Download or read book The Road Ahead written by Bill Gates and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1996 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this clear-eyed, candid, and ultimately reassuring

Download or read book A Look at Zambia s Road Financing Strategies The Impact of Incongruent Policies and Budgets written by Yohane Tembo and published by Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag). This book was released on 2015 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are various reasons why the road asset in Zambia has been deteriorating over the past five decades since independence. Much effort to restore the road asset to its original value and keep it maintained in a good and safe condition was initiated in mid 1990s with the launch of the Road Sector Investment Plan – Phase I, which was immediately followed by the launch of a Phase II to run from 2003 to 2013. It is my appreciation that many diagnostic studies into road financing strategies which could have led to inefficient road asset management in Zambia have been undertaken, and various solutions tendered. The author takes cognizance that resource mobilization for road construction and maintenance, and subsequent allocation to respective road programs can often be problematic for an emerging country like Zambia. It has the potential to lead to inefficiencies in road asset management as has evidently been demonstrated in the declining road asset value over time. The political, as well as the economic, landscape plays a vital role in resource mobilization and allocation strategies as much as the institutional and the legal framework do. The failure to clear the backlog of maintenance which normally results, largely, from deferment of scheduled maintenance due to insufficient annual budgetary allocation to the road sector maintenance programs has led to the significant deterioration in road network condition. Exorbitant road construction costs have posed additional challenges to the fiscus, thereby constraining both the quantity and quality of road infrastructure that could be constructed and maintained at any given time. Recent policy drives have been categorical in their preference of new road construction aimed at linking Zambia, over road maintenance, which plays a pivotal role in road asset management. This creates a perception that policy pronouncements are at variance to policy documents which promote sustainable economic development through efficient road investments and could be seen as being paradoxical in that the actual financing strategies are skewed towards road construction, a recipe of comfort for the next election challenge due to increased visibility on the ground, rather than to maintenance, as an astute and effective way of managing the road asset. The difficult of establishing congruence between government pronouncements and actual road business strategies in the implementing agencies has, over the years, posed challenges to the fiscal policy implementation. Consequently, this has often led to serious budget overruns due, firstly, to unplanned expenditure and, secondly, variations due to scope increase resulting from project implementation without having prior designs. This has led to high operating inefficiencies of existing roads due to the high level of pavement degradation, with the eventual effect of higher vehicle operating costs, longer travel-times, driver and passenger discomfort, and ultimately, higher agency pavement replacement costs. The damage caused to the economy is apparent in all this. The author carried out an analysis of road financing strategies in Zambia, taking a special look into the past decade, with the view to ascertaining the extent to which roads budgets have been employed to fund new construction and maintenance. This was necessary to establish whether there was a mismatch in allocation of resources for roads in terms of needs and policy, in which new road construction is highly favored in preference to maintenance. It was hoped that if the mismatch existed, it would espouse some paradoxes which existed between the road asset management policies and actual strategies.

Download or read book The Gravy Train An Inside Look at the Long Island Rail Road written by Dan Ruppert and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-19 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up in the suburbs of New York City on Long Island, I took a keen interest in all forms of transportation, especially trains. Afer graduating college, I worked as an industrial engineer for private sector corporations progressing to a middle management position within a Fortune 25 Company. In 1983 I accepted a job opportunity with the Long Island Rail Road as an industrial engineer. The LIRR is a government-subsidized agency that is part of a larger regional organization called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The LIRR had embarked on a very ambitious improvement program to upgrade their physical plants. This plan included the construction of a new railcar maintenance facility. The new facility was to replace their one hundred year old maintenance shops. I was hired to develop facility layouts for the most advanced rail car maintenance facility in the country. Friends and professional colleagues advised me to decline the job offer. However, I was a railroad buff and the opportunity to work for a railroad overshadowed any tredpidations. For decades, the LIRR had bore the brunt of adverse publicity. I would often consider much of the critisism as being too harsh and misguided. Not long after commencing employment, my perspective of the LIRR would be completely transformed. The inefficient and workplace abuses I witnessed first hand could only flourish in publicly subsidized environment. My job required me to observe and analyze the maintenance and repair operations performed on commuter railcars. My next step was identifying more efficient methods. I would then implement these improvements into the design of the new railcar maintenance facilities. I was met with a wall of resistence and non-cooperation from the unionized workforce. The LIRR had languished in decades of inefficient work habits supplemented with managerial coplacency and rampant nepotism. I would operate in a very hostile environment that had no incentive to embrace improvements. It would be in the better interests of the unions to maintain low productivity and therefore justify the gross overstaffing that existed for decades. Upon completion of developing the facility layouts, the next phase of my responsibilities involved coordination with design consultants hired by the LIRR. The consultants were responsible for the architectural and structural designs of the new maintenance facility. The consultans typically were selected based on political connections and not their level of expertise. The design phase was muddled with incompetence and waste. Inept project management would add tens of millions of dollars and lengthly delays to the construction phase of the project. Upon completion of construction, a new regime intent on maintaining the status quo within the LIRR assues control of the new maintenance facility. The new regime is not committed to capitalizing on the labor efficiencies offered by the new facility. Key positions are then filled with managers' intent in preserving the traditional inefficient ways of the LIRR. My story concludes with the agendas of the new regime and conflicts with those who were trying to transform the LIRR into a socially responsible institution. My trials and tribulations along with personal victories and setbacks are all the basis of my book.

Download or read book United States Circuit Courts of Appeals Reports written by United States. Courts of Appeals and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Road written by Cormac McCarthy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). • From the bestselling author of The Passenger A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Download or read book The Belt and Road Initiative Looks East written by Willem Oosterveld and published by The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. This book was released on with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Old Industrial Cities Seeking New Road of Industrialization written by Mark Wang and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2014 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of market economy and competition from rapidly growing coastal areas, Northeast China became the burden to China's overall economic development. With a high concentration of state-owned heavy industries, cities in this region suffered from heavy losses in revenue and massive layoffs of millions of former state-owned enterprise workers, known as the "Northeast Phenomenon" or "Neo-Northeast Phenomenon". The once towering economic giant was down. Such a "phenomenon" is not uncommon in other "rust belt" regions in industrialized economies. However, since the implementation of the Chinese Government's "Revitalisation Strategy of Northeast China" in 2003, cities in Northeast China have gone through various transformations.

Download or read book Brothers written by Bob Rodgers and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two boys pack their tents after a weekend in the Australian bush. But their father does not arrive to pick them up and it becomes clear that something very unusual is happening. In the distance, the Australian capital city is in flames. Two brothers must work together to fight and survive against an enemy from the stars. Another race has watched the arrival of this new enemy, but help is far away. Something big is happening and the earth will never be the same as the brothers find and fight the force that has turned their world upside down. Parental Notes: This book was written for my two sons to explore (as we developed the plot together) how they needed to trust and rely on each other for the rest of their lives. The book is action oriented but is built around this theme of cooperation. In addition to exploring some behavioural themes such as violence and grief, the story also introduces issues such as environmentalism and apocalyptic threats.

Download or read book Proceedings of the American Road Congress written by and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Twelve Years down the Road written by Alan Neil and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomy and some religions believe that life is a series of cycles. That is certainly reflected in the tale of Al's long, adventurous life; the cycle spun him in many different directions over the years. Twelve Years down the Road shares a collection of stories and events detailing the diversity of Al's unique life. From early childhood, he lived with his parents and two brothers in the woods of East Texas on a family farm surrounded by a national forest with a wildlife management area across the road. These stories reveal how he met the love of his life Betty, what he learned by delivering the Dallas Morning News, how he fared at his fi rst job in the Mississippi Delta in the middle of KKK country, how he perceived his work at a Texas prison, and how he came to work in Siberia for a pipeline company. As Al reflects on the cycles his long and varied life, he shares the stories that shape a person and make a man a man.

Download or read book Annual Report of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Missouri written by and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book History of Kalamazoo County Michigan written by Samuel W. Durant and published by . This book was released on 1880 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Looking For Thunder Road written by Jen Atkins and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At forty years old, Jessica Martinelli's life is in a rut. She is in a marriage with no passion and a job she can no longer stomach. She wishes that things were different, but fears the risk involved in upsetting the balance she has managed to strike for so many years. With the support of her family and friends, Jess makes the choice to begin an unorthodox journey to find some meaning in her empty existence - a journey that leads to new opportunities as well as surprising developments around every turn, including an unexpected chance at love

Download or read book The Law Journal Reports written by Henry D. Barton and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Automobile Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 1724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bradshaw s notes for travellers in Tyrol and Vorarlberg with illustrations maps and a list of plants etc written by George Bradshaw and published by . This book was released on with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Highway Topics written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: