Urban rail infrastructure – the path from comprehensive transport plans to the recent experience

Some 40 to 50 years ago the Australian State and Capital Territory governments produced comprehensive transport plans that began the transport planning processes for their capital cities. The subsequent path has been varied, particularly in regard to public transport. Sydney in particular has a long history of equivocation and deferral of major transport infrastructure construction, despite current and planned urban growth. Expansion of the railway network is now a major planning issue. Urban growth has outstripped that of the public transport system over an extended period and, whether or not policies of consolidation succeed, urban rail system capacity and extent is of concern. The past decade has been particularly problematic, and Sydney in particular has seen rapid swings in transport infrastructure policy and little new construction achieved. The primary purpose of this paper is to document the events of the past decade and how the plans have unfolded. It notes particularly the part played by the print media in raising the profile of transport planning in this process. The paper is based on path dependence theory and seeks to draw out the relationship between decisions taken over time. It will form the historical timeline for the author’s research in examining the cost of equivocation in public transport investment

Light rail: the semi-metro concept

Proposals to implement Light Rail transit in Australia have been the subject of considerable debate, particularly in Sydney. The purpose of this paper is inform aspects of this debate by drawing on the reasons that Light Rail was originally developed in Europe as a distinctive „semi-metro‟ rail application in the 1960s and 1970s before its international adoption. The paper has particular focus on using „semi-metro‟ Light Rail as a high quality alternative to Metro rail in an environment of budget constraint, or as a means to enhance service levels of present Light Rail proposals.The paper first presents a typology of transit systems to establish a clear understanding of the several forms of Light Rail. Secondly, it considers pertinent historic background of street tramway closures and the subsequent development and application of a respecified Light Rail Transit mode. Thirdly, the paper provides a high level analysis of the potential Sydney application of Light Rail. There are two key, related, points made in this paper. The first is that there has been a long history of demand for road space for motor vehicles that has been one factor in the removal of trams from the urban transit scene. This perceived conflict persists as a factor in today‟s Light Rail decision-making, despite recognition that streets should support a range of activities other than motorised transit. The second point is that street operation of transit is, in any case, often heavily compromised by motor vehicle congestion. While both of these matters may be managed to a degree by priority treatments, in certain situations the semi-metro concept – the original purpose of Light Rail – may offer advantages

The role of the rail system in the Sydney journey to work – a geospatial analysis

This paper presents a baseline analysis of the relationship between Sydney’s rail network, commuter belt journey to work travel patterns and Sydney’s urban development from historic, current and future perspectives, and examines how the rail links mooted in the Metropolitan Transport Plan relate to planned development. It reports part of a program of urban planning research that will lead to an understanding of the physical and economic sustainability impact of deferral of public transport infrastructure investment in a growing metropolis. The analysis draws largely on the 2006 Census data and State Government data, using geospatial mapping. It examines patterns of urbanisation in relation to the development of the rail network and the present urban planning paradigm. The paper shows that the rail network continues to be a key factor in Sydney’s development despite Sydney’s car dependency, but that it is falling further behind as the metropolis grows. Examination of the Metropolitan Transport Plan rail proposals in this framework underlines the disconnect between Sydney’s metropolitan growth, development of its transit infrastructure and the claim that its planning integrates the two

Central city railway capacity – making better use of existing infrastructure

Australia’s east coast capital cities have emerging issues with the capacity of the central city component of their urban railway networks. In each case major investment has been proposed but deferred as a result of other funding priorities. In Sydney’s case there are no current commitments, even though existing capacity is considered insufficient for growth. This is a particularly important issue, with work now starting on the North West Rail Link and partial funding available for the Epping-Parramatta line. However, there may be much less costly options than the rail tunnel options that were proposed in the 2005 and 2010 Sydney plans. These other options draw on simple operational principles and legacy infrastructure. The original plans for the City Railway envisaged a much more intensively used network than is presently the case, and drew on contemporary international examples. This paper shows that existing infrastructure in the vicinity of the Harbour Bridge can offer significantly greater capacity than is currently used, and suggests how this may be utilised to take the growth in the medium term. It draws on the early documentation, operational analysis and international examples for this purpose

Understanding the motivations of Ghanaian bureaucrats

This study examines the factors that affect the work performance of Ghanaian bureaucrats. Three decades ago Robert Price (1975) examined the impact that kinship ties had on the motivation of Ghanaian bureaucrats. He found that Ghanaian bureaucrats behaved in particularistic fashions as opposed to acting in a universalistic manner, suggesting kinship was a major determinant of bureaucratic routine. This study followed the work of Price by replicating his mix of interviews and surveys, with the addition of questions that incorporate recent work on bureaucracy that suggest motivation involves a mix of solidary, functional, and pecuniary preferences (Brehm and Gates, 1997; Golden 2000). Utilizing a mix of interviews and surveys of public servants from the Civil Service and the Ghana Education Service, I find the motivation of Ghanaian bureaucrats involves pecuniary, solidary and functional preferences as well as kinship ties

A very high speed lossless compression/decompression chip set

A chip is described that will perform lossless compression and decompression using the Rice Algorithm. The chip set is designed to compress and decompress source data in real time for many applications. The encoder is designed to code at 20 M samples/second at MIL specifications. That corresponds to 280 Mbits/second at maximum quantization or approximately 500 Mbits/second under nominal conditions. The decoder is designed to decode at 10 M samples/second at industrial specifications. A wide range of quantization levels is allowed (4...14 bits) and both nearest neighbor prediction and external prediction are supported. When the pre and post processors are bypassed, the chip set performs high speed entropy coding and decoding. This frees the chip set from being tied to one modeling technique or specific application. Both the encoder and decoder are being fabricated in a 1.0 micron CMOS process that has been tested to survive 1 megarad of total radiation dosage. The CMOS chips are small, only 5 mm on a side, and both are estimated to consume less than 1/4 of a Watt of power while operating at maximum frequency

The implementation of a lossless data compression module in an advanced orbiting system: Analysis and development

Data compression has been proposed for several flight missions as a means of either reducing on board mass data storage, increasing science data return through a bandwidth constrained channel, reducing TDRSS access time, or easing ground archival mass storage requirement. Several issues arise with the implementation of this technology. These include the requirement of a clean channel, onboard smoothing buffer, onboard processing hardware and on the algorithm itself, the adaptability to scene changes and maybe even versatility to the various mission types. This paper gives an overview of an ongoing effort being performed at Goddard Space Flight Center for implementing a lossless data compression scheme for space flight. We will provide analysis results on several data systems issues, the performance of the selected lossless compression scheme, the status of the hardware processor and current development plan

Alternativa y establecimiento en asesoría técnica y agropecuaria de labores agrícolas, de encadenamientos frutícolas y cítricos en el municipio de palmira - valle del cauca

El proyecto aplicado se establece bajo los márgenes de una agricultura estructurada que nos lleve a garantizar una producción con oportunidad y calidad, teniendo en cuenta los encadenamientos frutícolas y cítricos de los diferentes predios se hace necesario desde la, organización, ejecución y planeación una alternativa para establecer asesoría técnica agropecuaria en labores de cultivos agrícolas en el municipio de Palmira valle del cauca. De igual forma se ha imposibilitado una producción a gran escala debido a las prácticas agrícolas mal diseñadas bajo la premisa de no planificar lo que se establece en el campo, lo cual se ha visto reflejado en el margen costo beneficio negativo para el pequeño agricultor. La alternativa de establecer asistencia técnica agropecuaria a los agricultores del corregimiento del bolo municipio de Palmira departamento del valle del caucaThe applied project is established under the margins of a structured agriculture that leads us to guarantee a production with opportunity and quality, taking into account the fruit and citrus chains of the different properties, it is necessary from the, organization, execution and planning an alternative to establish agricultural technical assistance in agricultural crops in the municipality of Palmira Valle del Cauca. Likewise, large-scale production has been made impossible due to poorly designed agricultural practices under the premise of not planning what is established in the field, which has been reflected in the negative cost-benefit margin for the small farmer. The alternative of establishing agricultural technical assistance to the farmers of the corregimiento of the bolo municipality of Palmira Department of the Cauca Valle

FRET Biosensors: Engineering Fluorescent Proteins as Biological Tools for Studying Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease with over 200,000 new cases each year. In general, the cause of the disease is unknown, but oxidative stress inside of neurons has been associated with the disease’s pathology for some time. Currently, techniques to study the onset of PD inside of neurons are limited. This makes treatments and causes difficult to discover. One solution to this has been fluorescent protein biosensors. In short, these proteins can be engineered to glow when a certain state is achieved inside a cell. The present research discusses the engineering of a genetically-encoded fluorescent protein (FP) sensor able to detect reactive oxygen species (peroxide, hydroxyl, superoxide, etc.) inside of neurons, giving one the ability to enhance their understanding of the role these species play in the onset of the disease. This sensor relies on Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) between a green fluorescent protein and a red fluorescent protein to facilitate red-shifting of the sensor’s emission spectrum. Linked via a short polypeptide chain, the energy transfer efficiency of these combined FPs can vary greatly. Various linker lengths and FP combinations were experimentally tested to draw conclusions about their performance. The current trajectory of the research currently implies that those combinations with the shortest linker lengths will yield the highest-performing sensors. This sensor is another vital piece in the library of tools which can be used to help us begin answering the many questions we have about PD and its pathology