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Cross-Border Cargo Transport to and From Norway: Who Undertakes It, and At What Cost?
No full textWallengren, H., & Ottosson, M. (Eds.) (2019). Truckers: A profession in change. (Skrifter från Centrum för arbetarhistoria; Vol. 10). Centrum för Arbetarhistoria.acceptedVersio
How Regional Authorities Act Under Restricted Decentralization: Evidence from the Norwegian Transport Sector
Get PDFThe literature on decentralization points out that there is a tendency to limit discretion at the local level by, for example, imposing national standards. It is therefore of interest to understand how sub-national authorities act under conditions of political decentralization, which is not followed by a similar delegation of administrative competence. Are subnational authorities able to make policy changes or do they simply follow the same path as the central state authorities prior to decentralization? Drawing on insights from organisational perspectives, it might be expected that the shift of organisational locus affects policy change. Based on qualitative data, we explore the Norwegian Reform of Government Administration, which transferred the bulk of the national road network to the regional level in 2010. This was a political decentralization reform. The sub-national authorities continued to rely on the national road agency’s competence. Although standards, the professional community in the road agency and limited financial resources hampered the effect of the reform, we find that the regional authorities were able to influence the focus of the road agency towards a more sustainable and holistic regional perspective.publishedVersio
Adapting Accountability and Emerging Challenges: Contracting-out in the Transport Sector in Switzerland, Norway and Sweden
Get PDFGovernment reforms such as contracting-out continue to influence public service provision within infrastructure sectors. Contracting-out involves a detachment of the operators from political decision-making and the creation of intermediary procurement agencies. These reforms therefore tend to require an adaptation of how accountability is implemented. Previously, elected officials delegated their democratic authority (vested in them through public votes) to the public administration and thus more or less controlled service delivery. We address how accountability has been adapted in the context of contracting-out and the challenges that have emerged. We are primarily interested in assessing the ability of the political body to maintain control and the relationship between private service providers, citizens and customers. Using a multiple case study design, we select cases from the public transport sectors at the regional level in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland that represent different contracting-out models. We find that with increasing degrees of autonomy from the state (the two Nordic cases) there are both more adaptations to accountability and also more challenges emerge than the model with direct political control (the Swiss case). The central challenges arise between political- administrative and agency accountability with the involvement of a procurement agency. This has led to reforms to re-integrate the intermediary procurement agencies back into the country administration.publishedVersio
Gender differences in accident risk with e-bikes—Survey data from Norway
Get PDFE-bikes are becoming increasingly popular, and are given an important role in the green mobility of the future. However, some have raised concerns that the increased speed and the increased weight of the e-bike can lead to more accidents among cyclists riding an e-bike, as compared to conventional bicycles. Furthermore, it has been suggested that e-bikes may appeal to new groups of cyclists with little cycling experience, which may further impede cyclist safety. Previous research has not provided a clear picture. We investigate these questions with data from three surveys carried out in Norway (N=7752). A logistic regression analysis comparing conventional and electric bicycles, controlling for age gender and exposure, shows an overall risk increase (all accidents) for e-bike users. The results suggest that this increased risk derives from females having a higher accident risk on e-bikes. For men there is no risk difference between e-bikes and conventional bikes. Some, but not all, of this elevated risk can be attributed to being unfamiliar with the bicycle. E-bikes are not more likely to cause serious accidents than conventional bicycles. In-depth analysis of accident causation showed that there was no difference in the factors leading to accidents, except that there was a somewhat higher prevalence of accidents resulting from balance problems with e-bikes.publishedVersio
Environmental efficiency measurement with heterogeneous input quality: A nonparametric analysis of U.S. power plants
No full textWhile there is an abundant theoretical and empirical literature on environmental efficiency measurement, the impacts of heterogeneous input quality on environmental efficiency remain unexplored. Failing to control for this heterogeneity may lead to performance measurement errors, i.e., fuel quality differences are confused with technical inefficiency. In this paper, we account for this problem by proposing a Materials Balance production model that accommodates heterogeneous material flow coefficients and thereby allows for heterogeneity in input quality. Based on this model, a decomposition of environmental efficiency is proposed which disentangles the contributions of fuel quality differences and technical inefficiency. We implement our approach using nonparametric methods to evaluate and decompose environmental efficiencies using panel data on U.S. coal-fired power plants. Our results show that most of the potential to improve environmental efficiency is due to fuel quality differences and that environmental regulations have had an adverse impact on fuel quality.acceptedVersio
Maritime safety culture and safety behaviours in Greece and Norway: Comparing professional seafarers and private leisure boat users
Get PDFThe present study compares professional seafarers and private leisure boat users in Norway and Greece. The aims of the present study are to examine the safety behaviours related to personal injuries and accidents among these groups and to study the factors influencing these behaviours. This will serve as a backdrop to a general discussion of why the level of fatalities is higher among private boat users than among professional seafarers and what the former may learn from the latter. The study is based on surveys to crew members on Norwegian and Greek cargo and passenger vessels and leisure boat users in Norway and Greece. Our study indicates that while unsafe behaviours related to work pressure and risk taking are important among professional seafarers (i.e. risk acceptance and violations), unsafe behaviours related to the leisure/holiday situation was important for the leisure boat users (i.e. alcohol use while driving a boat). Additionally, we discuss how the situation of private leisure boat users is less regulated than that of professional seafarers. Our study indicates that both in the professional and the private setting, norms for interaction and conduct seem to be influenced by norms and expectations rooted in different socio-cultural groups, e.g. the national culture, the specific sector in question, the organisations and in peer groups.publishedVersio
Causality, not just correlation: Residential location, transport rationales and travel behavior across metropolitan contexts
Get PDFThe literature on relationships between the built environment and travel is extensive, but the vast majority of such studies relies solely on statistical analyses of travel survey data, with limited possibilities for establishing causality. This article presents insights from in-depth qualitative research, offering stronger evidence of causal influences than in mainstream studies on the built environment and travel. Analyzing 33 qualitative interviews, the paper explains causal mechanisms underlying observed differences between inner-city and suburban residents’ travel behavior in the Norwegian metropolitan areas of Oslo and Stavanger and in several earlier studies. We argue that built environment characteristics influence travel through their interplay with inhabitants’ rationales for location of activities and travel mode choice. The interviewees’ main rationales for activity locations, choosing the best facility and minimizing the friction of distance, are often traded off against each other. Inner-city residents can still be selective about the quality of the facility without needing to travel a long distance, since many potential facilities are often available within short distance from the dwelling. For suburbanites, choosing the best facility more often requires acceptance of longer travel distances. This is still context-dependent, depending on the center structure of the city. The interviewees’ rationales for travel mode choice are, together with time-geographical constraints, an important part of the explanation why suburbanites tend to travel much more frequently by car than inner-city residents do. Those who need to overcome long distances to reach daily destinations need fast means of transportation, and therefore consider themselves more car-dependent. The similarity of the transport rationales found in this study with rationales identified in other studies in different city contexts suggests a high degree of generality in the basic mechanisms through which urban form influences travel behavior.Causality, not just correlation: Residential location, transport rationales and travel behavior across metropolitan contextsacceptedVersio
How to road price in a world with electric vehicles and government budget constraints
Get PDFIn this paper we examine what characterizes second-best road prices targeting external costs from driving electric (EV) and conventional (ICEV) vehicles when there are distortionary labor taxes and binding government budget constraints. Further, we examine how this second-best pricing fits with government set goals of reducing CO2 emissions. The paper further develops an analytical framework for assessing first- and second-best road prices on vehicle kilometers, extending it to include EVs and externalities that vary geographically and by time of day. We find that optimal road prices largely vary with external cost, but are also significantly affected by the interactions with the rest of the fiscal system. Not surprisingly, the highest road prices should be for ICEVs in large cities during peak hours due to high external costs. More surprisingly, we find that the road price for ICEVs in rural areas should be lower than that for EVs due to large fiscal interaction effects. These road prices give large welfare gains, but they lead to no reduction in carbon emissions when applying the currently recommended social cost of carbon.acceptedVersio
20 years of competitive tendering in the Norwegian bus industry – An analysis of bidders and winning bids
Get PDFOur paper investigates the developments in the Norwegian bus industry following the ramp-up of competitive tendering since the early 2000s. We analyse a complete dataset of all 232 local bus contracts awarded through competitive tendering in Norway since 1995. We also utilize the Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises (CRE) for structural developments in the bus industry.
We first present some overall tendencies, including developments in number of bids per tender, contract size and cost developments. We use the cost implied by the winning bid as our cost indicator. The average cost per kilometre in the winning bid has increased substantially more than the general rate of inflation. At the same time, the average number of bidders per contract has fallen. Second, we build regression models to identify key drivers of cost developments in the bids. Contract sizes, in terms of vehicle-kilometres are found on average to be on the low side and an increase would reduce unit prices. We find as expected a significant effect of the number of bidders on unit prices. This leads us to a further investigation of factors explaining the number of bids per tender. We find that larger contracts tend to attract more bids, as do repeated tenders in the same area.submittedVersio
Exploring how politicians reflect on counteracting measures: the case of the Trondheim package
Get PDFTransitioning towards a low-emission society is a goal of numerous international and national political and administrative levels. This includes reducing impacts of road transport. While aiming for a transition towards more sustainable mobility, it is particularly striking that road capacity expansion is presently under planning or implementation in most main cities in Norway. Against this backdrop, we decided to study Trondheim’s Environmental Transport Package because this has a strong environmental profile with main objectives of reducing CO2 emissions and limiting car traffic, while at the same time increasing road capacity. Our exploration of how political decision-makers reflect on including road capacity expansion in a plan aimed at reducing traffic volume is only a first step towards finding out how an apparent disconnect between stated objectives and policy measures is reconciled. This might provide opportunities for better understanding and influencing politicians’ framing and actions early on, before measures are included that counteract the transition towards more sustainable mobility. We believe our explorative study reveals how motivated political decision-makers reason when faced with conflicting goals and contradictions, and, may contribute to a better understanding of what hinders transition in similar processes in other cities in Norway and abroad.acceptedVersio