Millions of children travel to and from school each day as part of their daily routine. A large percentage of children make this journey by car, and the numbers are steadily rising and this is leading to many environmental and health implications for children. The current economic climate has persuaded the British Government to look again at policies relating to all school travel funding to highlight areas where savings and cuts can be made. This is interesting because the home-to-school transport provision policy has been in place since the Education Act 1944 and this policy costs local authorities in England over £1 billion a year. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is threefold. Firstly, it seeks to determine the main issues within school travel and reports on the views of current professionals in the school travel industry. Structured in-depth interviews were carried out with 16 UK and US school travel experts. The questions focused on the current stakeholders of school travel, issues regarding school travel, bus use in school travel, and the challenges faced by transport planners to ensure school pupils have a safe and pleasant journey to school. Secondly this thesis quantifies the traffic and environmental impacts of the school choice policy in England. It achieves this by analysing School Census data from 2009 from the Department for Education. Multinomial logit modelling and mixed multinomial logit modelling are used to illustrate the current travel behaviour of English children in their journey to school and examine how there can be a significant reduction in vehicle miles travelled, CO2 emissions and fuel consumption if the school choice policy is removed. The results suggest that if all children attended their nearest school, this would result in reductions in their personal mobility, vehicle miles travelled and CO2 emissions. Finally, this thesis examines the policies relating to the funding criteria of home-to-school public school transport provision. Specifically, the paper employs a multilevel modelling technique to develop a series of relationships between bus usage by school and the level of spending by local education authorities on home-to-school bus travel provision while controlling for other factors such as school quality, land-use patterns and various proxies for household incomes. The results suggest that there is a significant effect of funding on the total school-level bus passenger mileage for primary (aged less than 11), secondary (aged 11 to 16) and Post 16 schools.

Lorsqu’ils explorent leur environnement, les humains comme les autres animaux ont la capacité d’utiliser de nombreuses sources d’information afin d’estimer la distance qu’ils parcourent. Le flux optique est un indice important dans la perception de la distance parcourue. De plus, il a été montré que l’ajout d’un point de vue oscillant à une simulation visuelle de mouvement propre vers l’avant modulait cette perception. A travers ce travail, nous nous sommes intéressés à tester si la perception de la distance parcourue était également affectée par un point de vue oscillant, mimant de manière plus ou moins fidèle les mouvements de la tête lors de la marche. Dans six premières expériences, il était demandé aux participants stationnaires, confrontés à un flux optique simulant leur propre mouvement vers l’avant, d’indiquer quand ils pensaient avoir atteint la position d’une cible distante initialement perçue. Une expérience subséquentes s'est intéressée à déterminer si l’absence de ces oscillations jouait un rôle important dans l’estimation de la distance parcourue lorsqu’ils marchaient sur un tapis roulant. Enfin, dans une dernière expérience nous avons développé une mesure dynamique de la distance parcourue à travers l’utilisation d’une tâche demandant aux participants de pointer continuellement la position d’une cible distante initialement perçue. Dans l’ensemble, nos résultats montrent qu’un point de vue oscillant joue un rôle important dans la perception visuelle du mouvement propre et que de nombreux paramètres semblent être impliqués dans ce processus, incluant les informations visuelles et proprioceptives mais également l’aspect écologique de la marche naturelle. / When exploring their environment, humans and other animals have the ability to use many sources of information to estimate the distance they travel. Several studies have shown that optic flow is a significant cue to perceive distance travelled. Furthermore, it was found that adding various viewpoint oscillations to a purely translational optic flow, simulating forward self-motion, modulated this perception. In a series of experiments, we tested whether the perception of distance travelled was also affected by viewpoint oscillation, similar to head motion during natural walking. A first series of experiments, participants were exposed to an immersive optic flow simulating forward self-motion and they were asked to indicate when they thought they had reached the remembered position of a previously seen target. Two further experiments aimed to test whether the idiosyncrasy of viewpoint oscillations affects the perception of distance travelled in stationary observers and whether the absence of their own viewpoint oscillation played an important role in subjects’ estimates, while they were walking on a treadmill. And finally, in a last experiment we tried to develop a dynamic measure of distance travelled to a previously seen target, with a continuous pointing task method. Overall, our results show that viewpoint oscillations play an important role in visual self-motion perception and that several parameters (including visual information, proprioceptive information and ecological aspects of natural walking) seem to be involved in this process.

Experience and key data suggest that snow and ice lead to increased numbers of cyclist falls during the winter months. Reliable in-depth data concering the extent and characteristics of this issue are currently not available in most countries. In Germany, this is due to the high level of under-reporting in official statistics, particularly for incidents involving only one bicyclist. In combination with the lack of knowledge on exposure this causes difficulties to quantify risks for cyclist falls. This study addresses these gaps. lt aims at quantifying the risk of single bicycle accidents in inclement weather conditions. This study focusses on icy and snowy conditions as these are of relevance for the risk to fall. Cyclists are particularly affected by slippery icy and snowy road conditions; these might exist in clear, cloudy, or foggy weather, in situations with high or low humidity and with higher or lower wind speed. Variables from official weather data are purposefully combined in this study to identify time periods with snow or ice on the roads and to allow for the comparison of those with all other time periods ('other weather''). We address the above-mentioned problems of exposure and underreporting by using multiple data sources for quantifying the risk of falls. This approach allows to compute clear risk ratios for icy/snowy and the other weather conditions and thus contributes to the scarce and fragmented literature that has generated such values so far. [from Background, AIM]

Motor fuel taxes have been collected as a principal source of highway funding for close to a century. They account for approximately two thirds of all the highway user fees and about half of all highway expenditures. Federal fuel taxes have not kept pace with the inflation in general and increasing traffic demand and resulting construction, maintenance and operation costs of the transportation assets in particular. Lack of political will, combined with rising anti-tax sentiment among the populace, has kept the federal tax level not only well below its initial intents, but also at a unsustainable level in future. Mileage based user fees are possibly an alternative to the fuel taxes, which have been the main mechanism for funding the transportation system. Mileage based user fees have been successfully utilized in many parts of the world with glowing results. Germany‟s “TollCollect”, a quasi government enterprise has utilized GPS technology in collecting the users‟ fee from the truck operators. The system has been a financial engine providing much needed funding for many major transportation projects. Oregon Department of Transportation, in a federally co-funded pilot project, examined the practicality of the mileage based user fee collection at the fuel pumps. According to the Oregon study, there are not any major technical difficulties in mileage based user fee collection at the pump. Study participants (general motorist) did not express any objection to the mileage based user fee collection. This dissertation evaluates revenue impacts of several pricing policies including: Current per gallon fuel taxes, conversion to a mileage based user fee, time of day user fee application, iv area type user fee and congestion priced user fees. State of Florida‟s years 2015-2035 fuel revenue forecast is used as a case study. A model is constructed to estimate annual vehicle miles travelled for the analyses period. Fuel efficiencies, current per gallon fuel taxes and their corresponding mileage-based user fee equivalents are the input to a financial model developed for comparisons. Results demonstrate that decrease in fuel revenues due to vehicles fuel efficiency improvements can be offset by replacing current per gallon fuel taxes with a mileage-based user fee. Pricing the user fee according to area type, roadway classification, time of day and congestion level can not only generate more revenues but also assist in demand management.

Background: In many developing countries, maternal deaths occur mainly as a result of unsafe abortions, a situation reflecting the inaccessibility of safe abortion services in such countries. In Ethiopia, unsafe abortion accounts for 32% of maternal deaths and almost 60% of gynaecological admissions, and is one of the top ten causes of general hospital admissions. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the views of women about the accessibility of safe abortion services in governmental health centres. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional descriptive and non-experimental study using structured questionnaires was conducted. 342 women who had received abortion care services in governmental health centres participated. Findings: 46.8% of the participants do not know about the penal code regarding safe abortion care. 52.9% of the participants viewed safe abortion care as inaccessible because there are various and competing factors which make abortion service to be viewed as accessible or inaccessible and these include distance to nearest health centre, the time it takes to receive the service, the cost of the service, and the lack of appropriate skills in the service providers. Conclusion: An improvement in the accessibility of abortion services will prevent deaths resulting from unsafe abortions / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

Background: In many developing countries, maternal deaths occur mainly as a result of unsafe abortions, a situation reflecting the inaccessibility of safe abortion services in such countries. In Ethiopia, unsafe abortion accounts for 32% of maternal deaths and almost 60% of gynaecological admissions, and is one of the top ten causes of general hospital admissions. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the views of women about the accessibility of safe abortion services in governmental health centres. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional descriptive and non-experimental study using structured questionnaires was conducted. 342 women who had received abortion care services in governmental health centres participated. Findings: 46.8% of the participants do not know about the penal code regarding safe abortion care. 52.9% of the participants viewed safe abortion care as inaccessible because there are various and competing factors which make abortion service to be viewed as accessible or inaccessible and these include distance to nearest health centre, the time it takes to receive the service, the cost of the service, and the lack of appropriate skills in the service providers. Conclusion: An improvement in the accessibility of abortion services will prevent deaths resulting from unsafe abortions / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)