Ferry Terminals Research Articles

Responding to Security Threats in the Post-9/11 Era

The 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and subsequent public transit system attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, dramatically elevated concerns about the security of open, accessible transit systems. Accordingly, the authors report on a survey of 113 U.S. transit systems regarding their post-9/11 policies and practices. Sixteen of the 80 surveyed systems with rail service and/or enclosed bus or ferry terminals reported receiving a credible threat (e.g., bomb, chemical, biological, fire attacks) in the previous year, with most threats concentrated on just a few of the largest systems. Not surprisingly, attention to transit security increased significantly after 9/11, partly in response to federal mandates. Although attention to policing, security technologies, and public education all increased since 9/11, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) strategies increased the most. Despite measurable programmatic progress, however, many respondents believe that meaningfully securing urban transit systems remains a daunting, perhaps insurmountable, challenge.

Diabrotica virgifera: procedure for official control

<i>Diabrotica virgifera</i>: procedure for official control

Planning and Evaluation of Passenger Ferry Service in Hong Kong

A predominant observation in Hong Kong is the continuous loss in ferry patronage. There are two main reasons for this: poor level-of-service and better competitors. New roads, bridges, and tunnels are serving the buses, and to some extent the railways; whereas the investment in ferry terminals is relatively at a lower level. On the one hand, there is no need to promote the ferries in a free market environment; but on the other hand, the ferries have the best safety record, can only relieve some traffic congestion and need water access that is one of the characteristics of Hong Kong. The goal of this paper is to design a planning approach combined with an evaluation procedure on how to make the best use of the existing water and pier resources in Hong Kong through the provision of commercially viable ferry services. The approach used covers the impact of future developments planning up to 2006 comprising all public transport modes in Hong Kong (heavy rail, metro, bus, and ferry). The planning tool is based on a newly developed multi-objective evaluation method in order to assess the ferry routes with scientific, practical, and simplified analyses for future use. This assessment is applied to the existing ferry routes and candidate routes and can also be carried out on an individual route basis or on a given set of routes. The objective functions set forth analytically in the evaluation method take into account the interests of the three participants: the passengers, the operators and the government. The proposed ferry network design formulation and the suggested new ferry routes will have a positive impact on changing the ferry system’s image in Hong Kong.

Dynamism and abundance of water hyacinth in the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria: evidence from remote sensing and seasonal‐climate data

Aquatic plant infestations impede lake traffic through navigable waterways, block ports and passenger ferry terminals. Timely, accurate information on aquatic plant dynamism, distributions and density is required both by public agencies and by private companies engaged in aquatic plant control efforts and the local population whose economic livelihood depends on the lake. This study combined the interpretation of remote sensing and climatic variability data in understanding the seasonal dynamism and abundance of water hyacinth in Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria. The results showed a direct relationship between the hyacinth geographic and density distribution and seasonal‐climatic patterns. Gentle currents, moderate rainfall and modest but stable temperatures propagated the rapid blooming and aggregation of the hyacinth mats especially in the sheltered bays. Relatively high rainfall and high temperatures do not favor the proliferation of the weed; hence disintegration and mobility as the strengths of the currents increase in magnitude.

Washington State Ferries’ Travel Demand Model Development and Forecasting Analysis Programs: A 10-Year Perspective

Recent Washington State Ferries (WSF) origin–destination travel survey data collection and model development activities are described. WSF performed similar activities in 1993. The lessons learned from the initial project helped to develop a better survey design and sampling plan. The overall survey response rate was 37%, about 28% higher than the response rate for the 1993 travel survey. The improved survey design and sampling plan also provided a richer data platform from which to establish more representative observed baseline ferry travel patterns, by boarding method and access and egress mode combinations. Compared with 1993, the 1999 travel survey results reflect a significant increase in the systemwide use of transit for access to and egress from ferry terminals. This increase was primarily attributed to improved transit service, timed ferry-bus connections, and ferry-bus passes implemented by Kitsap Transit and other transit agencies. In addition to the 1999 travel survey, WSF conducted a stated preference survey. The combined data from these two surveys provided information on ferry users’ revealed and stated preferences, which allowed a more rigorous statistical mode and route choice estimation analysis to be performed. This analysis helped develop a more robust and internally consistent model, as reflected in model performance. For walk-on and automobile-boarding passengers, the updated WSF model has produced more accurate route-level validation results than the previous model. The results from the model estimation and validation analyses are presented. Specific improvements made in the updated model are highlighted.

Intermodal Ferry Terminal Master Plans for Washington State Ferries: Planning for the Future

The Washington State Ferries (WSF) system has grown tremendously since its ferry terminals were constructed more than 40 years ago. Vehicle traffic is at capacity, and future plans must maximize intermodal transfers of passengers from transit to ferries. WSF has completed master plans addressing this issue at six ferry terminals. The master plans for Anacortes and Bainbridge Island are addressed, and each has unique conditions. Bainbridge is a commuter terminal, has the system’s largest traffic volumes, and is planned for 218-car, 2,500-passenger vessels operating on 35-min average headways. Anacortes, a tourist-driven facility, serves one international and four domestic routes. Although physically the largest terminal, it is also the most remote and has the longest waits. The primary methodology for planning ferry terminals is to separate travel modes for safe and efficient travel and to minimize intermodal transfer time. Direct links are needed for passengers from public transit and rail systems to ferries. Each terminal accomplishes this with similar, but unique, site-adapted solutions. Each terminal is planned using data developed for the project. Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act is analyzed using special programs. Passenger counts and growth curves are developed from WSF’s systemwide planning and processed to predict future modal splits. Fast, efficient, safe ferry terminals must separate modes of travel. Passengers must be able to transfer between travel modes with minimal time. Over-water coverage and environmental regulations offer challenges unique to ferry terminals. For success, each ferry terminal master plan must address these issues.

Washington State's Stormwater Management Program

To comply with state and federal laws, the Washington State Department of Transportation developed a Stormwater Management Program. The program included an outfall inventory and retrofit program, a Highway Runoff Manual (HRM), and stormwater research. Field crew inventoried sites where highway stormwater runoff is collected and discharged to surface water, ground water, and municipal storm sewers. Pipes, ditches, and stormwater structures that provide quantity and quality control were inventoried. The screening assessment for potential water pollution problems was made via observation and sampling kit. The sampling kit was found to be ineffective at identifying illicit connections. Inventoried sites were mapped using global positioning and geographic information system technology. Research was conducted on sites to determine watershed characteristics, potential environmental effects, and Best Management Practice (BMP) retrofit options. A computer data base of information is maintained to facilitate stormwater management activities. A prioritization scheme was developed to identify priority sites for retrofit, based on the following factors: receiving water body, beneficial uses, pollution loading, percent highway drainage, cost-pollution benefit, and values trade-off. The HRM was developed to direct stormwater management for existing and new state highways, rest areas, park-and-ride lots, and ferry terminals. Water quality and quantity issues for construction and maintenance are addressed by meeting the minimum requirements of the manual. Thirteen research projects have been funded to evaluate experimental BMPs, to determine BMP pollutant removal efficiencies, and to assess the costs and benefits of retrofitting outfalls. Research included bench-scale work, field projects, and a department survey.

Over and Back: The History of Ferryboats in New York Harbor

Ask the average American anywhere in the country to answer the association question Staten Islandand you get Ferryin immediate response. what is regularly billed as America's favorite boatride- not least because a round trip still costs an astonishing twenty-five cents- is the last public survivor of New York Harbor's once immense fleet of those doughty double-ended ferryboats. Dozens of ferryboats in a myriad of liveries crossed the harbor's waterways as recently as one generation ago Most have vanished as though they never were, leaving in their ghostly wakes only fading memories and a few gorgeously restored ferry terminals. The handsomest of these terminals, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, is probably the one dubbed by Christopher Morley the Piazza San Lackawanna. Over and Back captures definatively nearly two centuries of ferryboating in New York Harbor, by a master narrator of the history of transportation in America. In stories, charts, maps, photographs, diagrams, route lists, fleet rosters, and in the histories of some four hundred ferryboats, Brian J. Cudahy captures the whole tale as concisely as one could hope. The transportation expert, the ferry buff, the model builder, the urban historian: each will find grist for his or her mill. The photographs capture a highlt significant footnote in America's past and present; the colored illustrations prserve some of the stylish rigs in which the owners garbed their boats, despite coal soot, oil smudge, and urban grime. Fully a third of the book comprises the most complete statistical compilation that the nation's public and private archives permit. The data show, among other things, that some of the former workhorses of New York Harbor are filling utilitarian or social roles elsewhere in the United States and overseas, and that the newest boats in the harbor began life along the Gulf of Mexico and in New England.

The Colossus of Roads: Myth and Symbol along the American Highway by Karal Ann Marling

702 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Triborough Bridge at 125th Street, requiring unique examples of innovative highway technology. The last chapter, on drastic changes in port commerce and associated building projects, is too breezy a survey to give us the in-depth study this unprecedented state of affairs demands. The historical passages on waterfront planning together constitute a useful contribution to urban history, but questions must be raised about the case-study method itself. First of all, what was the principle of selection underlaying these five cases? Are they representative cases, and, if so, in what way? The survey of shoreline structures directly related to shipping is limited to the six Chelsea piers. Omitted entirely are the highly specialized carfloat terminals and the thirty-four ferry terminals that once ringed the island, most of them constructed by the New Jersey railroads. As for parks, there are by my count eleven in addition to Riverside, all differing by virtue of size, genesis, func­ tion, and topography. On the matter of subsidized housing, Vladek Homes was prelude to an extensive program of public housing spon­ sored by the Federal Housing Authority. And may we not ask why there should not have been some attention to bridges? There are twenty springing from Manhattan, of which fourteen cross the Har­ lem River, and their abutments, piers, anchorages, accessways, and lift-bridge towers form massive and prominent features of the water­ front. The first city of the United States, the only world city of the Western Hemisphere, one of the three greatest harbor cities of the world deserves much more than this introductory volume offers. Carl W. Condit Dr. Condit is professor emeritus of history, art history, and urban affairs at North­ western University. The Colossus of Roads: Myth and Symbol along the American Highway. By Karal Ann Marling. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Pp. xii+140; illustrations, notes, indexes. $27.50 (cloth); $12.95 (paper). Karal Ann Marling’s brief essay examines “an American penchant for commemorating our lost frontiers with gigantic statuary—anon­ ymous, vernacular sculpture for the most part” (p. xii), with special reference to such monumental landmarks of Minnesota as the Paul Bunyan groups of Bemidji and Brainerd. Those towns’ businessmen built on “legends” coined by an ad man in the teens to make something of nothing—to create distinctive places in the vast expanse of midwestern space. Marling’s narrative ranges widely from her Bunyans, whose origins she traces far beyond the Midwest. The impulse to erect oversized figures as boundary markers is an old one, stretching back at least to the ancient Colossus of Rhodes to which her title alludes. But heroic TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 703 figures acquired new meanings in the New World, Marling argues. Although Renaissance colossi alluded nostalgically to the boundary between past and present, American examples—which are still being erected—are distinctive as efforts to master space, to create a human culture equal to the natural environment of the New World. Thus, the urge to create monumental figures has been strongest at the fringes of American society, where the human/natural discrepancy has seemed most- poignant. The Minnesota Bunyans and their kin are equally products of the automobile. Marling repeats now-familiar arguments about automo­ bile scale and high-speed legibility, and she reminds us as well of the importance of tourism. The automobile tourist’s yen for far-hung wonders was satisfied by businessmen willing to manufacture curi­ osities that could draw tourist dollars to stagnating small-town econ­ omies. The kitsch aesthetic gave the highway colossi their form, but profit and place were their heads and their hearts. The Colossus of Roads is a smart book, full of shrewd insights, but it is not a very good one. The analysis is unequal to the intriguing subject matter. Marling has little to tell us about individual colossi or about roadside architecture in general that is not readily available from plaques or brochures distributed at the sites. And she cannot come to grips with the materiality of the objects. At one point she confides that postcard images and newspaper photographs are “almost as in­ triguing” as the real things (p. 3...