Former WCTR Prize Recipients

Kenneth KUHN, Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering, University Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Pavement network maintenance Optimization considering Multidimensional Condition Data

With a Honourable Mention to Cecilia Cruz (INRETS – France)

How is Own Account Transport Well Adapted to Urban Environments?

David A. Mfinanga (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
Ineffective Intersection Control in Developing Countries: Case of Dar Es Salaam City

With a Honourable Mention to Ahmed Ibrahem Mosa (Assistant Professor, Egyptian National Institute of Transportation)
Exploring the Impacts of In-Home Virtual Activities on Daily Activity and Travel Behaviour: An Analysis Using Cairo Activity and Telecommunication Diary Data 2006

The first recipient of this prize is:
David Banister (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
The sustainable mobility paradigm, Transport Policy – Special issue – 2008

Every member of the Steering Committee proposed candidates for the prize. On the basis of the criteria of scientific merits, practical works, International activities and contributions to the life of WCTRS, the nomination committee selected Prof. Alain Bonnafous for the Dupuit Prize.

Scientific merits of Alain Bonnafous:

Professor in economics at Université Lumière, Lyon 2

• he established Laboratory of Transport Economics (LET) and  served as director for 13 years

• he has extensive works dedicated to transport research

• he focused on various topics in transport economics, such as:
  • cost benefit analysis, transport infrastructure,
  • assessment, public-private-partnership (PPP),
  • opportunity cost of public funds, etc

• he published numerous peer reviewed publications including six books

His practical works:

• he played important roles in France and Europe to help governments identify significant solutions to transport problems
• he is a member of the Board of RFF (Réseau Ferré de France), defined the principles and the structure of the rail access charges
• he is Vice-chairman of the CNT (French National Council of Transport) in charge of the reforms in the transport sector

His international activities:

• he is an expert consultant of ECMT (now International Transport Forum), OECD, World Bank and EU
• he is a leader in international academic societies of transport
• he is a top researcher in major peer reviewed journals
• he has made LET an internationally renowned research organization.

His contributions to the WCTRS:

• Chair of the organizing committee of the 6th WCTR Lyon in1992
• President of WCTRS (1989 – 1998)
• Secretary General (1998 -2010).

The WCTRS Prize recompensing the best paper of the conference was given to a collective paper presented by:
Sergio Jara-Diaz, Marcela Munizaga, Paulina Greeven, Reinaldo Guerra

“The Unified expanded Goods-Activities-Travel Model: Theory and Results”

Pattharin Sarutipand
“Multi-facility Maintenance and Rehabilitation Model with Coordinated Intervention”

Pablo Durango-Cohen
“An Estimation-Optimization Approach to the Management of Transportation Infrastructure Systems under Model Uncertainty”

The Berkeley Dupuit Prize was unanimously awarded to Pr. Moshe Ben Akiva.

Nao Sugiki, co-authored by Kazuaki Miyamoto
“Spatio-temporal aggregation effects and path-dependence in a land- use micro-simulation system”

Francesco Viti co-authored by Henk van Zuylen
“Modeling overflow queues on urban signalized intersections”

• A record of outstanding scientific work;
• A significant reputation in transport policy;
• A reputation for truly international activity, involvement in the creation of global networks;
• Particular contributions to WCTRS, high reputation within WCTRS.

The Prize is donated by VIATEK through the good offices of Antti Talvitie. The Dupuit Prize Committee for the Istanbul Meeting 2004 was chaired by Roger Vickerman, and consisted of Pierre Laconte and Yucel Candemir as members.

Given the worldwide membership of WCTRS and the number of people within WCTRS who satisfy most if not all of the criteria for the award it was not difficult to produce a shortlist of potential candidates for consideration, but reducing this to a single name might be thought to be a much more difficult task. However, it soon became clear that one name stood out from our short list as someone who did not just meet the criteria but met them significantly with a high reputation which crosses continents.

The Dupuit Prize for 2004 is awarded to Professor Hideo Nakamura for his outstanding lifetime contribution to transport research and his major contribution to the development of WCTRS and its activities during his Presidency.

Hideo Nakamura was born in 1935 in Kyoto and studied civil engineering at the University of Tokyo. After working on the construction of the Tokyo underground he became an assistant at Tokyo University before a first visit to Stuttgart in Germany began his global reach (not to mention a remarkable knowledge of German folk songs). On his return to Japan he rapidly became a major figure in transport planning and transport policy thus securing his reputation and fulfilling the first two of our criteria.

In transport engineering his particular contribution was the innovative application of photogrammetry to the design of motorway alignments, involving an early use of computer aided design. In transport planning his development of land-use transport models was applied to the analysis of the Tokyo Bay Bridge. He made major contributions to the introduction of scientific methods in policy making for transport infrastructure.

But he was never satisfied at just being involved on Japanese transport; he recognised the importance of global contact, of learning from others (and their mistakes) and putting forward a clear view of Japanese practice. This led to many International invitations and awards. On retiring from the University of Tokyo in 1995 he did not settle back into a quiet life but became the first president of the newly founded institute for transport Policy Studies in Tokyo, an institution which as well as undertaking research has regular seminars and symposia which involve transport professionals from all over the world as many members of WCTRS will know from personal experience. Criterion three is met many times over.

In 1989 Hideo Nakamura was the chair of the local organising committee of the WCTRS Conference in Yokohama and his quiet efficiency in this job made him a natural choice as President of WCTRS, a post which was he help from 1998 to 2001. Those involved with WCTRS during this period will recognise that Hideo Nakamura was not just a titular president but led WCTRS through a major period of change, not least of which was the adoption of Transport Policy as the Society’s journal. Criterion four, contribution to WCTRS, passed with flying colours.

At the time many people would be resting having retired from two senior positions, a rejuvenated Hideo Nakamura has now taken on the role of president of the Musashi Institute of Technology in Tokyo. But he is not lost us as he remains a member of the Steering Committee of WCTRS.

Many people could get quite high scores on our official criteria (though few could claim to score quite as highly on all four) but very few would command the respect as individuals as Hideo Nakamura does. A calm and quiet influence, but someone whose company it is a pleasure to share, a man of great warmth and humour as well as a respected scientist, a public figure of influence in Japan and across the worl and a major contributor to the development of WCTRS as we know it today.

This paper is the first modeling effort for determining optimal mix of leased and owned aircraft, recognizing explicitly the uncertain and cyclical air nature of transport demand. It focuses on the role of ‘leasing companies to increase flexibility in airlines’ capacity changes. The model is applied to a panel data set of 23 major airlines of the world.

This paper presents a unique model of dynamic car ownership, based on a pseudo-panel approach which entails grouping individuals or households into cohorts, in order to estimate the various short and long run elasticity. Focus is made on the difference in car ownership and its determining factors, using data from the annual UK Family Expenditure Surveys. The paper concludes on the need of time for adjustment to changes in prices and income, as elasticity is twice as great in the long run as it is in the short run.

This paper describes the model SMILE which stands for “Strategic Model for Infrastructure Logistics and Evaluation”. This model has been constructed in order to enhance understanding of the developments and policy options regarding freight transport in the Netherlands. It is a unique model in the sense that it explicitly takes into account logistics developments and translates these tendencies, such as centralization of warehouses, higher frequencies and consolidation into freight demand characteristics.

This paper is original in that it considers the spatial mechanism of land market applying to China where land price is determined by the government and the land sales revenue is used for infrastructure improvement. A spatial model is designed to give an optimal land price as a tool for regional development policy to achieve a well balanced growth of economy between the cities within a province. This idea seems useful to promote a sustainable regional development avoiding serious traffic bottlenecks.

This paper is unique in that it examines the effects of strategic alliances in a multi-firm, multi-market setting by using game theory. This general framework can be used for the analysis of alliances in any network oriented industries including the airline industry. Applications are made to trans-Atlantic strategic alliances.

The paper presents a general framework for identifying major factors for creating competitive advantage through improvement of the maritime sector in a country. It uses the Porter-model as a framework and price factor analysis of Turkey’s driedfruits exporters in order to identify the main factors for determining quality of maritime logistics. The paper gives a well documented overview of the theory of creating regional competitive advantage. It is extremely usefull in applying these general principles into practice.

This paper examines the European port system using the foreland-port-hinterland concept and studies whether the ports confirm to a stage-wise port development model formulated in the early sixties. The findings from the model suggests that containerization, other technological developments and the hinterland to port intermodal transport network create a complex port operation environment, where the forces for both port concentration and deconcentration are active. The outcome is determined by:

1. the network connections of port to hinterland;
2. the managerial skills to provide services that attract mega-carriers’ providing door-to-door transport services; and,
3. from the management’s ability to finance and improve port and intermodal infrastructures.

This paper addresses the issue of urban mobility, the factors affecting it and how efficient policy interventions can be derived. The authors’ findings are based on cross-comparisons of the mobility trends of a target group in Indian and African cities under varying environments. They concluded that mobility levels and their qualitative characteristics depend not only on transport related factors but also on social, cultural and economic organization of the society. Further, there is a need for a homogeneous methodology in mobility surveys and the associated analyses to allow meaningful international comparisons.

This paper is the result of a long- standing research cooperation that started at CODATU V in New Delhi. In 1997, the French Ministery of Public Works funded Prof Sharma’s coming at LET (Laboratoire d’Economie des Transports) as a visiting professor.

This paper is an outstanding analysis of the reform of the Japan National Railways since 1987. It concludes that:

• the productive efficiency has been improved since 1987 due to a flatter and more decentralized organization and improved labor productivity, as well as the strategic behavior of the JR’s to develop rail ridership;
•  the service levels did not change appreciably after privatization, implying that the less profitable local services were not necessarily abandoned;
• the lingering debt problem may not be a failure of privatization but a failure of government, and this may require immediate attention if the new found benefits are to be retained.

As a laureate of the Jules Dupuit Prize, Michel FRYBOURG is in a particular position because he is a graduate of the same Engineering School as Jules Dupuit (the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées) and he subsequently achieved the same position as his predecessor in the French Administration. Michel FRYBOURG is a key actor of the development of transport research in France, as the initiator and the first Director of the “Institut de Recherche sur les Transports (INRETS)”, concerned with both physical and social science researches. His contribution (from the first initiative) to the WCTR Society was essential as member of the Steering Committee (and Chairman of the Scientific Committee for the 6th WCTR in Lyons). As Professor at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, he published well-known books in Transport Economics. His own fields of research were always characterized by a strong presence on new topics and actual problems: traffic engineering and safety in the sixties, assessment of technologies in the seventies, integrated logistics in the eighties, added value networks in the nineties. In these different areas, his main contribution was to provide efficient bridges between the technical and the socio-economic aspects of transport.