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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Federico Boffa (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management); Alessandro Fedele (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management); Alberto Iozzi (Università di Roma 'Tor Vergata' and SOAS University of London) |
| Abstract: | Following the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and GPS systems, fleets will gain prominence over private vehicles. We analyze the welfare effects of the transition from a fully decentralized regime, in which all travelers are atomistic and do not internalize the congestion externality, to a centralized regime, where all travelers are supplied by a fl eet of AVs controlled by a monopolist. In our model, heterogeneous individuals differing in the disutility from congestion may travel on one of two lanes, which may endogenously differ in the level of congestion, or they may not travel. We show that the monopolist sorts travelers across the two lanes differently than the decentralized regime. Moreover, depending on the severity of congestion costs, it may also exclude some travelers. We find that centralization is always welfare detrimental when the monopolist does not ration travel. If instead rationing occurs, centralization may be welfare beneficial, provided that congestion costs are sufficiently high. We then analyze how to restore first best with road taxes. While congestion charges are optimal under decentralization, taxes differ markedly in a centralized regime, where restoring first best may require subsidizing the monopolist. |
| Keywords: | Autonomous vehicles; congestion externality; eets; sorting; rationing |
| JEL: | R41 R11 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps67&r=all |
| By: | Richard Kalis; Daniel Dujava |
| Abstract: | We analyse commuting patterns in Bratislava’s fast growing sub-urban region with suboptimal developed infrastructure. Standardized discrete choice model is used to estimate demand for individual car transport as well as for public buses and trains and to obtain corresponding elasticities with respect to travel costs, times and income. We find low rate of substitution between available modes. Direct price elasticity for public modes is in accordance with often cited rule of thumb -0.3. Negative income elasticities of demand for buses and trains, together with low direct price elasticity for car transport can be hard to overcome when looking for solution of current traffic problems in the region. We use modelled demand to predict effects of two recently proposed policies - new parking system in Bratislava city and construction of highway D4R7. In case of first policy, we expect massive reduction in car usage due to increased costs for car commuters. On the other hand, new highway would have only limited impact on mode choice and could reduce number of train commuters. |
| Keywords: | Elasticities, Mode-choice, Nested Logit Model, Transportation |
| JEL: | R41 R42 R48 |
| Date: | 2019–08–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:brt:depwps:019&r=all |
| By: | Zou,Bo; Choobchian,Pooria; Rozenberg,Julie |
| Abstract: | The increasing cyber connectivity of vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructure will drastically reshape mobility in the coming decades. Although the advent of connected mobility is expected to benefit travelers and society by smoothing traffic, improving rider convenience, and reducing accidents, the augmented cyber components in connected and autonomous vehicles and related infrastructure also give rise to cyber attacks on the transportation system. Yet, little attention has been paid to transportation cyber resilience. This paper thus proposes an investigation on this topic with a comprehensive literature review. Cyber components and plausible autonomous mobility systems operation scenarios are discussed, before identifying possible cyber attacks to autonomous mobility systems at the vehicle and system levels. The discussion then moves to existing practices to enhance cybersecurity, and several strategies are investigated toward enhancing autonomous mobility system cyber resilience. At the vehicle level, creating layers and separation to reduce cyber component connectivity and deploying an independent procedure for data collection and processing are important in vehicle design and manufacturing. At the system level, recommended strategies include keeping redundancy in transportation capacity, maintaining a separate road network, and deploying different sub-autonomous mobility systems. |
| Date: | 2020–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9135&r=all |
| By: | Ji, Wei |
| Abstract: | The adoption of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) is considered to be a potential solution to reduce transportation-related emissions. People’s vehicle choice and driving behavior will have important implications for the realized emissions reductions from PEVs. Therefore, PEV-related policy studies require good understanding of human behavior. Traditional approaches to analyze travel behavior are mostly to build analytic models based on assumptions because of the limited accuracy and information of data. With the development of sensor technology, there are more methods than ever to collect accurate and informative behavioral data, so the crucial consideration is how to creatively use these data to better understand people’s behavior. This dissertation proposed some data-driven approaches to simulate behavior and provided a discussion of the implications for three PEV-related topics. The first study explored the potential of greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that can be achieved with adoption of PEVs in California by simulating vehicles’ emissions based on tracing data. It was found that assigning the right model of PEVs to drivers can help to reduce annual GHG emissions by 65%, compared to everyone driving a Toyota Corolla. The second study presented a tool to evaluate the spatial distribution of fast charging demand and to assess how much a charger in a certain location would be used based on travel diary. Scenario analysis illustrated that en-route fast charging demand will shift from primarily inside metro areas to long distance corridors outside metro areas as the battery size increases. The third study estimated the value of Clean Air Vehicle (CAV) decals by simulating the frequency of PEV owners’ access to high occupancy vehicle/toll (HOV/T) lanes based on survey data. The results indicated that the CAV Decals Program is one of the most attractive incentive policies, but there is spatial heterogeneity of CAV decal value across different regions. |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2018–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt6dw4d18t&r=all |
| By: | Illmann, Ulrike (TU Dresden, Germany); Kluge, Jan (Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna, Austria,) |
| Abstract: | A comprehensive roll-out of public charging infrastructure will be costly. However, its impact on the diffusion of electric vehicles (EVs) is not clear at all. Our study aims at estimating the extent to which an increasing availability of public charging infrastructure promotes consumers’ decisions to switch to EVs. We make use of a German data set including monthly registrations of new cars at the ZIP-code level between 2012 and 2017 and match it with the official registry of charging stations. We measure charging infrastructure by its visibility, capacity and abundance in order to estimate its impact on EV adoption. A CS-ARDL approach is deployed in order to identify the structural long-run relationship between charging infrastructure and monthly EV registrations. There is evidence of a positive long-run relationship but on a rather low scale. We conclude that consumers do not necessarily react to the mere number of chargers but attach more importance to charging speed. |
| Keywords: | Electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, CS-ARDL |
| JEL: | L90 O18 O33 R42 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihswps:9&r=all |
| By: | Malakhov, Sergey |
| Abstract: | The study of the marginal scenario of the theorem of lemons under the total failure of the market of used cars – nobody buys, but everybody gets taxi – shifts the analysis of the equilibrium down from the level of cars to the level of mileage, because the market of used cars stays under the pressure of options whether to buy or to lease and whether to rent a car or to get taxi. The buying of a car with regard to the demand for mileage represents the purchase of input for home production where driving like gardening and pets’ care can provide a direct utility but is also something one can purchase on the market. The equilibrium price of a mile equalizes the willingness to pay of shoppers, consumers with zero search&maintenance costs, and the willingness to accept or to sell of searchers, consumers with positive search&maintenance costs. The practice to sell rights for queue jumping and illegal taxicab operations illustrate the arbitrage between shoppers’ willingness to pay and searchers’ willingness to accept. The analysis of choice between a good high-mileage car and a bad aged low-mileage car goes beyond the traditional considerations on status purchases and describes the phenomenon of the consumers’ willingness to take care of good cars. The willingness to take care increases after-the-purchase costs of ownership above the level of standard technological maintenance costs. As a result, after-the-purchase costs of ownership per mile for high-mileage cars become greater than for aged low-mileage cars. The willingness to take care of big-ticket items supports the demand and sellers of good cars do not quit the market. The willingness to take care redistributes used cars, i.e., assets for the home production of miles, for its more efficient use and cleans up the way to the Coase theorem. |
| Keywords: | theorem of lemons, Coase theorem, equilibrium price dispersion, optimal consumption-leisure choce, willingness to take care, endowment effect |
| JEL: | D11 D83 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98380&r=all |
| By: | Bill Dupor (Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis); Rong Li; M. Saif Mehkari; Yi-Chan Tsai |
| Abstract: | New vehicle sales in the U.S. fell nearly 40 percent during the past recession, causing significant job losses and unprecedented government interventions in the auto industry. This paper explores three potential explanations for this decline: increasing oil prices, falling home values, and falling household income expectations. First, we use the historical macroeconomic relationship between oil prices and vehicle sales to show that the oil price spike explains roughly 15 percent of the auto sales decline between 2007 and 2009. Second, we establish that declining home values explain only a small portion of the observed reduction in household new vehicle sales. Using a county-level panel from the episode, we find (1) a one-dollar fall in home values reduced household new vehicle spending by 0.5 to 0.7 cents and overall new vehicle spending by 0.9 to 1.2 cents and (2) falling home values explain between 16 and 19 percent of the overall new vehicle spending decline. Next, examining state-level data for 1997-2016, we find (3) the short-run responses of new vehicle consumption to home value changes are larger in the 2005-2011 period relative to other years, but at longer horizons (e.g. 5 years), the responses are similar across the two sub-periods and (4) the service flow from vehicles, as measured by miles traveled, responds very little to house price shocks. We also detail the sources of the differences between our findings (1) and (2) from existing research. Third, we establish that declining current and expected future income expectations potentially played an important role in the auto market's collapse. We build a permanent income model augmented to include infrequent repeated car buying. Our calibrated model matches the pre-recession distribution of auto vintages and the liquid-wealth-to-income ratio, and exhibits a large vehicle sales decline in response to a mild decline in expected permanent income due to a transitory slowdown in income growth. In response to the shock, households delay replacing existing vehicles, allowing them to smooth the effects of the income shock without significantly adjusting the service flow from their vehicles. Augmenting our model with a richer set of household expectations allows us to match 65 percent of the overall new vehicle spending decline (i.e. roughly the portion of the decline not explained by oil prices and falling home values). Combining our negative results regarding housing wealth and oil prices with our positive model-based findings, we interpret the auto market collapse as consistent with existing permanent income based approaches to durable goods purchases (e.g., Leahy and Zeira (2005)). |
| Keywords: | new auto sales; 2007-2009 recession |
| JEL: | E27 E32 |
| Date: | 2020–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:87441&r=all |
| By: | Sambracos, Evangelos; Polydoropoulou, Amalia; Maniati, Marina; Ramfou, Irene |
| Abstract: | Green transport policies, especially in insular areas, have to account for the unique characteristics and growth prospects with respect both to tourism development and travel behavior of residents. This paper evaluates the impact of green transport policies, moving one step further in research by rating the proposed policies in terms of their effectiveness in achieving a wide variety of economic, social, environmental, and other public policy goals (sustainability). Under this scope, the approach developed is based mainly on two decision methods that is the cost-benefit and multicriteria analysis, using data derived from stated preference surveys on residents and tourists as well as observations of actual choices. Thus, alternative policies are given qualitative ratings, and the weights derived from preference surveys on policymakers are applied to calculate a composite total score for each alternative. Based on this information, an advanced decision-making model for policymakers is developed for evaluating the socio-economic impact of foreseen green transport policies in islands taking into account their unique characteristics. |
| Keywords: | Cost Benefit Analysis, Multicriteria analysis, transport policy, socio-economic evaluation |
| JEL: | D61 R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2019–10–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98356&r=all |