Professor Jean-Claude Thill
Knight Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Regional Economic Competition and Containerized Freight Shipping:
A Study of Regional Accessibility in the United States and Lessons for
China
Date: 29 May 2009 (Friday)
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Venue: Wang Gungwu
Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong (Map)
Lecture Abstract
Intermodalism has become one of the most significant transformations of
freight transportation in the United States and across the world over the
past three decades. The coupling of shipping modes has enabled shippers to
more fully realize the respective time and costs advantages of respective
modes. This lecture aims at finding how the intermodal freight
transportation network affects the ability of regions to position
themselves more effectively in the national space-economy. In particular,
the opportunity to take advantage of intermodalism when shipping
manufactured goods overseas may provide an essential competitive edge to a
company or to an entire region engaged in world commerce. The case of
domestic and international containerized freight traffic is examined
because it is closely associated with contemporary forms of integration
between rail shipping and trucking. The change in the freight
accessibility map of the United States to domestic and foreign markets
that can be ascribed to intermodal infrastructures and operations is
investigated. With the help of geospatial techniques of geographic
information systems, the potential impact of intermodalism in the United
States is analyzed by mapping integral place accessibility measures of zip
code areas. The performance of the intermodal freight network is evaluated
by comparing accessibility measures based on the highway network and on
the intermodal network, respectively. In studying export-led shipping
activities, we particularly examine access to container terminals in North
American seaports segmented by major seaboards. Implications for the U.S.
space-economy are discussed and lessons for China are drawn.
About the Speaker
Professor Jean-Claude Thill is the Knight Distinguished Professor of
Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He holds a
doctorate in Geography from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
Dr. Thill's multi-prong research has centered on the spatial dimension of
mobility systems and their consequences on how space is used and organized
in modern societies, statistical and computational methods of spatial
analysis, and most recently urban land-use dynamics. Since 2008, he has
been Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Computers, Environment
and Urban Systems, and serves on the editorial boards of several other
regional, national, and international journals of geography, regional
science, and spatial systems. He is the Executive Director of the North
American Regional Science Council. He received the 2008 David Boyce Award
from the North American Regional Science Council. He has held faculty
positions at Florida Atlantic University, The University of Georgia, and
The State University of New York at Buffalo. He joined the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte in 2006.
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Professor Richard Allsop, OBE MA PhD DSc FREng FICE FCILT FIHT FSS
Emeritus Professor of Transport Studies, University College London; Board
Member of ETSC and Chairman of its PIN Programme
How Road Safety varies across Europe: A View from ETSC – The European Transport Safety Council
Date: 14 July 2009 (Tuesday)
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Venue: Wang Gungwu
Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong (Map)
Lecture Abstract
ETSC is a Brussels-based independent organisation founded in 1993 and
dedicated to the reduction of the number and severity of injuries in
transport accidents in Europe. It provides an impartial source of expert
advice on transport safety matters to the European Commission, the
European Parliament, EU Member States and neighbouring countries. One of
its current activities is the road safety performance index programme PIN,
whose aim is to help EU Member States in improving road safety by
comparing Member States' performance with a view to identifying and
promoting best practice and encouraging the kind of political leadership
that is needed to reduce the disproportionate risk of death and injury
currently associated with using the roads.
Since June 2006, national research organisations and independent
researchers from 30 countries participating in the programme have been
providing the best data available in their countries about a range of
aspects of road safety, and these data, together with information from
cross-national European sources, have been used to compare a range of
aspects of performance quantitatively among the 30 countries. The results
of these comparisons are communicated, with the help of commentary from
experts across the 30 countries, in ways that aim both to inform all those
concerned with road safety, and to influence opinion formers and policy
makers as well as interested members of the public.
The lecture will present many of the findings of this work in the
context of discussion of the challenges the programme has presented in
terms of the methodology of such international comparisons and the balance
that has needed to be struck between scientific rigour and effective
advocacy.
About the Speaker
Professor Richard Allsop has extensive experience of research, training
and advisory work on road safety, traffic management and other aspects of
transport policy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and
has a DSc in Engineering from UCL (University College London), where he is
Emeritus Professor of Transport Studies, having been Professor since 1976
and Director between then and 1997 of what is now the Centre for Transport
Studies. He has contributed extensively to road safety research and
policy, including leading the production of the IHT Gudelines for Urban
Safety Management, and more widely to transport research and its
applications, for example in traffic signal control and in helping to lead
the production of the IHT manual Transport and the Urban Environment. He
is a member of the UK Government's Road Safety Advisory Panel and chairs
its Statistics Group, having previously chaired the group which developed
numerical advice to Ministers on the setting of the current road casualty
reduction targets for Great Britain. He is a Board Member of the European
Transport Safety Council (ETSC) and chairs its road safety performance
indicator programme PIN, and is a Director of PACTS, the UK Parliamentary
Advisory Council for Transport Safety. He has also provided inputs to road
safety policy in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Poland, and
lectured and contributed to research in many other countries.
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Professor Mei-Po Kwan
Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, The Ohio State University
What about Time in Transportation Research?
Date: 11 November 2009 (Wednesday)
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Venue: Wang Gungwu
Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong (Map)
Lecture Abstract
Transportation research has treated time largely as a one-dimensional
reference system for registering when events happen. Most analytical
methods that incorporate the temporal dimension to date are based on this
notion of time (such as in dynamic modeling or longitudinal analysis).
This presentation explores a different notion of time and its implications
for transportation research. Drawing upon recent studies on accessibility
and human travel patterns, it examines how time use and space-time
constraints may influence human travel behavior and activity patterns in
space-time.
About the Speaker
Professor Mei-Po Kwan is Distinguished Professor of Social and
Behavioral Sciences at the Ohio State University. She is Editor of the
Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Methods, Models and
GIS) and Associate Editor of Geographical Analysis. She received the 2005
UCGIS Research Award from the University Consortium for Geographic
Information Science (UCGIS) and the Edward L. Ullman Award from the
Association of American Geographers (AAG). Kwan's research interests
include geographical information science, individual accessibility in
space-time, information and communication technologies, human activity
patterns, and gender and ethnic dimensions of transportation.
