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- Contents
- Message from the General Editor
- Highway Safety Effects
- Air Travel in Small Communities
- Refrigerated Trucking Revisited
- Highway Bypasses in Kansas
- CASD Systems
- Transportation Investments
- Rolling Stock Planning
- Land Prices
- Disappearing Diagrams
- Magaprojects and Risk
Message from the General Editor
This issue initiates a new era in the proud history of the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum. In the 2000-2003 period, JTRF was published jointly with Transportation Quarterly by Eno Transportation Foundation. Beginning with this issue the new publisher of JTRF is the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota. JTRF will continue to publish up-to-date, high quality, analytical articles, industry issue papers, and book reviews that you have come to expect from JTRF. The new JTRF will be published twice a year in the spring and fall with about 8 to 10 articles per issue. As in the past, JTRF seeks original manuscripts dealing with any aspect of transportation. Articles must be analytical in nature and can be theoretical, empirical, or both. Industry issue papers may be entirely descriptive, addressing current issues that affect or will affect transportation industries-e.g., air, rail, truck, and water.
JTRF is a refereed journal that is listed in the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) and Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Marketing (9th edition). The peer review process will continue to be 90 days.
This issue of the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum contains the usual wide variety of transport topics that has characterized JTRF. Topical areas include:
- Highway safety impacts of railroad abandonment
- Demand for air travel in medium- and small-sized cities
- Regulation of railroad abandonments
- Refrigerated trucking issues
- Economic impacts of highway bypasses on small towns
- Computer-assisted scheduling and dispatching of paratransit
- Decision framework for transportation investments
- Commuter railroad equipment planning
- Effects of commuter rail transit on land prices
In "Highway Safety Effects from Rail Line Closure in Kansas," Jay Witt develops a methodology for measuring both highway safety costs and highway safety benefits of rail line closure. Applying the methodology to the western two-thirds of Kansas, Witt found that the safety benefits of abandonment exceeded the safety costs.
In "Air Travel in Small Communities: An Econometric Framework and Results," Dipasis Bhadra estimates air travel demand for small- and medium-sized cities. The author found that average fares, local income, origin and destination population, and market concentration of airlines are the principal factors affecting origin and destination air travel in these communities.
Fritz Kahn argues that Class I railroads are ignoring the regulatory requirement that they file current system diagram maps with the Surface Transportation Board. In "The Disappearing Diagrams" Kahn says that as a result shippers and communities are denied advance notice of lines likely to be shut down or abandoned.
Richard Beilock and Jim Del Ciello study changes in truck transportation of Florida produce in "Refrigerated Trucking Revisited." Based on two surveys conducted 15 years apart (1986-87 and 2001-02) of long distance truckers exiting Florida, the authors analyze changes in the use of brokers and the internet to arrange loads, importance of owner-operators and their ability to operate independently versus under lease to larger carriers, equipment replacement and utilization, and lumping.
In "Case Studies of the Economic Impact of Highway Bypasses in Kansas," Michael Babcock and Jose Davalos measure the impacts of bypasses on total employment of bypass towns, retail sales of the town's travel-related businesses, employment of the town's travel-related businesses, and the bypass town as a whole. The authors concluded that the bypasses did not have a statistically significant effect on total employment of the sample bypass towns. However, in the opinion of most of the owners and managers of the travel-related businesses, the bypasses had a negative impact on their retail sales and employment, and on the town as a whole.
Paul Metaxatos and Anthony Pagano document the impact of computer-assisted scheduling and dispatch (CASD) systems on paratransit operations in "Efficiency and Effectiveness Impacts of Computer-Assisted Scheduling and Dispatching System Implementation." Based on implementation of a CASD system in a small city in Illinois, the authors found evidence of small, but measurable, efficiency and effectiveness gains.
In "A Multi-Objective Decision Making Framework for Transportation Investments," Mashrur Chowdhury and Pulin Tan present a framework for analyzing the most desirable transportation investment options based on their objectives and constraints. The authors applied their framework with data generated for a Capital Beltway Corridor investment study. They found that the multi-objective decision-making framework was adaptable to this transport investment case study.
Rachel Liu, Albert Song, and David Nelson develop a comprehensive approach to selecting long-term rolling stock for commuter railroad service. In "A Comprehensive Approach for Rolling Stock Planning: Combining Train Performance Simulation and Life-Cycle Cost Analysis," the authors develop an approach that not only considers the performance of the proposed rail equipment, but also evaluates the life cycle costs of the proposed fleet. The authors present a case study of rolling stock planning for the New Haven Line to demonstrate the practical application of their model.
Robert Cervero analyzes the hypothesis that real estate prices reveal the degree to which rail transit investments confer benefits (i.e., connectivity). In "Effects of Light and Commuter Rail Transit on Land Prices: Experiences in San Diego County," Cervero uses hedonic price models to identify appreciable land value premiums for multiple land uses in different rail corridors of San Diego County.
Michael W. Babcock
General Editor, JTRF
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