Sveriges vägnät utgör en viktig del av det sammanhängande transportsystemet. Vägnätet är indelat i tre olika vägtyper, allmän väg, kommunal gata och enskild väg, vilka i sin tur regleras i olika lagstiftningar. För att säkerställa att vägarna är öppna och framkomliga finns det för varje väg en avsedd väghållare som är ansvarig för byggande och driften av vägen. Väghållare för allmän väg är primärt staten (genom Trafikverket), men om det främjar en god och rationell väghållning kan en kommun kan förordnas som väghållare för allmänna vägar inom hela eller delar av kommunen. När en kommun förordnas som allmän väghållare upprättas ett kommunalt väghållningsområde runt huvudorten inom vilket kommunen blir huvudsaklig väghållare.  Genom tillämpning av kombinerade metoder syftar detta arbete till att utifrån en historisk översikt och gällande institutioner översiktligt studera det statliga och kommunala väghållaransvaret, med fokus på allmänna vägar. Arbetet kombinerar en litteraturstudie, en enkätundersökning och ett antal mindre fallstudier, vilka avser att närmare undersöka synen på dagens fördelning av väghållaransvar, förändringar i väghållaransvar mellan stat och kommun, samt de kommunala väghållningsområdena roll och funktion i praktiken.  Arbetet visar på att kommunerna idag generellt ser positivt på det kommunala väghållaransvaret för allmänna vägar. Vid förändringar i väghållaransvaret är det primärt en kommun som övertar ansvaret från staten, och då vanligtvis genom att kommunen övertar vägrätten genom en ändring i det kommunala väghållningsområdet. Att ändringar i väghållaransvar mellan stat och kommun idag kräver överenskommelser, samtidigt som det saknas tvångsmedel, kan ifrågasättas ur både effektivitets- och rättviseaspekter. De incitament som idag framhålls för ett kommunalt väghållaransvar är samhällsekonomiska vinster, dock påpekas det av ett antal kommuner att dessa inte i tillräcklig omfattning kompenserar den ökade ekonomiska bördan.  Vidare har det konstaterats i arbetet att den kommunala kunskapen kring väghållarfrågor är viktig och skulle behöva förbättras. Ökad kompentens samt bättre information ifrån Trafikverket skulle potentiellt kunna leda till att fler samhällsekonomiska ändringar av väghållare genomförs, att fler kommuner engagerar sig i den allmänna väghållningen och att kommunerna i större utsträckning utnyttjar sin roll som allmän väghållare. Dagens regelverk rörande väghållaransvar leder även till en viss splittring av vägnätet inom tätorter då en väg i kommunal väghållning potentiellt kan ändra karaktär mellan allmän väg, gata och enskild väg flera gånger. Något som eventuellt skulle kunna motverkas av en mer enhetlig lagstiftning och större distinktioner mellan statlig och kommunal allmän väghållning. / The road network in Sweden is a crucial part of the overall transportation system. Today, the road network is divided into three different types of roads, public roads, municipal streets and private roads. These different types of roads are in turn regulated by different legislations. To ensure that the roads are open and accessible to the public, there is a designated road manager for each road. The road manager is the responsible party for the construction and operation of roads. The road manager for public roads are primarily the state, but if it promotes rational road maintenance, a municipality can be appointed as public road manager. When municipalities are appointed as road manager for public roads, a municipal road maintenance area is established around the main town, within which the municipality becomes the main road manager.  Based on a historical overview and current institutions, this work aims at studying state and municipal road maintenance responsibility for public roads, using a combined method strategy. The paper combines a literature study, a survey and a number of minor case studies, which all aims to study the distribution of road maintenance responsibility today, changes in road maintenance responsibilities, as well as the function of the municipal road maintenance areas. The results in the thesis shows that the municipalities today generally are positive towards a municipal road maintenance responsibility for public roads. In cases of changes in road maintenance responsibility, the most common case is that a municipality that takes over responsibility from the state. The most common way for a municipality to take over a responsibility for a public road is by changing the municipal road maintenance area, and thereby also taking over the public road right. The fact that changes in road maintenance responsibility between the state and a municipality today require agreements, while there are no compulsory methods, can be questioned from both efficiency and justice aspects. The incentives that today are emphasized for a municipal road maintenance responsibility are mainly of socioeconomic aspects. However, most municipalities emphasize that the economic burden from a road maintenance responsibility today aren’t sufficiently compensated by socioeconomic gains.  Furthermore, it has been found that the municipal knowledge regarding road maintenance issues is important and something that needs to be improved. Increased knowledge could potentially lead to more socioeconomic changes of road managers and that municipalities take greater advantage of their role as public road managers. The current regulations concerning road maintenance may also lead to a certain shattering of the road network within urban areas. This since a road with a municipal road maintenance responsibility can change between being a public road, municipal street and private road multiple times. Something that could potentially be compensated by the use of a more uniform legislation where greater distinctions are made between state and municipal public road maintenance.

"Jack Kerouac Does Not Lie" recounts my pilgrimage in the summer of 2000, from southwest Florida to a canyon beach in California where Jack Kerouac—as I had read in his Big Sur—lost his mind forty years earlier. I was heavily influenced. Kerouac’s On the Road showed me what to do with myself. Big Sur showed me where to go. In the twentieth century Americans shifted their notions of the west coast from a means for sustenance to a symbol of post-war freedom. Kerouac seems to embody this momentum; the world and the burning spirit his work describes is a precursor to the sixties. His muse, Neal Cassady, is the common link—appearing as Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s first major work and later as himself in Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. My parents were a part of this westward yearning’s last true surge in the early seventies, when they ventured cross-country and stayed out there for a time. They’d caught the tail end of the wave, and told me a bit about it. I was full of stories, mostly fiction. Sweating in my twenty year old conversion van with a big friend, Ben—whose goals were less "literary"—I sought to recreate the legends I had read, the movies I had seen, and the tales my parents had told me. I was on a mission; I wanted my trip to measure up. Ben was on vacation. Our folly is chronicled within; three weeks and four thousand miles of it.

Aggressive driving is not clearly and consistently defined in the literature, neither in terms of the specific behaviors chosen for inclusion nor the degree to which the emotional state of the driver is taken into account. Principally, the aim of this current research is to determine the extent to which aggressive driving and road rage overlap. This will be accomplished primarily by applying two well-supported dichotomies in aggression research: hostile/instrumental and impulsive/premeditated. Relevant personality traits will also be measured to help discern the aggressive driving- road rage overlap and to explore secondary areas of interest, such as sex and age differences in driver aggression.

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A trace metal speciation scheme proposed by Batley and Florence (1976) was applied to determine the physiochemical forms of zinc, cadmium, lead, and copper in two Central Florida highway drainage systems. The linearity and limitations of the ASV technique were also examined. The measurements showed that (a) more than 70% of the soluble Zn and Cd in all of the waters analyzed existed as liable ionic metal (b) lead was divided between labile and non-labile inorganic forms, but one particular form, PbCO3, predominated (c) a substantial fraction of copper is associated with organic colloids if humic substances are present. In addition a computerized chemical model for trace and major element speciation was applied to the waters in both drainage systems using measured average water quality for input parameters. A comparison between metal species measured by ASV and those predicted by the computer model are presented. There appears to be good agreement between the metal fractions measured in the water samples by ASV and those predicted by the chemical model.

Yes / Cattle grids are used on roads and tracks to prevent grazing animals from leaving an open space without fencing onto a more controlled area where access to the road from surrounded land is more limited. They are widely used in the UK at the entrances to common and moorland areas where animals are free to roam, but also on private drive entrances. Typically, they consist of a series of metal bars across the road that are spaced so that an animal’s legs would fall through the gaps if it attempted to cross. Below the grid is a shallow pit that is intended to further deter livestock from using that particular crossing point. The sound produced as vehicles cross these devices is a characteristic low frequency “brrrr” where the dominant frequencies relates to the bar passage frequency under the tyres. The sound can be disturbing to riders and their horses and walkers and residents living close by as evidenced by press reports and the need to consider noise aspects in planning for new installations. For this reason and due to the lack of available information on the size and nature of the problem measurements and recordings have been made at a number of sites in Yorkshire in the UK. In addition, questionnaire surveys of residents living close by and façade measurements have also been used to gauge impact. Results show that there is a wide variation in the maximum noise level produced by cattle grids of apparently similar design. This can be related to impact noise produced by the movement of all or part of the grid as the frame comes under impulsive loading as the vehicle crosses. It was further established that some residents living close to the cattle grids were disturbed by the noise, and in some cases vibration, and wanted them removed or suitably modified. / The work was funded by the Bradford Centre for Sustainable Environments, University of Bradford.

The tire is one of the most complex subsystems of the vehicle. It is, however, the least understood of all the components of a car. Without a good tire model, the vehicle simulation handling response will not be realistic, especially for maneuvers that require a combination of braking/traction and cornering. Most of the simplified theoretical developments in tire modeling, however, have been limited to on-road tire models. With the availability of powerful computers, it can be noted that majority of the work done in the development of off-road tire models have mostly been focused on creating better Finite Element, Discrete Element, or Boundary Element models. The research conducted in this study deals with the development of a simplified tire brush-based tire model for on-road simulation, together with a simplified off-road wheel/tire model that has the capability to revert back to on-road trend of behavior on firmer soils. The on-road tire model is developed based on observations and insight of empirical data collected by NHSTA throughout the years, while the off-road tire model is developed based on observations of experimental data and photographic evidence collected by various terramechanics researchers within the last few decades. The tire model was developed to be used in vehicle dynamics simulations for engineering mobility analysis. Vehicle-terrain interaction is a complex phenomena governed by soil mechanical behavior and tire deformation. The theoretical analysis involved in the development of the wheel/ tire model relies on application of existing soil mechanics theories based on strip loads to determine the tangential and radial stresses on the soil-wheel interface. Using theoretical analysis and empirical data, the tire deformation geometry is determined to establish the tractive forces in off-road operation. To illustrate the capabilities of the models developed, a rigid wheel and a flexible tire on deformable terrain is implemented and output of the model was computed for different types of soils; a very loose and deformable sandy terrain and a very firm and cohesive Yolo loam terrain. The behavior of the wheel/tire model on the two types of soil is discussed. The outcome of this work shows results that correlate well with the insight from experimental data collected by various terramechanics researchers throughout the years, which is an indication that the model presented can be used as a subsystem in the modeling of vehicle-terrain interaction to acquire more insight into the coupling between the tire and the terrain. / Ph. D.