Institutionalized inhibition: examining constraints on climate change policy capacity in the transport departments of Ontario and British Columbia, Canada

This paper examines the interaction between transportation policy and climate change policy in two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario. The concept of policy capacity is used to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of instruments in advancing goals in an area where established policy paradigms may not be congruent with new initiatives. A review of official policy documents and budgetary information on policy-related spending, as well as primary interviews with policy managers in relevant provincial ministries, reveals that overlapping policy goals and instruments may have created a situation of institutionalized policy inhibition, in which conflicting layers of policy goals and instruments constrain the available policy capacity

Setting One’s Sights: Exploring the Dynamics of Goal Selection in Road Safety Policy

Travel by automobile is manifestly the most dangerous activity that most citizens of developed economies routinely engage in, highlighting the value of trying to explain why some governments address this risk quite differently than do others. This article compares the ways in which Canada sets objectives for managing risk on its roads with alternative European and American targets. The manuscript tests the hypothesis that countries selecting concrete policy goals, which identify specific targets in terms of specific numbers of road deaths and injuries, will pursue more ambitious outcomes than countries that adopt goals stated in relation to another reference point, such as the number of vehicle-kilometres traveled, or the incidence of particular behaviour such as impaired driving or seat belt use. Relative policy goals are shown to translate into less ambitious anticipated results, thus reducing public officials’ exposure to future criticism for having fallen short of their commitments. Public officials who set concrete policy goals may be motivated by a combination of greater perceived political legitimacy and administrative capacity compared to counterparts who embrace relative policy goals, raising implications that are worthy of further exploration

Understanding the urbanization impacts of high-speed rail in China

Advances in transport technology have been shown to play a vital role in urban development over millennia. From the engineering and pavement innovations of the Roman road network to the aerospace breakthroughs that enabled jet aircraft, cities have been reshaped by the mobility changes resulting from new designs for moving people and goods. This article explores the urbanization impacts of High-Speed Rail’s introduction in China, which has built the world’s largest High-Speed Rail network in record time. Since High-Speed Rail was launched in Japan in 1964, this technology has worked to reshape intercity travel as a revolutionary transportation alternative. High-Speed Rail has developed steadily across Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland during the 1970s and 1980s. It expanded to Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Sweden in the 1990s. In the 21st century, China began developing High-Speed Rail on an unprecedented scale, and now has a national network that is longer than the totality of the rest of the world’s High-Speed Rail operations combined. China’s High-Speed Rail operation is exerting a transformative influence on urban form and function. This article synthesizes secondary research results to analyse the impacts of HSR on urbanization. These effects include population redistribution, urban spatial expansion and industrial development. We offer a typol-ogy that considers the urban effects of High-Speed Rail at three spatial levels: the station area, the urban jurisdiction, and the regional agglomeration. When organized through our typology, research findings demonstrate that High-Speed Rail influences urban population size, urban spatial layout and industrial development by changing the acces-sibility of cities. We highlight the processes by which High-Speed Rail ultimately affects the urbanization process for people, land use, and industrial development. However, High-Speed Rail’s impacts on urbanization are not always positive. While leveraging the development opportunity enabled by High-Speed Rail, governments around the world should also avoid potential negative impacts by drawing lessons from the experience of High-Speed Rail’s rapid de-ployment in China

Employer Transit Subsidy Study: Executive Summary

This study found that the larger the transit subsidy offered, the more employees were induced to become transit riders and the more transit-only commuting increased. The increase in transit-only commuting came from a reduction in auto-only and auto-and-transit commuting. Transit subsidy acceptance and effectiveness can be dampened by factors such as the availability of cheap parking, or greater distance between the workplace and rapid transit, leading to some variability in outcomes. Transit ridership and subsidy acceptance were associated with various positive self-reported improvements to workers’ quality of life, including their health, stress levels and commute predictability. These positive quality of life outcomes were achieved without the transit subsidy having any observed effects on work schedules, turnover and performance

Employer Transit Subsidy Study: Main Report

This study found that the larger the transit subsidy offered, the more employees were induced to become transit riders and the more transit-only commuting increased. The increase in transit-only commuting came from a reduction in auto-only and auto-and-transit commuting. Transit subsidy acceptance and effectiveness can be dampened by factors such as the availability of cheap parking, or greater distance between the workplace and rapid transit, leading to some variability in outcomes. Transit ridership and subsidy acceptance were associated with various positive self-reported improvements to workers’ quality of life, including their health, stress levels and commute predictability. These positive quality of life outcomes were achieved without the transit subsidy having any observed effects on work schedules, turnover and performance

Morphological and Physiological Features of a Set of Spinal Substantia Gelatinosa Neurons Defined by Green Fluorescent Protein Expression

The spinal substantia gelatinosa (SG) is known to be involved in the manipulation of nociceptive and thermal primary afferent input; however, the interrelationships of its neuronal components are poorly understood. As a step toward expanding understanding, we took a relatively unique approach by concentrating on a set of SG neurons selectively labeled by green fluorescent protein (GFP) in a transgenic mouse. These GFP-expressing SG neurons prove to have homogenous morphological and electrophysiological properties, are systematically spaced in the SG, contain GABA, receive C-fiber primary afferent input, and upregulate c-Fos protein in response to noxious stimuli. Together, the properties established for these GFP-labeled neurons are consistent with a modular SG organization in which afferent activity related to nociception or other C-fiber signaling are subject to integration/modulation by repeating, similar circuits of neurons

Measurement of Dielectric Suppression of Bremsstrahlung

In 1953, Ter-Mikaelian predicted that the bremsstrahlung of low energy photons in a medium is suppressed because of interactions between the produced photon and the electrons in the medium. This suppression occurs because the emission takes place over on a long distance scale, allowing for destructive interference between different instantaneous photon emission amplitudes. We present here measurements of bremsstrahlung cross sections of 200 keV to 20 MeV photons produced by 8 and 25 GeV electrons in carbon and gold targets. Our data shows that dielectric suppression occurs at the predicted level, reducing the cross section up to 75 percent in our data.Comment: 11 pages, format is postscript file, gzip-ed, uuencode-e

Bremsstrahlung Suppression due to the LPM and Dielectric Effects in a Variety of Materials

The cross section for bremsstrahlung from highly relativistic particles is suppressed due to interference caused by multiple scattering in dense media, and due to photon interactions with the electrons in all materials. We present here a detailed study of bremsstrahlung production of 200 keV to 500 MeV photons from 8 and 25 GeV electrons traversing a variety of target materials. For most targets, we observe the expected suppressions to a good accuracy. We observe that finite thickness effects are important for thin targets.Comment: 52 pages, 13 figures (incorporated in the revtex LaTeX file

The theory of the Landau, Pomeranchuk, Migdal effect

Bremsstrahlung of photons from highly relativistic electrons is investigated. The cross section of the processes, which is suppressed due to a multiple scattering of an emitting electron in dense media (LPM effect) and due to photon interaction with electrons of a medium, is calculated with an accuracy up to "next to leading logarithm" and with the Coulomb corrections taken into account. Making allowances for a multiple scattering and a polarization of a medium an analysis of radiation on a target boundary is carried out. The method of consideration of radiation in a thin target under influence of the LPM effect is developed. Interrelation with the recent experiment is discussed.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX, 3 eps figure