Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1 Introduction -- References -- 2 The Magic Hand of Speed: A Historical Account -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Machine Speed: First Principles -- 2.2.1 Definitions -- 2.2.2 Illustrations -- 2.3 Two Ages of Machine Speed -- 2.3.1 First Age of Machine Speed -- 2.3.2 Second Age of Machine Speed -- 2.4 Machine Speed: The Invisible Factor -- 2.4.1 The Dearth of Work on Machine Speed in General -- 2.5 Speed and Speed-ups: The Economics, Engineering, and Management Literatures -- 2.5.1 Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Political Economy: Energy and Motion, or Machine Speed by Another Name -- 2.5.2 Engineering -- 2.5.3 Management -- 2.6 Summary and Conclusions -- References -- 3 The Kinetics Approach to Production -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Model -- 3.2.1 Tier I: Mechanical and Chemical Kinetics at the Sub-process and Plant Levels -- 3.2.2 Tier II: Organization and the Demand for Supervision and Tools -- 3.2.3 Aggregating Across Firms Within an Industry/Sector -- 3.2.4 Production Per Factor Indexes -- 3.3 Empirical Evidence -- 3.3.1 Tier I: Testing the Theory of Process/Sub-process Kinetics -- 3.4 The Kinetic Approach to Production: Applications and Implications -- 3.4.1 Factor Substitution: Separating Fact from Fiction -- 3.4.2 The End of Human Supervision, Not the End of Work -- 3.4.3 The Labor PFI in the Post-WWII Era -- 3.5 Summary and Conclusions -- References -- 4 Speed-ups: Logistics and Profitability -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Statistical Speed-ups: The Two Dimensions -- 4.2.1 The Logistics of Machine Speed-ups -- 4.2.2 Statistical Machine Speed: The Role of Machine Downtime -- 4.3 Case Studies -- 4.3.1 Case Study I: The Hawkeye Meat Company -- 4.3.2 Case Study II: Canada Wire and Cable Company -- 4.3.3 Case Study III: The McLean Shipping Company.

Excessive speeds are a major contributing factor for road accidents. Research has shown that both accident risk and injury severity resulting from accidents vary with speed due to physical reasons and to psycho-physiological effects on road users; relations between these factors have been found at the individual and the system levels. Most road safety plans include speed management as a tool for mitigating road crash consequences and reaching the targeted safety levels. In that perspective the Portuguese Road Safety Plan is no exception, and an integrated set of safety interventions is programmed and being implemented, including legislation update, road infrastructure improvements, information campaigns, the use of ITS and enforcement activities. Automatic systems have been successfully used for enforcing compliance with speed limits in several countries, resulting in lower prevalence of excessive speeds and safety improvements in the vicinity of their installation sites. The investments for the implementation of these systems consistently show favourable benefit-cost ratios, provided the installation sites are carefully selected. In fact, automatic speed enforcement was identified as a road safety best practice in SUPREME, a 6th Framework European research project, in which best practices in road safety were collected, analysed and summarised. However, in some countries, social resistance to this type of devices may arise, if misunderstandings are allowed to develop about their main function. In this paper a presentation is made of the technical criteria being applied in Portugal for the selection of eligible sites for installation of automatic speed enforcement and for monitoring its safety effects. Also, a brief description is made of the related activity being taken within the Portuguese Road Safety Plan to ensure the needed social acceptability of this safety intervention. ; Autoridade Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária ; 2 ; 6p ; DT/NPTS ; 2010 ; 25 to 28 May

The most widespread approach to transport appraisal is to combine cost-benefit analysis (CBA) with environmental assessments and public consultations. However, large-scale transport projects such as the HS2 high-speed rail system in the UK seem to have pushed this approach beyond its limits, leading to broad discontent with the appraisal process. There is a need both to develop new methods capable of integrating a wide range of perspectives in a systematic manner and to test these for large-scale projects. Multicriteria analysis (MCA) has proven useful in supporting transport decision-making by including a broader set of criteria in the appraisal process. Multiactor multicriteria analysis (MAMCA) has extended this approach to include multiple actors and stakeholders in the judgment and decision-making process. This paper builds on the MAMCA method and demonstrates its practicability and usability by applying it to the case of HS2. The purpose of this paper is not to reach a definitive conclusion on the desirability of various project options, but to complement existing transport appraisal methods by making different perspectives explicit. For example, the results for this case show contrasting views for different groups of transport professionals: a favorable assessment of HS2 among transport planners employed in government, but an unfavorable assessment among transport researchers with a background in sustainability. In terms of contribution to the development of data collection methods, this research demonstrates the usefulness of conducting semistructured interviews in conjunction with an online questionnaire for the assessment and weighting process within MCA. Because MCA results are expressed in terms of relative desirability of projects, the approach also effectively systematizes the inclusion and assessment of multiple options. Overall, the proposed method enhances the capacity to analyze conflicting views in large-scale transport project appraisal processes.

Abstract
Even though 80% of a shopper's time in the store is spent moving from place to place, little is known about managing the pace of in-store traffic flow. Based on the store atmospherics literature, this article introduces interventions to optimize the pace of locomotion. A series of lab and field experiments demonstrates that changes in flooring affect customers' walking speed. The number, the nature, and the relative salience of progress markers along a walking path toward a physical location communicate goal progress and thus the motivation to reach a particular destination. Consistent with a goal gradient account, customers walk faster when fewer progress markers are placed along the walking path to the goal. The effect of the number of progress markers diminishes when the markers are unrelated to the goal and reverses when the markers are relatively more salient than the goal. This article contributes to the goal literature by showing how markers affect perceptions of goal progress (i.e., level vs. rate of progress) and provides concrete insights to speed up and slow down customers' walking speed in a retail environment.

Can changing the rules of the game affect government performance? We study the impact of a simple procedural reform on efficiency and quality of adjudication in Senegal. The reform gave judges the duty and powers to conclude pre-trial proceedings within a four-month deadline. We combine a staggered rollout across the six civil and commercial chambers of the court of Dakar and three years of high-frequency caseload data to construct an event study. We find a reduction in procedural formalism, as the length of the pre-trial stage decreases by 42.9 days (0.29 SD) and the number of case-level pre-trial hearings is reduced, while judges are more likely to impose deadlines. The effect is similar for small and large cases, while fast and slow judges are equally likely to apply the reform. The evidence suggests that these efficiency gains have no adverse impact on quality, while we document positive firm-level effects.

Can changing the rules of the game affect government performance? We study the impact of a simple procedural reform on efficiency and quality of adjudication in Senegal. The reform gave judges the duty and powers to conclude pre-trial proceedings within a four-month deadline. We combine a staggered rollout across the six civil and commercial chambers of the court of Dakar and three years of high-frequency caseload data to construct an event study. We find a reduction in procedural formalism, as the length of the pre-trial stage decreases by 42.9 days (0.29 SD) and the number of case-level pre-trial hearings is reduced, while judges are more likely to impose deadlines. The effect is similar for small and large cases, while fast and slow judges are equally likely to apply the reform. The evidence suggests that these efficiency gains have no adverse impact on quality, while we document positive firm-level effects.

Can changing the rules of the game affect government performance? We study the impact of a simple procedural reform on efficiency and quality of adjudication in Senegal. The reform gave judges the duty and powers to conclude pre-trial proceedings within a four-month deadline. We combine a staggered rollout across the six civil and commercial chambers of the court of Dakar and three years of high-frequency caseload data to construct an event study. We find a reduction in procedural formalism, as the length of the pre-trial stage decreases by 42.9 days (0.29 SD) and the number of case-level pre-trial hearings is reduced, while judges are more likely to impose deadlines. The effect is similar for small and large cases, while fast and slow judges are equally likely to apply the reform. The evidence suggests that these efficiency gains have no adverse impact on quality, while we document positive firm-level effects.

Can changing the rules of the game affect government performance? We study the impact of a simple procedural reform on efficiency and quality of adjudication in Senegal. The reform gave judges the duty and powers to conclude pre-trial proceedings within a four-month deadline. We combine a staggered rollout across the six civil and commercial chambers of the court of Dakar and three years of high-frequency caseload data to construct an event study. We find a reduction in procedural formalism, as the length of the pre-trial stage decreases by 42.9 days (0.29 SD) and the number of case-level pre-trial hearings is reduced, while judges are more likely to impose deadlines. The effect is similar for small and large cases, while fast and slow judges are equally likely to apply the reform. The evidence suggests that these efficiency gains have no adverse impact on quality, while we document positive firm-level effects.

Can changing the rules of the game affect government performance? We study the impact of a simple procedural reform on efficiency and quality of adjudication in Senegal. The reform gave judges the duty and powers to conclude pre-trial proceedings within a four-month deadline. We combine a staggered rollout across the six civil and commercial chambers of the court of Dakar and three years of high-frequency caseload data to construct an event study. We find a reduction in procedural formalism, as the length of the pre-trial stage decreases by 42.9 days (0.29 SD) and the number of case-level pre-trial hearings is reduced, while judges are more likely to impose deadlines. The effect is similar for small and large cases, while fast and slow judges are equally likely to apply the reform. The evidence suggests that these efficiency gains have no adverse impact on quality, while we document positive firm-level effects.

Lowering speed of car drivers will have positive impacts on environmental pollution and the number of road accidents. It is therefore a potentially interesting policy option for governments which want to reduce negative externalities of transport. In this paper the acceptance of such polities is analyzed by means of a survey questionnaire among car drivers and public transport users. First, an analysis is presented on the general speed behaviour, the behaviour on distinct road types, the acceptance of lower limits, and the acceptance and perception of electronic speed limiters. Next, a statistical analysis of subgroups is carried out. It is concluded that the speed of car drivers is in general not considered as a main problematic issue by drivers and non-drivers; therefore there is little scope for the acceptance of changes in speed polities. When speed polities are changed (lower limits) it seems most effective to emphasize safety aspects in order to increase support of the public. However, psychological factors of speed behaviour may play an important role in this respect.