Probing A Traffic Congestion Controversy: Density and Flow Scrutinized

Probing a die-hard traffic congestion controversy, this paper scrutinizes two key variables, density and flow, under equilibrium versus optimal states. Optimization requires equilibrium flow to decrease under mild congestion, but increase under hyper-congestion. However, both increasing flow needed under hypercongestion and decreasing flow needed under mild congestion should be accompanied by decreasing density. Thus, inflow of vehicles should always be discouraged to either increase or decrease flow of vehicles for economic efficiency. Moreover, even when optimal policy requires equilibrium flow to increase, the optimal flow itself must decrease eventually as demand increases beyond a critical level.     

当代美国大都市区交通拥堵的治理措施

20世纪70年代以来,交通拥堵已经成为美国大都市区最严重的社会问题之一,因而受到各级政府和社会各界越来越多的关注。为了解决交通拥堵及其产生的社会危害,美国各级政府、民间团体和私人企业等采取了一系列措施,比如扩建公路、发展公共交通、推行共同乘车计划、建立高密度混合开发且公交友好的社区等。然而实施这些措施并没有有效地缓解交通拥堵问题,其根本症结在于汽车、公路和城市低密度蔓延这三者间的互动关系没有得到根本的改善。     

Concerning A Certain Controversy

Saushkin disputes S. V. Kalesnik's view [see Soviet Geography, September 1965] that changes introduced by man in the geographic environment are relatively unimportant compared with changes induced by natural processes. Saushkin also insists, contrary to Kalesnik, that people are part of the geographic environment or “humanized” nature.     

China's Exchange Rate Controversy: A Balanced Analysis

A noted American authority on China's economy and monetary policy presents a statistical as well as theoretical analysis of a variety of perspectives on the controversy surrounding China's currency, basing his paper on both. The author provides the historical background and comprehensive summaries, focusing on different viewpoints about whether China's currency is undervalued, and thus may contribute to global imbalances. In the paper, he divides observers involved in the controversy into two main camps, namely the ones who find China's trade balances to be sensitive to price effects through exchange rate adjustments and those who emphasize other factors as bearing the responsibility for China's large surpluses, including the U.S. credit bubble emerging before the global financial crisis, as well as a version of Dutch disease.     

当代美国大都市区的空间结构特征与交通困境

第二次世界大战后美国大都市区的交通拥堵现象越来越严重,而且从20世纪70年代以来出现了新的发展趋势,即交通拥堵由原来的中心城市不断向郊区延伸.美国大都市区交通拥堵的原因深深地植根于大都市区的空间结构之中,其中包括郊区的低密度蔓延、住宅和就业的失衡、社区土地利用模式的单一性、郊区社区的空间设计和道路系统等.由于这些结构性问题十分难以克服,美国大都市区的交通陷于困境之中.     

Iceland: A Comment

Abstract

North-West England was the site of Britain's first canal and of one of the last true canal warehouses. The Duke's Warehouse in the Castlefield Canal Basin in Manchester was the first canal warehouse to have the classic design features of internal canal arms, multi-storeys, split level loading, terracing and water powered hoists, and was built between 1769 and 1771. The Great Northern Warehouse, in the centre of Manchester, was the last of the monumental road, rail and canal interchanges to be built in the Victorian period. Finished in 1898, it marked the close of the canal warehouse tradition and the beginning of motorised road transport storage. Between the two buildings were nearly 130 years of innovation and change. With at least 58 surviving canal warehouses across the region, from Kendal in the north to Bunbury in the south, North-West England contains one of the largest, and most important, groups of canal warehouses in Europe (Figures 1 and 2). As general purpose redistribution centres they were a vital element in feeding the rapidly growing industrial urban populations of the region. Furthermore, their design influenced the building of the first railway warehouses, and later the textile warehouse, and although the canals were superseded by the railway, the canal warehouse remained an important element of the transport economy until the arrival of road haulage in the 1920s. This paper is based upon research undertaken by the author in 2000 and 2001 as part of the Tameside Archaeological Survey. This is a landscape archaeology project funded by Tameside MBC and undertaken on their behalf by the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit.     

Agglomeration Diseconomies of Traffic Congestion and Agglomeration Economies of Interaction in the Information-Oriented City

This paper presents a partial equilibrium model of land, labor, and transportation markets in an information-oriented city with traffic congestion of commuting and agglomeration economies of interaction. We derive the equilibria by numerical computations using specific utility, production, and congestion functions. The laissez-faire equilibrium is compared with the optimum. In contrast with the results of many previous papers, at the optimum the CBD becomes compact and the city more suburbanized than the laissez-faire equilibrium. We also analyze the effects of a Pigouvian tax system and subsidies on the spatial structure in the city.     

Debating Belarus: A Framing Comment

A British political scientist and eminent specialist on the politics of the post-Soviet states comments on the divergent perspectives offered in the two preceding papers in the symposium on Belarus in the same issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics. He first briefly reviews the diverse approaches to the study of Belarus evident in the academic literature, and the reasons scholars might be led to the country as a topic of study, especially its suitability as a test bed for several issues of importance in comparative studies (e.g., the nature of presidential power and of political "charisma," of governance without political parties, and an economic model that has appeared until now to have resisted the path of accelerated market reform). Probing more deeply, the author identifies issues of the comparative method of particular relevance to the exchange that warrant further investigation, and goes on to present his own survey data (from early 2011 for Belarus and from 2010 in Ukraine and Russia) in an effort to advance the debate on these issues. In concluding, he suggests a line of further enquiry for understanding better the seeming paradox that is Belarus—the role played by retention of "Soviet" institutions (e.g., trade unions, local councils) that offer a means of communication between ordinary citizens and the authorities.     

Congestion Pricing and Demand Management: A Discussion of the Issues

This article reviews the political, technological, and economic issues involved in the formulation of congestion pricing policy. Increased urban congestion combined with increasingly scarce resources is making policymakers consider congestion pricing as an alternative to expanding highway capacity. Past experiences with congestion pricing and other types of demand management are discussed in an attempt to identify problems policymakers may expect to encounter in the US.     

Russia's Energy Policy: A Framing Comment

A prominent specialist on the Russian economy provides a framing comment on two preceding papers entitled "Russia's Energy Policy" (by Vladimir Milov, Leonard Coburn, and Igor Danchenko) and "Russia's Energy Policy: A Divergent View" (by Matthew J. Sagers). The author argues that Russia's current energy policy should be viewed as an outcome of competition between three overlapping programs. In this context, he identifies three policy models—the old Soviet, the liberal or oligarchic, and the most recent state capitalist. The latter is currently supported by President Putin, who prioritizes diversification of the country's economy at the expense of diminished investments in the oil and gas sector. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 2 tables, 2 figures, 22 references.     

China's Energy Future: A Framing Comment

A noted Hong Kong-based specialist on China's energy industries presents a comment on three papers comprising a symposium on that country's rapidly expanding oil, natural gas, and nuclear power sectors. He frames his observations around five overarching themes that have shaped China's energy sector development over recent decades and will continue to do so in the future. These include observations to the effect that: (a) China's energy policy seeks broadly similar objectives to those of other countries; (b) the country's energy resource endowment is not particularly rich when viewed in relation to the size of its population; (c) its energy mix continues to be dominated by coal, with important implications for the environment and domestic freight transportation; (d) the country's economy is confronting a pronounced spatial mismatch between the location of energy resources and the markets where they are consumed; and (e) strategies for energy developments in China are closely tied to overriding political and economic concerns at any given point in time.