The Student Room Group

F584 - OCR 23rd January 2012

Any one got any ideas on the essays??

Feel free to leave any tips for revision and key information.

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Reply 1
One of my teachers is convinced that it'll be on railways; perhaps privatisation. What does your teacher think might be on the paper? I'm hoping it's road pricing :colone:
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 2
Original post by don'tTRIP.
One of my teachers is convinced that it'll be on railways; perhaps privatisation. What does your teacher think might be on the paper? I'm hoping it's road pricing :colone:


Oh no! I hate privatisation and railways :/ Yh I hope it's on road pricing or market structures.
Reply 3
Original post by fiona23
Oh no! I hate privatisation and railways :/ Yh I hope it's on road pricing or market structures.


Privatisation isn't too bad; pretty straightforward actually :yy:

But yeah, apparently a paper on the rail industry is long overdue. Make sure you know the features of a natural monopoly and an oligopoly in case that's the 15-marker. Seems like a lot of colleges only allow their students to take this paper in June; are you taking the global paper too? Odd that I'm much more confident for that paper than this one :colondollar:
Reply 4
No I hate the last part of every chapter :frown: and no I'm not retaking global got an A :smile: global is much easier than transport in my opinion because it's all linked with AS :smile:
Reply 5
How are you revising? - haven't properly started yet! :/
Transport Economics is the worst unit :/ I wish my school had chosen Leisure instead :frown: I find this unit difficult to comprehend and very boring. Fingers crossed it will be a good paper for. I know contestability (my favourite type of question in this unit) came up in June 2011 but hopefully it will be one of the choices again.
Reply 7
Original post by TrampingRampage
Transport Economics is the worst unit :/ I wish my school had chosen Leisure instead :frown: I find this unit difficult to comprehend and very boring. Fingers crossed it will be a good paper for. I know contestability (my favourite type of question in this unit) came up in June 2011 but hopefully it will be one of the choices again.



I feel exactly the same way :frown: I hate transport economics! For section B I think the 3 questions are from chapters 3,4,5. I just hope part a and b are a good combination :/
Reply 8
Original post by Beast1
How are you revising? - haven't properly started yet! :/


I just read the book made notes and read some revision materials and just doing the past papers. How about you? I'm really not looking forward for this exam, so worried! :/
Reply 9
What do we need to know about the cross rail?? I just can't see how a question would ask about cross rail.

Also could some one explain the rail privatisation please? I don't know how I would explain fully whether it was successful or not.
Original post by fiona23
What do we need to know about the cross rail?? I just can't see how a question would ask about cross rail.

Also could some one explain the rail privatisation please? I don't know how I would explain fully whether it was successful or not.


I've been thinking the same thing; it's very likely that the paper could be on crossrail, or perhaps HS2 even.

As for rail privatisation, it's just the general arguments for privatisation. You could argue it has been beneficial as, it has reduced waiting times (raising productivity); cut our carbon footprint (less cars on the road) etc. Also, privatisation requires greater private sector investment to generate new capital, thus investment in new infrastructure can help the UK to move towards a more effective and sustainable transport system, thus helping the economy to grow. There's also the natural monopoly argument.

However, the benefits are really quite limited. Won't go into too much depth, but one aim behind privatisation was to reduce govt. expenditure; this has to some extent but rail franchises still recieve massive subsidy payments (op. cost...). Also, there's the argument that a private firm will attempt to profit maximise, thus cutting costs and compromising health and safety. Equally, it's argued that private sector firms only consider the private costs so, society incurs huge negative externalities; but then you could argue against it (good discussion = A*) so, govts. can appoint an independent regulator to avoid such a thing from happening. But then you could argue against that too (:colondollar:) and say that, this could lead to govt. failure as, it is very difficult to judge how far it should intervene.

Overall, I'd say the benefits are very limited.
Reply 11
Anyone got advice on essay structure? Need an A in this!
Reply 12
Original post by don'tTRIP.
One of my teachers is convinced that it'll be on railways; perhaps privatisation. What does your teacher think might be on the paper? I'm hoping it's road pricing :colone:


My teacher says the same thing.
I'm gonna revise it just in case...
Reply 13
I think there was a 15 marker on rail privatisation in the jan 2010 paper, go onto the icr website and memorise the mark scheme for it, the best thing
Reply 14
Original post by fiona23
What do we need to know about the cross rail?? I just can't see how a question would ask about cross rail.

Also could some one explain the rail privatisation please? I don't know how I would explain fully whether it was successful or not.


Cross rail is useful when talking about transport integration.
Cross rail could make journeys using public transport quicker/smoother and so make public transport seem more appealing.
Also, if through ticketing was possible for cross rail and other transport modes, using public transport would be easier and so more people are likely to use it over private car use. :smile:
Reply 15
I hate all this rubbish about sustainable transport policies, cost benefit analysis and integrations, I want a nice solid theory essay question on market structures or contestability
Original post by somaiyar
I hate all this rubbish about sustainable transport policies, cost benefit analysis and integrations, I want a nice solid theory essay question on market structures or contestability


Likewise.

Apparently they might ask about managerial aims; different to the aims of a firm (profit maximsation etc.)
Reply 17
Original post by don'tTRIP.
Likewise.

Apparently they might ask about managerial aims; different to the aims of a firm (profit maximsation etc.)


That would be quite a good question because in a 15 marker you normally get 9 marks for a diagram! You could also talk about profit satisficing, revenue max and sales volume max
What are the grade boundaries like for Transport? Been revising like an absolute nutcase; hoping for an A* in Economics :yy:

Also, you don't have to get over 90 UMS on both papers, right? I remember my teacher telling us about one guy who averaged 90 in both, with 80-something in this paper.
Original post by fiona23
I feel exactly the same way :frown: I hate transport economics! For section B I think the 3 questions are from chapters 3,4,5. I just hope part a and b are a good combination :/


Yeh I understand what you mean :P sometimes I just wish you could mix and match parts a) and b).. I find with the two parts they are kind of related and I have no idea if you could use the points from part a to get marks in part b etc...

How are you revising? Do you use the green Bamford text book?

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