Bus rapid transit systems: A comparative assessment

There is renewed interest in many developing and developed countries in finding ways of providing efficient and effective public transport that does not come with a high price tag. An increasing number of nations are asking the question – what type of public transport system can deliver value for money? Although light rail has often been promoted as a popular ‘solution’, there has been progressively emerging an attractive alternative in the form of bus rapid transit (BRT). BRT is a system operating on its own right-of-way either as a full BRT with high quality interchanges, integrated smart card fare payment and efficient throughput of passengers alighting and boarding at bus stations; or as a system with some amount of dedicated right-of-way (light BRT) and lesser integration of service and fares. The notion that buses essentially operate in a constrained service environment under a mixed traffic regime and that trains have privileged dedicated right-of-way, is no longer the only sustainable and valid proposition. This paper evaluates the status of 44 BRT systems in operation throughout the world as a way of identifying the capability of moving substantial numbers of passengers, using infrastructure whose costs overall and per kilometre are extremely attractive. When ongoing lifecycle costs (operations and maintenance) are taken into account, the costs of providing high capacity integrated BRT systems are an attractive option in many contexts

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Australian Commutersí Attitudes and Behaviour Concerning Abatement Policies and Personal Involvement

Public interest in the environment is building as we gain information about the deterioration in air quality and the potential threat of global warming. This research addresses the dichotomy between an individual’s behavior and his or her attitudinal support for policies which are promoted as benefiting the environment. We study how responses to attitudinal survey questions are interrelated, and how such responses are related to actual travel behavior using data from a survey undertaken in six capital cities in Australia in 1994. A measurement model is used to establish a set of latent attitudinal factors, and these factors are related in a structural equations model to a set of behavioral variables representing commuterís mode choice and choice of compressed work schedules, conditioned by a set of exogenous variables. We find that individuals with a strong environmental commitment are more likely to be female, from smaller households with fewer cars, be either under 30 years old or over 50 years old, have high household income and be highly educated. However, women are likely to view the car as a status symbol, and this attitude is conducive to choice of solo driving. We also find that mode choice influences attitudes; commuters who use public transport are more likely to support policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our conclusion is that switching commuters away from solo driving can have effects that transcend the benefit obtained from reduced vehicle use for the journey to work alone

The Trip Chaining Activity of Sydney Residents: A Cross- Section Assessment by Age Group with a focus on Seniors

In this paper we use a pooled (2002-2004) cross-section of the Sydney travel survey, an annual continuous survey since 1997, to investigate the current profile of trip chaining travel activity of individual’s in 5-year groups, with a particular focus on those over 64 years old (i.e., seniors), given the aging of the population. Multiple Correspondence Analysis is used to establish causality of nonlinear and non-monotonic relationships between socioeconomic descriptors and measures of travel behaviour (assessed as trip chains). A benchmark setting for today not only establishes the way in which the elderly currently ‘cope’ with the existing supply network and the available modal alternatives, given their needs, but also is useful in providing hints as to what might be the key emerging transport policy and planning challenges in the future to serve this growing and increasingly influential population sub-strata. The main policy finding is that after age 64, travel demand shifts from car driving (partly linked to loss of driving license, but partly through choice), to car passenger and then to public transport in complex trip chains, especially for singles and for all women

Driving Behaviour of Long Distance Truck Drivers: The Effects of Schedule Compliance on Drug Use and Speeding Citations

This paper reports the results of an econometric analysis of the influences on on-road behaviour of long distance truck drivers in Australia. The approach is couched in terms of a utility maximisation framework in which a driver trades-off economic reward with occupational risk. The physical risks to the driver due to driving while fatigued are proxied by the use of stimulants. Drawing on a 1990 survey of a sample of 402 truck drivers selected from owner drivers and employee drivers, we evaluate a number of alternative hypotheses on the relationship between drug taking, compliance with schedules and the propensity to speed. A system of structural equations is specified to test alternative hypotheses on causality between the endogenous variables and a set of exogenous effects. The models are estimated using distribution-free methods for mixed dichotomous and continuous variables. The main findings within the set of endogenous variables is that increasing speed is positively influenced by the propensity to take stay-awake pills which is itself positively influenced by the propensity to self-impose schedules. After controlling for a number of contextual influences on the endogenous variables, rates of financial reward have a significant impacts on all three endogenous variables. This study has highlighted the complex relationships which exist between speeding, social behaviour and economic reward

Perceived attribute importance in public and private transportation / BEBR No. 129

Includes bibliographical references (leaf 11)

LONG TERM IMPROVEMENT OF PERFORMANCE INDEXES IN BASKETBALL PLAYERS

In the present paper measurements and tests were carried out on 12 basketball players of a D-series team, undergoing muscular strengthen, for a period of more than 2 years. The team was divided into 2 groups : the control group, composed of 5 players undergoing only team-training, and the experimental group, composed of 7 players undergoing team-training and sinusoidal electrical stimulation to increase the power in quadriceps femoris and triceps surae . In this study a sinusoidal current at the frequency of 2500 Hz has been used. A stimulation time of 10 seconds was chosen, followed by a rest period of 50 seconds to avoid a reduction of the subsequent contraction force. This stimulation procedure was applied to the subjects of the experimental group for 20 minutes per day for 15days. Four stimulation cycles of 15 days were globally performed using the 4channel electrical stimulator mod. ST-E4C.Similar anthropometric data characterised the two groups : for the experimental group the mean age was 20.1 f 1.9 years, the mean height was 187.7 f 5.0 an and the mean weight 83.8 f 6.4 Kg for the control group these values were respectively 20.8 f 2.5 years, 189.0 f 2.8 cm, 80.6 f 3.7 Kg .Before and after each stimulation cycle, at the beginning and at the end of the agonistic season several tests were performed to evaluate performance indexes :1. Abalakov test (taking the best result of three tests);2. Standing long jump (taking the best result of three tests);3.30 meters dash (taking the average time of three tests).This study has shown that a h26 months the experimental group reached increments of performance indexes twice greater than the control group. After summer, before the beginning of the agonistic season, the absolute increments for the experimental group remained higher than the control group, suggesting that the improvement of the muscular performance by means of sinusoidal electrical stimulation is maintained by a normal training and constitutes a basic resource for the following improvements

Light dark forces at flavor factories

SuperB experiment could represent an ideal environment to test a new U (1) symmetry related to light dark forces candidates. A promising discovery channel is represented by the resonant production of a boson U, followed by its decay into lepton pairs. Beyond approximations adopted in the literature, an exact tree level calculation of the radiative processes $e+ e- \rightarrow \gamma, U \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^- \gamma, e^+ e^- \gamma$ and corresponding QED backgrounds is performed, including also the most important higher-order corrections. The calculation is implemented in a release of the generator BabaYaga@NLO useful for data analysis and interpretation. The distinct features of U boson production are shown and the statistical significance is analysed