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Analysis of the environmental impacts of unloading bays based on cellular automata simulation
No full textStanisław Iwan, Kinga Kijewska, Bjørn Gjerde Johansen, Olav Eidhammer, Krzysztof Małecki, Wojciech Konicki, Russell G. Thompson, Analysis of the environmental impacts of unloading bays based on cellular automata simulation, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, Volume 61, Part A, 2018, Pages 104-117, ISSN 1361-9209, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2017.03.020.Urban freight transport contributes to a number of environmental problems, such as poor air quality, noise and greenhouse gas emissions. Analysing the impact of UFT measures is particularly important, since improving the situation for freight deliveries more often than not will be at the expense of the citizens. Unloading bays are one of the most popular and simple solutions to implement to support the development of a sustainable urban freight transport system. This measure is aimed at reducing the congestion in busy city streets, which is often caused by delivery vehicles parking directly on traffic lanes to perform their (un)loading operations. The analysis, presented in this paper, is aimed at emphasising the advantages of unloading bays for the public, and thus enhancing the arguments in favour of popularisation of unloading bays. We simulate the traffic in areas of Szczecin and Oslo, and compare the situation without unloading bays to the situation with unloading bays. This is used to predict the benefits of unloading bays in terms of traffic flow and emissions. The basis of the analysis is utilization of a scenario-based approach and cellular automata simulation.Analysis of the environmental impacts of unloading bays based on cellular automata simulationacceptedVersio
Environmental regulations and allocative efficiency: application to coal-to-gas substitution in the U.S. electricity sector
Get PDFThe environmental economics literature has for a long time been occupied with the relationships between environmental regulations, technical efficiency, and productivity growth. This paper extends this discussion by taking up environmental regulations’ implications for allocative efficiency. It establishes a model framework that allows disentangling managerial and regulatory induced allocative efficiencies, and utilizes Data Envelopment Analysis to a sample of 67 coal-to-gas substituting power plants observed from 2002 to 2008 to calculate Nerlovian profit efficiencies and their technical and allocative efficiency components. The empirical results illustrate that failing to control for environmental regulations leads to overestimation of managerial allocative efficiencies by ignoring compliance costs. Marginal abatement cost estimates that are in line with allowance prices for NOx and SO2 are further obtained.acceptedVersio
Can evolutionary theory explain the slow development of knowledge about the level of safety built into roads?
Get PDFIn several papers, Hauer (1988, 1989, 2000a, 2000b, 2016) has argued that the level of safety built into roads is unpremeditated, i.e. not the result of decisions based on knowledge of the safety impacts of design standards. Hauer has pointed out that the development of knowledge about the level of safety built into roads has been slow and remains incomplete even today. Based on these observations, this paper asks whether evolutionary theory can contribute to explaining the slow development of knowledge. A key proposition of evolutionary theory is that knowledge is discovered through a process of learning-by-doing; it is not necessarily produced intentionally by means of research or development. An unintentional discovery of knowledge is treacherous as far as road safety is concerned, since an apparently effective safety treatment may simply be the result of regression-to-the-mean. The importance of regression-to-the-mean was not fully understood until about 1980, and a substantial part of what was regarded as known at that time may have been based on studies not controlling for regression-to-the-mean. An attempt to provide an axiomatic foundation for designing a safe road system was made by Gunnarsson and Lindström (1970). This had the ambition of providing universal guidelines that would facilitate a preventive approach, rather than the reactive approach based on accident history (i.e. designing a system known to be safe, rather than reacting to events in a system of unknown safety). Three facts are notable about these principles. First, they are stated in very general terms and do not address many of the details of road design or traffic control. Second, they are not based on experience showing their effectiveness. Third, they are partial and do not address the interaction between elements of the road traffic system, in particular road user adaptation to system design. Another notable fact consistent with evolutionary theory, is that the safety margins built into various design elements have been continuously eroded by the development of bigger and faster motor vehicles, that can only be operated safely if roads are wider and straighter than they needed to be when motor vehicles were smaller and moved slower.submittedVersio
Bilavgiftenes markedskorrigerende rolle
No full textBilavgiftene i statsbudsjettet for 2017 kan antas å medføre en reduksjon i de årlige C02-utslippene fra veitrafikk på minst 185 000 tonn. Utslippene blir dobbeltbeskattet gjennom så vel drivstoffavgifter som engangsavgift på førstegangsregistrerte biler. Dette medfører samfunnsøkonomisk tap. Det politiske interessante spørsmålet er likevel hvilke andre nest-bestløsninger, om noen, som kan gi tilsvarende store klimagevinster til en lavere kostnad. For at samfunnsøkonomene skal bli oppfattet som relevante, må vi være minst like opptatt av hvordan politisk fastsatte mal kan nås, som av hvordan velstand og verdiskaping kan maksimeres. Det er to vesensforskjellige spørsmål.publishedVersio
Household parking facilities: relationship to travel behaviour and car ownership
Get PDFFew studies have investigated how parking requirements (norms) for households and home parking availability influence car ownership and car-use. The common practice of local authorities is to use minimum parking norms for housing, and, in some urban areas, also maximum parking norms. This means that local authorities in general do not aim to influence car-use or car ownership by, for example, restricting the number of parking spaces or locating them some distance away. The objective of this paper is to analyse whether there are systematic differences in car ownership and car-use that can be linked to differences in parking norms, parking facilities and location. This knowledge would be of value to both the research community and authorities.
We use the dataset of the Norwegian National Travel Survey (NTS) 2013 consisting of about 60,000 interviews of individuals 13 years and older. A sample of over 2,000 urban dwellers was selected from this NTS for an additional in-depth parking survey. We asked detailed questions about home parking. The NTS 2013 and parking survey were merged and travel habits and background variables linked with detailed information about home parking availability. This provided an excellent opportunity to analyse how variations in parking facilities influence travel behaviour and car ownership.
Our data show that access to private or reserved parking triples the likelihood of car ownership. Trip frequency does not change with car ownership or access to home parking, but it does affect mode share. The longer the distance between home and the actual location of home parking the more reduced the car modal share. People are on average willing to accept more than 100 m between home and home parking. Physical separation of the two would therefore facilitate more efficient housing and less car driving. Free street parking may jeopardise this, however.publishedVersio
Which D’s are the important ones? The effects of built environment characteristics on driving distance in Oslo and Stavanger
Get PDFBased on a study in the Greater Oslo and Greater Stavanger urban areas in Norway, this paper employs quantitative and qualitative research methods to investigate the influences of residential location and neighborhood characteristics on car driving distances. Cross-sectional and quasi-longitudinal analyses show that built environment characteristics – especially the distance from the dwelling to the main city center – influence driving distances in both urban areas. In Stavanger, the impact of inward moving seems to be larger than that of outward moving, possibly reflecting self-selection to the inner city. In the relatively monocentric Greater Oslo, the distance to the city center has a stronger impact on weekday driving than on weekend driving. In the more polycentric Greater Stavanger, where the importance of downtown as a destination for commuting is weaker, the distance to the city center has similar effects on weekday and weekend driving. In Greater Stavanger, distance to the secondary center Sandnes also plays a role although the impact is small. Population density and job density have impacts in Greater Oslo but not in Greater Stavanger, where we instead find a weak effect of local-area job surplus. There is no tendency of ‘compensatory’ increased weekend driving among inner-city dwellers in either Greater Oslo or Greater Stavanger.publishedVersio
Balancing tourism development and nature protection across national park borders - a case study of a coastal protected area in Norway
No full textThe study examines the relationship between nature management and land use planning in order to balance nature protection and tourism development within and outside national park borders. Applying theory about local networks and social learning, we highlight how responsible actors coordinate in order to strike a balance between protection and tourism. Based on this study of a Norwegian coastal national park, we state that competent key individuals are crucial preconditions for fulfilling the management and planning objectives in a wider regional context. In our case study, such personnel within the national park management and municipal land use planning system serve as bridge builders between nature protection and tourism. However, we argue that the existing management system is very vulnerable, and an important implication of our study is that the present local network should be more firmly institutionalized in order to become sufficiently robust and resistant to changes
A synthesis of studies of access point density as a risk factor for road accidents
Get PDFStudies of the relationship between access point density (number of access points, or driveways, per kilometre of road) and accident frequency or rate (number of accidents per unit of exposure) have consistently found that accident rate increases when access point density increases. This paper presents a formal synthesis of the findings of these studies. It was found that the addition of one access point per kilometre of road is associated with an increase of 4% in the expected number of accidents, controlling for traffic volume. Although studies consistently indicate an increase in accident rate as access point density increases, the size of the increase varies substantially between studies. In addition to reviewing studies of access point density as a risk factor, the paper discusses some issues related to formally synthesising regression coefficients by applying the inverse-variance method of meta-analysis.acceptedVersio
Are bilateral conservation policies for the Bialowieza forest unattainable? Analysis of stated preferences of Polish and Belarusian public
Get PDF© 0 2017 Sviataslau Valasiuk, Mikołaj Czajkowski, Marek Giergiczny, Tomasz Żylicz, ... Per AngelstamTransboundary nature protected areas constitute a considerable proportion of all the existing spatial forms of biodiversity protection. One prominent example is the Białowieża Forest, shared by Poland and Belarus. There is a considerable literature on allocation of funds to preserving nature shared by several countries. Some of this literature assess the funding schemes and the impacts on biodiversity within the EU. A particular challenge for the Białowieża Forest is that the larger part of it is outside the EU border. There has been less research on the economic benefits that citizens attach to protected transboundary land nature on the other side of the border. We are trying to fill the gap by finding out and comparing preferences towards increased protection of domestic and foreign segments of the transboundary Białowieża Forest, stated by samples of Polish and Belarusian citizens. The results of a discrete choice experiment show an almost unilateral preference for nature conservation, passive protection of forest land, on the domestic side. Whilst Polish respondents on average are willing to pay for an increased area under protection, on their side of the border, most Belarusians seem to be satisfied with the status quo. Taken at face value, there is even an apparent mutual disutility derived from the perspective of co-financing bilateral passive protection programmes in the Białowieża Forest. By use of latent class analyses of responses, a group of the Polish sample willing to contribute to the transboundary conservation is identified and described, and compared against the non-cooperative groups on both sides of the border. The results can to some extent be explained by a strict border division with a high fence, by differences in welfare or by behavioural reasons. However, it cannot be ruled out that the affected populations simply do not perceive the Białowieża Forest as a binational public good.acceptedVersio
Motivational segments for trips along the high coast byway of Sweden: a study of local leisure excursions and domestic holidaymaking
No full textJacobsen, J. Kr. S., & Antonson, H. (2016). Motivational segments for trips along the high coast byway of Sweden: a study of local leisure excursions and domestic holidaymaking. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 17(2), 177–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/15022250.2015.1133318This on-site study investigated local leisure travellers’ and domestic tourists’ motivations for taking trips along the High Coast of Sweden, a byway designated with brown signage as a national tourism route, responding to a dearth of research on why people are motivated to scenic byway journeying. Non-local leisure travellers at selected locations along the byway were asked to fill in self-completion questionnaires and hand them back to the survey staff. The most emphasised motivations for taking this trip were ”getting away from everyday life”, ”beautiful view from the road”, and ”interesting landscape.” Based on factor analysis, three motivational patterns were identified: 1) sightseeing and outdoor life; 2) getting away and travelling around; 3) a quick route to family and friends. The route attracted a large proportion of local and regional repeaters with ties to the area through family and friends and/or second homes; only 18% were on their first visit. There were considerable motivational differences between those people who were going to a second home in the area and other visitors. Among travellers who did not visit a second home, there were few motivational differences between day-trippers and persons with overnight stay(s), corroborating blurred distinctions between excursionists and tourists. The large proportions of local and regional visitors indicated that extra-regional route promotion may be improved.Motivational segments for trips along the high coast byway of Sweden: a study of local leisure excursions and domestic holidaymakingacceptedVersio