D.Com. / In South Africa ninety percent of scheduled air travellers were transported by South African Airways during 1983/84. The airline operates on all the main routes in South and Southern Africa supported by the private scheduled airlines operating in a feeder/ distribution function to many main centers. Recently the industry has been subjected to a commission of inquiry (Margo Commission) which analysed amongst other the administration and control of civil aviation, the licensing of air services, and the adequacy and efficiency of scheduled and nonscheduled regional and domestic services ...

The focus of this report is to investigate whether a towboat would be able meet damaged stability requirements. In order to evaluate what type of damage stability requirements could be considered, two damage stability criteria were selected for this investigation: Offshore Supply Vessel and Passenger Vessel Damage Criteria. Two vessels are then evaluated using General Hydrostatic Software (GHS) to find the maximum allowable vertical center of gravity allowed by each set of criteria. These values are then compared to the vessels’ operating conditions to show if the vessels would currently be able to operate. Ultimately it is found that the extent of damage of the criteria is the greatest limiting factor for this vessel type. Suggestions are made regarding the necessary changes to the boats’ general arrangements and loading conditions in order to meet the damaged stability requirements.

Thesis (M.C.E.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Ardeshir Faghri, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

In the United States, passenger rail has always been less competitive than in other parts of the world due to a number of factors. Many argue that in order for a passenger rail network to be successful major changes in service improvement have to be implemented to make it more desirable to the user. High-speed rail can offer such service improvement. With the current administration’s allocation of $8 billion in its stimulus package for the development of high-speed rail corridors and a number of regions being interested in venturing into such projects it is important that we understand the factors and regulatory structure that needs to exist in order for passenger railroad to be successful. This study aims to review how foreign countries have developed and their railroad systems to identify key factors that have contributed to its successful implementation. An evaluation of the factors, such as organization structure, operation, administration, development and type of funding, that are common to each of these projects will used as performance measures to identify potential locations and opportunities for high speed rail projects in the U.S. Southwest region. / text

Texas features a growing economy and population. The state boasts a large and well-developed network of roads, freight railroads, and air facilities, which make the state a vital link in the movement of people and goods. However, as the state continues to grow in population and economic significance, these systems are straining to meet state, national, and even global needs. It is increasingly obvious to residents and state officials that Texas should consider implementing alternative modes of transport, including development of passenger rail, for which Texas currently lags behind many of its peer states. Passenger rail provides quantifiable benefits in displacing less energy-efficient and higher pollutant-emitting air and automobile modes while generating potential positive economic impacts and enhancing consumer choice and multimodalism. Conveniently, renewed national interest in rail has invigorated research measuring the applicability of passenger rail services to many different regions of the United States, with the possibility that future national transportation visions will include passenger rail as an essential element. This thesis seeks to clarify the potential for passenger rail specifically in Texas through comparison and contrast with other regions and nations in the midst of new national-level knowledge and the changing transportation opportunities and challenges facing the state. Some of the ideal characteristics of successful international passenger systems exist in Texas, including optimal city spacing and a well-established rail network, which have fuelled ongoing interest demonstrated by various system proposals for high-speed intercity transportation in Texas over the last four decades. Despite these characteristics, the state presents a number of barriers to rail transport rooted in low transit use coupled with generally lower density and ambivalent support from politicians and residents when officials present realities of eminent domain and land use changes. However, with revitalized national rail interest and new federal rail planning requirements, the state may yet be able to work through these challenges to exploit the opportunities the state possesses. / text

No description available.

The South African Public Transport System plays an important role in the development of the economy in the country and in the region as a whole. Without an effective and efficient public transport system, the country's economic status would not improve. Classical macroeconomic theory suggests that transport is one of several key preconditions for economic growth. Transport is an industry in itself and employs many people. The Government has developed policies to regulate passenger transport in South Africa and in particular Johannesburg. There are national and provincial regulations that have been enacted by the national and provincial government. These are National Land Transport Transition Act, Gauteng Transport Infrastructure Act, Gauteng Public Passenger Transport Act and Moving South Africa Strategy. It was recognised in MSA that Metropolitan transport is clearly one of areas where crisis is looming. It is more and more difficult to move. Buses have lost clients to taxis. There seems to be consensus that the car is the only right choice for most citizens. The problem highlighted was that the public transport model is not working. Present urban transport strategy is based on short-term optimisation and it ignores the long-term effect of a poor urban transport-land mix. The secondary research seems to suggest that South African passenger bus transport in ineffective and inefficient. The research problem was subsequently stated to show that public transport in Johannesburg in ineffective because bus passenger transport model leads to dissatisfied passengers. Furthermore, the model is ineffective because of the past inequalities that led to poor transport infrastructure. This was found not to be true through primary research. The results showed that passengers were satisfied with the bus passenger transport in the Metropolitan areas of Johannesburg. Furthermore, it was found that indeed the poor infrastructure due to past inequalities has affected passenger transport service delivery. Overall, the passengers were satisfied with the bus transport model applied irrespective of where these passengers lived. It was then concluded that the bus passenger transport is effective. Operators have to be cautious of the fact that it is crucial to adopt a customer-focussed service approach as this will lead to satisfied passengers. The MSA strategy of the department of transport is heading in the right direction. It identifies the need for putting customers first. The strategy proposed a future core transport system that is high volume, high frequency corridors in which public transport will be a priority. Customer's need for improved access and short trip times will be met by having regular feeder services to the high volume corridors, user-friendly transfer facilities, short wait times due to high corridor frequencies and the possibility of differentiated services for customers with specific needs. The passengers transport strategy is moving from commuter-based modal transport to customer-based public transport there will be densification of transport corridors, optimal deployment of modes to meet customer service requirements and improving operators' level performance. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

No description available.

A methodology is proposed for evaluating the level of service within an airport landside system from the passenger's point of view using linguistic service criteria. The new concept of level of service for a transport system, particularly within the airports indicates that there must be strong stimulation in order to proceed with the current stereotyped service standards which are being criticised due to their being based on, either physical capacity/volume or temporal/spatial standards that directly incorporates the perception of passengers, the dominant users. Most service evaluation methodologies have been concentrated on the factors of the time spent and the space provided. These quantitative factors are reasonably simple to measure but represent a narrow approach. Qualitative service level attributes are definitely important factors when evaluating the level of service from a user's point of view. This study has adopted three main evaluation factors: temporal or spatial factors as quantitative measurements and comfort factors and reasonable service factors as qualitative measurements. The service level evaluation involves the passenger's subjective judgement as a perception for service provision. To evaluate the level of service in the airport landside system from the user's perception, this research proposes to apply a multi-decision model using fuzzy set theory, in particular fuzzy approximate reasoning. Fuzzy set theory provides a strict mathematical framework for vague conceptual phenomena and a modelling language for real situations. The multi-decision model was applied to a case study at Kimpo International Airport in Seoul, Korea. Results are presented in terms of passenger satisfaction and dissatisfaction with a variety of different values.

This thesis presents a new set of methods to assist the process of ship design for safety with particular reference to collision damage. The study has two principal objectives: " investigations into subdivision aspects of passenger ships to improve their overall survival index " investigations into the subdivision of oil tankers in order to improve the effectiveness against spillage in the event of collision damage. In order to investigate the ship subdivision aspect a damage stability model was needed. A pre-requisite for developing the damage stability software was a robust but flexible method to define the hull and the compartments of subdivision. B-splines have been a popular representationatl ool in computer aided design over the past three decades.T his method, though more complex than other spline techniques such as cubic splines, was adopted with a fourth order basis function in this work. A complete set of spline manipulation libraries and associated numerical solvers were developed for this purpose. In addition to this, a method to define the intersection between the hull and the waterplane in the form of a closed B-spline curve for any given orientation of the vessel in terms of -heel, trim and draught was developed to aid the damage stability calculations. Though the earlier regulations stipulate fixed trim assessments to ease the computational process, it is clearly unsatisfactory and research has confirmed this to be a flawed approach. Free trim calculations on the other hand require an iterative and time consuming process to arrive at the equilibrium trim position for each heel angle. Pawlowski proposed a new method for the stability calculations of a freely floating rig when the unit is arbitrarily orientated to the wind direction. It uses the Euler theorem on the properties of equivolume waterplanes to arrive non-iteratively at the new inclined position. This theory was adapted for use in damage stability calculations and was numerically tested and proved to be sound. Damage stability calculations, though combinatorially large, are also inherently parallel. Parallel Virtual Machines (PVM) is a Message Passing Interface (MPI) developed jointly by ORNL, University of Tennessee, Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing centre. PVM enables a "virtual configuration" so that a collection of serial, parallel and vector processing machines appear as one large distributed memory computer. PVM was compared with another MPI called Network Linda where the advantage of PVM's user controlled message passing was demonstratedP. VM was used to implement the MJMD Distributed Memory paradigm to exploit this inherent parallelism in damage stability calculations and to obtain speedups. A systematic exploration of the search space for this design problem involves the generation of a large number of internal subdivision configurations. This, coupled with the fact that the design space was multimodal in nature made it suitable to the application of a class of heuristic search algorithms called Genetic Algorithms (GA). A brief description of the mechanisms behind GA is presented along with their mathematical basis in the form of two theorems: the schema theorem and the building block hypothesis. Various techniques for solving constrained optimisation problems with GA was explored. The penalty function method was found to be the most suitable and was finally adopted. The above techniques were applied to the optimisation. of the internal subdivision of passenger ships and cargo ships, oil tankers in particular. For passenger ships, the nature of the 's'-factor formulation on the local index was shown. The multimodal nature of the subdivision problem was highlighted and a GA was used to investigate the optimal subdivision characteristics of the vessel. The 's' factor formulation for cargo ship rules is different to that described by the A. 265 set of regulations for passenger vessels. In addition, the cargo ship rules describe a factor V which accounts for the probabilities of vertical extents of damages. However this formulation does not assign any credit for horizontal subdivision below the waterline. Data on vertical extents and vertical location of damages for cargo ships was collected and analysed in earlier studies done at Newcastle University. This data was used to develop a probability function akin to that developed for the longitudinal extent and longitudinal location so as to give credit for any horizontal subdivisions. The principal objective of this part of the study was to explore the search space for subdivision configurations that would minimize net oil outflow.