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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Li, Guozhen PhD; Ogden, Joan PhD; Miller, Marshall PhD |
| Abstract: | Zero-emission vehicles are seen as key technologies for reducing freight- related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. California’s 2016 Sustainable Freight Action Plan established a target of 100,000 zero-emission freight vehicles utilizing renewable fuels by 2030. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a promising zero-emission technology, especially for applications where batteries might be difficult to implement, such as heavy-duty trucks, rail, shipping and aviation. However, California’s current hydrogen infrastructure is sparse, with about 25 stations, primarily sited to serve fuel cell passenger vehicles and buses. New infrastructure strategies will be critical for implementing hydrogen freight applications. The researchers analyzed hydrogen infrastructure requirements, focusing on hydrogen fuel cells in freight applications, using a California-specific EXCEL-based scenario model developed under the Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways program (STEPS) at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis (Miller et al, 2017). Hydrogen vehicle adoption and demand was estimated for trucks, rail, shipping, and aviation, for a range of scenarios out to 2050. |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Zero emission vehicles, hydrogen fuels, fuel cells, freight transportation, heavy duty trucks, service stations, demand, mathematical models |
| Date: | 2021–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt5cs440qj&r=all |
| By: | Christensen, Peter (University of Illinois); Osman, Adam (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) |
| Abstract: | Changes in transport costs can affect mobility in ways that differ across the population, affecting the impacts of transport policies. We randomly assign large price reductions on Uber in Egypt over a 3-month period and collect comprehensive data on participant mobility using Google Timeline. A 50% price reduction quadruples Uber usage and induces a 42% increase in total travel. Effects and welfare gains are larger for women, who are less mobile at baseline and perceive public transit as unsafe. The price elasticity of private vehicle kilometers traveled (-1.28) implies that mobility and external costs increase substantially when ride-hailing prices fall. |
| Keywords: | travel demand, travel safety, ride-hailing, mobility on demand |
| JEL: | J16 J28 J61 Q55 R48 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14179&r=all |
| By: | Arik Levinson (Department of Economics, Georgetown University); Lutz Sager (McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University) |
| Abstract: | Regulators attest that tightened energy efficiency standards save consumers money. Efficient light bulbs, appliances, and vehicles cost more upfront but reduce energy expenses by more than enough to compensate. We use survey data on American cars and their drivers to examine whether individual drivers have indeed underinvested in fuel economy, given the gas prices they face and the miles they drive. We find that may be true, but only on average. Some drivers could likely have saved money by spending more upfront for efficient cars. But many others could have saved money purchasing less expensive, less fuel-efficient cars. In fact we find little correlation between individual drivers’ annual fuel expenditures and their fuel economy choices: a driver’s income, sex, age, and education are far more closely associated with their vehicle’s fuel economy. We can rule out several explanations for the disconnect. Rich car purchasers do not seem to consider fuel expenses any more than poorer ones, undermining arguments that borrowing constraints prevent low-income consumers from investing in fuel efficiency. And the disconnect between fuel expenses and vehicle choice holds whether we examine anticipated or realized mileage, ruling out mistaken expectations about future driving as an explanation. |
| Keywords: | Fuel economy, energy efficiency paradox, CAFE |
| JEL: | Q48 Q58 R48 |
| Date: | 2021–03–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~21-21-02&r=all |
| By: | Nicholas Sheard |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effects of airport infrastructure on employment and the distribution of the labor force in US metropolitan areas. The analysis is based on models for the air network and for its effects on employment, which are estimated using US data. Air traffic is found to have a positive effect on the population of the local area, with an elasticity of 0.010, so airport improvements induce a reallocation of workers between regions. Air traffic is also found to have a positive effect on employment in the local area with an elasticity of 0.036 and a weakly positive effect on the employment rate in other places within 400 miles. Simulations suggest that for each job created in the local area by an airport expansion, two and a half jobs are created elsewhere in the US due to the changes in the air network and the distribution of employment. Expanding the average airport adds one job in the US for roughly each $78,000 invested. The results further suggest that the US air network is less centralized than would be optimal. |
| Keywords: | Airport, Network, Transportation infrastructure, Urban growth |
| JEL: | H54 L93 R11 R42 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cop:wpaper:g-313&r=all |
| By: | Jani-Pekka Jokinen |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a model addressing welfare optimal policies of demand responsive transportation service, where passengers cause external travel time costs for other passengers due to the route changes. Optimal pricing and trip production policies are modelled both on the aggregate level and on the network level. The aggregate model is an extension from Jokinen (2016) with flat pricing model, but occupancy rate is now modelled as an endogenous variable depending on demand and capacity levels. The network model enables to describe differences between routes from the viewpoint of occupancy rate and efficient trip combining. Moreover, the model defines the optimal differentiated pricing for routes. |
| Date: | 2021–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2103.00565&r=all |
| By: | Christina Littlejohn; Stef Proost |
| Abstract: | EU countries want to decarbonize their road freight transport quickly. Long-haul electric trucks are a promising technology. There are several competing designs but at present the trade-off is between e-trucks with very large batteries and e-trucks with a smaller battery but combined with motorways electrified via catenary lines. In the latter case a combination of public investment (catenary lines on major motorways) and private investment (electric trucks) is required. As long-haul truck transport is partly international this raises problems of coordination among countries. We study the possible pricing and investment strategy of one forerunner country that faces lagging neighbors. The forerunner can make the use of electric trucks mandatory on its own territory by using very high road charges for diesel trucks. If it has opted for a catenary system, it faces still the choice of how it will price the use of its electric motorways. International diesel trucks, when crossing the border of a forerunner country, have to choose between paying high charges and transferring the load into an e-truck. We study the outcome of this international coordination game exploring the non-cooperative outcome varying the relative size of the forerunner in international truck traffic and varying the cost of electric highways. |
| Keywords: | electric trucks, freight transport, climate policy, tax exporting, distance charging |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8876&r=all |
| By: | Combs, Tabitha; Pardo, Carlos F. |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic brought a dramatic shift in demand for spaces for safe, physically distanced walking, bicycling, and outdoor commerce. Cities around the world responded by instituting a variety of policies and programs meant to address this shift, such as carving out roadway space for non-car uses, putting pedestrian walk signals on recall, reducing speed limits, and subsidizing bike share schemes. The extraordinarily rapid pace and global scale of these responses—and the public’s reactions to them—suggest that the transport planning, policy, and engineering professions may be at an inflection point with respect to equitable accommodation of non-car transport modes. In this paper we describe an effort to support potential shifts in practice by documenting and cataloging over a thousand COVID-19-related mobility responses into a publicly available database. We provide detailed guidance on using the database, along with preliminary summaries of key variables in the database. We also put forth a research agenda intended to build understanding about the processes that led to these actions, their implications for future efforts to design and implement pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ways in which the transport professions might evolve in response to lessons learned during and after the pandemic. |
| Date: | 2021–02–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2mzuy&r=all |
| By: | Bruno Hoornaert; Alex Van Steenbergen |
| Abstract: | This paper seeks to quantify the cost of the most important inefficiencies in Belgian transport taxation. To this end we calculate the welfare gain of an ideal, optimal tax/subsidy system across the transport market as a whole (i.e. considering private road traffic in conjunction with public transport). We found the total welfare gain to be 2.3 billion euros, of which 1.3 billion are due to time gains of remaining road users. Our measure lies significantly above those found in the literature, since we consider the distortion cause by a wide range of subsidies. |
| Keywords: | Optimal taxation, Externalities, Traffic Congestion |
| JEL: | D61 D62 H21 H23 |
| Date: | 2019–09–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpb:wpaper:1909&r=all |
| By: | Coraline Daubresse; Benoît Laine |
| Abstract: | PLANET is a model developed by the Belgian Federal PLANning Bureau that models the relationship between Economy and Transport. Its aim is to produce: (i) medium- and long-term projections of transport demand in Belgium, both for passenger and freight transport; (ii) simulations of the effects of transport policy measures; (iii) cost-benefit analyses of transport policy measures. This methodological report describes the main features of the PLANET model, and more specifically, the version 4.0 used for the transport outlook published in January 2019. |
| JEL: | R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2020–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpb:wpaper:2001&r=all |
| By: | Lindgren, Erik (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University); Pettersson-Lidbom, Per (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University); Tyrefors, Björn (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and Department of Economics, Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze the effect of transport infrastructure investments in railways on three measures of local economic activity: real nonagricultural income, agricultural land values and population size. As a testing ground, we use data from a new historical database that includes annual panel data on approximately 2,400 regions, i.e., local governments, during the period 1860-1917. We use a staggered event study design that is robust to treatment effect heterogeneity. Importantly, we find extremely large reduced-form effects of having access to railways. For real nonagricultural income, the cumulative treatment effect is approximately 120% after 30 years. Therefore, this effect is 20 times larger than most reduced-form effects found in previous works on the effect of transport infrastructure on economic activity. Equally important, we also show that our reduced-form effect reflects growth rather than a reorganization of existing economic activity. |
| Keywords: | railways; transport infrastructure; real income; land value; event study; treatment heterogeneity |
| JEL: | H54 L92 N73 O22 R12 R42 |
| Date: | 2021–03–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2021_0001&r=all |
| By: | Sanguinetti, Angela; Amenta, Nina |
| Abstract: | This study explores the potential to promote lower-emissions air travel by providing consumers with information about the carbon emissions of alternative flight choices in the context of online flight search and booking. We surveyed over 450 employees of the University of California, Davis, asking them to choose among hypothetical flight options for university-related business trips. Emissions estimates for flight alternatives were prominently displayed alongside cost, layovers and airport, and the lowest-emissions flight was labeled “Greenest Flight”. We found an impressive rate of willingness to pay for lower-emissions flights: around $200/ton of CO2E saved, a magnitude higher than that seen in carbon offsets programs. In a second step of analysis, we estimated the carbon and cost impacts if the university were to adopt a flight-search interface that prioritizes carbon emissions information and displays alternatives from multiple regional airports in their employee travel-booking portal. We estimated potential annual savings of 79 tons of CO2E, while reducing airfare costs by $56,000, mainly due to an increased willingness of travelers to take advantage of cheaper nonstop (lower-emissions) flights from a more distant airport in the region over indirect flights from their preferred airport for medium-distance flights. Institutionalizing this “nudge” within organizations with large travel budgets could have an industry-wide impact in aviation. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, Carbon Emissions, Air Travel, Flight Search, Interface Design, Online Travel Booking |
| Date: | 2021–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt70d421zg&r=all |
| By: | Patrícia C. Melo; Conceição Rego; Paulo Rui Anciães; Nuno Guiomar; José Muñoz-Rojas |
| Abstract: | Transport investment is frequently advocated as having the double virtue of achieving both economic growth and territorial cohesion. The idea is that improving the accessibility of lagging regions to cities, increases the attractiveness of those regions for people and businesses. However, transport is only one of the factors affecting local development and there is no consensus on its net effect on population growth. The large scale of public funding allocated to motorway investment since the country joined the European Union in 1986 makes Portugal an ideal case study to examine the potential effect of improved road accessibility on the development of lagging rural areas. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between rural population change and road accessibility to the urban hierarchy (i.e. cities of different sizes) between 1991 and 2011. Regression analyses show that rural population growth is negatively associated with road distance and road travel time to the urban hierarchy, notably to medium-sized cities (i.e. 20,000-99,999 inhabitants). This suggests that medium-size cities play an important role in supporting population growth in their rural hinterlands. Robustness tests confirmed the validity of these findings. There is no evidence of nonlinearities in the magnitude of the effect between accessible and remote rural areas, which may be partially related to the relatively small size of the country. |
| Keywords: | rural areas, population change, road accessibility, rural-urban linkages, spillover effects |
| JEL: | R11 R12 J21 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp01652021&r=all |
| By: | Button, Kenneth John |
| Abstract: | A century ago Arthur Pigou published The Economics of Welfare. Within this volume are a few lines relating to the pricing of traffic congestion. Over the years, these lines have attracted the attention and thoughts of some of the leading economists of their day. These have included, Knight, Clapham, and Robertson in the 1920s, Kahn and Viner in the 1930s, Ellis and Fellner in the 1940s, and Buchanan, Vickrey, Solow, Friedman, Walters, Demsetz, Newbery, and Allais in the post-World War II period. Here I look at the academic arguments from the 1920s concerning how roads should be priced, and by whom. I then move to consider the continuation of the intellectual debates after World War II and their implications for policy design and implementation. Finally, I briefly look at the extent to which some of the existing road congestion pricing systems meet the requirements of the economic theory. |
| Date: | 2020–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:wkrb5&r=all |
| By: | Ajayi, Ayodeji Olusola; Amole, Oludolapo Olutosin |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the patronage and utilization of urban open spaces in Osogbo, Nigeria. Data were obtained through a multi-stage sampling technique. The study area was divided into high, medium and low density areas and 553 (5%) of buildings were systematic selected from 11,022 buildings identified through preliminary survey and satellite images. One teenager and two adults (a male and female) were selected in each building resulting in the total sample size of 1,659. Information on respondent's socio-economic characteristics, frequency of utilization open spaces, travel time, means of transportation and time spent in open spaces were obtained from the questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The results show that most of the respondents (60.8%) were occasional users of open spaces, 2.2% of respondents never used the open spaces while 37% were frequent users. In addition, the most frequently used open space was the neighborhood park (42.1%), followed by school playgrounds (39.2%) and pocket parks (32.7%). Incidental open spaces had the lowest proportion of patronage(20.9%). The longest duration of use occurred in school playgrounds while the neighbourhood park was the most accessible to the respondents. The frequency of use varies across typologies and residential densities. The mean travel time of respondents across all open spaces was 13.62 seconds, the variations in travel time across typologies were not statically significant (F=3.802, p =.010). Recommendations to make open spaces more accessible were suggested. |
| Keywords: | Open space typologies,Accessibility,Urban neighbourhoods,Open space utilization,Proximity |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:231722&r=all |
| By: | Coraline Daubresse; Benoît Laine |
| Abstract: | The aim of this study is to take a step back about teleworking as a tool to tackle mobility issues. Beyond the renewed interest in the public debate from which teleworking benefits, and its strong emphasis since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, the aim here is to use reliable sources and proven models to identify the relationship between increased teleworking and decreased transport demand. To this end, the PLANET model of the Federal Planning Bureau has been adapted to explicitly take into account changes in this practice in its long-term projections. |
| Keywords: | Transport |
| JEL: | R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2020–11–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpb:wpaper:2006&r=all |