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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Carlson , Annelie (VTI); Mellin , Anna (VTI) |
| Abstract: | In the debate of climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gases, the issue of energy use is closely related. Several political aims concern the need to reduce the overall energy demand in the society, where transportation is an important contributor. In the transport sector, major efforts have been concentrated on developing more fuel efficient engines and vehicles. However, the road infrastructure, its operation and maintenance also use energy and do have an effect on traffic fuel consumption and emissions. It is therefore important to also take the infrastructure into consideration when addressing the energy issue for traffic and use a broader perspective. The objective of this study is to estimate the total energy use in a life cycle perspective of a road infrastructure investment and the impact of different phases of the roads life time. How the results are related to the transport objectives is also addressed. A life cycle assessment method is used to evaluate an infrastructure investment, including construction, operation, maintenance and traffic during 60 years. A small community is used as a case study where a bypass has been built and the result show that this investment will increase the total energy use by approximately 60%, or 1 550 TJ compared to not building it. A major part of the increase is due to traffic, and since mostly fossil fuel is used there will also be an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The result stipulates that the aspects of energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gases has not been accounted for in the planning or it has been considered as less important than other aspects, e.g. traffic safety and accessibility. |
| Keywords: | Life cycle assessment; Energy use; Road infrastructure and traffic |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_023&r=tre |
| By: | Toledo, Tomer (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology); Cats , Oded (KTH); Burghout, Wilco (KTH); Koutsopoulos , Haris N. (KTH) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a transit simulation model designed to support evaluation of operations, planning and control, especially in the context of Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS). Examples of potential applications include frequency determination, evaluation of real-time control strategies for schedule maintenance and assessing the effects of vehicle scheduling on the level of service. Unlike most previous efforts in this area, the simulation model is built on a platform of a mesoscopic traffic simulation model, which allows modeling of the operation dynamics of large-scale transit systems taking into account the stochasticity due to interactions with road traffic. The capabilities of Mezzo as an evaluation tool of transit operations are demonstrated with an application to a real-world high-demand bus line in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area under various scenarios. The headway distributions at two stops are compared with field observations and show good consistency between simulated and observed data. |
| Keywords: | Simulation; Public transport; Operations; ITS |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_029&r=tre |
| By: | Cats, Oded (KTH); Koutsopoulos, Haris N. (KTH); Burghout, Wilco (KTH); Toledo, Tomer (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | Real-time information is increasingly being implemented in transit networks worldwide. The evaluation of the effect of real-time information requires dynamic modeling of transit operations and of passenger path choices. This paper presents a dynamic transit analysis and evaluation tool that represents time-tables, operation strategies, real-time information, adaptive passenger choices, and traffic dynamics at the network level. Transit path choices are modeled as a sequence of boarding, walking and alighting decisions that passengers undertake when carrying out their journey. The model is applied to the Metro network of Stockholm, Sweden area under various operating conditions and information provision scenarios, as a proof of concept. An analysis of the results indicates substantial path choice shifts and potential time savings associated with more comprehensive real-time information provision and transfer coordination improvements. |
| Keywords: | Real-time information; Public transport; Route choice; Simulation |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_028&r=tre |
| By: | Cats, Oded (KTH); Nabavi Larijani, Anahid (KTH); Ólafsdóttir, Ásdís (KTH); Burghout, Wilco (KTH); Andreasson, Ingmar (KTH); Koutsopoulos, Haris N. (KTH) |
| Abstract: | Transit operations involve several inherent sources of uncertainty including dispatching time from the origin terminal, travel time between stops and dwell time at stops. Bus holding control strategies are among the prominent methods applied by transit operators in order to improve transit performance and level of service. The common practice is to regulate departures from a limited number of stops by holding buses until the scheduled time. An analysis of the performance of a high-frequency bus line in Stockholm based on Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) data shows that this control strategy is not effective in improving service regularity along the line. It also indicates that drivers adjust their speed based on performance objectives. Implications of a control strategy that regulates departures from all stops based on the headways from the preceding bus and the following bus were evaluated using BusMezzo, a transit operations simulation model. The results suggest that this strategy can improve service performance considerably from both passengers and operators perspectives. In addition, it implies cooperative operations as the decisions of each driver are interdependent of other drivers with mutual corrections. The difficulties in realizing the benefits of the proposed strategy in practice such as dispatching from the origin terminal, driver scheduling and compliance are discussed. The implications of several practical considerations are assessed by conducting a sensitivity analysis as part of the preparations to a field experiment designed to test the proposed control strategy. |
| Keywords: | Public transport; Operations; Simulation; Field experiment; Reliability |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_026&r=tre |
| By: | Khanna, Shefali (Resources for the Future); Linn, Joshua (Resources for the Future) |
| Abstract: | By decreasing gasoline consumption, greater fuel economy could significantly reduce environmental and energy security concerns. In this paper, we show that since the year 2000, technology and market shares have contributed roughly equally to rising new vehicle fuel economy in the United States. We discuss the implications of these patterns for the safety and welfare effects of fuel economy standards. |
| Keywords: | corporate average fuel economy standards, passenger vehicles, fuel savings, vehicle safety, greenhouse gas emissions rate standards |
| JEL: | Q4 L62 |
| Date: | 2013–09–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-13-29&r=tre |
| By: | Cats, Oded (KTH); Loutos, Gerasimos |
| Abstract: | Waiting time uncertainty is one of the main determinants of public transport reliability and overall level-of-service. The dissemination of real-time information concerning vehicle arrivals is often considered an important measure to reduce unreliability. Moreover, the prediction of downstream vehicle trajectories could also benefit real-time control strategies. In order to adequately analyze the performance of real-time bus arrival information system, the generated predictions have to be compared against empirical bus arrival data. A conventional real-world bus arrival prediction scheme is formulated and applied on the trunk lines network in Stockholm. This scheme was found to systematically underestimate the remaining waiting time by 6.2% on average. Prediction error accuracy and reliability varies considerably over time periods, along the route and as a function of the prognosis horizon. The difference between passengers’ waiting time expectations derived from the timetable and real-time information is equivalent to 30% of the average waiting time. |
| Keywords: | Public transport; Real-time information; Reliability; Prediction |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_025&r=tre |
| By: | TAKARADA Yasuhiro |
| Abstract: | We develop a two-country, two-good general equilibrium model of international trade that takes international transport sectors into explicit consideration to examine the effects of environmental policy on international transport. International transportation services are traded between two countries. First, we find that international emission permit trading between the international transport sectors of two countries benefits the country that imports transportation services, regardless of the trading price of emission permits. However, a country that exports transportation services may lose from emissions trading even if it receives all of the direct gains from permit trade by buying (or selling) permits at the current market price of the other country. Our results suggest that the trade pattern in transportation services is crucial to the welfare effects of permit trade in international transport sectors. Second, we demonstrate that a country may gain from unilateral reduction in the emission permit of its transport sector despite the fact that the stricter regulation shrinks its transport sector. Both countries can benefit from the voluntary regulation if environmental regulations on international transport are initially weak. |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rdpsjp:13061&r=tre |
| By: | De Borger, Bruno; Proost, Stef |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the political economy of pricing and investment for excludable and congestible public goods in a federal state. Currently, we observe a wide variety of practices, ranging from federal gasoline taxes and road investment to the local supply of -- and sometimes free access to -- libraries, parking spaces and public swimming pools. The two-region model we develop allows for spill-overs between regions, it takes into account congestion, and it captures both heterogeneity between and within regions. Regional decisions are taken by majority voting; decisions at the federal level are taken either according to the principle of a minimum winning coalition or through cooperative bargaining. We have the following results. First, when users form the majority in at least one region, decentralized decision making performs certainly better than centralized decision making if spill-overs are not too large. Centralized decisions may yield higher welfare than decentralization only if users have a large majority and the infrastructure in a given region is intensively used by both local and outside users. Second, if non-users form a majority in both regions, centralized and decentralized decision making yield the same socially undesirable outcome, with prices that are much too high. Third, both bargaining and imposing uniform price restrictions across regions improve the performance of centralized decisions. Fourth, the performance of decentralized supply is strongly enhanced by local self-financing rules; it prevents potential exploitation of users within regions. Self-financing rules at the central level are not necessarily welfare-improving. Finally, the results of this paper contribute to a better understanding of actual policy-making. |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ant:wpaper:2013020&r=tre |
| By: | Cats, Oded (KTH) |
| Abstract: | Transit systems exercise complex dynamics and evolve through the interaction of various agents. The analysis of transit performance requires emulating the dynamic loading of travellers and their interaction with the underlying transit system. Multi-agent simulations aim to mimic the emergence of global spontaneous order from numerous inter-dependent local decisions. This paper presents a framework for a multi-agent transit operations and assignment model which captures supply uncertainties and adaptive user decisions. An iterative day-to-day learning process consisting of a within-day dynamic network loading loop simulates the interaction between transit supply and demand. The model requires the development and integration of several modules including traffic simulation, transit operations and control, dynamic path choice model and real-time information generator. BusMezzo, a transit simulation model, is used as the platform for implementation. |
| Keywords: | Agent-based Simulation; Public Transport; Assignment; Operations |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_024&r=tre |
| By: | Ghani, Ejaz; Goswami, Arti Grover; Kerr, William R. |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral highway project on the urban and rural growth of Indian manufacturing. The Golden Quadrilateral project upgraded the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. The study uses a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts based on their distance from the highway system. For the organized portion of the manufacturing sector, the Golden Quadrilateral project led to improvements in both urban and rural areas of non-nodal districts located 0-10 km from the Golden Quadrilateral. These higher entry rates and increases in plant productivity are not present in districts 10-50 km away. The entry effects are stronger in rural areas of districts, but the differences between urban and rural areas are modest relative to the overall effect. The productivity consequences are similar in both locations. The most important difference appears to be the greater activation of urban areas near the nodal cities and rural areas in remote locations along the Golden Quadrilateral network. For the unorganized sector, no material effects are found from the Golden Quadrilateral upgrades in either setting. These findings suggest that in the time frames that we can consider -- the first five to seven years during and after upgrades -- the economic effects of major highway projects contribute modestly to the migration of the organized sector out of Indian cities, but are unrelated to the increased urbanization of the unorganized sector. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Housing&Human Habitats,E-Business,Anthropology,Labor Policies |
| Date: | 2013–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6620&r=tre |
| By: | Rashed, Yasmine; Meersman, Hilde; Van de Voorde, Eddy; Vanelslander, Thierry |
| Abstract: | The relation between transportation and economic activity is complex and interrelated. From this complexity arises the difficulty of forecasting the port throughput, which plays an essential part in planning the port operations, not only for the port stakeholders but also for the development of hinterland activities and connectivity network. The aim of the univariate method used in this paper is to estimate short-term forecasting and to provide initial insight of the stochastic process for further research in the multiple regression analyses. The SARIMA model is found to be quite appropriate for the container throughput since seasonality exists in the time series. The advantage of the univariate method is that it is independent of other variables, provide a generic and a simple model that can be updated frequently and the model can be applied to other ports. |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ant:wpaper:2013022&r=tre |
| By: | Xiao, Yu; Fukuda, Daisuke |
| Abstract: | Recent studies show that traveler’s scheduling preferences compose a willingness-to-pay function directly corresponding to aggregate measurement of travel time variability under some assumptions. This property makes valuation on travel time variability transferable from context to context, which is ideal for extensive policy evaluation. However, if respondents do not exactly maximizing expected utility as assumed, such transferability might not hold because two types of potential errors: (i) scheduling preference elicited from stated preference experiment involving risk might be biased due to misspecification and (ii) ignoring the cost of misperceiving travel time distribution might result in undervaluation. To find out to what extent these errors matter, we reformulate a general scheduling model under rank-dependent utility theory, and derive reduced-form expected cost functions of choosing suboptimal departure time under two special cases. We estimate these two models and calculate the empirical cost due to misperceived travel time variability. We find that (i) travelers are mostly pessimistic and thus tend to choose departure time too earlier to bring optimal cost, (ii) scheduling preference elicited from stated choice method could be quite biased if probability weight- ing is not considered and (iii) the extra cost of misperceiving travel time distribution contributes trivial amount to the discrepancy between scheduling model and its reduced form. |
| Keywords: | travel time variability, scheduling delay, departure time choice, rank-dependent utility |
| JEL: | D61 D81 R41 |
| Date: | 2013–09–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:49737&r=tre |
| By: | Cats, Oded (KTH); Nabavi Larijani, Anahid (KTH); Koutsopoulos, Haris N. (KTH); Burghout, Wilco (KTH) |
| Abstract: | Transit operators are interested in strategies to improve service reliability as it is an important measure of performance and level of service. One of the common practices aimed to reduce service unreliability is holding control strategies. The design of these strategies involves the selection of a set of time point stops and the holding criteria for regulating the departure time. In order to analyze the impacts of holding strategies on transit performance, it is necessary to model dynamically the interactions between passenger activity, transit operations and traffic dynamics. An evaluation of different holding criteria and number and location of time point stops was conducted using BusMezzo, a dynamic transit simulation model. The holding strategies were implemented in the model and applied to a high frequency trunk bus line in Stockholm. The analysis of the results considers the implications of holding strategies from both passengers and operator perspectives. The analysis suggests substantial gains from implementing holding strategy based on the mean headway from the preceding bus and the succeeding bus. This strategy is the most efficient in terms of passenger time savings as well as fleet costs and crew management. |
| Keywords: | Transit Operations; Reliability; Simulation; ITS; Holding |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2013–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_027&r=tre |
| By: | Fraas, Arthur G. (Resources for the Future); Harrington, Winston (Resources for the Future); Morgenstern, Richard D. (Resources for the Future) |
| Abstract: | The shale gas revolution in the United States has dropped the price of natural gas (NG) significantly. Combined with new fuel and vehicle technologies, an opportunity exists to expand the use of NG throughout the economy, including in the light-duty fleet of cars and trucks. This expansion could involve the direct combustion of the gas in the form of compressed natural gas or liquid petroleum gas or, alternatively, the use of natural-gas-based liquid fuels such as ethanol or methanol. This paper examines the potential economic, environmental, and national security gains from replacing a portion of the domestic gasoline use in the light-duty fleet with these various NG-based fuels. Also examined are the regulatory barriers to the expanded use of the fuels. We find that these NG-based fuels could yield significant fuel cost savings relative to conventional gasoline in the light-duty fleet, along with gains to national security and, possibly, some environmental benefits. |
| Keywords: | energy, natural gas, alternative fuels |
| JEL: | Q42 Q48 Q53 Q55 |
| Date: | 2013–09–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-13-28&r=tre |
| By: | Kim , Nam Seok (The Korea Transport Institute); Susilo , Yusak O. (KTH) |
| Abstract: | Using Poisson regression and negative binomial regression, this paper presents an empirical comparison of four different regression models for the estimation of pedestrian demand at the regional level and finds the most appropriate model with reference to the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 2001 data for the Baltimore (USA) region. The results show that Poisson regression seems to be more appropriate for pedestrian trip generation modeling in terms of x2 ratio test, Pseudo R2, and Akaike’s information criterion (AIC). However, R2 based on deviance residuals and estimated log-likelihood value at convergence confirmed the empirical studies that negative binomial regression is more appropriate for the over-dispersed dependent variable than Poisson regression. |
| Keywords: | Pedestrian; Trip generation; Poisson; Negative binomial; Regression |
| JEL: | O18 R41 |
| Date: | 2013–09–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2013_022&r=tre |
| By: | Brian Lucey (Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College Dublin); Britta Berghöfer (Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | The aviation industry is characterized by low profit margins and a constant struggle with skyrocketing fuel costs. Financial and operational hedging strategies serve aviation managers as a tool to counteract high and volatile fuel prices. While most research on fuel hedging has concentrated on the U.S. airline market, this paper is the first study to include airlines from Asia and Europe. We analyze 64 airlines over 10 years and find that Asian carriers are more negatively exposed than European airlines but less exposed than North American airlines. In contrast to Treanor, Simkins, Rogers and Carter (2012), this study finds less significant negative exposure coefficients among U.S. carriers. Using a fixed effects model we reject the hypothesis that financial hedging decreases risk exposure. One possibility is that the decreased volatility in jet fuel prices over the past few years has perhaps made airlines less exposed to fuel prices and hence, financial hedging less effective. However, operational hedging, defined by two proxies for fleet diversity, reduces exposure significantly. A one percent increase in fleet diversity, calculated with a dispersion index using different aircraft types, reduces the risk exposure coefficient by 2.99 percent. On the other hand, fleet diversity, calculated with different aircraft families, reduces exposure by 1.45 percent. Thus, aviation managers have to balance the fleet diversity between operational flexibility and entailed costs. |
| Keywords: | Airline, hedging, operational hedging, financial hedging |
| JEL: | G3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iis:dispap:iiisdp433&r=tre |
| By: | Gangwar, Rachna; Raghuram, G. |
| Abstract: | Structuring Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in railways is a challenge, given its technology base, and obligation as a public and affordable mode of transportation. The sector provides strong incentives for vertical integration due to economies of scope. However, it is evident from the literature that large integrated PPPs in railways systems are not feasible due to higher commercial risks. They also suffer from implicit cross subsidization since the railway infrastructure is capital intensive, common to multiple revenue sources, and fare box revenues are generally not sufficient to recover investments. This is being addressed by various unbundling approaches in recent PPPs. This research explores the potential of unbundling the railway system into over 40 ‘elements’ wherein an element is the smallest unit that can be given to a party for execution. This would however result in significant horizontal and vertical interfaces between these elements. A sustainable PPP would need to limit the extent of interfaces due to transaction costs and risks. This can be achieved by bundling the elements horizontally and/or vertically into ‘entities’ to extract the best value for a PPP. The governing principles would be scale economies (horizontal integration), scope economies (vertical integration), need for competition (horizontal disaggregation), level playing field, transactional transparency, and need for specialization (vertical disaggregation). Additional drivers would be appetite for investment, availability of competence and accountability for an entity. The findings of the research indicate that the entity formation is one of the most crucial aspects of a PPP in railways. A consequential critical area is managing the interfaces between entities, which are subject to transaction costs and risks. These should be carefully identified and addressed by well-designed contractual agreements and independent regulation |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:12129&r=tre |
| By: | Neil M. Coe; Martin Hess |
| Abstract: | Abstract Contemporary economic globalization as a highly dynamic process has seen substantial changes in its organization, governance, geographies and impacts. These global shifts can be characterized by – among other aspects – increased functional and geographical fragmentation of production processes, various waves of outsourcing and off-shoring, changing geographies of production and consumption and associated labour market dynamics. At the same time, nation states and regional economic blocs aim at increasing macro-regional and global integration through bilateral and multilateral trade and investment negotiations, predicated on transformations in transportation and logistics technologies that enable the functioning of complex global production networks (GPNs) and link regional, national and supra-national economies. This paper aims to assess the consequences of what has been termed a ‘logistics revolution’ for economic and social upgrading in global logistics and client sectors. It starts by charting the existing research base and exploring the structure and dynamics of the global logistics industry, before addressing the potential of and obstacles to economic and social upgrading. The analysis highlights the often-neglected importance of logistics as a global industry: a major employer and value generator in its own right, with its own evolving GPNs. It demonstrates the increasingly diverse structure of logistics operations and labour markets, creating opportunities for upgrading through innovation and new technologies, but at the same time it shows the continued prevalence of ‘low-road’ logistics labour markets and workers often struggling to secure labour rights, decent wages and improved working conditions. These issues are illustrated and discussed for both the global logistics industry itself and the logistics activities in client sectors such as horticulture, apparel and mobile communications. The paper concludes with reflections on the contingent and variegated outcomes of logistics development and avenues for future research. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:ctg-2013-38&r=tre |
| By: | Piotr Niewiadomski |
| Abstract: | Abstract This paper contributes to the international research project ‘Capturing the Gains: Economic and Social Upgrading in Global Production Networks and Trade’. Its main aim is to analyse the operations of international airlines in Africa and assess the influence of the international aviation industry on the development of tourism in selected African states. Simultaneously, through an exploration of the different ways in which international airline groups can foster the development of the tourism sector in Africa, the paper informs the general understanding of the influence of tourism on regional development. Although in general terms the paper focuses on the whole of Africa, more detailed issues are analysed on the basis of South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:ctg-2013-36&r=tre |
| By: | Zacharias G. Bragoudakis (Bank of Greece and University of the Aegean); Stelios Panagiotou (Bank of Greece); Helen Thanopoulou (Bank of Greece) |
| Abstract: | The influx of shipping receipts from the world's leading fleet has been critical for the development of the modern Greek economy. Following the fateful September of 2008, the range and speed of the shift in direction of the freight rates, combined with the general economic and credit climate, have had a significant impact on Greek receipts from shipping. The paper explores the short-term - vis-à-vis - the long-term response of shipping-related flows in the Greek balance of payments on the basis of monthly data. It also evaluates the role of the change in Greek ship-owners’ investment strategies from 2006 onwards. To this end, the authors model the impact of freight market fluctuations through a Greek shipping freight rate index that they have calculated, loans outstanding and the value of ships on inflows and outflows from shipping. The findings provide evidence in favour of a change in the investment behaviour of the Greek shipping companies. Inflows and outflows tend to be dictated partly by the cash-flow position of the companies involved in the S&P market, as indicated by the positive relationship with freight rates |
| Keywords: | Investment Strategy; Greece; Shipping Earnings; Balance of Payments; Shipping Services; Error Correction Model. |
| JEL: | C3 C5 F32 L91 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bog:wpaper:157&r=tre |