The economics of power system reliability and planning

has to say, clearly its professional readership is likely to be restricted to transport planners and to academies in related fields. To this group, however, it should prove a worthwhile reference, not just for the information it conveys about the particular prob? lem with which it is concerned, but also for some of the methodological experience it reports. After an opening chapter setting out the background to and aims of the research project, the following threee chapters describe the organisation and analysis of a survey of households in parishes in South Oxfordshire. Chapter 5 contains a summary of the survey data on travel patterns, and the following chapter such as car availability, car sharing and public transport services. The next two chapters both employ techniques relatively little used in transport research. Chapter 7 uses a conjoint measurement approach to assess response to a number of hypothetical transport policy alternatives, while Chapter 8 reports the results of a simple 'game' played by interviewees, aimed at identifying desired modal character? istics, subject to a 'budget' constraint. Finally, Chapter 9 investigates the concepts of latent demand, transport deprivation and accessibility in the context of the South Oxfordshire area and Chapter 10 discusses some of the policy problems highlighted by the study. This is a book which deserves the attention of transport planners. It does not pretend to open up major new horizons, but it does provide a thorough discussion of a significant practical problem and it applies techniques of analysis which are relatively new and which seem to have the potential for broader application. Alan Pearman