Institutionalized inhibition: examining constraints on climate change policy capacity in the transport departments of Ontario and British Columbia, Canada

This paper examines the interaction between transportation policy and climate change policy in two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario. The concept of policy capacity is used to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of instruments in advancing goals in an area where established policy paradigms may not be congruent with new initiatives. A review of official policy documents and budgetary information on policy-related spending, as well as primary interviews with policy managers in relevant provincial ministries, reveals that overlapping policy goals and instruments may have created a situation of institutionalized policy inhibition, in which conflicting layers of policy goals and instruments constrain the available policy capacity

Measurement of Dielectric Suppression of Bremsstrahlung

In 1953, Ter-Mikaelian predicted that the bremsstrahlung of low energy photons in a medium is suppressed because of interactions between the produced photon and the electrons in the medium. This suppression occurs because the emission takes place over on a long distance scale, allowing for destructive interference between different instantaneous photon emission amplitudes. We present here measurements of bremsstrahlung cross sections of 200 keV to 20 MeV photons produced by 8 and 25 GeV electrons in carbon and gold targets. Our data shows that dielectric suppression occurs at the predicted level, reducing the cross section up to 75 percent in our data.Comment: 11 pages, format is postscript file, gzip-ed, uuencode-e

Setting One’s Sights: Exploring the Dynamics of Goal Selection in Road Safety Policy

Travel by automobile is manifestly the most dangerous activity that most citizens of developed economies routinely engage in, highlighting the value of trying to explain why some governments address this risk quite differently than do others. This article compares the ways in which Canada sets objectives for managing risk on its roads with alternative European and American targets. The manuscript tests the hypothesis that countries selecting concrete policy goals, which identify specific targets in terms of specific numbers of road deaths and injuries, will pursue more ambitious outcomes than countries that adopt goals stated in relation to another reference point, such as the number of vehicle-kilometres traveled, or the incidence of particular behaviour such as impaired driving or seat belt use. Relative policy goals are shown to translate into less ambitious anticipated results, thus reducing public officials’ exposure to future criticism for having fallen short of their commitments. Public officials who set concrete policy goals may be motivated by a combination of greater perceived political legitimacy and administrative capacity compared to counterparts who embrace relative policy goals, raising implications that are worthy of further exploration

Streets Paved with Gold: Urban Expressway Building and Global City Formation in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver

Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are Canada’s most signifi cant locations of global city formation today. Their distinctive spatial development and mobility mix were greatly infl uenced by decisions regarding inner-city expressway building. This article explores the hypothesis that choices made regarding how to move motor vehicles through Canada’s three major metropolitan areas between 1960 and 1980 can be better understood by examining the dynamics of global city formation in these jurisdictions.    Montreal implemented a comprehensive expressway network to align with its status as Canada’s leading global city during the 1960s. Toronto’s attempt to complete an expressway network was partial, reflecting fragmentary global city aspirations during the 1970s. Vancouver, where global city ambitions only began to form during the 1980s, cancelled urban expressway plans and became Canada’s ‘freeway-free’ major city. New insight into the structure of these cities can be gained when a global city analytical framework is applied to their urban expressway development experience

Bremsstrahlung Suppression due to the LPM and Dielectric Effects in a Variety of Materials

The cross section for bremsstrahlung from highly relativistic particles is suppressed due to interference caused by multiple scattering in dense media, and due to photon interactions with the electrons in all materials. We present here a detailed study of bremsstrahlung production of 200 keV to 500 MeV photons from 8 and 25 GeV electrons traversing a variety of target materials. For most targets, we observe the expected suppressions to a good accuracy. We observe that finite thickness effects are important for thin targets.Comment: 52 pages, 13 figures (incorporated in the revtex LaTeX file

Understanding the urbanization impacts of high-speed rail in China

Advances in transport technology have been shown to play a vital role in urban development over millennia. From the engineering and pavement innovations of the Roman road network to the aerospace breakthroughs that enabled jet aircraft, cities have been reshaped by the mobility changes resulting from new designs for moving people and goods. This article explores the urbanization impacts of High-Speed Rail’s introduction in China, which has built the world’s largest High-Speed Rail network in record time. Since High-Speed Rail was launched in Japan in 1964, this technology has worked to reshape intercity travel as a revolutionary transportation alternative. High-Speed Rail has developed steadily across Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland during the 1970s and 1980s. It expanded to Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Sweden in the 1990s. In the 21st century, China began developing High-Speed Rail on an unprecedented scale, and now has a national network that is longer than the totality of the rest of the world’s High-Speed Rail operations combined. China’s High-Speed Rail operation is exerting a transformative influence on urban form and function. This article synthesizes secondary research results to analyse the impacts of HSR on urbanization. These effects include population redistribution, urban spatial expansion and industrial development. We offer a typol-ogy that considers the urban effects of High-Speed Rail at three spatial levels: the station area, the urban jurisdiction, and the regional agglomeration. When organized through our typology, research findings demonstrate that High-Speed Rail influences urban population size, urban spatial layout and industrial development by changing the acces-sibility of cities. We highlight the processes by which High-Speed Rail ultimately affects the urbanization process for people, land use, and industrial development. However, High-Speed Rail’s impacts on urbanization are not always positive. While leveraging the development opportunity enabled by High-Speed Rail, governments around the world should also avoid potential negative impacts by drawing lessons from the experience of High-Speed Rail’s rapid de-ployment in China