nep-tre New Economics Papers
on Transport Economics
Issue of 2021‒11‒08
thirteen papers chosen by
Erik Teodoor Verhoef
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  1. Real-World Simulations of Life with an Autonomous Vehicle Suggest Increased Mobility and Vehicle Travel By Harb, Mustapha; Walker, Joan; Malik, Jai; Circella, Giovanni
  2. Post-Covid Recovery Scenarios for the Travel Industry By Kaitila, Ville; Lehmus, Markku
  3. Cost-effective reduction of fossil energy use in the European transport sector: An assessment of the Fit for 55 Package By Marten Ovaere; Stef Proost
  4. Telework and Time Use By Pabilonia, Sabrina Wulff; Vernon, Victoria
  5. PERSONALIZED TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP AND RATIONAL CAR CHOICE: EVIDENCE FROM ONLINE FIELD EXPERIMENT By Ergo Themas; Maryna Tverdostup
  6. How can ports act to reduce underwater noise from shipping? Identifying effective management frameworks By Laura Recuero Virto; Hervé Dumez; Denis Bailly; Carlos Romero
  7. Partial Dominance in Branch-Price-and-Cut for the Basic Multi-Compartment Vehicle-Routing Problem By Katrin Heßler; Stefan Irnich
  8. Do Cohesion Funds foster regional trade integration? A structural gravity analysis for the EU regions By Yevgeniya Shevtsova; Jorge Diaz-Lanchas; Damiaan Persyn; Giovanni Mandras
  9. Is the monocentric urban economic model still empirically relevant? Assessing urban econometric predictions in 192 cities on five continents By Charlotte Liotta; Vincent Vigui\'e; Quentin Lepetit
  10. Certification of low-carbon hydrogen in the transport market By Sai Bravo; Carole Haritchabalet
  11. How is the COVID-19 Pandemic Shifting Retail Purchases and Related Travel in the Sacramento Region? By Forscher, Teddy; Deakin, Elizabeth PhD; Walker, Joan PhD; Shaheen, Susan PhD
  12. A sound environment: health effects of traffic noise mitigation By Lindgren, Samuel
  13. Health precautions while traveling after COVID-19 By Teitler Regev; Shosh Shahrabani

  1. By: Harb, Mustapha; Walker, Joan; Malik, Jai; Circella, Giovanni
    Abstract: Fully autonomous vehicles are expected to have a profound effect on travel behavior. The technology will provide convenience and better mobility for many, allowing owners to perform other tasks while traveling, summon their vehicles from a distance, and send vehicles off to complete tasks without them. These travel behaviors could lead to increases in vehicle miles traveled that will have major implications for traffic congestion and pollution. To estimate the extent to which travel behavior will change, researchers and planners have typically relied on adjustments to existing travel simulations or on surveys asking people how they would change their behavior in a hypothetical autonomous vehicle future. Researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Davis used a new approach to understand the potential influence of autonomous vehicles on travel behavior by conducting the first naturalistic experiment mimicking the effect of autonomous vehicle ownership. Private chauffeurs were provided to 43 households in the Sacramento, California region for one or two weeks. By taking over driving duties for the household, the private chauffeurs served the household as an autonomous vehicle would. Researchers tracked household travel prior to, during, and after the week(s) with access to the chauffeur service.
    Keywords: Engineering
    Date: 2021–11–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt5rn5g0cn&r=
  2. By: Kaitila, Ville; Lehmus, Markku
    Abstract: Abstract We assess the recovery of the Finnish travel industry from the covid19 pandemic in 2021–2023. The subject of the study is air and sea passenger traffic, the food service (restaurant) and accommodation industries. The Covid19 virus has proven to be capable of mutations, and the pandemic is by no means over. This increases uncertainty, especially with regard to the recovery of international travel. The travel industry will recover with vaccine coverage and when the pandemic will otherwise subside, but it will take a long time for business travel and intercontinental air transport to recover to pre-pandemic levels.
    Keywords: Forecasting, Services, Transportation, Scenarios, Covid19
    JEL: E27 L83 L93 R41
    Date: 2021–10–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:briefs:100&r=
  3. By: Marten Ovaere; Stef Proost (-)
    Abstract: This paper surveys climate and energy policy in the EU transport sector covering the road, aviation, and shipping sectors. We summarise current policies, focusing on the Fit for 55 Package, and categorise them according to their targeted decision stage (consumption, investment, or research) and the type of instrument being used (e.g. cap-and-trade, tax, mandate, performance standard, or subsidy). Next, we analyse the cost-efficiency of the different policies and instruments. We find that they address a range of market inefficiencies, but that there are still a number of aspects that can further improve the cost-effectiveness of current EU climate policies in the transport sector. For example, higher taxes and an emission performance standards for aviation and shipping, the right combination of R&D investments and learning-by-doing policies, and balancing implicit carbon prices by revising the road tax system and adding congestion tolls and charges. Finally, European policy has important side effects on the rest of the world that need to be taken into account in the selection of policies. This improved set of policies can support a sustainable recovery and reach the European Union’s climate targets at the lowest cost.
    Keywords: European energy policy, European climate policy, European transport, policy, road transport, aviation, shipping, Fit for 55 Package
    Date: 2021–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rug:rugwps:21/1031&r=
  4. By: Pabilonia, Sabrina Wulff; Vernon, Victoria
    Abstract: This chapter reviews the evidence on the relationship between telework and households' time allocation, drawing heavily on the empirical evidence from time diary data, and discusses the implications of telework for workers' productivity, wages, labor force participation, and well-being as well as its impacts on traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. Telework results in significant time savings for workers, as they reduce time on commuting and grooming activities by over one hour on telework days. This time is reallocated to household and leisure activities, but differentially for men and women. Men spend most of their time windfall on leisure activities; however, fathers also increase time on primary child care. Women, on the other hand, increase their household production. Children and parents benefit because they spend more time together; however, average full-time workers spend more time alone when they telework, which leads to an increase in loneliness for some. There is also evidence that telework can increase productivity for some workers and those workers may consequently earn higher wages, except for mothers who are willing to accept lower pay for the option to work from home. Finally, the reduction in commuting due to telework leads to reduced congestion during peak travel times, especially in the morning hours.
    Keywords: working from home,telework,telecommuting,commuting,home-based work,alternative work arrangements,work-life balance,time use,productivity,well-being,wages
    JEL: J22 J31 D13
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:970&r=
  5. By: Ergo Themas; Maryna Tverdostup
    Abstract: Purchasing a car is one of the decisions that may have a sizeable negative impact on an individual or family budget if all costs associated with owning a car are not properly considered. With car leasing being easily accessible, car buyers may underestimate all the costs beyond the leasing payments when choosing a car and select a vehicle above their own budget. This paper conducts an online field experiment in a specially designed bot in the Facebook Messenger application in Estonia, to investigate whether disclosing the complete personalized total cost of ownership (TCO) leads to a better calibrated choice of cars for a test drive. The study documents that introducing better information into real-life car choices does not have a positive effect on the correspondence between cost of car and individual budget. Quite the opposite, subjects deviate from their budget even more when a personalized TCO (for one month or five years) is disclosed, and in particular, subjects generally tend to choose cars above their budget. While previous studies on car buyer behaviour with different cost information have been carried out as lab experiments with hypothetical car buyers, our study contributes to the literature by conducting a field experiment with real car buyers, finding a substantial gap with the results obtained in the lab setting.
    Keywords: Consumer behaviour; Online field experiment; Rational decision-making; Total cost of ownership
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtk:febawb:132&r=
  6. By: Laura Recuero Virto (Ecole Polytechnique); Hervé Dumez (Ecole Polytechnique); Denis Bailly (Université de Brest); Carlos Romero (Escuela politecnica de Madrid)
    Abstract: Through a survey and interviews with representative stakeholders, this paper aims to find mechanisms to align commercial interests with underwater noise reductions from commercial shipping. While acknowledging the wide variations in ports' specificities, port actions could support a reduction in underwater noise emissions from commercial shipping through changes in hull, propeller and engine design, and through operational measures associated with reduced speed, change of route and travel in convoy. Though the impact of underwater noise emissions on marine fauna is increasingly shown to be serious and wide-spread, there is uncertainty in the mechanisms, the contexts, and the levels which should lead to action, requiring precautionary management. Vessels owners are already dealing with significant investment and operating costs to comply with fuel, ballast water, NOx and CO2 requirements. To be successful, underwater noise programs must align with these factors. Ports could propose actions such as discounted port fees and reduced ship waiting times at ports, both depending on underwater noise performance. Cooperation between ports to scale up actions through environmental indexes and classification societies' notations, and integration with other ports' actions could help support this. However, few vessels know their underwater noise baseline as there are very few hydrophone stations, and measurement methodologies are not standardized. Costs increase and availability decreases dramatically if the vessel buyer wants to improve the noise profile. Local demands regarding airborne noise close to airports boosted global pressure on the aviation industry to adopt existing quieting technology. This experience of the aviation noise control could inform the underwater noise process. Since 2017, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has been implementing a voluntary vessel slowdown trial for commercial vessels in key known foraging areas for southern resident killer whales, which are locally considered an emblematic species.
    Keywords: Noise., ocean, pollution, shipping,
    JEL: Q53 Q56 Q58 Q25
    Date: 2021–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fae:wpaper:2021.13&r=
  7. By: Katrin Heßler (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz); Stefan Irnich (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
    Abstract: We consider the exact solution of the basic version of the multiple-compartment vehicle-routing problem, i.e., a problem consisting of clustering customers into groups, routing a vehicle for each group, and packing demands of the visited customer uniquely into one of the vehicle’s compartments. Compartments have a fixed size, and there are no incompatibilities between the transported items or between items and compartments. The objective is to minimize the total distance of all vehicle routes such that all customers are visited. We study the shortest-path subproblem that arises when exactly solving the problem with a branch-price-andcut algorithm. For this subproblem, we compare a standard dynamic-programming labeling approach with a new one that utilizes a partial dominance. While the algorithm with standard labeling already struggles with relatively small instances, the one with partial dominance can cope with much larger instances.
    Keywords: vehicle routing, packing, shortest-path problem with resource constraints, dynamic-programming labeling, partial dominance
    Date: 2021–02–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2115&r=
  8. By: Yevgeniya Shevtsova (European Commission - JRC); Jorge Diaz-Lanchas (Universidad Pontifica Comillas); Damiaan Persyn (University of Göttingen); Giovanni Mandras (European Commission - JRC)
    Abstract: This paper uses a structural gravity model to explore the regional trade and welfare impact of the EU Cohesion Policy Transport Infrastructure Investment programme estimated using a novel dataset of the Generalised Transport Costs for the EU regions at the NUTS2 level. The results indicate that on average additional investment in transport infrastructure can increase NUTS2 total regional exports by 0.40% and regional real GDP 1.13%. Central and Eastern European Regions enjoy the highest exports and GDP gains, while few Western European regions experience a negligible decrease in wages, which may occur as a result of factor price convergence.
    Keywords: structural gravity, trade policy, general equilibrium analysis.
    JEL: F13 F14 F15 R13
    Date: 2021–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:termod:202107&r=
  9. By: Charlotte Liotta; Vincent Vigui\'e; Quentin Lepetit
    Abstract: Despite a large body of work that developed over more than 60 years, and numerous applications in theoretical papers, the empirical knowledge accumulated on the monocentric urban model and its extensions remains limited. Using a unique dataset gathering spatially explicit data on rents, population densities, housing sizes, and transport times in neighborhoods inside 192 cities on all continents, we investigate on a systematic basis the empirical relevance of the key stylized facts predicted by this model. Some of these predictions appear extremely robust: cities are more spread out when they are richer, more populated, and when transportation or agricultural land is less costly, and 95\% of the cities of our sample exhibit the predicted negative density gradient from the city center to suburbs. Rent variations inside cities are also significantly explained by transport times in most of the cities (159 cities). However, housing production (and population densities) seem significantly impacted by rents in only slightly more than half of the cities (106 cities). Nevertheless, high levels of informality, strong regulations and planning, specific amenities (e.g. coastal amenities) are, as expected by the theory, main factors leading to the discrepancies. Overall, several decades after its creation, the standard urban model seems to still capture surprisingly well the inner structure of many cities across the world, both in developed and in developing countries.
    Date: 2021–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2111.02112&r=
  10. By: Sai Bravo (TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Carole Haritchabalet (TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    Abstract: This paper develops a theoretical framework to study the deployment of free-of-emissions green hydrogen in the transport sector. We consider a vertically related market with hydrogen producers upstream and fuel stations downstream. Production technologies differ in cost efficiency and carbon emissions. We show that when consumers have limited information about the hydrogen origin, no new green producers are able to enter the market. A label for green hydrogen allows multiple production technologies to co-exist, but society is better off when producers use vertical restraints to increase consumers' information.
    Keywords: Label,Vertical Restraints,Innovation,Hydrogen
    Date: 2021–10–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03371277&r=
  11. By: Forscher, Teddy; Deakin, Elizabeth PhD; Walker, Joan PhD; Shaheen, Susan PhD
    Abstract: A significant portion of the population stayed, and continue to stay, at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With more people staying home, online shopping increased along with trips related to pickups and deliveries. To gain a better understanding of the change in retail purchases and related travel, UC Berkeley researchers compared pre-pandemic shopping to pandemic-related shifts in consumer purchases in the greater Sacramento area for nine types of essential and non-essential commodities (e.g., groceries, meals, clothing, paper products, cleaning supplies). In May 2020, the research team resampled 327 respondents that participated in the 2018 Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) household travel survey. The 2018 SACOG survey collected responses over a rolling six-week period from April to May 2018 and asked residents about their motivations for, attitudes toward, and ease of use of online shopping. They were also were asked about the number of e-commerce purchases made, and the number of deliveries and pickups made from those e-commerce purchases for each commodity type. In addition, respondents also reported changes (less or more) in their behavior from a typical week in January or February 2020 (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic) for: 1) tripmaking, e-commerce purchases, and delivery and pick up frequencies; 2) purchase sizes; 3) distances traveled; and 4) modes used for in-person trips. This brief highlights findings from an analysis on changes in frequency of purchases, deliveries and pickups, and order sizes.
    Keywords: Engineering
    Date: 2021–10–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt19r0034f&r=
  12. By: Lindgren, Samuel (Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute (VTI))
    Abstract: This study investigates the health effects of a nationwide program that provided noise mitigation to dwellings. The analysis uses hospitalization records and a difference-in- differences model that compares residents in treated homes to those with similar at- tributes in untreated homes. Results show that noise mitigation measures lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases by 10% after seven years, with effects driven by reduced risk of hypertension. Health effects are larger among the population exposed to higher baseline noise levels. These findings suggest that implementing similar noise mitigation measures will produce meaningful health benefits.
    Keywords: Health; Environmental policy; Noise pollution
    JEL: Q51 Q52 Q53
    Date: 2021–10–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:vtiwps:2021_010&r=
  13. By: Teitler Regev (YVC - Max Stern Yezreel Valley college); Shosh Shahrabani (YVC - Max Stern Yezreel Valley college)
    Abstract: Purpose: The tourism industry needs to identify potential tourists' planned behavior after COVID-19 and prepare accordingly. This study was conducted in Israel during the initial outbreak of COVID-19. This research focused on different types of precautionary measures used by the tourists and how perceived risk of getting sick with COVID-19 while traveling abroad as well as risk perceptions and attitudes about travel abroad might affect tourists' intentions to adopt precautionary measures when planning future travel abroad. Methods: This research is based on an online survey questionnaire distributed during March 2020 among four hundred and six Israeli participants. Results: The analytical model show that people's with higher levels of attitudes toward traveling abroad and those that prefer to avoid destinations with higher levels of attitudes toward traveling abroad and those that prefer to avoid travel to destinations with various risks had higher intentions to take precautionary measures while traveling abroad. Implications: The results of the current research can assist the tourism industry understand what precautionary measures are important to potential travellers and what health safety assurances the industry must provide to facilitate its recovery in the near future.
    Keywords: COVID-19,tourism,health threat perception,future travel avoidance,precautionary measures
    Date: 2021–10–18
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03385071&r=

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