Search results

This research investigates the drivers for the rental value of motorway service areas and aims to identify and analyse these factors to provide a better understanding of the retail opportunities in these locations.

The primary research looked at the reasons that clients/customers chose to visit motorway service areas. In addition, the research included two case studies of motorway service areas and a number of interviews with experts in the field.

The main findings determined that there has been an increase in turnover figures which, as motorway service area rents are mainly calculated as a base rent and percentage of turnover figure, shows there is an increase in rental value. It is also proffered that the regulations set out by the Highways Agency and Department for Transport are holding back growth of motorway service areas.

There is very little research undertaken on the rental determinants of motorway service areas as a sub‐set of the retail market. This research provides an insight into the mechanics of this sub market and identifies the drivers of rental values.

Most carbon accounting consists of valuing what has not happened; such absent entities and their materialisation through simulated calculations can enact political participation, however. By using Marres’s (2012) notion of an “experimental site of material politics”, this paper aims to investigate the mediating role of simulated calculations of prevented carbon emissions in deploying environmental politics’ discourses. Here, such calculations become seductive forces for public engagement and help performing engaging spaces for supporting the diffusion of innovation technologies.

The empirical analysis concerns a simulated calculative device developed by Autostrade, a motorway management firm, in its work to translate questions about capacity utilisation, through the fluidity of traffic, into reductions in CO₂ emissions. These reductions took the form of a simulation that required an apparatus to be performed and involved alternative scenarios focussing on hypothetical rather than absolute CO₂ reductions.

The Autostrade case highlights how simulated calculations of absent CO₂ emissions participate in the construction of a collective experience by interfacing concerns that encompass the rationalities of the domestication of technological innovation and make motorway mobility a responsible and ac-countable action.

The paper shows how simulated and experimental calculations on absent carbon emissions act as mediators between public engagement and the deployment of environmental politics discourses. They both extend political participation and propagate and reproduce the trials, which, from time to time, challenge the enticement and forcefulness of a technological innovation.

The paper suggests a different dimension of politics that relies on material politics. Rather than considering human centric discursive acts, it looks at the power of technical objects and their augmented calculative devices in engaging the public in environmental politics. This is where absence, which is made visible and materialised through simulations, deploys affordances that reframe power relationships.

This is the first case study that addresses the issue of the role of accounting calculation on absent carbon emissions in enabling innovation and engaging publics in environmental politics.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an industry-funded qualitative interdisciplinary research project that has produced a new approach to motorway noise management called “noise transformation”.

Four iterative design tests guided by listening as methodology. These included field recordings, laboratory tests and two field tests. Field tests were conducted in combination with ethnographers, who verified community responses to field-based transformations.

Transformation requires an audible perception of both background and introduced sounds in all instances. Transformation creates a 1–2 dB increase in background sound levels, making it counterintuitive to traditional noise attenuation approaches. Noise transformation is an electroacoustic soundscape design method that treats noise as a “design material”. When listening to motorway noise transformations, participants were actually experiencing another rendering of a sound that they had already acquired a degree of attunement to. Thus, they experienced transformations as somehow familiar or normal and easy to feel comfortable with.

Noise transformation is a new approach to noise management. Typically, noise management focusses on reduction in dB levels. Noise transformation focusses on changing the perceptual impact of noise to make it less annoying. It brings together urban design, composition and ethnography as a means to think about the future design of outdoor environments affected by motorway traffic noise, and should be of interests to planners, designers and artists. The authors have structured the paper around listening as methodology, through which both design and ethnography outcomes were achieved.

A smart city is a city that functions in a sustainable and intelligent way, by integrating all of its infrastructures and services in a cohesive way using intelligent devices for monitoring and control, to ensure efficiency and better quality of life for its citizens. As other countries globally, the UK is keen on economic development and investment in smart-city missions to create interest in monetary environment and inward investment. This paper aims to explore the driving forces of smart road transport transformation and implementation in the UK.

The study involved interviews with 16 professionals from the UK road transport sector. A semi-structured interview technique was used to collect experts' perception, which was then examined using content analysis.

The results of the study revealed that the technological advancement is a key driver. The main challenges faced during the implementation of smart-city elements in the UK road network are lack of investment, maintenance, state of readiness and the awareness of the smart road transport concept. The study concludes that an understanding of the concept of smart cities from a road transport perspective is very important to create awareness of the benefits and the way it works. A wider collaboration between every sector is crucial to create a successful smart city.

The study contributes to the field of digitalisation of road transport sector. This paper reveals the key driving forces of smart road transport transformation, the current status of smart road transport implementation in the UK and challenges of the smart road transport development in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to study the slime mould Physarum polycephalum

The paper proceeds by representing major urban areas of China by oat flakes, inoculating the slime mould in Beijing, waiting till the slime mould colonises all urban areas, or colonises some and cease further propagation, and analysing the protoplasmic networks formed and comparing with man-made motorway network and planar proximity graphs. Findings

Laboratory experiments found that P. polycephalum

The paper demonstrated the strong component of transport system built by slime mould of P. polycephalum

Details two training programs for Highways Agency traffic officers, which were recognized in the latest UK National Training Awards.

Describes the origins and outcomes of a training program that gives new traffic officers from diverse backgrounds the general skills needed to manage incidents on the motorway, and a second training program giving traffic officers specific skills to manage a new traffic system on a stretch of motorway in the West Midlands, where vehicles travel on the hard shoulder at busy periods.

Highlights Highways Agency claims that traffic officers have helped to bring about a 12 percent reduction in incident‐related congestion, a 1.9‐minute response‐time improvement, a three‐minute improvement in carriageway‐clearance times and 44 percent more police time freed for tackling criminality.

Reveals that traffic officers are not burdened with dealing with criminality, so they have time to deal with routine incidents and essential traffic management at more serious events, alongside the emergency services.

Describes how properly trained traffic officers are helping to cut delays on England's congested motorway network.

This paper aims to present a linear mathematical framework for modeling and optimizing road transport infrastructure. The framework assesses and optimizes performance of existing transport facility rather than relying on building new roads for the ever-increasing travel demand.

The mathematical framework is built upon a traffic model called Cell Transmission Model (CTM). CTM describes the relationship and evolution of traffic flow and concentration over space and time. The model is parsimonious and accurate in predicting traffic dynamics. More importantly, the traffic flow model is piecewise linear with which the corresponding transport facility optimization problem can be formulated as a Linear Programming (LP) problem and solved by established solution algorithm for global optimality.

We select a section on England Motorway M25 as a case study. With traffic data, we first calibrate the CTM, and we are able to produce traffic estimation with a reasonable error rate of 12 per cent. The corresponding LP then seeks an optimal ramp metering strategy that minimizes the delay on the motorway. It is shown that an optimal and practical strategy can be derived which reduces the motorway delay by 10 per cent without significantly hurting the surrounding connectors.

Instead of the tedious microscopic models used by many traditional tools, the underlying CTM is parsimonious and reliable. The tools developed herein are based upon plausible traffic theory and will be accessible for a wide range of users. The LP formulation can be easily implemented and solved for optimal and practical control strategies for real-world transport networks by using existing computer software (CPLEX) within reasonable computational time. The present work will certainly contribute to the sustainable development of transport facility.