Al Jazeera’s Tarek Bazley reports 29/12/2011

 Experts says railway systems are vulnerable from computer attacks that might overload them with traffic.

Computers that control train networks have been exposed as being at risk of hacker attacks, according to a German security expert. Speaking at a security conference in Berlin, the expert said hackers could shut down railway switching systems by overloading them with traffic. Operators have downplayed the threat, saying the system is secure. After a year in which numerous governments and companies have been hacked, it may be a warning train operators may want to consider.

By Fernando Mineiro – Expert in Transportation, Lisbon, Portugal 12/11/2011

One of the technical difficulties of Portuguese road distribution is the placement of our population.20% of the continental Portuguese territory has 80% of the population, a logistic challenge which the Distribution Companies operating in Portugal sometimes don’t consider.

Due to this fact operational costs to supply the rest of the territory are inflated, and on the top of the cake, commercial demand implies that the territory should be covered in 24 hours. Lire la suite »

By Fernando MINEIRO – Portuguese expert in transportation, Lisbon – Portugal

Due to strategic errors the maritime traffic have been neglected in the late years, the development of better roads to connect the Spanish peninsula, gave the illusion that the country could live only from the European commerce. Now and due to the economic crisis everybody wants to develop “sea”. I don’t see a future here either, Portugal neglected to many years of development European funds and now there isn’t a magical formula to give a boost on their business.

Despite the figures demonstrate an increased on exportation, on the commercial balance, if we watch the “small figures” we will see that the road, sea and air traffic weights are decreasing, which means that on transport purposes we aren’t producing more, the increment is based on services provided (Tourism mainly).

Lire la suite »

The case of the high speed rail between Perpignan (France) and Barcelona (Spain)

By Sophie Masson – Laboratoire Montpelliérain d’Economie Théorique et Appliquée (LAMETA – UMR 5474, France & Romain Petiot – University of Perpignan Via Domitia, IUT, dpt GLT, Chemin Passio-Vella, BP 79905, 66962 Perpignan Cedex 9, France

The transport system plays an important role in tourism destination development. A high speed railway authorizes a reduction in transportation costs and can be a tool for tourism destination development by allowing accessibility improvement. Nevertheless, this improvement is often synonymous with reinforcement of spatial competition between tourism destinations. New economic geography (NEG) models show that agglomeration and dispersion forces determine the spatial structure of economy. These two opposing forces are influenced by transportation costs. A decrease in transport costs can reinforce the concentration of economic activities. A prospective analysis investigating the case of the Lire la suite »

Published in INVISIBLE CITY

The airport is a place where journeys begin and end. These are the places that I start feeling like a traveller. In the airport I feel a sense of dislocation, it comes, I think, from knowing that there are hundreds of airports just like this one all around the world. I cannot be intimate with a location that is constantly repeated because it does not exist as an individual place. The structure of the airport does not require individuality in order to function. Its production of repetition and homogeneity is the basis for its efficiency worldwide because it creates an order through which people’s movements can be controlled smoothly. Any intimacy I could want to feel in this space would, therefore, be swallowed in the airport’s overwhelming sameness. This is a space that serves to move people on their way, it does not exist of and for itself, but instead only as a means of delivering people to their destination. The airport is a place of transition; it does not need to describe history or culture because no one is coming to the airport to be at the airport. They come to the airport in order to leave. The airport is what Marc Augé calls a non-place.4

A non-place, as Augé describes it, is not relational, historical or concerned with identity.5 Augé therefore sees a non-place as a product of supermodernity; a quality of living in a state of excess, where importance is placed on creating meaning Lire la suite »

GIBRALTARNEWS www.the-rock-of-gibraltar.com 01/06/11
Latest News & Events from the Rock

Parts of Gibraltar’s western coastline suffered oil pollution yesterday morning following an incident during Saturday night’s heavy weather at the refinery in Algeciras involving a British merchant vessel, ROPAX ONE, and the refinery mono-buoy. Lire la suite »

In AL JAZEERA 22/04/11

Protest in Shanghai comes against the backdrop of rising inflation.

Striking lorry drivers have gathered in Shanghai’s main harbour district for the third day to protest against high fuel costs and new charges imposed on them by logistics companies.

About 600 people gathered outside the office of a logistics company near

Baoshan port on Friday, some throwing rocks at lorries driven by those who have not joined the strikers.
There are signs that their action is now beginning to affect exports from China’s busiest container port. Lire la suite »