Quick appraisal of "Sistema de suministro desde el embalse del Cenajo a la Mancomunidad de Canales del Taibilla"

The project under assessment concerns the construction of an aqueduct in order to divert water from Tajo-Segura Channel onto the Cenajo reservoir and to the water purification plants of Sierra de la Espada and of Campotéjar. The main objective is to improve water quality rather than quantit

Fiscal Measures to Reduce CO2 Emissions from New Passenger Cars

Model based calculations constitute the core output of this study. The calculations assess the extent to which vehicle related taxes (mainly acquisition taxes and ownership taxes) can be effective means to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars. More specifically, the model calculations have assessed the ability of vehicle taxes to support the target to reduce average CO2 emissions from new cars down to a level of 120 g/km. This is the agreed target of the Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars.European Union, taxation, car, environment

Europeanisation should meet international constructivism: the Nordic Plus group and the internalisation of political conditionality by France and the United Kingdom

This article is a plausibility probe for the significance of international constructivist ‘mediating factors’ to explain variation in Europeanisation outcomes. It applies a most similar systems design (or Mill's method of difference) to show that the UK has internalised political conditionality to a larger extent than France at least partially because it has been the object of stronger socialisation pressures within the ‘Nordic Plus’ group. The article contributes to the literature on Europeanisation and development cooperation in two important ways. First, it enlarges its scope of analysis, both geographically (beyond new European Union member states) and thematically (beyond simple measures of aid quality and/or quantity). Second, it emphasises the importance of international (versus domestic) mediating factors. The empirical analysis focusses on three cases of aid sanctions in response to human rights abuses and democratic setbacks: Zimbabwe 2002, Madagascar 2009 and Mozambique 2009

Cyclists in shared bus lanes: could there be unrecognised impacts on bus journey times?

This paper contributes to debates around improving the modelling of cycles, through an exploratory case study of bus–cycle interactions in London. This case study examines undocumented delays to buses caused by high volumes of cyclists in bus lanes. It has generally been assumed that cyclists do not noticeably delay buses in shared lanes. However, in many contexts where cyclists routinely share bus lanes, cyclist numbers have historically been low. In some such places, bus lanes are now seeing very high volumes of cyclists, far above those previously studied. This may have implications for bus – and cycle – journey times, but traditionally traffic modelling has not represented the effects of such interactions well. With some manipulation of parameters taken from models of other cities, the model described here demonstrates that cycles can cause significant delays to buses in shared lanes, at high cycling volumes. These delays are likely to become substantially larger if London's cycling demographic becomes more diverse, because cyclist speeds will decline. Hence bus journey time benefits may derive from separating cycles from buses, where cycle flows are high. The project also suggests that microsimulation modelling software, as typically used, remains problematic for representing cyclists

Prospects of a new treatment step in Vassum sedimentation basin

Formålet med rapporten er å vurdere mulighetene for å etablere en tilleggsrensing for Vassum rensebasseng ved E6. Dagens rensebasseng mottar avrenning fra dagsone og fra tunnelvask fra tunnelene Nordby, Vassum, Smihagan. Bassenget fjerner i hovedsak partikkelbundne forurensninger. I rapporten er det foretatt en gjennomgang av aktuelle renseløsninger som kan etableres som en tilleggsrensning til dagens rensebasseng.Statens vegvesen Vegdirektorate