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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Chai, Huajun; Rodier, Caroline; Song, Jeffery; Zhang, Michael; Jaller, Miguel |
| Abstract: | The potential for automated vehicles (AVs) to reduce parking in city centers has generated much excitement among urban planners. AVs could drop-off (DO) and pick-up (PU) passengers in areas where parking costs are high: personal AVs could return home or park in less expensive locations, and shared AVs could serve other passengers. Reduced on-street and off-street parking present numerous opportunities for redevelopment that could improve the livability of cities, for example, more street and sidewalk space for pedestrian and bicycle travel. However, reduced demand for parking would be accompanied by increased demand for curbside DO/PU space with related movements to enter and exit the flow of traffic. This change could be particularly challenging for traffic flows in downtown urban areas during peak hours, where high volumes of DOs and PUs are likely to occur. Only limited research examines the travel effects of a shift from parking to DO/PU travel and the impact of changes in parking supply. This study uses a microscopic road traffic model with local travel activity data to simulate personal AV parking scenarios in San Francisco's downtown central business district. These scenarios vary (1) the demand for DO and PU travel versus parking, (2) the supply of on-street and off-street parking, and (3) the total demand for parking and DO/PU travel due to an increase in the cost of travel to the central business district. View the NCST Project Webpage |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Autonomous vehicles, Curbside parking, Drop-off zone management, Land use, Planning |
| Date: | 2020–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt63m6k29n&r=all |
| By: | Kathrin Goldmann (Institute of Transport Economics, Muenster); Jan Wessel (Institute of Transport Economics, Muenster) |
| Abstract: | The European Union coordinates and co-finances supra-national transport infrastructure investments in the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), which consists of road, rail, airport, and port infrastructure. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to quantify the direct and indirect economic growth effects of newly created TEN-T core corridor roads in Eastern European countries. Both the panel data and the spatial analyses show that regional GDP growth at the NUTS3 level is between 0.5 and 2.0 percentage points higher, if a region has direct access to a newly built road. The analyses with a spatial Durbin model (SDM) show that the new construction of a TEN-T core road also causes positive spillover effects on other regions that have direct access to the corridor network, as well as on regions that are not directly connected to the corridors. The results thus indicate that the TEN-T policy, which aims to alleviate transport bottlenecks, can increase cohesion between central and peripheral regions and consequently enhance regional welfare in Eastern Europe. |
| Keywords: | transport infrastructure, TEN-T corridors, supra-national infrastructure investment, spatial Durbin model |
| JEL: | R42 O18 O47 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mut:wpaper:31&r=all |
| By: | Sadek, Bassel A; Martin, Elliot W; Shaheen, Susan A |
| Abstract: | Truck-based transportation is the predominant mode used to transport goods and raw materials within the United States. While trucks play a major role in local commerce, a significant portion of truck activity is also long haul in nature. Long-haul truck drivers are continuously faced with the problem of not being able to secure a safe parking spot since many rest areas become fully occupied, and information about parking and availability is limited. Truck drivers faced with full parking lots/facilities either continue driving until a safe parking spot is located or park illegally. Both scenarios pose a hazard to the truck driver, as well as the surrounding road users. Disseminating forecasts of parking availability to truck drivers may help mitigate this hazard, since many truck drivers plan their parking in advance of arrival. Building on 1 year of nearly continuous truck parking data collection, this paper proposes and demonstrates a method for developing a dynamic forecasting model that can predict truck parking occupancy for any specified time within the present day, using only truck parking occupancy data from a trucking logistics facility in the northern San Joaquin Valley during 2016. Different versions of the dynamic model were studied and verified against successive weekdays with performance measured using the root-mean-square error (RMSE). Results indicated that for a particular day, the maximum error can range between 13 and 40 trucks, about 5% of the absolute maximum capacity of the facility. |
| Keywords: | Engineering |
| Date: | 2020–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt0gm743bg&r=all |
| By: | Svanberg , Lisa (Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute (VTI)); Pyddoke, Roger (Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute (VTI)) |
| Abstract: | Crowding in public transportation is increasingly perceived as a problem in large cities. Public transport authorities strive to develop policies that manage demand and reduce crowding in the best way. This paper reviews studies of policy instruments aimed at crowding and demand management of public transportation, mainly quantitative studies. The most observed policies are adjustments of fare (including differentiation), frequency, capacity, bus size and in some cases road tolls. The reviewed studies either implicitly represent crowding by the willingness to pay for less crowding or by reduction of occupancy levels. We subdivide papers into studies that model transport scenarios and studies that observe passenger demand, often real-world cases. We use social welfare optimization as reference point for analysis of the study contributions. Studies that observe passenger demand present results limited to the effects on overall demand and generally not in terms of social welfare. Some studies report on price differentiating policies that succeed in reducing peak demand, reductions ranging from 1.2 to 10 percent. Most modelling studies find it optimal for occupancy to decrease, however, some studies find that higher occupancy rates are welfare optimal. Few of the reviewed studies present the costs and benefits directly associated with decreasing occupancy. Few studies present both spatio-temporal distributions of occupancy and include a policy for the reduction of crowding. This suggests that a clearer picture of the severity of on-board crowding, together with a policy to manage crowding would be useful. |
| Keywords: | Crowding; On-board crowding; Occupancy; Public transport; Policy |
| JEL: | R40 R48 |
| Date: | 2020–05–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:vtiwps:2020_006&r=all |
| By: | Mundaca, Gabriela; Strand, Jon |
| Abstract: | We study impacts of carbon pricing to international transport fuels on fuel consumption and carbon emissions, trade activity, focusing on sea freight which constitutes the most important international trade transport activity. We use the WITS global dataset for international trade for the years 2009-2017 to estimate the impacts of changes in the global average bunker fuel price on the weight times distance for goods transported and carbon emission from international shipping. We find quite strong but variable negative effects of fuel cost increases on weight times distance for traded goods, and on carbon emissions from sea freight, for the heaviest goods categories at the 6-digit HS levels of aggregation in global trade, with bunker-price elasticities ranging from -0.03 up to -0.52. Considering an increase in the bunker fuel price as a proxy for a fuel tax, our results then indicate substantial impacts of bunker fuel taxes on the volume of sea transport, on bunker fuel consumption, and on carbon emissions from the international shipping sector. Our results indicate that, for the current level of international trade, a global tax of $40 per ton CO2 tax will reduce carbon emissions from global shipping fleet by about 7% for the heaviest traded products; and by most so for goods with particularly high weight-to-value ratios such as fossil fuels and ores. |
| Keywords: | International Trade, shipping, carbon taxation, carbon emissions |
| JEL: | F1 F13 F18 |
| Date: | 2020–03–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100347&r=all |
| By: | Xi Wan (Nanjing Audit University, China); Benteng Zou (CREA, Université du Luxembourg) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the importance of commercial revenue on optimal airport charges in Hotelling type duopoly airports under a two-sided market framework with two complementary services-concession and aeronautical operations. Each airport sets commercial and landing charges and serves a single airline. The airport- airline bundle competes for leisure and business passengers. The setting of landing charges under different regulatory regimes is investigated. We demonstrate that in the leisure travel market, which ignores schedule delay cost, the optimal landing fee is invariant to the regulatory scheme, and concession revenue is determined by an airports home market size. In the business travel market, the optimal landing charge is smaller if concession revenue is included in setting the landing fee than if it is not included. In the former case, increasing passenger volume does not guarantee increases in airports’ aeronautical revenue, and a negative impact may exist if the weight of concession profit out of total profit is small. |
| Keywords: | Airport competition; airport regulation; two-sided markets; landing fee; commercial charge. |
| JEL: | L93 D43 L13 C72 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:20-01&r=all |
| By: | Jahn, Malte; Schumacher, Paul; Wedemeier, Jan; Wolf, André |
| Abstract: | The paper at hand discusses the different typologies of combined transportation in Europe. It shows that an improvement of handling infrastructure for combined transport can positively reduce environmental costs of trading between regions. However, the expected emission reduction effects are relatively small in comparison to the total emissions of the transport sector. This means that, in order to achieve a substantial reduction of emissions, combined transport initiatives need to be complemented by a reduction of the specific emissions of the relevant transport modes. The paper closes with an outlook towards the development of the combined transportation sector. |
| Keywords: | combined transport,European Union,hinterland transportation,sustainability,regional economics,Baltic Sea Region |
| JEL: | R4 R40 R48 Q56 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hwwirp:192&r=all |
| By: | Daniel A. Brent (Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, Pennsylvania State University); Louis-Philippe Beland (Department of Economics, Carleton University) |
| Abstract: | Traffic congestion is a growing problem in urbanizing economies that results in lost time, health problems from pollution, and contributes to the accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions. We examine a new external cost of traffic by estimating the relationship between traffic congestion and emergency response times. Matching traffic data at a fine spatial and temporal scale to incident report data from fire departments in California allows us to assign traffic immediately preceding an emergency. Our results show that traffic slows down fire trucks arriving at the scene of an emergency and increases the average monetary damages from fires. The effects are highly nonlinear; increases in response time are primarily due to traffic in the right tail of the traffic distribution. We document an additional externality of traffic congestion and highlight the negative effect of traffic on a critical public good. |
| Keywords: | Traffic, Public Goods, Externalities, Emergency Response Times |
| JEL: | R41 R42 R48 H41 Q50 |
| Date: | 2020–05–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:car:carecp:20-08&r=all |
| By: | John K. Dagsvik (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | In many instances the consumer faces choice settings where the alternatives are discrete. Examples include choice between variants of differentiated products, urban transportation modes, residential locations, types of education, etc. So far, a Slutsky equation for discrete choice models has not been derived. In this paper an aggregate Slutsky equation for the discrete case is obtained, which differs in important ways from the corresponding equation in the standard theory of consumer demand. A remarkable feature of the compensated marginal effects in the discrete case is that they are usually not symmetric, as the marginal compensated effects with respect to a price increase versus a price decrease may be different. The description of the analytic formulas is accompanied by several examples of their use: for example, in travel demand and labor supply. |
| Keywords: | Equivalent variation; Compensating variation; Discrete/continuous choice; Slutsky equation; Marginal compensated effects; Price indexes |
| JEL: | C25 C43 D11 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:930&r=all |
| By: | Berliant, Marcus |
| Abstract: | Workers generally commute on a daily basis, so we model commuting as a repeated game. The folk theorem implies that for sufficiently large discount factors the repeated commuting game has as a Nash equilibrium any strategy profile that is at least as good as the maximin strategy for a commuter in the one shot game, including the efficient ones. This result applies whether the game is static, in the sense that only routes are chosen as a strategy by commuters, or dynamic, where both routes and times of departure are chosen. Our conclusions pose a challenge to congestion pricing. We examine evidence from St. Louis to determine what equilibrium strategies are actually played in the repeated commuting game. |
| Keywords: | Repeated game; Nash equilibrium; Commuting; Folk theorem |
| JEL: | R41 |
| Date: | 2020–05–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100169&r=all |
| By: | M. Keith Chen; Devin G. Pope |
| Abstract: | Traveling beyond the immediate surroundings of one’s residence can lead to greater exposure to new ideas and information, jobs, and greater transmission of disease. In this paper, we document the geographic mobility of individuals in the U.S., and how this mobility varies across U.S. cities, regions, and income classes. Using geolocation data for ~1.7 million smartphone users over a 10-month period, we compute different measures of mobility, including the total distance traveled, the median daily distance traveled, the maximum distance traveled from one’s home, and the number of unique haunts visited. We find large differences across cities and income groups. For example, people in New York travel 38% fewer total kilometers and visit 14% fewer block-sized areas than people in Atlanta. And, individuals in the bottom income quartile travel 12% less overall and visit 13% fewer total locations than the top income quartile. |
| JEL: | R23 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27072&r=all |