to smaller airplane sizes. New routes have been about as strong a development as added frequencies on existing routes. It seems that network growth patterns cannot be anticipated based on intuition alone. Such unexpected results require substantial evidence in support plus some explanation of the reasons why. This paper offers data and some explanations that begin the discussion.     

Port devolution revisited: the case of regional ports and the role of lower tier governments

Most models of port governance have been developed to fit the largest ports, and tend to simplify the devolution process as one involving the transfer of jurisdiction from the State to the private sector. The devolution of smaller ports has been largely ignored as have transfers involving transfers from upper levels of government to lower tiers of public administration. Yet in many countries this has been the experience of port governance, where complex structures have arisen, many of which involve public control, in contrast to the strongly privatised process covered in the literature. The objective of this paper is to examine the process and consequences of changing port governance involving small and medium size ports where lower tiers of government are involved. It examines the recent devolution process in Canada and the decentralization policy in France. It brings to light the diversity of actors, public and private, who have come into play. The paper goes on to examine the challenges that have come about as a result of devolution that face the new port administrations. The paper concludes that existing models of port governance are incomplete and that the role of public administration in port governance is greater, albeit in a different form, than claimed in the existing literature.     

The likely impacts of target setting and performance rewards in local transport

All local transport authorities in England have, since 2000, been obliged to submit 5-year plans for local transport. The plans set out the overall strategy, key policies that will be implemented and how the strategy will be resourced. The central government now adjusts the funding allocations up or down by up to 25% based on the quality of the plans and, on an on-going basis, achievement against the targets proposed in these plans. This paper presents a theoretical and practical assessment of the impacts of these incentives on local authority performance.The research has employed a mixed-methods approach with interviews, questionnaires, the development of a game theoretic representation of the process and a laboratory experiment. The findings have been discussed with practitioners. The research suggests that the presence of performance rewards, in a scheme where authorities believe they have a reasonable chance of being rewarded, leads to authorities setting more ambitious targets. Whilst it is not certain that these targets will be met it appears that the absolute outcomes achieved are likely to be better than they otherwise would have been. Generic conclusions are drawn about the conditions under which target-based performance reward schemes will work best.     

Scottish theme towns: have new identities enhanced development?

Three small towns in southwest Scotland have recently been branded as distinct theme towns, based on books, artists and food. This is an attempt to make them more attractive to visitors and thereby improve their economy. The objective of this research is to establish whether the new identities possessed by the towns have enhanced their development. It is argued, using data reviewing the past decade, that they have all developed, albeit at different rates, in terms of the economy and culture. Moreover, it is maintained that social capital has been enhanced and is a factor whose importance has been under-appreciated by planners and observers of this type of process. The relevance of the new identity to the pre-branding identity is also seen as a factor in successful development and ideas of authenticity and heritage are brought to bear on the relationship.     

Elite interviews: critical practice and tourism

The elite interview method has been applied to the study of politics and policy-making and to other social and organisational contexts, although it has been relatively little applied in a formal fashion in tourism research. Nevertheless it is a method that has the potential of enhancing the quality and quantity of research data given the power and influence of elite subjects. The conduct of elite interviews suggests that there are qualitatively different aspects in interviewing ‘up’ as compared to interviewing ‘across’ or ‘down’. The article provides a review of some of the major issues involved in the conduct of elite interviews and highlights some of the tactics that researchers may use in the interview process as well as some of the potential ethical and publishing constraints. Even though there are a number of potential methodological challenges in using this method it provides a valuable approach in tourism research, especially studies that aim to understand decision-making processes, policy-making and perceptions. It is shown that individual ingenuity and reflexivity are required in order to overcome some of the challenges reported in existing studies.     

Hub location under capacity constraints

Hub-and-spoke networks are employed in cargo transportation. This paper presents a model for hub location in these kinds of networks. Hubs are considered capacity limited. For that reason, costs due to congestion in hubs are introduced into the model. A Simulated Annealing algorithm has been developed to solve the model. The algorithm includes a balanced module, the purpose of which is to reduce congestion. Each hub is modelled as an M/M/1 queuing system. The algorithm has been tested in randomly created networks. The results show that when a situation of congestion occurs, the proposed algorithm enables better solutions to be found, thereby improving the standard of service.     

Severe acute respiratory syndrome,tourism and the media

There has been an assumption, based on trends from the last two decades of the twentieth century, that global tourism will continue to grow. A number of events in the early twenty first century, however, have called this into question. Some of these have been natural occurrences, others anthropogenic, such as the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001, which indirectly affected global tourism, and that in Bali in 2002, where tourists were the major target. The outbreak of the disease severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in early 2003 had direct and significant impacts on global tourism. This article provides an overview of the SARS outbreak and its impact on global tourism, and focuses on the role of the media in relation to the disease outbreak. Eighteen months on from the height of the outbreak, SARS appeared to have been checked, but there have a number of subsequent cases and of particular concern, it has been predicted that the disease will return on a large scale, and therefore a future research agenda is also presented. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding and managing anti-social behaviour on public transport through value change: The considerate travel campaign

This article explores anti-social behaviour on public transport, regarded as a major problem by most transport authorities in Britain. It has been estimated that a passenger increase of more than 11.5% in Britain could be achieved if public concerns over anti-social behaviour could be allayed. The article starts by noting that combating anti-social behaviour has generally been seen as the remit of police and enforcement officers. However, research carried out for Transport for London indicates that for the majority of the travelling public, the forms of anti-social behaviour, which concerns them is more likely to be low-level behaviour, ranging from groups of young people behaving boisterously to people eating food or talking loudly on mobile phones.Using the ‘problem solving approach’ structure, the article then examines the process by which Transport for London has partially ‘uncoupled’ anti-social behaviour from criminal activities and then treated the two issues as related but distinct. As a result, a series of policing and enforcement initiatives have been introduced to prevent crime, but a different, unique approach has been taken towards controlling anti-social behaviour. Rather than being tackled as a form of low level criminality, anti-social behaviour is viewed as the outcome of clashing values about appropriate behaviour on public transport. Therefore, the answer to anti-social behaviour lies in minimising these values clashes, rather than concentrating on enforcement against perpetrators. The article describes the resulting large-scale media campaign—the Considerate Traveller Campaign, which was launched in 2008 with the aim of increasing tolerance and consideration for others.The article concludes with a summary of the early evaluation of the campaign, which suggests that it is having some positive effect in changing values and argues that in the longer run, it may be possible to amend the behaviour on public transport without relying so heavily on enforcement measures.     

How efficient and productive are road toll companies?: Evidence from Norway

This article evaluates the technical efficiency of toll companies, i.e., how toll companies perform relative to each other, their productivity, and whether toll companies improve their efficiency from one year to the next relative to the best performers. The rationale for this study is that Norwegian road toll companies have been criticized for not being as efficient as they should; it has been claimed that some have very large operational costs compared to their peers and hence are inefficient. The framework for analysis is Data Envelopment Analysis and its subsequent Malmquist Productivity indices. The data are from the accounting period of 2001–2004 and contain information on 18 companies. The results show that: (1) there is a potential for efficiency increases of about 14%, (2) there are economies of scale in the industry in that larger companies (as measured by number of lanes served) tend to be more efficient compared to smaller companies, and (3) there has been a productivity increase in the sector of about 1%, and this progress is due more to companies employing a newer and more effective method for collecting funds and less to improving efficiency from one year to the next. Finally, these findings suggest that the Norwegian road authorities should consider reorganizing the toll sector such that the inherent economies of scale are utilized.     

Use of the Urban Core Index to analyze residential mobility: the case of seniors in Canadian metropolitan regions

The present research intends to fill gaps identified in the current literature in the classification of the urban environment (i.e. city vs. suburbs), something that is important in urban and transportation planning, especially in the context of seniors. It does so first by proposing an urban/suburban classification that takes into account multiple census variables to provide a richer yet fine-grained and standardized classification of urban and suburban census tracts – the “Urban Core.” The Urban Core is then compared with the more common classification of the “Inner City,” that is based on age of housing. The proposed definition is then applied to examine if recent behavior of seniors has been consistent with the contention that they will increasingly move to the city – something that has been suggested in the media and grey literature. This is done by examining disaggregate data from four Canadian censuses on households moving to the Urban Core or suburbs, by age group. This is done initially graphically, and then logistic regressions are used to analyze how the effect of being a senior on moving to the Urban Core has evolved over the four censuses, while controlling for other socio-demographic variables. As such, using the proposed definition of the Urban Core, analysis suggests that seniors have been increasingly moving away from the Urban Core, behavior that is inconsistent with a hypothesis of a return to the city for seniors in the future.     

Tourism: a sacred journey? The case of ashram tourism,India

Religious tourism — tourism that is motivated by faith or religious reasons — has been in evidence for centuries. In more recent times, however, it has been suggested that modern tourism has become the functional and symbolic equivalent of more traditional religious practices, such as festivals and pilgrimages. In other words, it is claimed by some that tourism is a sacred journey. To date, however, little work has been undertaken to explore this position; the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to contribute to this debate. Based on an exploratory study, it considers the motivations and experiences of Western tourists visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the nearby utopian township of Auroville in Pondicherry, south east India. It identifies two principal groups of visitors, namely ‘permanent tourists’ who have immersed themselves indefinitely in a spiritual ‘Other’, and temporary visitors. The latter are categorised into sub‐groups which point to a variety of spiritual and non‐spiritual motives. The paper concludes that there is a continuum of spirituality inherent in tourism, though this is related to tourists' experience rather than initial motivation. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The assessment of the EU–US Open Skies Agreement: The counterfactual and other difficulties

The advent of the EU–US Open Skies Agreement has been widely anticipated. A number of consequences have been predicted, for example, impacts on fares, on passenger volumes, choice and on consumer welfare. Airline costs are also predicted to fall as a result of increased competitiveness and increased cooperation among airlines. In the short period since the implementation of the Agreement, it is relatively easy to assess the supply-side changes that have been made, but more difficult to make wider judgements. For example, can traffic growth be attributed to Open Skies and does airline and alliance market power result in less fare flexibility with consequently less influence on changes in passenger volumes? Have airline costs changed and what has been the source of the savings? This paper offers some insight into the data that will be required to make these and other wider judgements and discusses some methodological difficulties.     

Implications for CARICOM member states in the search for a ‘liberally controlled’ air transport market: The case of regional tourism to Barbados

This study presents an analysis of the state of aviation liberalisation in CARICOM (Caribbean Community) and its implications for regional tourism to Barbados as a member state in CARICOM. The evidence shows that improvements to the regulatory aviation environment in CARICOM would aid improvements in intra-regional tourism. Given the benefits that have been obtained globally, previous studies have been deductive and analysed the benefits of a less restrictive aviation environment in the region. However, the inductive approach of this study reveals that before there can be a successful attempt at any such liberalism in CARICOM, there are pre-existing constraining factors which must be addressed since they will hinder the effectiveness of any such policy. The study therefore proposes that the effectiveness of the existing regional multilateral agreement is hindered by political interference, not only in the overall context of aviation bureaucracy, but also in the business operations of the regional carriers.     

The Destination Marketing Organization as an intelligent agent: Evaluating engagement in knowledge management practices

DMOs have been increasingly called upon to adopt the role of knowledge management, becoming intelligent agents with the capacity to gather, assess, and disseminate information among internal and external stakeholders. While knowledge management has remained a prominent topic in the literature, its application within the field of tourism management has been limited. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to ascertain to what extent DMOs have engaged in knowledge management practices through a nation-wide survey of 30 Canadian DMOs. The results demonstrate that, while DMOs have made progress toward becoming intelligent agents, there remains a long way to go.     

Decreasing popularity of the car? Changes in driving licence and access to a car among young adults over a 25-year period in Norway

The general impression that car-use has reached a peak or the orientation to have a car has stagnated in several Western countries has been associated with young people being less interested in obtaining a driving licence and getting a car. Examination of public statistics and of data from Norwegian National Travel Surveys indicates that the percentage of young people acquiring a driving licence fell during the 1990s and has been stagnating since the start of the year 2000. Over a 25-year period, we find that young people living outside large cities have a car(s) in the household; they are in paid work and are married/cohabiting. They have a driving licence to a much greater degree than those who live in cities and have good access to public transport; they are students and not married/cohabiting. In the same 25-year period we have seen a higher percentage of young people living in the larger cities, spending longer on education and delaying establishing a family. Our cohort analyses indicate that young cohorts/generations defer from obtaining a driving licence. At age 30 years the proportion of licence holders has been around 90%, but analysis of young cohorts from 2001 to 2009 shows that this figure is declining.