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Using the concept of a family financial officer (FFO), the family is found to be not homogeneous in its financial and purchase behavior. Thus, if the husband is the FFO, the couple is more likely to save a higher proportion of income and in variable dollar forms, and to purchase automobiles less frequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keeping attuned to fashion trends is crucial to the success of companies in many industries. This article explains that fashion trends can be detected fairly easily if the marketer is aware of certain factors which help to determine whether a particular innovation will go on to become an accepted fashion. According to the author, fashion trends may be of two types which facilitate the prediction of peaks in fashion popularity and the point in time when the trend is likely to die out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The kinds of shopping behavior exhibited by automobile purchasers have implications for both advertising and selling strategy. This article illustrates a methodology for studying shopping deportment and suggests possible hypotheses about the importance of this kind of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many research studies have identified different product images, very few have identified the consumer personalities attracted to different product images. The author of the present study attempts to find consumer personality differences among owners of convertible, compact, and standard cars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of personality impressions is largely concerned with measuring judgments about other people's traits and how perceptions of others affect attitudes and behavior toward them. This report is concerned with this general class of problems but, more specifically, with the prediction of respondents' perceptions of oth ers' preferences from independent information about the qualities or "personalities" of preferred things and their congruence with impressions of others' personality traits. In brief, respondents were first asked to judge the relevance of a common set of personality traits to other persons' choices of: (1) automobile brands, (2) occupations, and (3) magazines. Then, based on interrelationships found across these stimulus classes, we attempted to predict the same respondents' judgments of the likelihood that: (1) a person with Occupation X would own Car Y and (2) one who regularly reads Magazine Z would own Car Y. Accurate prediction implies that all three stimulus sets can be meaningfully compared. From a methodological point of view, the study demonstrates that heterogeneous collections of stimuli can sometimes be meaningfully scaled in a common space, in this case one composed of trait dimensions. This method represents an extension of most previous scaling studies, in which stimulus items have typically been drawn from nominally the same class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credibility standards in automobile liability insurance are critically examined. Accordingly, it is shown that such standards are theoretically and empirically deficient. These deficiencies may be a partial cause of some pricing problems in the standard voluntary market because they lead to an improper allocation of loss costs among risk classes. Some suggestions for improving the theoretical foundations of credibility standards are made in order to alleviate these deficiencies and problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents several methods of analyzing a time series in conjunction with variables which are available only for census years. Within the framework of diffusion theory, the time series of automobile registrations per capita is examined first in terms of the existence, extent, and pattern of variation over the years 1910 to 1969. By means of simple graphic techniques, measures of central tendency, interannual correlations, and smallest-space analysis, turning-points in temporal variation are established. Cross-sectional path analysis with collateral social and economic variables at these important junctures permits substantive interpretation of the pattern of automobile diffusion in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports an analysis of brand loyalty for automobiles in the United States. Analysis of households; Measure that was used for judging brand loyalty; Explanatory variables for the Multiple Classification analysis of brand loyalty.

A queuing model is presented in which delay stems from a disparity between the order at which service is provided to customers and the order at which they may leave the system. Consider, for example, wives waiting in cars-single file-for the arrival of their husbands by a common train. A car is ready to leave when its passenger takes his seat but may have to wait for the departure of all cars preceding it in the lane. Initially, the probability function of waiting is determined for a single, finite queue. Next, the consequences of splitting the single queue into several parallel queues with identical discipline are explored. The results of the analysis are applied to a parking lot design problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper a traffic assignment model has been constructed in which the cost on a link may depend not only on its load, but also on the loads on other links of the network. In this paper it is shown that this model is also capable of handling the case of several classes of users in the same transportation network each of which has an individual cost function and, at the same time, contributes to its own and other classes' cost functions in an individual way. Typical applications arise not only in street networks where vehicles of different types share the same roads (e.g., trucks and passenger cars) but also in other types of transportation networks (e.g., telephone networks). An algorithm is constructed for finding the system-optimizing flow pattern for such a multiclass-user transportation network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model is developed for the flow of automobiles in one direction along a two-lane, country road. The model takes into account the fact that cars differ in speed, that slower cars accumulate queues behind them, and that the rate of escape from such a queue, by passing the lead car, depends on the speed of the lead car, on the nature of the road, and on the density of traffic going in the opposite direction. Equations for the stochastic steady state of the system reduce to an in- integral equation for the mean queue length, as a function of lead- car speed and of a queue-delay parameter. Solutions are obtained, with tables and graphs, for two different assumptions regarding the dependence of passing delay on lead-car speed. In both cases the model exhibits a sudden change from sparse-traffic conditions, where queuing is rare and delay of the faster cars is minimal, to the dense-traffic conditions where nearly all cars find themselves trapped in a slow queue, as the passing-delay parameter is increased beyond its transitional value. Such a sudden `phase-change' in traffic character is typical of actual traffic under the specified conditions. Measured dependence of queue length on lead-car speed checks nicely with the model, for sparse-traffic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, hypotheses based on land-use patterns within cities are tested. Grocery store locations in the city of Lansing, Michigan, for the time periods 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950 and 1960 were used to indicate commercial land-use patterns. As a check on some of this work, a quadrant method, based on the Poisson distribution was used. The advent of new and faster means of transportation, better roads and the ability of nearly all of gainfully employed people to own an automobile have caused a transportation revolution.

Automobile insurance rates in Canada are promulgated by the Canadian Underwriters' Association (the C.U.A.) and all member companies are bound to adhere to them. Other rate schedules are set out by the Independent Automobile Insurers' Conference and by the Independents, but these usually conform very closely to the C.U.A. rates, so that the C.U.A. rate manual actually provides the basis for all automobile insurance premiums in Canada [2]. Consequently, the question of whether the C.U.A. rate-making procedure yields premiums which accurately reflect risks is interesting. In this study, the determining features of the C.U.A. approach are applied to situations in which risks are known. Comparison of C.U.A. rates with actual risks then yields an assessment of the validity of the C.U.A. procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information related to recent cases on power of dealer to bind conditional vendor by transaction with bonafide purchaser. A delivered an automobile to B, a dealer, under a conditional sales agreement, which A assigned to the plaintiff, a finance corporation. The agreement stipulated that B was not to sell the car without the consent of A. B sold the car to C, a bona fide purchaser, without obtaining consent, taking a conditional sales agreement in part payment. The defendant financed this transaction in good faith and received an assignment of the written agreement.

Provides information on the power of forfeiture of automobile seized while carrying intoxicating liquor in the U.S. Extent of the liability to forfeiture under the various statutes in force; Instance when the policy behind the enactment of a statute is effectively to curb violation of the law; Need to interrupt an act involving a penalty or forfeiture.

The article informs that when automobiles began to spread over the United States in the early days of this century, and people from other states came into a state and negligently caused damage to the person or property of its citizens and then left the state, the citizens became annoyed. Of course an action could be brought against the nonresident motorist in his own state, or in another state in which he could be found and served with process, since the action was a transitory action. But this was not very satisfactory. But the Massachusetts method proved so satisfactory that most of the states have passed similar statutes.

In this article the author brings to light a number of salient facts and conclusions relative to an important phase of criminal investigation: that of automobile arson. The rapid enlargement of insurance underwriting in the past ten years to cover automobiles has brought about a proportionate increase in the number of questionable fires. A majority of such losses result from the premeditated and willful burning of property, "incendiary fires" according to the records and "arson" according to the criminal investigator. The automobile, due to its movability, varying value and its ability to carry a mortgage greater than value, lends itself particularly well to those individuals who seek to derive a profit or escape an obligation by the willful destruction of insured property. The prevalence of this vicious practice indicates both a disregard for the law and a lack of fear of detection in the minds of the offenders. Many officers and investigators have the idea that nothing can be done to prove a case of arson in connection with the burning of an automobile.

The article presents information on the ways to prevent accidents in the United states. As every police official knows there are now coming into prominence many traffic factors the effect of which will be in the direction of causing more accidents. The most obvious of these is the recent abolition of gasoline rationing. This reflects the victory and marks the beginning of the relaxation of many war-time restrictions. While all officials should be pleased at this new condition, which will permit car owners to secure greater transportation values from their automobiles there are some very serious implications regarding its effect on accidents. Stated in its simplest form this means more gasoline, more travel, more chances to make an error in driving, and more chances to be hit. Confronted with this new flood of gasoline and its potential ability to increase accidents each police administrator should immediately take stock of the situation, make his own determination of what may happen in his area and decide what steps he can take to keep the accident situation from getting out of hand.

This article presents information on investigation related to stolen automobile in the U.S. Individuals in this specialized field of thefts are ordinarily quite expert in disguising original ownership either by altering numbers or by other methods, and in securing comparatively safe outlets for their products. For this reason, cars stolen for resale ordinarily present both a recovery and an identification problem. While thefts caused by juveniles stealing cars for the purpose of joyrides may not be bona fide larcenies they nevertheless account for a great number of stolen cars. They are important for the reason that there is the constant possibility and probability that the car may be partially or totally wrecked or may be the cause of serious property damage or personal injury. Then, of course, there are cases where automobiles are not actually stolen, but where the owner may report a theft for reasons of his own. He may attempt to dispose of his car in order to collect insurance or he may find it convenient or necessary to conceal some fact requiring the unexplained absence of his car which he therefore reports as stolen.

This article presents information on criminal mobility. Human mobility has increased in amount and altered in kind, and population has become distributed in a new settlement structure fundamentally different from that of the pre-automobile era. In spite of this transition, political boundaries remain unchanged and are still used for administrating government services, including the collection of criminological data and the jurisdiction of agencies of crime control. It is the In spite of this transition, political boundaries remain unchanged and are still used for administrating government services, including the collection of criminological data and the jurisdiction of agencies of crime control. But there is little agreement concerning a specific and objective technique for territorial realignment. The present investigation proposes to determine whether criminal phenomena have a spatial pattern, and if so, how boundaries of criminal interaction may be delineated. Criminal mobility is well known. Almost any daily newspaper carries an account of a crime in which the perpetrators fled from the scene in a speeding automobile, posted upon the bulletin boards of most police departments are circulars identifying offenders wanted in other places and advising rewards to be paid for their capture, police frequently broadcast to suburban and other places asking cooperation in apprehending fugitives.

This article examines the issue of one-man versus two-man police patrol cars as of January 1, 1956. Patrol methods have been the subject of heated debate among police officers over the years. Statements of half-truth, misplaced emphasis, and over generalization without documentation have too frequently clouded the controversies. One of the most venerable men in police administration, August Vollmer, early in his career came to the conclusion that the patrolman on foot was obsolete. Foot patrol trends, however, in comparison with motorized patrol, fail to support a theory that foot patrol is outmoded. Ten of the cities reporting all motorized patrol were cities of less than 10,000 population. Of the remaining 61 cities reporting all motorized patrol, 82% of them were in the 10,000-25,000 population group. Only one city over 100,000 population reported all motorized patrol. In 1943 there was a low degree of patrol motorization per 100 employees in cities over 500,000 population. Forty of the cities reporting all motorized patrol were cities in the 10,000-25,000 population group. The 526 cities reporting a combination of foot and motor patrol were in the 10,000-25,000 population group. All reporting cities with a population over 25,000 except one, reported the use of some form of motorized patrol. Thus today, as in the past, foot patrol is accepted generally as the most effective type of police patrol, with motorized patrol a natural adjunct. Though a patrol car without speeding will patrol ten times the area of a foot patrolman, foot patrol is urgent under certain circumstances. Nonetheless, area and population growth, and limitations on money available for police services, inevitably necessitate reductions in foot patrol. The ever-increasing demand for effective patrol, under existing restrictions, might be partially answered in the U.S. on the basis of experiments abroad.

The article discusses the relation of alcohol to accidents, due to increased incidence of drunk driving accidents in the U.S. Alcohol diminishes the acuteness of sensory perception. It delays or weakens motor performances and physical coordination, and thus many times it causes serious automobile crashes. Tests have shown that a few drinks make a drinker react more slowly in emergencies. He is inclined to be less cautious at the wheel than he would ordinarily be. He takes more chances and generally drives at a greater speed. These are general results and may vary with individuals. It is also true that the effect of several drinks on the same person may vary from time to time. The general pattern is so unmistakable, however, that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that a driver should not drink, and a drinker should not drive. It is especially urgent in the light of reports from every state which show that the number of registered motor vehicles and licensed operators is increasing tremendously. In Maryland, a state with high per capita ownership of automobiles, the number of licensed vehicles has increased 50% in the last ten years. At the same time the number of residents seeking driving permits has increased 100%. In 1951 there were 159,738 applications for instruction licenses. This increase in the number of automobiles and drivers, in itself, compounds the accident problem.

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The few studies of American hamlets now in existence have been primarily concerned with the survival of these tiny agglomerations-have good roads and automobiles caused them to be superfluous? In all of these studies Dun and Bradstreet's reference books of commercial ratings have been the principal data source. In some, Rand McNally's and Cram's atlases provided supplementary data. For 12 counties in southwestern Wisconsin, where I am making a field study of hamlets, counts of these settlements were made from the three sources noted above for 13 irregularly spaced years beginning in 1882 and terminating in 1940. The discrepancies between the three sources is striking. Recent counts by these same sources were compared with data collected in the field during the spring of 1940. The results are such as to raise serious doubts whether the published sources are sufficiently reliable in their hamlet counts to permit the data to be used in decade to decade comparisons of hamlet numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an analysis of the motor industry in Great Britain in 1914 from several points of view. Growth of output; Sources of capital and of enterprise; Techniques of manufacture; Nature of the trade's strength and shortcomings; History of the motor industry; Important figures in the motor industry.

The rationality of regional and urban planning in the U.S. depends upon the continuing analysis of national programs with the aim of understanding their regional impact in both the short and long run. Anything short of comprehensive national and regional planning, in the face of very rapid technological change, is an invitation to national calamity, a calamity realized in the urban crisis of the 1960's. The regional and national planning process must take into account the impact of technological change and the governmental programs which reinforce that change. Rational development planning cannot result from a framework which does not recognize the relationship existing between a particular region and the nation. Rational regional planning cannot exist without national coordination. This coordination must take the form of a national program which provides a full employment environment along with welfare and income maintenance schemes that are not contradictory. Furthermore, the transportation, energy, and production subsidy programs must be rationalized so that problems are not solved for one region by simply transferring them to another.

In theory, profitability is a good guide to both economic and technical efficiency. Since it is related to the difference between costs and prices, it reflects both the scarcity of inputs and the wishes of the consumers and is therefore a measure of economic efficiency. In those industries where prices are more or less given to any individual firm—and it is reasonable to assume that this is the case for freight rates in motor transport— profitability is also a measure of technical efficiency: it reflects a firm's ability to hold down costs and its speed of reaction to changes in the market. In practice, there are serious disadvantages associated with profitability as a measure of efficiency. Such disadvantages do not result from any monopolistic power of motor carriers to influence prices; motor carriers, including the nationalized. British Road Service, always have to bear in mind potential competition from private carriers which is likely to occur whenever there is no difficulty in obtaining 'C' licenses. A basic factor is changes in the state of the economy. In a depression profits tend to be low and in inflation they tend to be high, yet neither condition is attributable to the policies of any individual firm or industry. There are further shortcomings of a statistical nature following from accounting conventions which determine the calculation of profit figures. In times of inflation such figures tend to be exaggerated as a result of basing depreciation on historical costs. The difficulty can be overcome to a certain extent by using profit figures gross of depreciation but it cannot be entirely eliminated. In any measure of profitability, profits must relate to capital resources used and invariably estimates of capital are also based on historical costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic factors in large families. The relationships between family size and such items as emotional stability, parental and child intelligence, social status, occupation, school work, marital happiness, personal adequacy, ideal number of children, fertility planning, alcoholism, family disorganization, and the family in various cultures have been investigated. Data were analyzed separately for each of the seven variables relative to number of children, home ownership, number of automobiles, number of telephones, number of radios, number of television sets, and monthly and annual income. Inter-correlations among the seven variables revealed the highest figure between income and television, next highest rankings in order of size were reported for income and automobiles, radio and automobiles, income and home ownership. The only large negative correlation that emerged was that between home ownership and telephones. While many people who are renting their homes do not possess the other items, they do have a telephone.

This article analyzes trends in U.S. international trade and comparative advantage as of June 1971. The authors first offer a bird's-eye view of U.S. trade in seven major end-use categories over the period 1925-70. In the years prior to World War II, the nation's net export position within each category was fairly stable. Capital goods and automobile, for example, reliably yielded export surpluses that displayed no major trend upward or downward, while trade deficits were typical for consumer goods other than automobiles. Immediately after the war, trade surpluses developed in nearly all major categories, including even such consumer goods as textiles and shoes. Worldwide industrial recovery and devaluations of other currencies altered that unusual situation. By the late 1950s, the U.S. moved into trade deficits for fuels and lubricants and for consumer goods, and away from its substantial export surplus for automobiles. On the other hand, the net export surplus for capital goods expanded dramatically and that for chemicals strengthened. This dynamism of changes within sectors continued during the sixties. In general, the export surpluses widened in areas of strength, and deficits grew larger in areas of weakness. The latter areas deteriorated even during the early sixties when the U.S. overall trade balance was improving; by the same token, surpluses on capital goods and chemicals grew substantially during the late sixties while the overall trade balance was deteriorating.

Durkheim argued that improvements in transportation or further increases in the density of a population would lead to increased division of labor and to the effacement of segmental (territorial) types of organization. This paper develops the thesis that segmental growth-an increase in the number of segmental units-is the result of expansion of the settlement area under constant conditions of transportation. Two recent models of geopolitical structure, developed by Boulding and Stinchcombe, are shown to be related to this thesis and are made the basis for a formal representation of it. The thesis is then used to explain a particular case of segmental growth-the historical process of dividing states into county jurisdictions. Existing variation in county size is explained by the termination of segmental growth following the introduction of the automobile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the economic changes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin which have not been matched by appropriate changes in legal, political and financial institutions. The fundamental change in the state is mobility. And this means automobile. It is ease of movement that made metropolitan areas possible and it is ease of movement that will control their future. The number of automobile registrations in the state has grown from 44,255 in 1921 to 173,713 in 1940 to 325,409 in 1960. This leap forward in mobility made possible a far greater breadth of choice as to where one would locate. It brought to an end the need to cluster. One's place of employment plays a declining role in the family decision about place of residence. Similarly, the surge in automobile use had lessened the need for industry to locate on rail or water routes. Related to the increased economic unity and interdependence is an increased economic specialization among the municipalities of the state. This, too, grows out of the growth of mobility. The economic specialization refers to the kinds of land use on which the different cities and villages concentrate. The delicate grading of property specialization is possible only when there is a very large population to draw from. It is mobility which supplied that large population.

The article focuses on the rearrangement and differentiation of functions among urban sites with the widespread use of motor vehicles. Increased population mobility necessarily initiates a repatterning of retail service institutions. At the same time that the area of the consumption hinterland around the metropolitan center is extended, the resistance to an interurban movement of potential consumers is lessened by a reduction in the time-cost dimensions of local travel. Metropolitan centers, located as they are at the confluence of transport flow, tend to usurp increasingly those retail functions which can be performed only, or most efficiently, for a wide service area which will provide either a heavy volume of business or a sufficient number of potential consumers to support specialized products. Outward from the central business districts of the metropolitan cities, other functions are distributed in an ordered zonal progression among competing sites. At the margins, characterized by elemental service centers, only standardized necessities and convenience goods which require frequent repurchase can be supported.

The article presents a study of the diffusional change in an American community. Group-to-group diffusion has been studied by the anthropologists, but primary, or intra-group, diffusion has not received the attention that it deserves. The source used was the village weekly, the assumption being that a rural newspaper offered the most convenient and yet valid means of sampling the diffusion process in a small community over a period of years if the trait chosen possessed news value during the time in question. During the ten years, 1901-10, there were 408 references of all kinds to the automobile in the newspaper. During the ten years of incomplete diffusion the average distance involved in each reference decreased year by year and the percentage of references relating to the Dexter community increased, and these tendencies were equally apparent after diffusion had been completed. Diffusion of the automobile in Dexter has been marked by five distinct stages, the symbolical stage, the incidental demonstration stage, the local sale stage, the advertising stage, and the indirect-aid stage.

The article discusses the increasing use of automobile camps among tourists and workers venturing the Evergreen Playground. The dominance of automobile transportation in this seasonal flow of population is suggested by the United States Bureau of Customs statistics for the year ending June 30, 1919. It indicate that more than four times as many passengers enter various ports of entry in Washington by boat, and ten times as many by train. Although the number of passengers crossing the boundary at Blaine in automobiles increased more than five times between 1921 and 1919. The number of passengers entering the United States by train through this port of entry in 1919 was only one-fifth of the total number of passengers in 1919. The auto camp business as a whole is in the pioneer stage of its development. It hasn't reached a stable plane of operation. Camps have sprung up like mushrooms along the main highways. Competition between them is keen. Variation in physical equipment and service for the same price is common.

The article presents a detailed discussion about social differentiation, race, and cultural groups. It focuses on the means of transportation and mobility in coastal islands. It mentions that the coastal islands are depending on the use of the internal combustion engines that was invented in the last twenty to thirty years. It states that the invention has gone through the building of bridges and roads, the operation of ferries, and the personal and individual ownership of power boats and automobiles.

This article investigates some economic implications associated with atomic energy. Aside from atomic energy itself, there result from a fission process fissionable material capable of sustaining a chain reaction, radiations and radioactive materials. The primary interest attaches to the utilization of the energy given off in the fission process. Thus far it has not been found feasible to use this energy in any way other than in the form of heat. Technical considerations restrict the manner in which atomic power can be utilized. The necessity of having a pile as large as the critical size, or larger, in order to sustain a chain reaction, the requirements of the cooling mechanism, and most important of all the necessity of shielding against lethal radiations, make imperative an atomic power plant of large and bulky structure. Use of light portable units, in automobiles, for example, is thus precluded. It is conceivable that rockets and passengerless aircraft might be propelled by atomic energy. Political and security solutions of the atomic energy problem may well run counter to economic ones. If so, the former in all probability will override the latter.

The article calls attention to some of the less overt but highly pervasive sources and processes of capital mobility. It says that the mobility of invested capital is much greater than that indicated by the volume of formal depreciation charges, however. The prevailing forms of capital and the prevailing business practices in this country are such that a very considerable diversion of capital from one industry to another is constantly taking place through ordinary business transactions, without the intervention of banking institutions, and often without the formal decision of those whose capital is affected. In the first place, it is curious to observe that many of those who ascribe the utmost fluidity to capital in the abstract confine their concept of capital goods to highly durable instruments. The fact is that a very considerable proportion of this country's capital--both consumer's and industry's--consists of goods that have a relatively short length of life. The capital embodied in quasi-durable consumers' goods alone--in furniture, clothing, pleasure automobiles, and the like, in the hands of consumers--was estimated by the Bureau of the Census to have a value of approximately 42 billions of dollars at the end of 1922, an amount exceeding by 5 billions the aggregate value of all movable capital equipment in the hands of industry, trade and agriculture.

Reveals the influence of agricultural machinery and the automobile on farming operations. Conditions favorable to greater mechanization; Benefits and drawbacks of automotive transportation; Reduction in the quantity and quality of agricultural labor.

Starting with a basic model of volley fire against a group of homogeneous passive targets, a series of discrete approximations to the expected number of surviving targets is proposed. Some of these yield quite good approximations over a reasonably wide range of parameter values. Continuous analogues of these approximations are described, and it is shown how various Lanchester-type equations arise in a natural way from these continuous analogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a modification of the single-car intersection delay problem in which the waiting driver, upon finding a suitable gap for crossing also examines the succeeding one, and uses it if it is larger. It is shown that the additional delay time caused by this method of gap acceptance is generally quite small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linear theory of single-lane traffic flow is generalized by using an integral transform technique well-known in other branches of applied science. This technique introduces the idea of a memory function that describes the way in which a driver processes the information he receives from a lead vehicle. Several analytical examples are computed and the earlier linear model is discussed as a special case of the more general theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of several aspects of the theory of car queues. In it we consider a situation in which there is traffic on a main highway and a queue of cars on a side road waiting to merge. First we consider a case in which the lead driver chooses to merge on the basis of whether the gap in main highway traffic exceeds a service time that is chosen from a probability density. An expression for the generating function of the steady-state distribution and the waiting-time distribution are derived. Secondly, the critical input to the side road is determined such that for all larger inputs the queue is transient. In particular we consider the effect of the move up time (of the second car in a queue) on this parameter. Finally, we present the results of a study by simulation techniques for the analysis of traffic queuing models. A discussion of the use of importance sampling in improving simulation studies is given, and a comparison made between theoretical and simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The response delay in clearing the queue of automobiles waiting at a traffic light can be modeled by allowing one car to leave at the end of each of a series of discrete intervals in time. The steady-state queue formed at a cycle traffic light is discussed for general stationary arrival processes. A method of solution for the case where arrivals are Poisson is described. General formulas are given for the probability of not clearing the queue during a cycle and for the expected wait at the light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vehicle waiting at an intersection with a major road makes a merging maneuver into the mainstream traffic, thus possibly requiring oncoming traffic to slow down. This paper examines the resulting disturbance that this forced entry may create in the main stream, assumed to be a renewal process. After showing that the disturbance propagation is formally equivalent to the busy period of a related queuing model, explicit results on the length of disturbance period and the number of vehicles affected are obtained for the case of Poisson traffic. It is shown that there is some minimal main-stream headway which should be forced in order to maximize the rate at which entries can be made from the secondary road. Finally, two measures of accident potential for the merging maneuver are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The San Francisco Bay area has long had an ambivalent relationship with the automobile. In 1949, just as the postwar love affair with the automobile was starting, there was movement in the state legislature to create a Rapid Transit Commission for the Bay area. In 1957, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District was started. San Franciscans sought to differentiate their city from its sibling Los Angeles. They have long disdained its pattern of development, dedicating large fractions of the available land to driving, storing and maintaining the automobile. There are still 75 miles of track. One station has been added, Embarcadero, the first after the transbay tube in San Francisco. Several miles of track were placed below grade in Berkeley. Many of its projects are financed through revenue bonds instead of Congressional appropriations. Agencies which have to return to a legislature or the bond market for funds for several projects tend to be better at cost estimating both because of a learning-by-doing phenomenon and a need to establish credibility with the legislature. A Metropolitan Transportation Commission was created by the state legislature in 1970 with power to deny permission to any public multicounty transit system which uses an exclusive right-of- way and to approve all applications for federal grants to transit systems in the area.

This article discusses various articles related to economic development, published in the May 1968 issue of the journal "The American Economic Review." According to the author, professor Henry Villard seems to have bent over backward to find some problem to discuss. Villard picks on an increase in the number of automobiles as a good example of adverse consumption. The author says that he can think of at least two beneficial effects of an increase in automobile consumption. First, it will make possible the economic production of a greater variety of cars and second, it will make economically feasible the construction of many roads, bridges, and tunnels. This article written by professor Michael Michaelis is thoughtful and stimulating. For its approach it draws heavily upon various scientist-engineers who have addressed themselves to technological aspects of economic and social problems, as well as upon the institutionalists who have been more strictly in the economics profession. In his article Michaelis focuses on technological innovation.

This article discusses the cross-section studies of the consumption of automobiles in the U.S. Depreciation is used as the primary measure of consumption in order to determine how well demand measured in this way can be explained by income and other social and demographic variables. Consumption expenditure is the imputed depreciation cost of each car owned by the spending unit plus an estimated repair cost. The survey data provided the year and make of each car owned plus the price paid for each car acquired during the year of study. It was necessary to construct average wholesale values for each year and make of car. In addition to repairs there are many other costs associated with car ownership and operation. License and insurance fees, gasoline, oil and tire costs can amount to several hundred dollars per car. Since the expenditure data used in this study did not include any of these costs and since other data are not readily available if at all, there seemed to be no way to add such costs either as an independent component or as a function of the age, the make or the degree of use of the car, or some similar variable.

The decentralization or suburbanization of economic activity in major metropolitan areas, particularly those which grew to immense size during the nineteenth century, is a familiar phenomenon. The problems, such as increasing central city budgetary difficulties, associated with this process are also familiar. In this article the authors hope to provide additional insight into the development of such large, core-dominated cities and into the factors which have and are affecting the location of economic activity within them. The article begins with a summary of a theoretical analysis developed to examine the structure of factor prices and costs within a core-dominated city. This analysis does not directly incorporate the influence of agglomerative economies, though their importance is acknowledged. The article highlights the effects of certain technological lags and transport cost relationships that the authors feel have not been sufficiently well understood. It, moreover, assigns to the automobile a more modest role in the suburbanization of metropolitan activity than is found in most studies.

This paper focuses on the consumer preferences for different types of assets as shown by cross-section data on the composition of wealth held by families. The data pertain to December 31, 1962, and are from the Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers which was conducted for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System by the Census Bureau in the spring of 1963. The first portion of the analysis deals with the broadest definition of wealth that seemed feasible under survey procedures. The analysis is in terms of six major components of wealth or net worth: own homes; automobiles; savings in the form of life insurance, annuities and retirement plans; investment in businesses and professions; liquid assets (exclusive of currency); and investment assets mainly-stocks, marketable bonds, and investment real estate. The second part of the analysis is confined to consumer portfolio; that is, liquid and investment assets. The analyses are directed towards determining the forms of wealth selected as wealth increases, or, in other words, consumer preferences among different forms of wealth and investment.

We consider here the delays suffered by a car in passing through a long sequence of synchronized traffic signals, assuming that the density of traffic is low enough that one can neglect the interactions between cars, and that each car has a desired speed which it maintains at all times except when stopped by a traffic light By considering the special case of equally spaced lights, we conclude that for short distances between lights the relative phase of the traffic lights that gives a minimum average delay per light depends upon the fraction of green time of the traffic cycle For long distances between lights, it is found that the usual progressive timing of lights may cause greater delays than a random synchronization but in such cases there are other schemes of synchronization that are still better Finally, some qualitative effects of velocity fluctuations are discussed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]