Personal security in travel by public transport : the role of traveller information and associated technologies

Acknowledgement This research reported in this paper has been funded by a grant award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council: EP/I037032/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Future prospects for personal security in travel by public transport

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/I037032/1]. No other funding support from any other bodies was provided.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Sociotechnical imaginaries of connected and automated vehicle technology: Comparative analysis of governance cultures in Finland, Germany, and the UK

As an emerging technology, the potential deployment of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) in cities is attributed with significant uncertainties and anticipated consequences requiring responsible governance of innovation processes. Despite a growing number of studies on policies and governance arrangements for managing the introduction of CAVs, there is a gap in understanding about country-specific governance strategies and approaches. This research aims to contribute addressing this gap by presenting a comparative analysis of CAV-related policy documents in Finland, UK, and Germany, three countries which are actively seeking to promote the introduction of CAVs and which have distinct administrative traditions. Our analytical framework is based on the set of premises about technology as a complex socio-technical phenomenon, operationalized using governance cultures and sociotechnical imaginaries concepts. Our comparative policy document analysis focuses on the assumed roles for CAV technology, the identified domains and mechanisms of governance, and the assumed actors responsible for steering the development process. The results highlight similarities in pro-automation values across three different countries, while also uncovering important differences outside the domain of traditional transport policy instruments. In addition, the results identify different types of potential technological determinism, which could restrict opportunities for responsiveness and divergent visions of mobility futures in Europe. Concluding with a warning against further depolitization of technological development and a dominant focus on economic growth, we identify several necessary directions for further developing governance and experimentation processes

Achieving genuinely dynamic road user charging : issues with a GNSS-based approach

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Lessons learnt from the deployment of a semantic virtual research environment

The ourSpaces Virtual Research Environment makes use of Semantic Web technologies to create a platform to support multi-disciplinary research groups. This paper introduces the main semantic components of the system: a framework to capture the provenance of the research process, a collection of services to create and visualise metadata and a policy reasoning service. We also describe different approaches to authoring and accessing metadata within the VRE. Using evidence gathered from data provided by the users of the system we discuss the lessons learnt from deployment with three case study groups

Transport and climate change policy in the United Kingdom : a social justice perspective

Purpose – The social dimensions of the relationship between transport and climate change are examined, in particular, the potential for unintended negative consequences to directly and/or indirectly arise from policies to reduce the climate change impact of the transport sector. It takes the example of current policies in the UK as its primary focus. Methodology/approach – A combination of literature, policy review and the quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered through primary fieldwork research from a number of related studies. Findings – It is identified that different social groups can experience very different outcomes in accessing transport and adapting to changes to the transport system, whether these are uniquely targeted towards certain individuals or more systemically applied across the whole population. For this reason, it is essential that policy makers fully understand the potential vulnerability and resilience of different social groups to policies that are intended to address transport-related climate change. The key component of social impacts should be systematically analyzed, by income, potential vulnerability and their spatial and temporal distribution, as well as according to resilience/adaptability to the proposed intervention. This continues to pose an important future challenge for research in this area of transport policy making. Originality/value – This chapter highlights the potential for unintended negative social consequences to directly and/or indirectly arise from policies to reduce the climate change impact of the transport sector.</p

Using argumentation within sustainable transport communication

In this paper we present the preliminary results of a survey of persuasive communication within the sustainable transport domain. This survey is underpinned by a reconstructionof the arguments used, a scheme oriented analysis of the corpus of reconstructed arguments, and elements of a theoretical and applied framework for using the corpus to effect lasting behaviour change using argumentative techniques within the self-same domain

The significance of individual leadership in complex governance arenas: the case of transportation and climate change

Incompatible leadership styles in environmental and transport policy making often results in power struggles and fragmentation. Coherent cross-sector leadership is needed to address complex problems such as the transport sector’s contribution to climate change, yet little currently exists. Although there are examples of visionary leadership progressive transport decarbonization, we also have evidence of sustainable transport policies actively being quashed. Examining actions of selected individuals offers an interesting opportunity to understand contradictions and complexities, which often go unconsidered in political research and thought.</p

What multipliers don’t tell you: A spatial analysis of farm household linkages

Agricultural policy and farm lobby groups often stress the role of farm production in sustaining local economies. This paper considers the spatial pattern of the upstream and downstream agricultural transactions of farms in North East Scotland and, in particular, the extent to which they take place within the locality of the farm holding. Three alternative definitions of “local” are considered: a distance based measure; a measure which takes into account the location of the farm in relation to the nearest town; and finally a measure which takes into account the location of input suppliers/output purchasers. The results are shown to vary qualitatively according to the definition of local adopted, highlighting the importance of allowing for context as well as demand-side factors when explaining purchasing and sales decisions. A highly complex pattern of production-related linkages in the region is revealed. Certain towns are found to dominate agriculture-related transactions in the region reflecting the spatial concentration of upstream and downstream agribusinesses. Probit analysis suggests that farm size, farm type and risk attitudes influence output sales patterns. The policy implications of the findings are considered