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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Burlig, Fiona PhD; Bushnell, James PhD; Rapson, David PhD; Wolfram, Catherine PhD |
| Abstract: | The rapid electrification of the transportation fleet in California raises important questions about the reliability, cost, and environmental implications for the electric grid. A crucial first element to understanding these implications is an accurate picture of the extent and timing of residential electricity use devoted to EVs. Although California is now home to over 650,000 electric vehicles (EVs), less than 5% of these vehicles are charged at home using a meter dedicated to EV use. This means that state policy has had to rely upon very incomplete data on residential charging use. This report summarizes the first phase of a project combining household electricity data and information on the adoption of electric vehicles over the span of four years. We propose a series of approaches for measuring the effects of EV adoption on electricity load in California. First, we measure load from the small subset of households that do have an EV-dedicated meter. Second, we estimate how consumption changes when households go from a standard residential electricity tariff to an EV-specific tariff. Finally, we suggest an approach for estimating the effect of EV ownership on electricity consumption in the average EV-owning household. We implement this approach using aggregated data, but future work should use household-level data to more effectively distinguish signal from noise in this analysis. Preliminary results show that households on EV-dedicated meters are using 0.35 kWh per hour from Pacific Gas and Electric (PGE); 0.38 kWh per hour from Southern California Edison; and 0.28 kWh per hour from San Diego Gas and Electric on EV charging. Households switching to EV rates without dedicated meters are using less electricity for EV charging: 0.30 kWh per hour in PGE. Our household approach applied to aggregated data is too noisy to be informative. These estimates should be viewed as evidence that more focused analysis with more detailed data would be of high value and likely necessary to produce rigorous analysis of the role EVs are playing in residential electricity consumption. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, Electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, energy consumption, demand, household, residential areas, policy analysis, empirical methods, data analysis |
| Date: | 2020–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt9t62s2sd&r=all |
| By: | Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M.; Nitsch, Volker; Wendland, Nicolai |
| Abstract: | For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We use difference-in-differences and spatial differencing to estimate the land price capitalization effects of metro rail in Berlin, Germany today and a century ago. Over this period, the negative implicit hedonic price of rail noise tripled. Our results imply income elasticities of the value of noise reduction and transport access of 2.2 and 1.4, substantially exceeding cross-sectional contingent valuation estimates. |
| Keywords: | Accessibility,spatial differencing,noise,difference-in-differences,income elasticity,land price |
| JEL: | R12 R14 R41 N73 N74 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:darddp:236&r=all |
| By: | Peng, Cong |
| Abstract: | Traditional retail involves traffic both from warehouses to stores and from consumers to stores. Ecommerce cuts intermediate traffic by delivering goods directly from the warehouses to the consumers. Although plenty of evidence has shown that vans that are servicing e-commerce are a growing contributor to traffic and congestion, consumers are also making fewer shopping trips using vehicles. This poses the question of whether e-commerce reduces traffic congestion. The paper exploits the exogenous shock of an influential online shopping retail discount event in China (similar to Cyber Monday), to investigate how the rapid growth of e-commerce affects urban traffic congestion. Portraying e-commerce as trade across cities, I specified a CES demand system with heterogeneous consumers to model consumption, vehicle demand and traffic congestion. I tracked hourly traffic congestion data in 94 Chinese cities in one week before and two weeks after the event. In the week after the event, intra-city traffic congestion dropped by 1.7% during peaks and 1% during non-peak hours. Using Baidu Index (similar to Google Trends) as a proxy for online shopping, I found online shopping increasing by about 1.6 times during the event. Based on the model, I find evidence for a 10% increase in online shopping causing a 1.4% reduction in traffic congestion, with the effect most salient from 9am to 11am and from 7pm to midnight. A welfare analysis conducted for Beijing suggests that the congestion relief effect has a monetary value of around 239 million dollars a year. The finding suggests that online shopping is more traffic-efficient than offline shopping, along with sizable knock-on welfare gains. |
| Keywords: | e-commerce; traffic congestion; heterogeneous consumers; shopping vehicle demand; air pollution |
| JEL: | R40 O30 |
| Date: | 2019–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103411&r=all |
| By: | Maliszewska,Maryla; Van Der Mensbrugghe,Dominique |
| Abstract: | China's Belt and Road Initiative aims to improve connectivity between China and more than 70 countries through infrastructure investment and regional cooperation. The initiative has the potential to accelerate significantly the rate of economic integration and development in the region, as trade costs decline. The goals of this paper are to (i) study the impacts of infrastructure improvements on Belt and Road Initiative and non?Belt and Road Initiative countries'trade flows, growth, and poverty; and (ii) suggest policies that would help maximize gains from the Belt and Road Initiative?induced trade cost declines. The analysis captures the trade costs reductions as a result of infrastructure improvements. The findings indicate that the Belt and Road Initiative would be largely beneficial. First, global income increases by 0.7 percent (in 2030 relative to the baseline). This translates into almost half a trillion dollars in 2014 prices and market exchange rates. The Belt and Road Initiative area captures 82 percent of the gain, with the largest percent gains in East Asia. Second, globally, the Belt and Road Initiative could contribute to lifting 7.6 million people from extreme poverty and 32 million from moderate poverty. Third, the initiative would lead to a modest increase in global carbon dioxide emissions, with a complex set of positive and negative outcomes at the national level for other types of emissions. |
| Keywords: | International Trade and Trade Rules,Inequality,Transport Services,Food Security,Construction Industry,Common Carriers Industry,Food&Beverage Industry,General Manufacturing,Pulp&Paper Industry,Textiles, Apparel&Leather Industry,Plastics&Rubber Industry,Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies |
| Date: | 2019–04–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8814&r=all |
| By: | Kurzhanskiy, Alex; Varaiya, Pravin |
| Keywords: | Engineering |
| Date: | 2018–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt2qr5975v&r=all |
| By: | Frank A. Sloan |
| Abstract: | Driving while intoxicated causes many traffic accidents and deaths. Two decisions are closely related, whether to engage in heavy drinking, and to drive, conditional on heavy drinking. This paper reviews the extensive literature on heavy drinking, addiction, and driving after heavy drinking. Relevant public policies involve a combination of deterrence, incapacitation, and treatment. While there is empirical support for the rational addiction model applied to heavy drinking, some attributes of drinker-drivers differ from others (e.g., impulsivity in domains other than alcohol consumption, hyperbolic discounting). Policies most effective in reducing drinking and driving are alcohol excise taxes, minimum drinking age and zero tolerance laws for underage persons, dram shop and social host liability, and criminal sanctions overall. Empirical studies have not determined which specific criminal sanctions are most effective. A major impediment to criminal sanctions as a deterrent is that the probability of being stopped/arrested when driving while intoxicated is extremely low, |
| JEL: | I12 K14 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26779&r=all |
| By: | Beria, Paolo; Tolentino, Samuel; Filippini, Gabriele |
| Abstract: | The literature on open-access rail competition has been quite unanimous in pointing out the positive effects of the entry of the (few) newcomers in their respective markets. Generally speaking, quality has increased and frequency too. The effect on prices has also generally been what everybody expected: the newcomer is pricing less than the incumbent and overall the prices on the liberalised market are lower than the counterfactual ones. Without denying all the positive effects that rail competition in Italy has brought since 2012, thanks to the large-scale direct competition of NTV/Italo vs. the incumbent Trenitalia, in this paper we will provide the first evidence of something new, happened in the last 12 months. Since 2018, in fact, while frequencies and passengers continue to grow, for the first time also the average prices started increasing, even in those routes just opened to competition. The scope of this work is limited to analyse everyday train prices in a period of three years on numerous Italian routes, showing how prices changed over time and in particular according to the presence of competition and route characteristics. Findings are interesting: prices do not fall in all routes where competition starts, or at least just for a short period. In general, 2019 saw a consistent realignment of prices to a higher level than 2017-2018, for both competitors. One obvious explanation could be that the competitors are just apparently competing, or that production costs have raised (or both). This would be by far the worst outcome of a liberalisation process: costs up and cartel prices up with the costs. But the same phenomenon could be explained differently if there is no overcapacity: competition is working on parameters different than average prices (quality, frequency, product differentiation, price discrimination). We are still not able to demonstrate the existence of a cartel, so this work is just intended to show what has happened, and not why. |
| Keywords: | rail prices; competition; intermodality; Italy; rail; Italo; NTV; Trenitalia; high-speed |
| JEL: | D43 L92 R40 |
| Date: | 2020–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98841&r=all |