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Fatigue among bus drivers in Ghana and Norway: Examining the influence of working conditions and national road safety culture
Full text linkJenny Blom, Enoch F. Sam, Lars Even Egner, Tor-Olav Nævestad, & Anthony Fiangor, Fatigue among bus drivers in Ghana and Norway: Examining the influence of working conditions and national road safety culture, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 89, 2025, Pages 394-403, ISSN 2352-1465, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2025.05.070.The present study examines factors influencing fatigue among professional drivers in Ghana and Norway, focusing on the role of national road safety culture and work stress/time pressure. The study is based on surveys of Ghanaian (n = 281) and Norwegian (n = 285) bus drivers and qualitative interviews with bus drivers in the two countries (n=19 and n=11). We found that Norwegian bus drivers reported considerably fewer incidents of dozing off or falling asleep during the past three months compared to the Ghanaian bus drivers. Qualitative data indicates that bus drivers’ work situation in Ghana is far less regulated than in Norway, with low regulation and enforcement of bus drivers’ working hours and a higher prevalence of pay based on the number of passengers, which motivates long working hours and speeding. Surprisingly, multivariate analyses of the survey data indicate that neither age, mileage, experience, a national road safety culture with a higher level of aggressive violations, longer working hours, nor having bonus-based wage were statistically significantly associated with increased fatigue when controlling for country. Amongst drivers who are not self-employed, work stress/time pressure and organizational safety culture had a statistically significant impact on fatigue after the respondent’s country was controlled for. Ultimately, country (i.e. Ghana vs Norway) had the most significant influence on the likelihood of drivers falling asleep or dozing off, with Norwegian drivers being considerably less likely to experience this. Surprisingly few other variables were able to explain the difference between the two countries.Fatigue among bus drivers in Ghana and Norway: Examining the influence of working conditions and national road safety culturepublishedVersio
How public authorities might alter their conduct to improve the chances that desired city centre projects in smaller cities are realised: Insights from interviews with developers
No full textTennøy, A.; Hagen, O.H. Improving City Centre Project Delivery in Small Cities: Developer Perspectives on Public Authority Conduct. Buildings 2025, 15, 2578. https://doi.org/10.3390/ buildings15142578Urban development through property development in central parts of cities rather than through sprawl is key to achieving sustainable future cities. However, realising desired projects in complex city centre environments is challenging and risky due to the involvement of numerous actors. This paper offers novel insights into developers’ perspectives on how the conduct of public authorities influences city centre zoning plan processes. Based on interviews with 11 employees of property development firms, working on mixed-use city centre projects ranging from 1100 to 112,000 m2 Gross Floor Area in small and medium-sized Norwegian cities, the study identifies key challenges developers experience in their interactions with public authorities across sectors and administrative levels during planning processes and analyses how these challenges relate to goals, knowledge and power among key actors. The study finds that public authorities can improve the efficiency of zoning plan processes and enhance city centre project delivery by altering their conduct. First, by more explicitly clarifying that the realisation of desired city centre property developments is a primary policy objective, maintaining this focus throughout the processes and taking responsibility for reconciling conflicts in ways that enable feasible projects. Second, by improving their knowledge of the fundamental need for projects to be profitable in order to be realised, and the impact of authorities’ requirements on project viability. Third, by exercising their agenda-setting power more constructively and flexibly throughout the zoning plan process. The paper examines underexplored perspectives in planning research and yields actionable recommendations for planning practice.How public authorities might alter their conduct to improve the chances that desired city centre projects in smaller cities are realised: Insights from interviews with developerspublishedVersio
Knowledge of Local Toll-road Pricing in Oslo
Full text linkEgner, Lars Even, and Nils Fearnley. 2025. “Knowledge of Local Toll-Road Pricing in Oslo.” Findings, January. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.128171.We investigated knowledge of local toll roads among Oslo residents with a valid driver’s license and access to a car through a survey (N = 419; sample: e-scooter users). Knowledge of prices, rules, and rush hour times is limited. Only 0.5-3% of respondents indicate a correct price (±1 NOK) for toll-passings. Correct answers regarding monthly and hourly payment caps are 10% and 17%, respectively. Finally, 4-44% of respondents indicated the correct time when peak hours start or stop.Knowledge of Local Toll-road Pricing in OsloacceptedVersio
A predictive term-spread model in the age of inflation targeting
No full textJostein Tvedt, A predictive term-spread model in the age of inflation targeting, The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Volume 76, 2025, 102364, ISSN 1062-9408, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.najef.2025.102364.The link between the shape of the US government bond yield curve and future economic growth is analysed using a novel real economy endowment model. The model suggests that the predictive power of bond market prices relies on the entire yield curve, i.e., on the long run interest rate level, the short-dated bond yield, the forecast horizon specific term spread and term premiums. A forecast horizon specific, maturity weighted, term spread is suggested as a supplement to extant one-factor term-spread models. The endowment model offers a theoretical basis for the findings of the recent empirical literature, which indicate predictive power of both the slope and curvature of the yield curve. The paper’s empirical section supports the observation that, in recent decades, the slope and curvature are predictors of US economic growth.A predictive term-spread model in the age of inflation targetingpublishedVersio
Mind the Kayak! Informing UX Design of Autonomous Vehicles through Edge Case Testing in the Field
Full text linkOle Andreas Alsos, Mina Saghafian, Erik Veitch, Taufik Akbar Sitompul, Felix Petermann, and Eleftherios Papachristos. 2025. Mind the Kayak! Informing UX Design of Autonomous Vehicles through Edge Case Testing in the Field. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 862, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713318As autonomous vehicles are being deployed in the field for public use, passengers are interacting with traffic in new ways. In recent years, user experience related to risky traffic interactions has been studied using virtual simulations, desktop studies, and surveys—yet field tests have remained out of reach. In this paper, we present results from a field test of an autonomous urban passenger ferry open to public use. Specifically, we investigate two questions: (i) are passengers’ safety perceptions negatively affected by interactions with risky traffic? and (ii) can simulating risky behavior in the field (so-called "adversarial evaluation") present a viable way to study user experience? After repeatedly sending a kayaker on a collision course with the ferry (N = 20 interventions), we sampled naïve passengers about their experiences (intervention group; N = 37) and compared the result to those who experienced a normal crossing (control group, N = 178). The results favored the intervention group, which scored higher in safety perception. However, the latter also reported that there is a need for more feedback about the ferry’s current state and future intentions to avoid surprises both for passengers and for other traffic. As autonomous vehicles are field-tested and deployed, the study reflects a growing need to test user experience in the operational environment. We discuss implications for design, emphasizing the use of external human-machine interfaces (eHMIs) and special considerations for the maritime domain.Mind the Kayak! Informing UX Design of Autonomous Vehicles through Edge Case Testing in the FieldpublishedVersio
High-Quality Public Transport and its Association with House Prices
Full text linkErik Bjørnson Lunke and Lars Böcker (2025). High-Quality Public Transport and its Association with House Prices. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies, 5 (1). 1-13. https://doi.org/10.18261/njus.5.1.1In the context of sustainable mobility transitions in urban areas, there is a concern that low-income households lack access to areas where travel needs can be conducted without a car, for example because of housing affordability issues. This study investigates the association of public transport accessibility with house prices, estimating a hedonic price model with controls for spatial dependencies and temporal variations, using data on all house transactions in the Oslo urban region (Norway) from 2015 to 2020. We find that public transport accessibility contributes to substantial and significantly higher house prices, and that this price association has increased during the study period. Our findings imply that in their transition towards sustainable urban transport, cities should not overlook social sustainability. Mitigating measures include both securing affordable housing in areas where walkability, cyclability and public transport access is present, and investing in sustainable mobility in areas lacking such services.High-Quality Public Transport and its Association with House PricespublishedVersio
What can empirical utility functions tell us about the value of a statistical life?
No full textRune Elvik, What can empirical utility functions tell us about the value of a statistical life?, Research in Transportation Economics, Volume 110, 2025, 101534, ISSN 0739-8859, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.retrec.2025.101534.This paper explores how utility functions for income and health state can be applied in order to develop closed-form estimates of the value of a statistical life based on an assumption of utility maximisation. For utility functions fitted to the results of studies of life satisfaction in Norway, most estimates of the value of a statistical life are quite low, in the range of 2–30 million NOK. These estimates refer to reducing the risk of a traffic fatality, which currently is about 20 per 1 million inhabitants in Norway. These estimates are lower than nearly all estimates developed in a road safety valuation study made in 2010. By combining utility functions for health impairments and utility functions for income, it is possible to estimate the monetary compensation for a health impairment needed to restore the initial level of utility. These estimates can be extrapolated to obtain estimates of the value of a statistical life.What can empirical utility functions tell us about the value of a statistical life?publishedVersio
Developing an intuitive decision support system for equitable vaccine distribution during pandemics
Full text linkBoey, L., Baharmand, H., Phillips, R.O. et al. Developing an intuitive decision support system for equitable vaccine distribution during pandemics. Sci Rep 15, 16339 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-01640-9Effective organization of the vaccine supply chain is vital to achieve high vaccination rates in pandemics. This paper presents a novel approach for developing a decision support system (DSS) to support health officials and policymakers who must make timely and impactful decisions with limited information for distributing vaccines. We combine a stakeholder-informed systems approach for problem definition with a user-centered design approach for DSS development. The methodology has been tested during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used system modeling to capture stakeholders’ knowledge, experience, and learnings from the H1N1 pandemic, leading us to focus on the central vaccine allocation problem (CVAP), which involves determining the number of vaccines allocated to each municipality in an equitable way. We designed a dashboard that embedded a mathematical model as a DSS for in-country CVAP during a pandemic. A Lightning Decision Jam workshop was conducted to define the DSS’s characteristics, with the visualization of scenarios and decision-making transparency being key features during the development process. We validated the DSS with policymakers and built it for the Norwegian context, with flexibility for adaptation to other regions, particularly those still grappling with high vaccine supply deficits. Our approach offers a novel and practical way to develop DSSs to support policymakers making critical decisions during pandemics.Developing an intuitive decision support system for equitable vaccine distribution during pandemicspublishedVersio
Policies on parcel lockers: Multi-level governance networks for urban logistics
Full text linkKnapskog, M., Caspersen, E., Briseid Kraft, I., Herheim, H., & Jensen, S. A. (2025). Policies on parcel lockers: multi-level governance networks for urban logistics. Planning Practice & Research, 40(4), 932–953. https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2025.2504949This paper presents the research results of a case study on how multi-level governance networks, logistics operators’ interests and customer practices influence last-mile deliveries. One of the paper’s main research contributions is how public regulation might steer the use of parcel lockers to contribute to attractive urban environments, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and secure efficient solutions for businesses. The research was motivated by the establishment of a multi-level governance network working for sustainable solutions for last mile deliveries in the Oslo region of Norway. The data were obtained through a literature review, investigations into regulatory tools, semi-structured interviews, and a survey.Policies on parcel lockers: Multi-level governance networks for urban logisticsacceptedVersio
Framework conditions, driving style, and passenger falls among bus drivers in Ghana and Norway
Full text linkJenny Blom, Enoch F. Sam, Lars Even Egner, Tor-Olav Nævestad, Anthony Fiangor, Framework conditions, driving style, and passenger falls among bus drivers in Ghana and Norway, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 89, 2025, Pages 404-413, ISSN 2352-1465, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2025.05.071.Passenger falls in bus transport are the most prevalent source of personal injuries in bus transport in Norway, the EU, and the US. While the prevalence of passenger falls in bus transport has been documented in Norway, the EU, and the US, there is a scarcity of available data on this matter in African countries, including Ghana. Investigating different factors that influence passenger falls is an important first step in beginning to mitigate these injuries. This study investigates whether framework conditions, driving styles, and more, impact how often bus drivers experience passenger falls. For the purposes of this study, a passenger fall is defined as any instance where a bus passenger loses their balance and falls due to vehicle motion (such as sudden braking or acceleration), as well as any fall that occurs while boarding or alighting the bus. The study is based on surveys to Ghanaian (n = 281) and Norwegian (n = 285) bus drivers, and qualitative interviews with bus drivers in the two countries (n=19 and n=11). We found that Norwegian drivers report considerably fewer passenger falls than Ghanaian drivers. Work stress and time pressure, as well as bus driving experience, are the strongest predictors of passenger falls. Driving longer routes is also related to higher reporting of passenger falls. The number of dangerous intersections and stops is also a predictor of passenger falls, but not when stress is accounted for. We find no statistically significant association between a national road safety culture characterized by higher levels of negative driving behavior and traffic violations, and passenger falls. Measures to reduce passenger falls should focus on the underlying causes of driver stress.Framework conditions, driving style, and passenger falls among bus drivers in Ghana and NorwaypublishedVersio