Maximizing Ferries in New York City's Emergency Management Planning

In addition to providing fast, efficient, and enjoyable public transportation under normal circumstances, ferries have consistently proven to be the most resilient mode of transit during and after emergencies. Lacking reliance on either a fixed route or the electrical grid, ferries have historically been deployed for speedy evacuations from no-notice emergency situations. Moreover, ferries are typically the first mode of transportation to resume service during prolonged transit outages, relieving New Yorkers -- particularly in communities lacking bus and subway access -- from an extended transit paralysis.In spite of ferries' utility in emergency management, they are presently underutilized in New York's waterways. This paper is a call to action to policymakers and city officials to redefine ferries as critical emergency management assets. In doing so, the City will not only be equipped for a robust, interconnected ferry transit network, but it will also be prepared to facilitate effective waterborne evacuation and transit recovery. This paper makes eight key recommendations for maximizing the role of ferries in citywide emergency preparedness:1. Increase capacity for waterborne evacuation by expanding inter-borough ferry service.2. Provide ferry crews with emergency personnel identification.3. Prioritize reimbursements to ferry operators when allocating federal and state emergency relief funds.4. Fully integrate ferries with mass transit to facilitate seamless regional mobility.5. Coordinate all regional ferry infrastructures -- including all boats and landings -- as one unified system of emergency management.6. Develop coastal design standards to equip New York's shoreline for emergency response.7. Establish a Department of the Waterfront -- a new city agency -- and house a Waterfront Emergency Management division within it to coordinate long-term planning and preparedness efforts.8. Considering ferries as essential emergency management assets, apply for government emergency preparedness and recovery grants for coastal retrofitting and additional tie-up sites

No Road, No Rage: A Forum on Expanding Bay Area Ferry Service, MTI Report F-02-01

As part of the Mineta Transportation Institute\u27s ongoing efforts to promote dialogue addressing surface transportation issues, it is my pleasure to share this edited transcript of No Road, No Rage: A Forum on Expanding Bay Area Ferry Service . As the title suggests, expanding water transit services has been proposed as one way to ease congestion on the roads. The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority is seeking to expand ferry service for the Bay Area, and this forum offered an opportunity for interested citizens to hear more about the proposal, ask questions, and share their concerns and hopes. This event was the result of many people\u27s efforts, and I thank all those individuals and organizations referenced in the Acknowledgements section. I especially want to thank George Dobbins, Program Director of The Commonwealth Club, for working with MTI to sponsor this event; Senator Don Perata for being a leader in the legislature on this issue and also for being our keynote speaker; Tom Vacar for taking the time to be our moderator; and our panelists, Steve Kinsey, Russell Long, Cynthia Murray, and Gavin Newsom. The Mineta Transportation Institute has three primary functions: research, education, and information transfer. It is in this last role that we organized and presented this discussion. We hope that this edited transcript will contribute to an understanding of the issues and possible solutions, not only for those in our community, but also for anyone considering water transit issues

Enhancing AIS to Improve Whale-Ship Collision Avoidance and Maritime Security

Whale-ship strikes are of growing worldwide concern due to the steady growth of commercial shipping. Improving the current situation involves the creation of a communication capability allowing whale position information to be estimated and exchanged among vessels and other observation assets. An early example of such a system has been implemented for the shipping lane approaches to the harbor of Boston, Massachusetts where ship traffic transits areas of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary frequently used by whales. It uses the Automated Identification Systems (AIS) technology, currently required for larger vessels but becoming more common in all classes of vessels. However, we believe the default mode of AIS operation will be inadequate to meet the long-term needs of whale-ship collision avoidance, and will likewise fall short of meeting other current and future marine safety and security communication needs. This paper explores the emerging safety and security needs for vessel communications, and considers the consequences of a communication framework supporting asynchronous messaging that can be used to enhance the basic AIS capability. The options we analyze can be pursued within the AIS standardization process, or independently developed with attention to compatibility with existing AIS systems. Examples are discussed for minimizing ship interactions with Humpback Whales and endangered North Atlantic Right Whales on the east coast, and North Pacific Right Whales, Bowhead Whales, Humpback Whales, Blue Whales and Beluga Whales in west coast, Alaskan and Hawaiian waters

Escape of the German Army Across the Westerscheldt, September 1944

The writing of this article was made possible by Mr. K. Schacht (Steinkirchen), former officer of the Bundesmarine, who gave me the unpublished script of Mr. F. Roher. Mr. Roher belonged to the Kriegsmarine and took part in operations in the Dutch waters in 1944. He put together a captivating document. Some additional research had to be done to put it in a clear and complete perspective. The fact that a specially formed unit of the Kriegsmarine was able, in 15 days, to ferry across the Westerscheldt 100,000 men, 6,000 vehicles, 6,000 horse-drawn wagons and 750 pieces of artillery, undoubtedly lengthened the war and the occupation of a large part of the Netherlands. The evacuation across the Wester-Scheldt surely can be found in literature. The role of the Kriegsmarine, however, forms a forgotten chapter, even more so because the event was overshadowed by the long battle for the mouth of the Scheldt. Now, 50 years after the event, through examination of the facts gathered by Mr. Roher, we will have to admit this was a remarkable logistical operation that was perfectly executed under the most difficult conditions

Engineering psychology: Contribution to system safety

There has been a growing interest in the area of engineering psychology. This article considers some of the major accidents which have occurred in recent years, and the contribution which engineering psychology makes to designing systems and enhancing safety. Accidents are usually multi-causal, and the resident pathogens in the design and operation of human-machine systems can lead to devastating consequences not only for the workers themselves but also for people in the surrounding communities. Specifically, in each of the accidents discussed, operators were unaware of the seriousness of the system malfunctions because warning displays were poorly designed or located, and operators had not been sufficiently trained in dealing with these emergency situations. Since the 1940s machines and equipment have become more complex in nearly every industry. This, coupled with the continuing need to produce effective and safe systems, has resulted in psychology professionals being called to assist in designing even more efficient operating systems. In earlier times, a worker who made a mistake might spoil a piece of work or waste some time. Today, however, a worker's erroneous action can lead to dire consequences

Mobility: a double-edged sword for HSPA networks

This paper presents an empirical study on the performance of mobile High Speed Packet Access (HSPA, a 3.5G cellular standard) networks in Hong Kong via extensive field tests. Our study, from the viewpoint of end users, covers virtually all possible mobile scenarios in urban areas, including subways, trains, off-shore ferries and city buses. We have confirmed that mobility has largely negative impacts on the performance of HSPA networks, as fast-changing wireless environment causes serious service deterioration or even interruption. Meanwhile our field experiment results have shown unexpected new findings and thereby exposed new features of the mobile HSPA networks, which contradict commonly held views. We surprisingly find out that mobility can improve fairness of bandwidth sharing among users and traffic flows. Also the triggering and final results of handoffs in mobile HSPA networks are unpredictable and often inappropriate, thus calling for fast reacting fallover mechanisms. We have conducted in-depth research to furnish detailed analysis and explanations to what we have observed. We conclude that mobility is a double-edged sword for HSPA networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first public report on a large scale empirical study on the performance of commercial mobile HSPA networks

European Railway Comparisons – Company Profiles

This work was undertaken as part of a project sponsored by the British Railways Board entitled `European Railway Comparisons'. The aims of this project are as follows: (i)To compare the current efficiency of European railway operators and examine recent trends at both aggregate and disaggregate levels. (ii)To assess the effects of economies of scale and economies of density on European rail operations. (iii)To make an exploratory assessment of the potential for further disaggregation by market type (InterCity, Commuter, Freight) in order to make detailed comparisons of market shares. The main methods employed to carry out this study are as follows: (i)A review of the literature on railway cost and productivity analysis. Preliminary findings are given in Working Paper 354 and a paper presented to the World Conference on Transport Research (Nash, C.A. and Preston, J.M. (1992) "Assessing the Performance of European Railways"). (ii)Collation of published data for 13 European State Railway Operators. (iii)Face to face interviews with managers at the 13 State Railway companies in order to check our understanding of published data sources, gain more infomation at a disaggregate level (administered by a self completion questionnaire) and obtain an understanding of the institutional background. This report summarises some of the background information that was obtained from the interviews undertaken in the summer of 1992. A company profile is developed for each operator under four main headings: Objectives and Management, Finance, the Freight Market and the Passenger Market

Ex post analysis of the regional impacts of major infrastructure: the Channel Tunnel 10 years on.

The regional impact of transport infrastructure investment has achieved considerable attention across Europe in recent years. The construction of major bridges and tunnels to overcome natural barriers and the development of the trans-European networks has led to large volumes of research on the likely economic impacts of such investment on neighbouring regions. Most of these studies are ex ante studies undertaken as part of the decision process into the investment, either on the part of the project promoter or the affected regions. At the same time there has been a continuation of interest in the broader question of the wider economic benefits arising from transport improvements at a more aggregate level; whether and under what circumstances such benefits do arise, and if so how they can be incorporated in any evaluation. As a recent study by Flyvbjerg et al (2003) has shown, the claims made for the returns on major projects have tended to be exaggerated, both in terms of underestimates of likely costs and overestimates of potential direct traffic benefits. This paper provides a relatively rare example of an ex post study of what impacts one of the major recent infrastructure projects has had on the local and regional economy by looking at the experience of the Channel Tunnel after its first ten years of operation. The paper reviews the methodological issues in carrying out an ex post study and assembles evidence related to traffic, labour market, investment and development impacts compared to the ex ante expectations. The main methodological issue is in establishing the counter-factual position of how the regional economy would have developed in the absence of the tunnel. A substantial volume of traffic would have continued to have passed through the region’s ports using the ferries which would have required continuing investment over this period. This has been a period also in which major changes have occurred in the EU economy with the move to completion of a Single Market. Many of the driving forces of the regional economy come from the adjacent London metropolitan region. The approach adopted has been to examine trends in the regional economy relative to those in the wider regional and national economies in both the UK and France. There are two basic questions: to what extent would traffic have continued to grow at the rate experienced in the absence of the tunnel infrastructure; and has tunnel related traffic had a differential impact on the local economy from a similar volume of ferry traffic? The paper examines in detail the volume and structure of traffic and compares these with ex ante traffic forecasts; trends in the local labour markets in terms of the growth of job opportunities, occupational structure and the evolution of unemployment; investment (including foreign investment) in the regional economy; and the development and execution of plans for physical development in the region. The paper concludes that although much has changed in the region following the completion of the tunnel, it is difficult to identify a significant difference in the aggregate performance relative to the wider regional and national experiences. Essentially, the improvement of transport infrastructure has enabled the regions to be more integrated into their wider regions and experience a similar economic performance, but whether this has led to a better performance is more difficult to determine.