Following reports of increased mortality in the small ruminant population of the Sahrawi territories, western Algeria, between January and May 2010, local veterinary authorities suspected an outbreak of peste des petits ruminants (PPR). An investigation was implemented in May 2010 and followed up in October 2010 in the Sahrawi refugee camps, Tindouf province, with the objective of confirming the circulation of the peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV). Laboratory results confirmed the presence of PPRV in 33.3% of the samples. Sequence analysis revealed that the virus belonged to Lineage IV and phylogenetic analysis indicated a close relationship (99.3%) with the PPRV isolated during the Moroccan outbreak in 2008.

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Urban bus system so-called Trans Koetaradja (TK) has been considered and piloted as a way to mitigate motorcycles and cars dependency in Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh Province. It is assumed that the effectiveness of the such proposed policy would be useful if the public acceptance of this policy has a positive response. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the attitudes of the public in responding to such proposed policy. The data were collected within line 3 and line 4 of TK that is City Center - Mata Ie and City Center - Ajun - Lhoknga. The data collection method used was Stated Preference (SP) with a total of 220 samples collected using a stratified random sampling method. The SP questionnaire contains information about socio-economic, travel behavior, and respondents’ perceptions representing their attitudes towards TK policy. People are dependent on their vehicles due to public transport challenging to use. The psychological indicators such as like driving a car & motorcycle and TK has limited accessibility have significant manifested to the latent variable of Inhibition of freedom of movement/activity. These sign representing the attitudes of the people in Banda Aceh would be dependence to their own vehicles and directly affected to the rejection to use proposed bus system of the proposed policy. Furthermore, male commuters who have low education level and income households more likely to autos dependent and more feeling inhibition of freedom of movement/activity if they use public transport.

Background: Public Transport (PT) is commonly recognized as a valid transport policy to reduce car and motorcycle users in many developing countries. In emerging countries such as Indonesia, a city like Banda Aceh has not run-away from the influences of impecunious public transportation services such as insufficient quality of services. The need for public transport reforms in achieving efficiency and sufficiency is under consideration by the Government as a way to mitigate severe private mode dependency. Therefore, Stated Preference (SP) survey was conducted in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where the so-called bus reform policy Trans Koetaradja runs under trial as a case study. This investigation looks at Banda Aceh citizens’ intentions to Trans Koetaradja bus reform policy in terms of the public approval. Methods: The questionnaires were distributed to the public within three lines of Trans Koetaradja. Utilizing psychometric data collected from SP survey, we construct four factors representing psychological determinants (i.e., appropriateness of the policy, private mode dependency, the consciousness of problem private mode in society, and inhibition of freedom of movements). Due to the characteristics of the methods for evaluating public’ intentions, we retain that this kind of unobserved variable analysis could be accomplished by applying multivariate latent variable modeling. Aims: This work aims to propose a Structural Equation Modeling of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (SEM-CFA) for analyzing the effects of citizens intents related to subjective an individuals’ indicators on the psychological factors that might abridge the judgments about numerous characteristics towards the bus reform policy. Results: The empirical findings show that some latent factors offer explanatory power for bus reform policy acceptance. Latent variables, including “perceived appropriateness of the policy” and “awareness of problem private mode in society” appear to be the most significant direct causes leading to the acknowledgment of the effect of the acceptance of the proposed policy. Conclusion: However, the effect of latent variables of “private mode dependency” and “inhibition of freedom of movement/less accessibility of the bus” reveals negative determinants to the acceptance of the policy.