Travel choices in Scotland - the effect of local accessibility on non-work travel

Accessibility features prominently in the developing transport policies of both the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Scottish Executive which aim to promote social inclusion in particular and the integration of transport and land use planning more generally. It follows that a detailed understanding of the relationship between accessibility, personal mobility and travel behaviour is critical to the successful implementation of these policies. This paper presents the results of a disaggregate, multi-variate analysis of the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) dataset and attempts to unravel the complex relationship between socio-economical circumstance, geographical access to local services and public transport and revealed non-work travel choices. The socio-economical and geographical diversity of Scotland offers an excellent opportunity to undertake an analysis of this nature. The SHS is a continuous, cross-sectional survey funded by the Scottish Executive and undertaken by face-to-face interview based on a sample of the general population in private residences in Scotland. It seeks to provide information on the composition, characteristics and behaviour of Scottish households. The survey collects information in two parts - firstly the highest income householder provides household level data including household composition and income, key attributes of household members, transport resources available to the household including access to public transport; secondly a randomly selected adult from the household provides information on inter alia personal travel (including the completion of a one-day travel diary on the previous day) and personal views on transport, the neighbourhood and local services. The dataset analysed in this paper was collected between 1999 and 2003 and contains over 75,000 surveyed households and over 49,000 completed travel diaries. Two other variables were matched with the residential location of SHS respondents and added to the dataset; namely, an index representing proximity to local services at electoral ward level derived in the Scottish Indices of Deprivation 2003 study and a locational classification for each respondent which captures settlement size and wider regional accessibility. The primary focus of the analysis presented in this paper is an examination of the extent to which the quality of local access to services affects distance travelled for non-work purposes. Within this analysis individual and household socio-economical circumstance, available transport resources (both car ownership and local access to public transport) and the wider regional geographical context are also taken into account. It is hypothesised that good local access is negatively associated with distance travelled and that there also exists the possibility of significant interaction between local access and socio-economical circumstance and available transport resources. Regression models are developed for non-work travel which test the statistical significance of these explanatory variables. The results of the analysis reported here will add to the existing evidence base on the relationship between accessibility and travel choice. Its conclusions are expected to inform the development of strategies to enhance social inclusion and reduce overall travel which are tailored to socio-economical and geographical circumstance

Preface

Introduction to the volume

Project management under uncertainty

Morris' (1986) analysis of the factors affecting project success and failure is considered in relation to the psychology of judgement under uncertainty. A model is proposed whereby project managers may identify the specific circumstances in which human decision-making is prone to systematic error, and hence may apply a number of de-biasing techniques

Do we really drive as we feel?

Learning to drive has been conceptualised as a series of stages which take the learner from mastery of the basic mechanics of driving, through anticipation of other road user's behaviour, to the development of a driving style consistent with the skill achieved in the first two stages (Parker & Stradling, 2002). Deery (1999) suggests that hazard perception is one of the main skills to be acquired in the second stage and that this skill is poorly developed in the inexperienced (and usually young) driver

Determination of impact sensitivity of materials at high pressures

Compact device is used to determine impact sensitivity of material in static, high pressure, gaseous environment. It can also be instrumented to monitor and record pressure, temperature, and striker impact force. Device is used in conjunction with commercially available liquid oxygen impact tester which provides impact energy

Hydroelectric management on the Rio Chama: Balancing competing ecological priorities through non-consumptive flow management between the El Vado and Abiquiu reservoirs

Management of dammed river systems is a complex problem. Spatial and temporal impacts result in complex system trade-offs, and shareholders have competing objectives. Dynamic modeling can provide improved information as decision-makers attempt to optimize the value of river flows. This paper models the direct and indirect economic impacts of a small reservoir-dam-river system and applies this framework to an existing Bureau of Reclamation dam and generator in the upper Rio Grande basin. Over past decades, concerns for river habitat preservation have reduced the production of peak-demand energy from hydroelectric plants. Over the same period, as U.S. power markets incorporate solar and wind generation, the demand for flexible, quick-ramping energy during evening hours is increasing. Hydroelectric power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by making grid integration of solar and wind power less costly and by directly substituting for dirtier alternative power sources. Economic modelling of market and non-market values associated with the system permits optimization of hydroelectric power to reduce emissions and support intermittent renewable integration without sacrificing ecological goals. A system dynamics model of the dam allows a cost-benefit analysis of dispatchable energy production in the presence of constraining daily, weekly or monthly ecological flow requirements. The case study suggests that constrained economical dispatch of existing small hydropower generators may be optimal both economically and ecologically. This model provides a scalable framework for incorporating the ecological benefits of hydropower flexibility into the cost-benefit analysis that drives maintenance, upgrade and decommissioning decisions for existing U.S. hydroelectric dams

Hydroelectric management on the Rio Chama: Balancing competing ecological priorities

Management of dammed river systems is a complex problem. Spatial and temporal impacts result in complex system trade-offs, and shareholders have competing objectives. Dynamic modeling can provide improved information as decision-makers attempt to optimize the value of river flows. This research models the direct and indirect economic impacts of a small reservoir-dam-river system and applies this framework to an existing Bureau of Reclamation dam and generator in the upper Rio Grande basin. Over past decades, concerns for river habitat preservation have reduced the production of peak-demand energy from hydroelectric plants. Over the same period, as U.S. power markets incorporate solar and wind generation, the demand for flexible, quick-ramping energy during evening hours is increasing. Hydroelectric power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by making grid integration of solar and wind power less costly and by directly substituting for dirtier alternative power sources. Economic modelling of market and non-market values associated with the system permits optimization of hydroelectric power to reduce emissions and support intermittent renewable integration without sacrificing ecological goals. A system dynamics model of the dam allows a cost-benefit analysis of dispatchable energy production in the presence of constraining daily, weekly or monthly ecological flow requirements. The case study suggests that constrained economical dispatch of existing small hydropower generators may be optimal both economically and ecologically. This model provides a scalable framework for incorporating the ecological benefits of hydropower flexibility into the cost-benefit analysis that drives maintenance, upgrade and decommissioning decisions for existing U.S. hydroelectric dams

The Guest Worker Myth: How Turkish Immigrant Communities Rebuilt West Berlin (1960s - 1980s)

In the 1960s and 1970s, West Berlin was at the center of the world's attention. Plagued by Cold War divisions, all eyes were focused on the city's seemingly miraculous physical and economic renewal. Modern housing compounds by world famous Bauhaus émigrés drew visitors and press attention, and the currency reform of 1948 had seemingly sparked an economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). However, there is an essential story that is often only a footnote in this history of urban renewal: the so-called "guest workers" (Gastarbeiter). From the 1950s until 1973, Germany recruited thousands of foreign workers from countries like Spain, Yugoslavia, and Turkey to temporarily increase their production capacity. The workers were hired upon a rotation principle – after just a few years, they were to return home and make space for new recruits. Living in dormitories under strict curfews and restrictions, a far cry from the city's modernist housing complexes that advertised freedom and democracy, the Gastarbeiter were seen as easily replaceable participants in the German economic miracle. This thesis elaborates on the story of West Berlin's transformation from the 1960s through the 1980s by complicating conventional macro-narratives of urban transformations. It moves beyond West Berlin's origin myths in order to acknowledge Turkish immigrants as central and active agents in West Berlin's evolution. Drawing on archival research in Germany, each chapter approaches West Berlin's story from two perspectives. First, I discuss big picture changes in the city, addressing flashy building expositions and ambitious top-down policy initiatives. With this framework in place, each section then zeroes in on the lives of Turkish guest workers living in the city. From the long train ride to Germany, to the founding of so-called "backyard mosques" (Hinterhofmoscheen) and small businesses, these sections round out the story of Germany's island of democracy in the East. It is impossible to fully understand the larger-scale changes happening in West Berlin without investigating the influence of the Turkish immigrants in the city, and vice versa.Ohio State Department of HistoryNo embargoAcademic Major: Histor

An Examination of Backgrounds to Early-Run Minimum-Bias Events in ATLAS at the LHC

The initial parts of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) run will be a source of critical information - about the ATLAS detector and about the physics of $pp$ collisions at $sqrt{s} = 14$ TeV, including parton distribution evolution and the cross-sections of $sigma_{pp}$. The accelerator itself will be the source of some detector interest, as we have a first look at what have so far been speculations on the quality of the vacuum in the experimental insertion, and the cleanliness of the beam from the accelerator. The shakedown period, with its low beam squeeze, low luminosity, and undemanding trigger menus, will be of great interest, avoiding the pileup and radiation levels that will arrive with higher luminosity -- making it an important opportunity to investigate minimum-bias events in relative isolation. For the short lifetime of the Minimum Bias Trigger Scintillators (MBTS), which are expected to fail within a few months of running, they will aid in discriminating the minimum bias signal of inelastic non-single-diffractive $pp$ collisions. Using single- or double-coincidence signatures, the MBTS system and other trigger and analysis strategies attempt to avoid triggering on otherwise empty bunch crossings and eliminate the effects of beam-gas collisions and beam-halo effects which would lead these spurious triggers that would reduce the general minimum-bias trigger efficiency. An examination of the effects of beam halo and beam -gas interactions on the minimum-bias trigger response is made. The signatures of the beam halo and beam gas are examined from the standard ATLAS tracking reconstruction