regulation

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Mon 18 Aug 2008

GAO Month in Review - July 2008

Posted by Matthieu Desiderio under PPP, air, freight, infrastructure, intermodal, logistics, mobility, passengers, public transport, regulation, road, safety, security, transport
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Here are the latest US Government Accountability Office (US GAO) reports about transportation, published in June 2008.

Thu 24 Jul 2008

Special announcement from the Editor

Posted by Matthieu Desiderio under PPP, economics, energy, environment, finance, freight, high speed rail, infos, infrastructure, intermodal, logistics, maritime, mobility, passengers, politics, projects, public transport, rail, regulation, road, transport, waterways
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Everybody knows summer is a “slow” period. Thus we have not been writing a lot in the last couple weeks on Transport Expertise, but we did quite a bit of thinking to improve the services we provide, and to choose what we will write about in the future.

After six month of successful activity, we needed to figure out where to go and why. Also, some organizational questions have been raised, and we needed time to work on certain things like “How to market our work and the website?”, “How to promote the documents we produce?”, “What do the readers want to read about?”, etc.

To answer the last questions, we analyzed the site statistics and decided that we will mainly concentrate on five particular topics that have been interesting most of Transport Expertise visitors, since the website’s opening:

  • High Speed Rail;
  • Public Transport: infrastructure, rolling stock, operation;
  • PPP / Toll Roads / Infrastructures investments;
  • Green Logistics / Green Supply Chain; and
  • Freight Rail and Waterways.

Also, in order to better integrate all the services we provide, we chose that we will publish directly the Transport Information Group Newsletter from a “transport-expertise.org” email address. The Google Group that we have been using until now will be abandoned. Working on the new tools will however take time, and we hope the new delivery system to be ready by September 2008. We will thus be able to send other materials such as new study released to our subscribers.

Activity will resume at full rhythm in the next couple days; our goal now is to publish two daily articles, one in French at 2:00 PM Paris time (6:00 AM EST), and one in English published at 12:00 PM EST/9:00 AM PST.

We are still working on two studies that will be released soon (delayed because of the previous reasons):

  • French Offer in Urban Mobility;
  • High Speed Rail in France.

We hope to see you on Transport Expertise in the next couple weeks/months. We thank you for your support, and wait for your feedback and comments.

Matthieu Desiderio, Transport Expertise Editor

 

Wed 2 Jul 2008

GAO Month in Review - June 2008

Posted by Matthieu Desiderio under air, freight, maritime, passengers, regulation, safety, security, transport
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Here are the latest US Government Accountability Office (US GAO) reports about transportation, published in June 2008.

 

Thu 19 Jun 2008

Are environmentally friendly measures financially unsustainable?

Posted by Matthieu Desiderio under economics, energy, environment, finance, passengers, regulation, road, transport
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Reading Les Echos today makes me rise this question… The French Government implemented a system of tax/subsidy (bonus-malus écologique aka écopastille), that is applied to new cars’ buyers: the system is quite simple, if people buy a car that has a low gas consumption and thus low emissions, the buyer gets a refund/subsidy and if they buy a gas guzzler, they have to pay a tax over the car price (see the chart below for more details).

However it seems like this measure implemented by the new Government early 2008, following the decisions taken during the Environmental Roundtable, may cost around €200 million to the French State in 2008. The reason is that more people are buying more smaller cars than large ones or SUVs, since petrol prices are going up and the tax does not match the subsidies distributed. The Government initially anticipated the system to be self-funded… For the first five months in 2008, small-low-polluting cars sales increased 15% whereas large-engine-gas-guzzzling ones fell 27%, according to the French Carmakers Committee.

Amount of environmental tax/subsidy per grams of CO2 emitted per kilometer

Environmental Tax/Subsidy - Bonus-Malus écologique

Source: Transport Expertise/Ministère de l’Ecologie

A phenomenon that might be temporary

It might be alarming that the system is not financially sustainable but the Ministry of Finance said this phenomenon might only be temporary. Since car buyers anticipated the new law, many people bought their large saloon cars and SUVs before the law to be applicable, in December 2007. (more…)

 

Fri 6 Jun 2008

How oil price escalation will impact logistics organisations?

Posted by Matthieu Desiderio under economics, energy, finance, freight, intermodal, logistics, politics, rail, regulation, road, transport
1 Comment

To which extent logistics organisations will be impacted by the oil price escalation?

This is a serious risk supply chain managers are going to face! Most of supply chains rely on road transport, since road haulers are for shippers the most trustworthy mean to ensure just in time deliveries. Yet, with the current oil price escalation, shippers will have to take a new look at their organisations.

Over the 1997-2003 period, barrel price was $30 on average. Early 2008, the price went over the symbolic threshold of $100, after a five-year, 350% increase (average 2003 price was a little bit under $30 per barrel). Fortunately, European countries have so far taken advantage of two factors that substantially reduce impacts on road transport prices: the devaluation of the dollar compared to the euro, and the relatively high level of taxation on fuel prices. In France, a financial device (the well known Taxe Intérieure sur les Produits Pétroliers or TIPP) has been set up to partially refund road haulers for every litre of oil bought. Also, another program has been set up to force hauliers’ clients to bear the overcosts due to fuel price continuous increases (with financial penalties if it is not applied): its actual success is however discussed by road transport companies. From United Kingdom’s hauliers viewpoint, this approach is even considered as a stepback to a price-controlled situation and is, as a consequence, not really welcomed. (more…)

 

Thu 5 Jun 2008

GAO Month in Review - May 2008

Posted by Matthieu Desiderio under PPP, air, economics, energy, environment, finance, freight, infrastructure, passengers, regulation, road, safety, security, transport
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Here are the latest U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO) reports about transportation, published in May 2008.

 

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