TESIS PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE MAGÍSTER EN ADMINISTRACIÓN / Leon Parra, Suyin, [Parte I], Lepe Negrete, Luis, [Parte II] / Actualmente la tasa de pasajeros circulantes por el aeropuerto de Antofagasta es de aproximadamente 1 millón de pasajeros por año. Considerando que la oferta actual de servicios de transporte publico es bastante acotada, restringida en tiempos y con precios altos respecto la calidad del servicio. Este modelo de negocio considera una serie de herramientas de marketing, con objetivo de poder establecer un modelo de introducción de nuevo servicio al mercado, posicionamiento de marca y búsqueda de nuevos segmentos de negocios en el largo plazo. Con base en los antecedentes recolectados y al modelo de negocio a implementar, Aereo-Trans tiene como objetivo poder captar aproximadamente el 10% del mercado total, equivalente aproximadamente a 201 mil pasajeros. Lo que se espera se traduzca en un ingreso anual aproximado de 1 millon de dólares, relativo a un tamaño de mercado de 37 millones de dólares, según las estimaciones efectuadas en el desarrollo de este estudio. Con objetivo de poder dar curso a este proyecto, se requerirá de una inversión inicial de aproximadamente 875 mil dólares, de los cuales un 65% financiará la adquisición de medios de transporte masivos (minibuses) los cuales son un recurso crítico para la ejecución del presente modelo. El 35% restante estará destinado a capital de trabajo, cuyo objetivo será financiar los primeros meses de operación. Se evalúa económicamente el modelo de negocio, entregando resultados satisfactorios con un VAN de MUSD 302, una TIR de 19,3%, un EBIT promedio de 21% (relativo a las ventas) y finalmente un payback de 3 años (recuperación de la inversión). En base a esto último se podrá apreciar que el presente proyecto tiene gran atractivo para el inversionista privado. Finalmente el modelo presentado, considera un escenario base el cual podría verse afectado por las condiciones económicas de la segunda región y el país, pudiendo este volverse aun mas rentable, de lo expuesto en este estudio. Además de esto ultimo, también es posible volver este modelo mas atractivo a través de una estrategia de precio menos agresiva para con su competencia, volviendo al negocio mas rentable en términos unitarios (Margen por ticket).

The planning process of public transit systems have for long been a subject treated in operations research. In recent years, research within the public transit area focus on adapting this planning process for electric vehicles. This thesis evaluates a heuristic approach to the vehicle scheduling problem for electrical buses without the use of any licensed software. Among the previous research is an article that presents a mathematical model for scheduling of electrical buses using AMPL and CPLEX. However, due to not finding optimal solutions for all instances of the problem, the question of a heuristic approach is raised. Literature studies indicate that large neighbourhood search (LNS)-based heuristics have shown previous success for scheduling of vehicles. Results from the implementation of a constructive heuristic combined with an LNS-heuristic are compared with the results from the mathematical model and CPLEX. We see some success using the heuristic approach. However, the method we compare against still provide better solutions for almost all instances. More specifically, the difference between the results (number of buses needed) increases with an increasing complexity of the problem. Finally, due to the lacking results, some recommendations are given for improving the performance of the heuristic.

This study compares and contrasts operational expenses of district-owned to privately owned school bus services operated in Wichita, Clay, Montague, Jack, Wilbarger, Throckmorton, Baylor, Palo Pinto, Young, and Archer counties within the state of Texas.

Several studies indicate that the cabin of buses is the micro-environment in urban public transport where commuters might be the most exposed to black carbon. Black carbon functions as an indicator of air pollution, which is shown to have harmful impacts on the human body and because it may lead to cancers, systemic inflammation, and cardiovascular diseases, it is listed as one of the top causes to premature deaths, globally. This makes it important to understand what mechanisms there are to the elevated levels of pollutants in urban buses, and by performing mobile in-cabin measurements of black carbon concentrations during 55 bus trips in the public transport system of Stockholm, this study have tried to assess the influences from using different types of fuel, self-contamination, meteorological conditions and driving factors. Although concentrations showed large variability both spatially and temporally, idling at intensely trafficked bus stops showed an average increase of concentrations by 42% compared to the overall average. The risk of allowing increased number of pollutants at bus stops increases with idling for longer time and having the doors open meanwhile.

This dissertation asks how activists, planners, and politicians reshaped transport institutions to prioritize buses over cars in London and Paris. The policy studied in both cities is the creation of a network of bus priority, known as the Red Routes and London Bus Priority Network in London and the Mobilien network in Paris. Using media analysis, archival research, and 30 interviews across the two cities, it traces the process of change in both cities and maps the deliberative system, the actors engaged in the decision-making process. It finds that empowered but not autonomous local governments—the boroughs in the case of London and the city of Paris in the case of Paris—were major actors in the change process, putting forth alternatives and deliberating with regional bodies to shape policies that took into account a variety of competing needs. It also finds that public conversation, debate, and conflict were essential to the process of institutional change, through which road governance was decentralized and local actors were empowered to control their own streets. These findings follow Iris Marion Young’s proposal that empowered but not autonomous local actors, subject to regional governments, is the most just model of urban governance.

Integrated Circuit (IC) designs are increasingly moving towards Intellectual Property (IP) reuse for various targeted products and market segments. Therefore, there is a need to share and synergize internal bus architectures to enable the reuse of IP blocks for various ASIC and SoC applications. Due to the different market segments of various ASICs and SoCs, design teams and architects have opted to use customized internal bus architectures to suit the respective targeted features for their market segments. As a result, many ASIC and SoC companies that produce microprocessors for computers, microcontrollers for consumer electronics as well as memory and I/O controller chipsets have opted to use different internal interfaces, designs and IPs for the different products that they sell. A modular and configurable bus architecture that is flexible and capable of supporting IPs from various ASICs and SoCs would serve to solve many of the problems relating to IP reuse for various applications from a front end design perspective. There are several approaches to resolve this, for example, using a standard existing open source bus, a new all-encompassing bus that covers the needs of the majority of designs and a customization of a particular bus level such as the interface layer, where part of the bus features are fixed and the rest of them are determined by individual design groups. This research covers the analysis of existing bus architectures in industry and considers the various options for bus architecture optimization for design modularity, bus performance and IP reuse with existing technology. The architecture definition, design, logic simulation and performance comparisons of the proposed bus architecture on industry standard RTL design and validation tools was then conducted.

Orange County, FL has been experiencing ozone concentrations in the past several years which in some cases exceeded the national and state standards. The high concentration of ground level ozone can cause a variety of health problems including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion or it can worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Other effects include reduction of agricultural crop and commercial forest yields, lower growth and survivability of tree seedlings, and higher susceptibility of plant to diseases, pests and other stresses such as harsh weather. The ozone generation rate is directly related to the ambient concentration of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic carbons (VOCs). These two air pollutants, mostly produced from combustion of fossil fuels, react with oxygen to form ozone in presence of sunlight. In urban areas, ozone generation rate can be decreased by reduction of ozone precursors, NOx and VOCs. The Air Quality Research group of University of Central Florida proposed that one of the emission reduction strategies be for school bus fleets in the area. School buses were chosen because of their important impact on ambient air quality in general and on student health in particular. There were about 473,000 school buses in the 2004-05 school year nationwide which traveled for a total mileage of about 4 billion miles in that year. Orange County Public School (OCPS) system owns about 1400 school buses which traveled about 17 million miles in 2005-06 school year, serving 71000 students. The use of diesel fuels, Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD, diesel fuel containing 15ppm sulfur) and Biodiesel (B20, a mixture of 20% biodiesel and 80% ULSD), were chosen as the first proposed action to be studied. Also the effects of transportation parameters, average speed and idling time on fleet emissions were selected to be reviewed. This report reviews the fuel option and transportation parameters, effects on school bus fleet emissions and it does a comparison analysis in order to show advantages and disadvantages of each fuel. The Conventional Diesel (CD) and ULSD emissions were estimated by using MOBILE6.2 model, and effects of B20 on emissions were derived from published studies. It was found that using B20 or ULSD can reduce the emissions significantly for the most of major pollutants but in the case of NOx, the percentage changes is not certain yet and more investigation is required. Emissions vary for different average speeds and 27 miles per hour can be defined as the optimum average speed. Also reduction of idling time is an excellent control option for decreasing emissions, and should be considered for OCPS.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / abstract / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics

According to the current governmental regulations, all diesel buses will be replaced in the United States and the European market within the next ten years. There are over 60,000 buses in the United States and each year over 3,000 new buses of approximately 40 feet in length are purchased. The bus market has a growth rate of four to five percent per year over the last two years. The improvements in technology offered by United States companies prove unsatisfactory in terms of bus performance and the emissions of new buses. The energy crisis in the United States and concern over the health hazards of the diesel fuel exhaust gases and particulates, alternative fuel vehicles are in great demand in the transit market world wide.