http://en.transport-expertise.org A Transport Expertise Division Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:19:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Here are the latest US Government Accountability Office (US GAO) reports about transportation, published in June 2008. Air Traffic Control: FAA Uses Earned Value Techniques to Help Manage Information Technology Acquisitions, but Needs to Clarify Policy and Strengthen Oversight. GAO-08-756, July 18, 2008 (45 pages). http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-08-756 Airline Industry: Potential Mergers and Acquisitions Driven ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/08/18/gao-month-in-review-july-2008/ Rhône to Rhine High-Speed Rail line will be delivered on time. This is what Réseau Ferré de France (RFF), the owning and managing company of the French railway network, annouced early July. The line will be entering commercial service by December 2011. Five years of work to link Rhône and Rhine ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/08/11/rhone-to-rhine-hsr-line-will-be-delivered-on-time/ The French toll road operator and builder group Vinci recently signed a contract agreement for the Athena-Tsakona toll road concession, a major highway project in Greece. In this project, Vinci Concessions leads a consortium called Olympia Odos, composed of Vinci Concessions (36%), Hochtief PPP Solutions (Germany, 25%) and three Greek ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/08/11/in-brief-vinci-will-operate-athena-tsakona-toll-road/ A partnership contract to finance a €3.4 billion project French Transportation Minister Jean-Louis Borloo confirmed that a future High-Speed Rail link from Le Mans to Rennes (more precisely from Connerré in Sarthe to Cesson-Sévigné in Ille-et-Vilaine) would be build, and financed through a Partnership Contract (contrat de partenariat) agreement. The project ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/07/30/western-extension-of-the-hsr-network-toward-brittany/ 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 ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/07/24/special-announcement-from-the-editor/ A short brief about the free-access bikes made available by Paris City, in collaboration with JCDecaux advertising company. Velib' will celebrate next week its first anniversary and results seem to be far beyond expectations. Every day, an average 110-120,000 bikes are rented, to ride an average 18 minutes, and Velib' just past ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/07/10/one-year-26-million-trips-3000-losses-velib-in-paris/ The operation is (apparently) a success: according to a report from the stocks market authority (Autorité des marchés financiers, AMF), SNCF, the French national railway operator, would hold more than 95% of Geodis shares and right of votes. This announcement was made by the AMF on Monday, July 7 and the ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/07/10/in-brief-sncf-take-over-bid-on-geodis-is-a-success/ Here are the latest US Government Accountability Office (US GAO) reports about transportation, published in June 2008. Coast Guard: Strategies for Mitigating the Loss of Patrol Boats Are Achieving Results in the Near Term, but They Come at a Cost and Longer Term Sustainability Is Unknown. GAO-08-660, June 23, 2008 (56 ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/07/02/gao-month-in-review-june-2008/ There is a way to finance infrastructure when the National Government does not have enough money... simply rely on the Local and Regional Governments! A future high-speed rail line extension is planned from Paris toward the west side of France, also known as Brittany, Bretagne in French. As of today, on ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/07/01/future-hsr-line-to-brittany-local-governments-participate-in-the-funding/ Near Field Communication or NFC is a technology that has a great potential when associated with cellphones... In Asia, many transit systems adopted this technology and implemented it to ease the access to services related to transit trips, and mostly to intermodal transit trips. The last European Congress on Mobility, ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/06/30/near-field-communication-development-in-france/ Paris launch a waterways transit service Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë and Jean-Paul Huchon, President of Paris-Ile de France regional Government innaugurated the new waterways transit service Voguéo on Saturday, June 28, 2008. Operated by RATP, this new service will link Maisons-Alfort in the Val-de-Marne Département to Austerlitz train station inside Paris city ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/06/30/metro-bus-tramway-commuter-rail-and-now-vogueo/ Roissy Carex, a High-Speed Freight Rail project Since 1999, a group of companies settled on the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport platform have been thinking and working together to set up a high speed freight rail service. From this idea came a struture, involving several partners: Public entities: Roissy Development (Economic Development ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/06/27/cargo-rail-express-does-it-ring-a-bell/ FedEx, worldwide leader in express freight and packages transportation, will finance an extension of its infrastructures based in Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport (Roissy-CDG). This site is the most important package sorting warehouse in France for FedEx and employs around 1,800 people of about 2,500 total in France. FedEx European hub ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/06/24/fedex-develops-its-european-hubs/ 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 ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/06/19/are-environmentally-friendly-measures-financially-unsustainable/ Transport Expertise today released a new study "Deutsche Bahn, Implementing a Successful Strategy". Published in English, a partial version is available here, and the full version may be sent to your email address upon demand through the website’s contact form. The Deutsche Bahn (DB) has been a pace maker on the ... http://en.transport-expertise.org/index.php/2008/06/18/study-release-deutsche-bahn-implementing-a-successful-strategy/