Editorial

Abstract

Welcome to the Institution of Civil Engineers' (ICE) Transport journal. This is my first editorial as chair of the editorial advisory panel. I thank ICE for giving me this opportunity and extend my gratitude to editorial advisory panel colleagues and our esteemed reviewers for their exceptional support and contributions towards timely publication of papers. I also take this opportunity to thank our past chairperson for his outstanding service.Our mission is to publish high-quality papers that extend our reach internationally while sustaining the highest standards. The increasing popularity of our journal has led to six editions being published per year.Transport is a journal for the whole transportation community. We publish peer-reviewed papers for engineers, researchers, policy makers and everyone interested in transportation-related issues. We believe that broad coverage of topics is the main strength of our journal. This February 2018 edition is no exception, presenting two papers on transport policy, two on pedestrian aspects in transport and one on transport geotechnique. I offer a brief overview of all five papers under three section headings. Transport policyOur first paper is on 'Railway usage charges based on marginal maintenance costs', by Sternad et al. (2018). The focus of their study is to develop a charging model for the use of freight transport in regional railway lines in Slovenia. Due to the low freight potential on certain regional routes, the offer of rail freight services is quite poor. The authors develop an econometric cost function model that includes the most important explanatory variables such as marginal costs and gross tonne kilometres (grt.km). Currently estimated marginal costs for calculating charges are only based on train-km, which does not represent efficient use of infrastructure, because the share of empty wagons on regional routes is between 40 and 50%. For this, the authors made a comparison between the current model and their developed one, demonstrating that their new model gives a lower charge than that calculated using the current model. This new model could have positive economic effects for carriers.The second paper is on 'Impact of traveller information on mode choice behaviour', by Meng et al. (2018). Integrated traveller information assists travellers to plan their trips better. By leveraging the most up-to-date information on network congestion, availability and status of transit modes, opportunities for easy transfer and parking availability, travellers can make smart travel decisions, such as adjusting the travel mode, route and departure time, resulting in saving of travel time and alleviation of traffic congestion. This paper analyses mode choice behaviour of commuters under the influence of simulated multimodal traveller information by developing two logit models. Results showed that integrated multimodal traveller information can influence a traveller's mode choice decision.Readers will find both papers very informative and useful in transport planning and d...