A Study of the Feasibility and Potential Implementation of Metro-Based Freight Transportation in Newcastle upon Tyne

The concept of using a metropolitan railway network to transport freight directly to a city centre from the surrounding businesses has been the subject of much research. This paper looks in depth at the Tyne and Wear Metro system, situated in Newcastle upon Tyne, to determine if such a scheme would be feasible. Through research into the modes of transport available, along with a review of literature and case studies, it was found that the current method of transporting the majority of freight by road is unsustainable and damaging to both the environment and local communities. Other options for the transportation of freight have been reviewed, and results showed that a modal shift will be necessary in the near future. The system was then modelled using software provided by the Department for Transport, which demonstrated that the implementation of such a scheme would provide vast accident savings, a reduction in the number of casualties on the road, and a monetary saving as a result of the lower casualty rate. The conclusion was reached that the scheme is viable, however further research and study is necessary before implementation

One job, one deal...or not: do generations respond differently to psychological contract fulfillment?

This paper investigates generational differences in the relations between psychological contract fulfillment and work attitudes. Data were collected from a sample of 909 employees in the Dutch service sector. Structural equation modeling analyses were used to test the moderating effects of generational differences on the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on affective commitment and turnover intention. The relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and these work outcomes was moderated by generational differences. Furthermore, results indicate that different generations respond differently to different aspects of psychological contract fulfillment, such as career development, job content, organizational policies, social atmosphere and rewards. The study provides evidence that generational differences impact the reciprocal relationship between employer and employee. Results from this study suggest that Baby Boomers and Generation X may be more motivated by social atmosphere, whereas Generation Y may be more motivated by job content and career development. Fair organizational policies are particularly motivating to Generation X, and providing rewards, though more important to Generation Y, seem mostly unrelated to work outcomes. This article is the first to study the moderation of generational differences in the relationships between psychological contract fulfillment and work outcomes

Elements for European logistics policy - A discussion paper

Following a Finnish initiative the European Commission is preparing a communication on logistics in 2006. To support the preparations Finland arranged the so called EULOC-process in which logistics experts from different countries were invited to participate. First, an industry foresight of European logistics in 2015 was created. Next, the mission, vision and policy priorities of the European logistics policy were discussed. The mission for European logistics policy was created from the viewpoint of citizens, companies, states and Europe. Seven vision elements were created. The driving visions are “Seamless systems” and “Intelligent regulation”. The guiding and enabling visions are “Resources” and “Cost efficiency”. The outcome visions are “Europe’s competitiveness”, “Equal business opportunity” and “Sustainability”. According to the experts’ views the priority areas of European logistics policy are Infrastructure – Seamless systems require investments Research, development and training – Strengthen the competitiveness of the European Union Enterprises – The reinforcement of logistic industry Regulation – Innovative and intelligent Cost Efficiency – Effective logistics Sustainability – From environmental, social and economic viewpoint, a must in modern logistics Co-Operation – A strategic issue in network society Public-Private Partnership – Agile solutions for investments

An empirical study of the variability in the composition of British freight trains

As part of the broader sustainability and economic efficiency agenda, European transport policy places considerable emphasis on improving rail’s competitiveness to increase its share of the freight market. Much attention is devoted to infrastructure characteristics which determine the number of freight trains which can operate and influence the operating characteristics of these trains. However, little attention has been devoted to the composition of the freight trains themselves, with scant published data relating to the practicalities of this important component of system utilisation and its impacts on rail freight viability and sustainability. This paper develops a better understanding of the extent to which freight train composition varies, through a large-scale empirical study of the composition of British freight trains. The investigation is based on a survey of almost 3,000 individual freight trains, with analysis at four levels of disaggregation, from the commodity groupings used in official statistics down to individual services. This provides considerable insight into rail freight operations with particular relevance to the efficiency of utilisation of trains using the available network paths. The results demonstrate the limitations of generalising about freight train formations since, within certain commodity groupings, considerable variability was identified even at fairly high levels of disaggregation

Hub exchange operations in intermodal hub-and spoke networks: A performance comparison of rail-rail exchange facilities

The implementation of hub-and-spoke networks in intermodal transport is suggested as one of the potential solutions for helping to increase the intermodal market share. Traditionally, trains are shunted at hubs; this is a time-consuming process. Since the early 1990s a new type of intermodal terminal, specifically designed for fast tran-shipment at nodes in hub-and-spoke networks, has been introduced in Europe. These hub terminals could replace this time-consuming shunting. Studies on the new hub terminals suggest that they may perform more efficiently than shunting yards. However, a systematic comparison to reveal the operational and costs differences be-tween shunting and these new hub-terminals for a broad range of situations still lacks. The main objective of the study was to develop a model to identify favourable opera-tional conditions for new hub terminals to be implemented and to quantify their op-erational performances in relation to alternative hub exchange facilities. Simulation models were developed to study rail-rail exchange operations at new hub-terminals, hump and flat shuntings yard and road-rail terminals.OT

Analysis of the Reduced Wake Effect for Available Wind Power Calculation During Curtailment: Including Validation Experiments

Master thesis at two faculties: "Civil Engineering and Geosciences" and "Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering". Department: Offshore Engineering. With increasing wind power capacity, the impact of wind power on power system operation increases. For a mature integration of large amounts of wind power, controlling wind farm output by temporary curtailment becomes increasingly relevant. Wind farm curtailment provides valuable technical and economic opportunities for balancing the power system. However, quantifying the exact amount of curtailed wind power at the wind farm level is not trivial. This is because curtailment induces a reduction of the wake effects, complicating the determination of the available power in the wind. Understanding the reduced wake effect is important to improve the technical reliability and business case of wind power curtailment, especially for very large offshore wind farms. The purpose of this research is to present and validate an algorithm to determine the available power of a wind farm during curtailment. Current best practices in available power estimation is to sum the individual turbine available power signals. This leads to an overestimation, as the reduced wake effect is not accounted for. In the algorithm developed in this thesis, existing wake models play a key role in quantifying the reduced wake effect. These wake models have been validated first for wind turbine operation without curtailment and then for operation during curtailment. For the latter, curtailment experiments were prepared and executed on the existing nearshore wind farm Westermeerwind, consisting of 48 wind turbines in commercial operation. Based on that, the developed algorithm has been validated for wind turbines in a straight row and for sub-rated wind speeds. In the experiments, the first turbine in the row was curtailed and the reduced wake effect was clearly observed at the second turbine. The reduced wake effect led to a power increase of the second turbine of 45% to 80% of the curtailed power of the first turbine. However, it also led to a power decrease for the third turbine in a range of 5% to 40% of the curtailed power. No noticeable structural changes in power production were observed from the fourth turbine onward. The algorithm was shown to perform well in calculating the available power at the second turbine, with the Jensen wake model delivering the lowest error. For the third turbine, the algorithm did not perform well, due to relatively large errors of the wake models for the third turbine. The Larsen wake model resulted in the lowest error considering the available power of the whole row of turbines. Overall, it is concluded that the algorithm proposed and validated in this thesis delivers a significantly improved estimation of the available power during curtailment. It is recommended to continue study of the proposed algorithm by testing the performance of other wake models, performing more (types of) curtailment experiments and obtaining higher quality wind data.Civil Engineering and GeosciencesHydraulic EngineeringEuropean Wind Energy Maste