Supporting policy packages: the future of road pricing in the UK

Transport is already a large component of our economy and society. Historically, transport programmes were substantially about developing basic infrastructure networks. Now the emphasis is on the active management of systems and operating them to maximum advantage in the face of growing travel demand and capacity limitations. Combined developments in technology and the world economy have accelerated change to almost unpredictable levels. The change affects many areas and transport is not an exception. With new vehicle technologies, radical policies and the persistent growth in private and commercial vehicles, a new changing transport landscape is emerging. One of these changes comes in the form of sustainable transport management - managing the demand of existing infrastructure networks. The role of demand management has been illustrated in many reports and papers and it seems that governments are becoming more aware of it. This paper focuses on one particular demand management policy that is often regarded as radical and generally unacceptable. Road pricing often gets delayed or abandoned due to controversy, disagreements, unanticipated problems and a whole host of other delaying factors. There are complex interactions in transport management - there is a need for cooperation between networks, stakeholders and different authorities. Single measures that focus on 'sustainable transport' usually address a limited set of objectives and are not usually combined with other policy measures. When combined, it is sometimes unclear whether the multiple interactions between policy tools and implementation networks have been considered. An emerging case of implementation of a policy package in the UK is the support of road pricing initiatives combined with public transport improvements by the Transport Innovation Fund. The paper will present a review of the UK road pricing situation along with key implementation factors that show firstly the importance of combining policy tools and secondly the necessity in creating and maintaining strong implementation networks

Child development and the aims of road safety education

Pedestrian accidents are one of the most prominent causes of premature injury, handicap and death in the modern world. In children, the problem is so severe that pedestrian accidents are widely regarded as the most serious of all health risks facing children in developed countries. Not surprisingly, educational measures have long been advocated as a means of teaching children how to cope with traffic and substantial resources have been devoted to their development and provision. Unfortunately, there seems to be a widespread view at the present time that education has not achieved as much as had been hoped and that there may even be quite strict limits to what can be achieved through education. This would, of course, shift the emphasis away from education altogether towards engineering or urban planning measures aimed at creating an intrinsically safer environment in which the need for education might be reduced or even eliminated. However, whilst engineering measures undoubtedly have a major role to play in the effort to reduce accidents, this outlook is both overly optimistic about the benefits of engineering and overly pessimistic about the limitations of education. At the same time, a fresh analysis is clearly required both of the aims and methods of contemporary road safety education. The present report is designed to provide such an analysis and to establish a framework within which further debate and research can take place

Reflecting the real world?: How British TV portrayed developing countries in 2005

TV audiences are fed up with how the developing world is portrayed on the small screen, according to a new VSO report published today. Reflecting the real world? How British TV portrayed developing countries in 2005 reveals that television viewers have an overwhelmingly negative view of the developing world and that they hold TV responsible. The report shows that viewers have a real appetite for richer representations of the world outside the UK and calls on broadcasters to invest more money, creativity and talent in bringing the world to UK audiences. The report is based on interviews with TV viewers and leading broadcasters. It shows that despite the high level of developing world coverage on TV over the last year, there has been no sign of a positive shift in public attitude. TV viewers associated the developing world with famine, disaster and corruption and people's initial image was very often of starving babies with flies around their eyes. The research highlights that news coverage and charity campaigns have also contributed to a feeling that the developing world is a hopeless cause. News reporting of the Asian Tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake brought people's attention to poorer countries but reinforced a doom-laden view of them. Even the Make Poverty History campaign and the Live 8 concerts, which enthused millions of people, appear to have inadvertently contrived to confirm a stereotype of Africa as a continent on its knees and added to a sense that nothing has changed over the last 20 years. The research uncovered a very strong sentiment that TV coverage of developing countries is too negative. Viewers expressed a desire to see the positive side of life in the developing world and hear about any progress being made. Crucially, they wanted TV programmes that were positive and transforming, challenged their perceptions, and contained human interest stories, real-life issues and characters they can relate to. Their ideas for new developing world programming tended to reflect their favourite genres and included Jamie's African School Dinners, Life Swap, African Grand Designs, Spooks or 24 in Africa and Africa's Next Top Model

Big data analytics:Computational intelligence techniques and application areas

Big Data has significant impact in developing functional smart cities and supporting modern societies. In this paper, we investigate the importance of Big Data in modern life and economy, and discuss challenges arising from Big Data utilization. Different computational intelligence techniques have been considered as tools for Big Data analytics. We also explore the powerful combination of Big Data and Computational Intelligence (CI) and identify a number of areas, where novel applications in real world smart city problems can be developed by utilizing these powerful tools and techniques. We present a case study for intelligent transportation in the context of a smart city, and a novel data modelling methodology based on a biologically inspired universal generative modelling approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). We further discuss various implications of policy, protection, valuation and commercialization related to Big Data, its applications and deployment

Exploring strategic approaches towards a sustainable transport system

This paper undertakes a ‘backcasting’ analysis exploring strategic approaches for overalsystems sustainability in personal transport. Starting from a robust definition of sustainability for the personal transport sector, the research examines the impact of combinations of transport technologies and changes in travel behaviour in reducing CO2 emissions towards a sustainable level. In doing this a simple equation model is used. This is purposely simple to provide a tool developing understanding by anyone exploring transport’s sustainability challenges. It is concluded that technical measures in isolation are likely to be ineffective and politically problematic. Equally, even substantial modal shift from car to public transport cannot on its own attain the sustainability target. A combined strategy of both technical improvements and demand management addressing trip length, trip generation and modal share can deliver the necessary improvement, although the implementation of such a package remains politically challenging