Public/stakeholder perceptions of airline alliances: The New Zealand experience

The recent proposed alliance between Air New Zealand and Qantas is examined in the context of public opinion within New Zealand. Overall, public support for the alliance was lacking, and several reasons for this are discussed. More than half of respondents were not in favour of the Government of New Zealand having majority ownership in Air New Zealand. In this case, however, the New Zealand public act as both consumers and stakeholders. Thus, the proposed alliance raises issue of national interest as well as consumption-based considerations.     

The design of light-handed regulation of airports: Lessons from experience in Australia and New Zealand

The difficulties experienced with traditional forms of economic regulation of airports involving direct control of prices have led to an interest in light-handed regulatory frameworks. Experience with light-handed regulation of airports is primarily confined to Australia and New Zealand. The paper examines the design features of light-handed regulation in Australia and New Zealand in relation to the stated objectives associated with the introduction of light-handed regulation. The paper identifies important aspects associated with the design of light-handed regulation including the incorporation of a credible threat of stronger regulation and the characteristics of this, and an apparent trade-off in objectives achieved with different approaches to light-handed regulation.     

The perceived risks of local climate change in Queenstown,New Zealand

Place-embedded, resource-dependent industries are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The scientific framing of these risks can be understood through modelling; however, risks are perceived by non-scientific communities in more culturally relevant and localised frames. This empirical study utilised qualitative, semi-structured interviews with four stakeholder groups connected to the ski industry in Queenstown, New Zealand. The objectives of this research were to identify current scientific knowledge on climate change risks to Queenstown's ski industry and to critically address how the risk of climate change is perceived. This paper reports three main findings: (1) scientific reporting and expert interviews expect climate change to manifest as inter-annual variability up to the 2050s, (2) current climatic variability is perceived to be the greatest risk to the ski industry at present and (3) climate change is perceived to be distant and a greater threat to other people and other places giving rise to ‘optimistic bias’.     

Modelling the volatility of international visitor arrivals to New Zealand

International visitor arrivals are considered to be a major source of foreign exchange, tourism-related employment and other tourism-related activities. This study used SARIMAX/(E)GARCH volatility models to forecast visitor arrivals by air transport to New Zealand from its eight key tourist source markets (Australia, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US)) and control macroeconomic factors together with global and regional structural changes. The empirical models reveal that the macroeconomic factors contributed at various levels to different markets, and the models we provided made accurate and reliable forecasts for visitor arrivals by air transport from all studied markets. The results from the markets for Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK showed that significantly negative tourism demand shocks increased the volatility of tourism arrivals, more than positive tourism demand shocks of equal magnitude. Accordingly, the findings of this study will allow policy-makers in the New Zealand tourism sector and other stakeholders (e.g. airline management) to better understand the impacts on the volatility of visitor arrivals to New Zealand.     

Capital City Museums and Tourism Flows: an Empirical Study of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

This study uses time series analysis to explore the extent to which the opening of the Museum of New Zealand in 1998 contributed to tourism growth in the nation's capital, Wellington. With the use of a series of different measures for tourism and major events in the city, econometric regressions are undertaken to better understand the relationship between visitors to the museum and tourism growth in the city's short‐term commercial accommodation sector. The findings are consistent with the museum having a positive impact on tourist arrivals and overnight stays. These results contribute valuable empirical evidence of the positive role of museums in attracting tourists to urban centres. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of the ‘school run’ on road traffic accidents: A spatio-temporal analysis

Engineering and improved road safety education has resulted in an overall decrease in road traffic accident numbers in Christchurch, New Zealand. The temporal trends of crash data from 1980 to 2004 reveal that lowering of crash rates is not occurring at a uniform rate throughout the day, with comparative increases in crash rates occurring during morning rush hour, and during the ’school run’. No spatial clustering around schools was identified. This suggests that policies to reduce school travel related road accidents need to be focused on reducing overall traffic levels rather than focusing geographically on areas in the immediate vicinity of schools.     

Long-distance trips in a sparsely populated region: The impact of high-speed infrastructures

This paper aims to analyze the different territorial performance of two new high-speed transport infrastructures, a national motorway and a high-speed rail (HSR) line, with an emphasis on their different roles on long-distance trip making, in a peripheral and sparsely populated province of Spain, contributing to the existing limited research on the influence of high-speed transport infrastructures on urban structure and mobility of sparsely populated regions.The paper provides empirical evidence by means of a mobility survey. The analysis of modal split, travel frequencies, and travel purposes allows a better understanding of long-distance mobility patterns and establishes different travel profiles. The study of commuting and discretionary flows shows different levels and types of metropolitan integration depending on the type of connection and on local characteristics.     

The last free-range children? Children’s independent mobility in Finland in the 1990s and 2010s

The study reports the degree of children’s independent mobility (CIM) in Finland for over two decades, from the beginning of the 1990s up to 2011. The first part of the research examined the differences of CIM in five different settlements in 2011: inner city, suburban, large town, small town, and rural village. A cross-sectional survey was used on a total of 821 7- to 15-year-old children in various settlements in different parts of Finland. Independent mobility was operationalized both as mobility licenses, meaning parental permits to perform certain activities independently, and as actual mobility, the proportion of active and independent school travel and independent weekend activities. In the second part of the study, we used the same measures to compare the independent mobility of Finnish children in the 1990s and 2010s. The second sample consisted of a total of 306 8- to 10-year-old children and their parents who participated in the CIM study in 1993–94 or in 2011. The major finding of the study was that in Finland children’s independent mobility had decreased significantly during a span of 20 years, even more noticeably in the small town and rural village settings than in the inner city settlements. Finnish children, nevertheless, still enjoy a very high degree of independent mobility when compared with the children from the 16 countries involved in the large international comparative study for which the current research was conducted. In the discussion, we give some possible factors that can provide some understanding of and explanation to these trends.     

‘Being on the move’: Time-spatial organisation and mobility in a mobile preschool

The mobile preschool, a form of preschool practice in a bus, is a new and growing phenomenon in Swedish preschool education. Combining theories of time-spatial organisation and mobility, we critically investigate the implications of transforming traditional stationary preschool practice into a mobile preschool. Our findings show that the social order of the mobile preschool is ‘being on the move’ and that the travelling shapes the time-spatial organisation, with major implications for daily routines and activities. In our analyses we show how constant travelling characterises the mobile preschool as a social practice with (i) logistics and choice of place prevailing over daily planning, (ii) creation of time and space for embodied habits, (iii) teachers as attendants and children as passengers, and (iv) walking in lines. However, mobility and time-spatial constraints are also co-constructed and intimately connected with the participants’ agency, since both children and teachers are actively ‘doing time’ and ‘creating space’ within the dominant structure of ‘being on the move’.     

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.     

The economic impact of aviation: A review on the role of market access

In recent decades, advancements in telecommunications and (air) transportation have driven globalisation processes. Consequently, policymakers and scholars view access to transportation as an essential prerequisite for economic development. For aviation, existing empirical studies have attempted to estimate the wider economic impacts from regional, country-level and global perspectives. However, no theoretical framework has yet been presented that comprehensively captures the full set of mechanisms by which aviation can contribute to economic development. Such a framework would cover both positive and negative regional impacts, as well as the mechanisms and spatial distribution behind them. In this paper, we use a New Economic Geography approach to comprehensively describe the impact mechanisms. We then apply this theoretical framework to an empirical study of metrics of air transport supply, which policymakers and researchers can use to assess how well airports and their surrounding regions are connected by means of the air transport network. The results of our analysis can inform scholars and policymakers on how air transport can shape economic geography and the productivity of economic systems. The results might also provide guidance for future empirical work on the wider economic impacts of air transportation.     

The effect of urban growth on commuting patterns in Christchurch,New Zealand

The rising demand for residential development in the urban fringe of Christchurch, New Zealand, has led to an increase in car use and lengthening journeys, both of which have serious environmental implications. In light of this, the relationship between urban form and transport was investigated in Christchurch through the analysis of journey to work data from 1991 and 2001. Low density suburban areas were found to generate and receive the highest percentages of car trips in both 1991 and 2001. It was also found that the majority of work-trips involved suburb-to-suburb commuting, rather than to the centre of the city. Average trip length did not increase substantially over this period, although increases were apparent in separate modes. Multivariate regression analysis established that the key variable determining modal split and trip length was the distance the residence was located from the central business district. Results were similar when compared to larger cities elsewhere.     

An overview of current research and developments in urban air mobility – Setting the scene for UAM introduction

Recent technological advances provide the means for potentially realizing urban air mobility (UAM) as a passenger transport mode for intra- and inter-urban transport. However, questions regarding regulations, infrastructure requirements, and economic constraints remain to be answered. Therefore, this review aims at giving an overview on different research areas in the emerging topic of UAM. To this end, findings from several fields within the UAM research community were gathered and are presented here to provide a landscape of relevant questions surrounding the implementation of UAM. This overview considers vehicle-related aspects, such as aircraft requirements and aircraft classification for intra- and inter-city passenger transport, and discusses potential hurdles to their introduction. The exploration of challenges includes questions on certification and policy, as well as challenges in the area of traffic management and ground infrastructure requirements. Besides that, literature on operational concepts, possible market structures and the interaction with existing transport systems will be reviewed. The discussion of hurdles will conclude with a summary of current literature on public acceptance of UAM. An overview of methods for modelling and simulation of UAM will wrap up the prior discussion and provide insights on first modelling results.     

Investigating the impact of recession on transportation cost capitalization: a spatial analysis

The unprecedented economic crisis experienced by Greece is fertile ground for research at myriad levels. In this paper, the authors aim to investigate the effects of the crisis on real estate prices by measuring the impact of transportation infrastructure location. For the purposes of this research, on-line real estate data collected in 2011, when the consequences of the crisis were still uncertain, and in 2013, when a significant decline had been observed, are combined.The analysis is based on various spatial statistical methods. In order to identify potential common price patterns, G spatial clustering is first performed. Spatial error models (SEM) are then developed to parameterize the real estate prices. The results show that, overall, purchase prices have been reduced by 18.2% and rents by 15.2%. More specifically, the positive impact of metro station locations (<500 m) has declined 42.5% for purchase prices and 62.5% for rents. Moreover, dwellings located in the Inner Ring are still more expensive than others; however, the impact of the crisis has been reduced by 30.3% for purchases and 50.7% for rents. On the other hand, the negative impact of ISAP station locations (<500 m) has declined by 53.5% for purchase prices.The findings of this paper could be of great interest to the transportation policy research community and could be used to better predict the benefits and costs of public transport investment under extremely uncertain conditions, such as a long-lasting recession.     

Accessibility modelling: predicting the impact of planned transport infrastructure on accessibility patterns in Edinburgh,UK

The achievement of good spatial accessibility and equity in the distribution of urban services is one of the supreme goals for urban planners. With Scottish Government backing, the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) has started to construct a tram network to cater for the future needs of Scotland’s capital city by providing an integrated transport solution using trams and buses. Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Accessibility (SNAPTA) which is a GIS-based accessibility model has been developed to measure the accessibility by public transport to different urban services and activities. The model responds to several limitations in other existing accessibility models in planning practice. It offers an alternative and practical tool to help planners and decision makers in examining the strengths and weaknesses of land use – transport integration. SNAPTA has been applied to a pilot study in Edinburgh city to identify the contribution of the infrastructure improvements of the tram system and Edinburgh South Suburban Railway (ESSR) to improved accessibility by public transport to six types of activity opportunities. This paper outlines the concept and methodology of the SNAPTA model, and presents the findings related to this pilot study with a focus on changes in potential accessibility to jobs between four different public transport network scenarios. The accessibility values so obtained help to identify the gaps in the coverage of the public transport network and the efficiency in the spatial distribution of urban services and activities. The findings focus on whether the planned transport infrastructures for Edinburgh will lead to better accessibility and reduced inequity (in terms of accessibility) across the city.     

The spatial impact of EU Pan-European transport axes: City clusters formation in the Balkan area and developmental perspectives

This article explores the spatial and development implications of the Pan-European Transport Axes in the Balkans. For that purpose, the potential Development Poles and Axes are determined, on the basis of size, the location of cities, their interconnection and their role as hubs of the Pan-European axes. This is achieved by means of the formation and implementation of a methodology based on the use of special statistical applications. According to data analysis, three geographical units arise: Central Core, Peripheral Zone, Perimetric Zones. In the analysis that follows, Advantages, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are examined in each case and suggestions are made as regards the policies required.     

The effect of economic restrictions on transport practices in Cuba

Like many developing nations, Cuba has undergone—and continues to undergo—a revolution in the way its society lives, works and accesses mobility. However, unlike other developing nations, Cuba is unique in that it has faced enormous pressures for the past forty years due to an economic blockade by its erstwhile dominant trading partner, the United States. Furthermore, this economic pressure was exacerbated in the early 1990s with the political and economic collapse of the Former Soviet Union, and the Eastern European Socialist countries, which had replaced the United States as Cuba's principal trading partners. These events have led to a transformation in how goods and people are moved, not least because of a huge reduction in the amount of hard currency available to pay for fuel, vehicles and spare parts. This resulted in a number of innovative behavioural and technological outcomes.Cuba thus provides an enhanced example of how physical, economic and social factors influence the development of transport systems. This unusually severe situation contains lessons for other countries seeking to develop more sustainable transport systems. In particular, the case graphically illustrates the link between economic and transport growth. The paper will outline the development of transport practices in Cuba thus far, look at the options available for the future and draw conclusions on what other countries can learn from the Cuban experience.     

Transport biofuels in the European Union: The state of play

The implementation of the Biofuels Directive (2003/30/EC) in 25 member states is assessed here. Implementation problems are identified and analysed for the purpose of suggesting a way forward for biofuels policy in the European Union. Three main patterns are observed: effective implementation, formal compliance and weak implementation. Problems encountered in the policy process are both of a practical and more fundamental nature, i.e., due to a lack of consensus on the priority of competing policy objectives and disagreement on the suitability of first-generation biofuels for reaching the objectives. In this situation, stronger enforcement of targets does not appear to be a constructive way forward. Based on our analysis, we argue that the European Union should instead, and in agreement with the principle of subsidiarity, allow member states more flexibility.     

The link between urban development and the modal split in commuting: the case of Biscay

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the links between different land use patterns and the modal split in commuting. The analysis is conducted at municipal level, based on data on land use and mobility characteristics of the de-urbanisation process in Biscay, a small European province, from 1991 to 2001. The links are assessed by means of multiple regression analysis, in which specific techniques of spatial econometrics are applied in order to avoid biased results and unreliable inferences due to spatial dependence. The findings reveal, at municipal level, the importance of gross population density, geographic concentration of the population and, to a lesser extent, the ratio of jobs to residents in explaining the modal split in commuting, and the influence of access to public transport. It is also shown that public transport services have spillover effects that extend beyond the limits of the municipality and encourage use in adjacent areas.