YEAR IN REVIEW 1999: TRANSPORTATION

AVIATION (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) The world airline industry had a successful financial year in 1997, due mainly to continuing efforts to reduce costs, the advantages stemming from an increasing number of alliances, and low fuel prices. According to the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), scheduled carriers returned an operating profit of 5.7% of operating revenues, with income at $291 billion and expenses at $274 billion. This marked the fifth year in a row that the industry had shown a positive outcome. Pierre Jeanniot, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the airlines' own trade body with more than 250 members, warned against too much optimism, however, pointing out that when the 1997 profit was added to those made in 1994-96, it still left the airlines $800 million short of recovering their losses from earlier in the decade. The figures also disguised a far from homogeneous regional profitability picture, he added. Preliminary 1998 figures, moreover, confirmed a substantial slowing in the industry. Asia/Pacific airlines, traditionally among the best performers, began to suffer from the economic downturn in that part of the world. Their 1997 results were "collectively probably their worst-ever," according to Jeanniot, and a survey of the opinions of chief executive officers of carriers in the region caused IATA to revise downward its 1997-2001 growth forecasts from 7.7% per year to 4.4% for passengers and from 9% to 6.5% for cargo. Airlines operating to, from, and within the region were expected to make $2 billion less net profit and to carry 30 million fewer passengers and one million tons less freight in 2001 than had been previously forecast. Airlines in Europe, Africa, and North America showed growth close to the world average. The performance of those in the Middle East was below average. Overall, IATA airlines carried 1,273,000,000 passengers and 26 million tons of cargo during 1997, up, respectively, 6.8% and 7.8% from 1996. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was the world's busiest in 1997, with a throughput of 70.3 million passengers, while Memphis (Tenn.) Airport handled the most air freight, at 2.2 million tons, according to Airports Council International figures. North American and European carriers owed much of their success to strong economic conditions, and in Europe the major airlines were able to shrug off the impact of a number of small newcomers whose start-up had been facilitated by European Union aviation liberalization. In both regions airlines continued to pursue with vigour "code-share" alliances, which enabled them to sell seats on one another's aircraft. IATA estimated that by the end of 1997 there were some 600 such alliances throughout the airline world. It was a trend that increasingly worried fair-trading and antimonopolistic bodies. The airlines' worries included the growing burden of taxation, charges rising for using navigation and airport facilities, growing pressure from environmental lobbies, and the year 2000 computer bug. Carriers claimed that many governments were devising new ways of tapping the industry as a source of revenues for general treasuries. IATA gave examples--a tax equivalent to $17 per seat on departing international flights in Norway, with the intention, according to IATA, "of reducing demand for air transport," and a 7.5% tax in the U.S. on mileage awards for frequent flyers. International airlines paid $7.3 billion in airport landing and related charges and $5.9 billion in navigation charges in 1997, increases, respectively, of $800 million and $700 million over 1996. Together, these charges represented 9.6% of the airlines' international operating costs, compared with 8.9% the previous year. In September 1997 an aircraft emissions surcharge went into effect at Zrich, Switz., the first time that emissions had been reflected in the structure for user charges. Jeanniot commented, "Ultimately, no airline, whatever its region, will be able to stand aloof from environmental matters, as pressure for energy taxes mounts, and serious efforts to cut oil consumption begin to bite. The environmental debate has more to do with politics and public sympathy than with technology and scientific fact." Massive users of computers, airlines, air traffic control organizations, and airports, backed by both ICAO and IATA, initiated a campaign to ensure that the advanced technology on which they rely would recognize the year 2000. IATA member airlines spent a total of $1.6 billion to ensure that their information technology would be up to date when the new century arrived. (See COMPUTERS AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS: Sidebar.) From the safety point of view the year was an improvement over 1996, with a total of 864 fatalities in 23 accidents, compared with 1,418 in 25 accidents. There were 17,777 airliners on the world register (12,384 jets, 5,393 turboprops) compared with 17,019 (11,798 jets, 5,221 turboprops) in 1996. Both major civil aircraft manufacturers--the Boeing Co. of the U.S. and the European consortium, Airbus Industrie--stepped up production rates to meet rising airline industry orders, though late in the year the lack of orders from Asia caused Boeing to lay off several thousand workers. ARTHUR REED FREIGHT AND PIPELINES Freight operators experienced a difficult year in 1998, especially in East Asia. The economic crisis in that region sapped business confidence in markets that already were reeling from the impact of globalization and consolidation. Among the less-developed countries investment in infrastructure concentrated on efficiencies within and access to ports. In the U.S. the $2 billion Alameda Corridor project to link the ports of Long Beach, Calif., and Los Angeles to transcontinental rail yards nearby the latter city--a project made necessary by the strong growth of the U.S. Pacific ports--was scheduled to begin construction shortly. Mexican ports, in the wake of their 1993 privatization, were emerging as profitable gateways. Bright spots in Asia included a new port link to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and sustained growth of trade into China. Singapore and Hong Kong continued to vie for the title of busiest container port. Hong Kong planned to open a new container terminal in 2001 and two more on Lantau Island thereafter. The Port of Singapore Authority signed a long-term service agreement with China Ocean Shipping Co., which was expected to help maintain the Authority's volume throughput and underlined the importance of the Chinese market. Driven by an unprecedented demand for energy, pipeline construction increased. In the U.S. construction was at the highest level since the early 1980s, and in the rest of the world construction was up 8% over 1997. One-third of all the new projects were in the U.S., a result of an increase in offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Onshore projects included the 3,055-km (1,900-mi) Alliance pipeline from western Canada to Chicago; the 730-km (455-mi) Lakehead pipeline from Superior, Wis., to Mokena, Ill.; and the 644-km (400-mi) pipeline from Lake Erie to White Plains, N.Y. Russia and Turkey agreed to join in building a 1,200-km (745-mi) $3.3 billion pipeline across the Black Sea. In Central Asia new projects included a 1,509-km (940-mi) $1.6 billion pipeline from Turkmenistan through Iran to Turkey and a 3,200-km (2,000-mi) line from Kazakstan to Iran. (See Spotlight: Central Asian Oil Disputes.) Farther east, plans for a trans-Asian gas pipeline network linking India to Myanmar (Burma) were disrupted by terrorist bombs and technical difficulties. In South America the success of the Bolivia-Brazil pipeline, which took 20 years to come to fruition, generated the need for a second line. JOHN H. EARP INTERCITY RAIL (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) The dominant goals of intercity rail service during recent years, high-speed trains and privatization, expanded in 1998 to include objectives based on providing convenient, modernized, and value-for-the-money services. The high-speed network was being extended, but its rate of expansion in core European services slowed during the year. A rail crash at Eschede, Ger., in June that killed 98 passengers focused thoughts on safety issues. Sweden began planning a high-speed rail line on its east coast, and Germany planned to link Hannover and Berlin. Japan announced a $10 billion development plan to extend its Shinkansen high-speed network to link Kagoshima with Sapporo. In the U.S., where passengers accounted for only 1% of railroad traffic, Amtrak, the government-supported operator of almost all of the nation's intercity passenger trains, planned a $3.5 billion network radiating out from Chicago. The construction of the 517-km (1 km = 0.62 mi) Boston-New York City line was scheduled to be completed in 1999. High-speed projects in Asia suffered a setback during the year because of the region's economic difficulties. The Milan-Genoa link in Italy was canceled because the train was likely to generate extremely loud noise in the narrow valleys through which it would pass. The emphasis on improving rolling stock meant that during the next four years 10 or more major railways in Europe would rely on tilting trains for their main line services. In the Philippines the government sought BOT/BLT (build-operate-transfer/build-lease-transfer) arrangements in order to restore its railway to profitability. Kansas City/Southern expanded a 2,750-km regional network to a 16,000-km system, and Canadian National expanded its operations by a $2.4 billion merger in order to reach the Gulf of Mexico. In Peru there were plans to build three new railways totaling 1,300 km. A Brazilian iron ore company, Cia. Vale do Rio Doce, which was privatized in 1997, demonstrated that its two heavy-haul railways could be profitable. The number of rail-airport links continued to grow with Brussels, Oslo, London Heathrow, and Hong Kong--all opening in 1998. An emphasis on interchange facilities and customer-oriented stations was exemplified by the new plans for the principal railway stations in Zrich, Switz., and Berlin. JOHN H. EARP ROADS AND TRAFFIC (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) Notwithstanding the economic difficulties of 1998 and the increasing awareness of the detrimental effects of car emissions, the aspirations to own and use a car continued unabated. Roads and their traffic provided the backbone of transportation in both the developed and less-developed countries. Although the scale of national road programs was being cut back, key links in strategic networks continued to be constructed. The Trans-Kalahari Highway was completed during the year (see Sidebar), as was the Tokyo Bay crossing that included a 4.4-km bridge and 9.4-km of tunnel (1 km = 0.62 mi). Under construction were the 2.3-km Selatin twin tunnel as part of the Izmir-Aydin expressway in Turkey, and the 1.9-km Molldiete tunnel as part of the 3.2-km bypass to Ravensburg in Germany. In Australia projects included a 1.6-km long tunnel to ease congestion in Perth's city centre at a cost of $197 million and construction in Melbourne to provide a missing link between the city's four radial freeways at a cost of $82.5 million. Traffic in urban areas was likely to become more controlled, as three projects that opened during the year demonstrated. In Milan, to encourage the use of public transportation, automobiles were almost completely banned from the city centre. Marseille, France, embarked on a traffic control scheme to divert cars around its urban area, and Paris planned to organize an annual clean transport day with restrictions on automobiles. During the year Paris and New York City forged an agreement to pool experiences regarding the control of motor vehicles. This extended to traffic management by intelligent systems, parking control, enhancement of facilities for pedestrians and cyclists, and priority for public transportation. The U.K. government was committed to changing the balance of car use in favour of more environmentally friendly systems of transportation. JOHN H. EARP SHIPPING AND PORTS According to figures released by Lloyd's Register of Shipping, during 1997 the world fleet of merchant ships grew by 2.8% to 522.2 million gt (gross tons), an increase of 14.3 million gt over the previous year. The tanker fleet grew by only 0.5%, and general cargo ships, under strong competition from containerships, increased by only 0.1%. In contrast, as the bulk carriers ordered in the strong freight market of 1995 were delivered, the bulk carrier fleet increased by 3.1%. The most startling gain was registered by the containership fleet, which grew by 13.5%. July 1, 1998, was a key date for shipping because major International Maritime Organization (IMO) initiatives entered into force at that time. A new Chapter IX of the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) made the International Safety Management Code mandatory, and a new version of Chapter III of SOLAS dealing with lifesaving appliances and arrangements came into force. A proposal for a harmonized Code of Safety for Ships in Polar Waters was submitted to the IMO D41 meeting (subcommittee on design and machinery). This was an attempt to agree on a common approach by the major classification societies and national administrations, which had their own rules for ships operating in polar waters. Closely allied to shipping industry trends was the enormous scale of investment in world port and harbour projects. Optimism was clearly the dominant factor in 1997-98, a time when terminal operators were faced with a new challenge--an 8,000-TEU (20-ft equivalent units) containership of over 100,000 deadweight tons. China and India had huge port projects under way during the year, with Shanghai forecast to become the world's fifth largest container port by 2020. Even a medium-sized maritime country such as Spain planned to invest $472 million on its ports in 1999 through state-owned Puertos del Estado. The world's largest independent port operator, Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH), was involved in the opening in The Bahamas of the $78 million Freeport Container Port, a joint venture between HPH and the Grand Bahama Development Co. Port Raysut, a new container terminal at Salalah in southern Oman, opened in November. The privately-owned facility would cut Europe-Asia transit times by as much as three and a half days. Port Raysut was expected to rank among the world's top 20 container ports within a year. Another large investment was taking place at Mina Zayed, the main port of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. In 1993 Abu Dhabi had embarked on an ambitious $765 million 20-year plan that would enable the port to handle 600,000 TEU and 4.5 million metric tons of cargo by 2013. EDWARD CROWLEY URBAN MASS TRANSIT (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) As cities in 1998 faced up to planning for the new millennium, there was a growing awareness that urban mass transit played a critical role in the quality of urban life. Policy statements from civic and public transportation authorities had a common theme: investment in their cities could be stimulated by mass transit networks. Developing such facilities generally demanded both public and private participation, although Rio de Janeiro; Montevideo, Uruguay; and So Paulo, Braz., privatized their urban transport during 1998. New systems opened in Ankara, Turkey; Sofia, Bulg.; Warsaw; and Taegu, the third city in South Korea to have mass transit. Tehran opened its rehabilitated system, and Lisbon added a new line. The new Meteor Line in Paris was driverless. Other cities with newly opened links included Madrid; Munich, Ger.; Tokyo; and Los Angeles (the Red Line to Hollywood). Cities that were constructing and/or extending their metro systems included Cairo, Singapore, and St. Louis, Mo.; and Paris planned to build a second Meteor Line. Ottawa; Vienna; Casablanca, Mor.; Seattle, Wash.; and Novosibirsk, Russia, had well-advanced plans. Equally impressive was the extent of commitment to light rail systems. Karachi, Pak.; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Munich opened new lines in 1998. Cities with projects under construction included Sacramento, Calif.; Sydney, Australia; and Stockholm (which was to be privately operated). Cities planning light rail systems included Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.; Brisbane, Australia; Krakow, Pol.; Mlaga, Spain; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Much effort was being put into devising low-floor vehicles for both light rail and subway systems, and the industry was attempting to standardize its approach. New designs were introduced in Gteborg, Swed.; Vevey, Switz.; and Dsseldorf, Ger.; principally to enhance the passenger appeal of the vehicle. Buses remained the backbone of urban systems. Advances during the year included new light vehicle designs; compressed natural gas engines in Sacramento, Calif.; and on-street priority that included reversible lanes in Adelaide, Australia. Ann Arbor, Mich., pioneered a new operating system that included AVL (automatic vehicle location), computerized dispatching, smart cards for ticketing, and automated vehicle component monitoring. People-mover systems and monorails were becoming less expensive to develop but were more likely to be used for resorts or links to systems rather than as primary urban transportation. Boston opened a new $2.9 million shuttle to the MBTA Orange Line, and Las Vegas, Nev., linked its downtown hotels with a monorail. JOHN H. EARP United States. Consumer affairs at the federal level in 1998 involved the continuing efforts to address information, safety, and fraud--with some attendant controversy. The Department of Agriculture delayed setting long-anticipated national organic-food standards; an extraordinary deluge of some 200,000 responses to its proposed regulations, issued in mid-December 1997, prompted the agency to make fundamental revisions. The standards were intended to govern the National Organic Program called for in the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, which aimed to resolve the confusion created by a patchwork of private and state rules regulating organic-food production and labeling. The majority of the comments received opposed the proposal's inclusion of biotechnology-derived products as organic foods and the use of biosolids (municipal sludge) in their production and irradiation in their processing. One consumer group, however, warned that such concerns could backfire, with standards made too restrictive for the organic-food industry to expand into large-scale production. With expansion of a new food-safety system called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) underway at the beginning of the year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April called for retail food businesses to test the feasibility of the system in restaurants, grocery stores, and institutional food services. The FDA also proposed requiring food processors of packaged fruit and vegetable juices to implement HAACP. Following an outbreak of food-borne illness from apple cider the previous year, the agency issued final rules in July regarding warning labels on unpasteurized juices. The White House, meanwhile, established a President's Council on Food Safety to coordinate the various food-safety activities of the separate federal agencies into a comprehensive, strategic, federal food-safety plan. The General Accounting Office and National Research Council weighed in with reports suggesting coordination could entail streamlining safety laws and oversight in a single agency, rather than the existing 12 agencies and 35 different statutes. Concerns about the risk that large vehicles, particularly sport utility vehicles, posed to people in smaller cars were highlighted when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began crash testing light trucks and vans with passenger cars. The NHTSA reported on incompatibilities or mismatches in vehicle design, such as bumper heights, that might increase the consequences of crashes. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety provided helpful perspective with its report, based on real-world crash data, that showed the relative importance of vehicle size in safety, but it also showed that other factors mattered, such as design, use patterns, and where and how vehicles were driven. The NHTSA proposed to increase the prominence of mandatory rollover warning labels in sport utility vehicles. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported a relatively new consumer problem known as cramming, in which unscrupulous billing firms added charges for unwanted products or services to consumers' local telephone bills without their knowledge. Sparked in part by the confusing complexity of local phone bills, cramming generated about 9,000 complaints to the FTC over a 12-month period and led to calls for federal or state intervention. Opponents of anticramming legislation wanted consumer safeguards for phone bills similar to those for credit card bills, which were developed successfully and voluntarily by the industry. Stating that fraud could slow the growth of consumer business over the Internet, the FTC launched Consumer Sentinel, a secure consumer fraud and complaint database for use by law enforcement organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Following its report to Congress on Internet privacy, the FTC also suggested that legislative measures should be taken to protect consumer financial information, which prompted concern that overly rigid rules would hamper commerce. As states cracked down on misleading and fraudulent sweepstakes pitches, 32 states and the District of Columbia reached a settlement with American Family Publishers, one of the largest sweepstakes outfits, over alleged misleading offers. The National Association of Attorneys General began to study whether additional specific laws were needed to protect consumers from abusive and deceptive sweepstakes activities. PETER L. SPENCER Veterinary Medicine Concerns arose during 1998 that the widespread use of antibiotics in farm animals could result in a loss of effectiveness when antibiotics were used to treat human infections. There had been suggestions that the use of products based on quinolone and fluoroquinolone could contribute to the creation of resistant strains of foodborne bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter, which cause severe illness in humans as well as animals. A World Health Organization (WHO) meeting convened in Geneva in June recommended international cooperation to gather data, standardize testing methods, and develop a code of practice for the use of such products. The biennial congress of the International Pig Veterinary Society, July 5-9, attracted more than 1,500 veterinarians to Birmingham, Eng. Delegates from 50 countries discussed problems in the production, health, welfare, and disease control of hogs. There was particular emphasis on porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, a viral disease that occurred worldwide and could cause serious losses among affected animals. A symposium organized by the Office International des Epizooties on classical swine fever was held in conjunction with the conference. The disease had resisted international efforts to eradicate it and remained widespread, causing economic problems in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. A recent resurgence in Western and Central Europe affected pig breeding and called into question the effectiveness of prevention and control strategies. Recent developments in diagnostic and vaccine technology, however, were said to offer prospects for new approaches to controlling the disease. A new variant strain of foot-and-mouth disease identified by the World Reference Laboratory, Pirbright, Eng., as originating in Iran and named A/Iran/96 had spread to Turkey by 1998. Existing vaccines had proved ineffective, and so vaccines incorporating the new strain were produced. Vaccination of all ruminants in nearby areas was urged. Scrapie is a disease of sheep caused by a prion protein (PrP) that has links with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans; material from scrapie-infected sheep was also believed to be the origin of bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow" disease) in cattle. Attempts to eradicate scrapie would be greatly helped by the availability of a test to diagnose it before signs of the disease appeared. B.E.C. Schreuder and colleagues at The Netherlands Institute for Animal Science and Health devised a test that detected scrapie infection at 10 months of age, about halfway through the incubation period and well before clinical signs developed. The test was simple to perform and relatively noninvasive, using biopsies of material taken from the tonsil of the animal. Knowledge of the weight of a horse is essential for calculating the dosage of medicines, formulating rations, and training for optimum condition. Methods of assessing the weight in the absence of a weighbridge (a platform scale flush with the roadway) included specially calibrated tapes, formulas based on body girth and length, precalculated tables, and visual estimation relying on the experience of the observer. J.M. Ellis of Warwickshire College, Moreton Morrell, Eng., and colleague Teresa Hollands endeavoured to establish the comparative accuracy of different methods by comparing the results in 600 horses of similar size and age against the actual weight. The accuracy of the results varied widely, the degree of error depending on the height of the horse. Most accurate, at 98.6%, was a formula developed in 1988 by C. L. Carroll and P. J. Huntingdon: weight (kg) equals the square of the girth multiplied by the body length (cm) divided by 11,877. Least accurate was visual estimation, scoring 88.3%. EDWARD BODEN