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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Georges Sfeir; Filipe Rodrigues; Maya Abou Zeid; Francisco Camara Pereira |
| Abstract: | Household travel surveys have been used for decades to collect individuals and households' travel behavior. However, self-reported surveys are subject to recall bias, as respondents might struggle to recall and report their activities accurately. This study addresses examines the time reporting error of public transit users in a nationwide household travel survey by matching, at the individual level, five consecutive years of data from two sources, namely the Danish National Travel Survey (TU) and the Danish Smart Card system (Rejsekort). Survey respondents are matched with travel cards from the Rejsekort data solely based on the respondents' declared spatiotemporal travel behavior. Approximately, 70% of the respondents were successfully matched with Rejsekort travel cards. The findings reveal a median time reporting error of 11.34 minutes, with an Interquartile Range of 28.14 minutes. Furthermore, a statistical analysis was performed to explore the relationships between the survey respondents' reporting error and their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The results indicate that females and respondents with a fixed schedule are in general more accurate than males and respondents with a flexible schedule in reporting their times of travel. Moreover, trips reported during weekdays or via the internet displayed higher accuracies compared to trips reported during weekends and holidays or via telephones. This disaggregated analysis provides valuable insights that could help in improving the design and analysis of travel surveys, as well accounting for reporting errors/biases in travel survey-based applications. Furthermore, it offers valuable insights underlying the psychology of travel recall by survey respondents. |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2308.01198&r=tre |
| By: | Li, Yue; Wang, Mingshu; Zhao, Qunshan |
| Abstract: | With the global pandemic significantly changing people’s travel behaviours, urban traffic analysis has played an even more important role in urban (re)development, providing insights for urban planning, traffic management, and resource allocation. This research uses the spatial Durbin model to understand the relationship between traffic flows, urban infrastructure, and socio-demographic indicators before, during, and after pandemic periods. We analyze factors including road characteristics, socio-demographics, surrounding built environments, and Google Street View images to understand their influences on traffic flows. In Glasgow, we have found that areas with more young and white dwellers are associated with higher traffic flows, while green spaces are associated with fewer traffic flows. The application of Google Street View images has revealed the heterogeneous effects of the built environment on urban traffic flows, as the magnitudes of their effects vary by distance. With the influence of COVID-19, residents prefer to spend their daily life in their local areas rather than having long-distance travel in the pre-pandemic time. With this noticeable travel behaviour change, the promotion and development of the 15 or 20-minute neighbourhood concept can play an important role in encouraging active travel and achieving a net-zero carbon target in the near future. |
| Date: | 2023–07–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:kwbdz&r=tre |
| By: | Allister Loder; Fabienne Cantner; Victoria Dahmen; Klaus Bogenberger |
| Abstract: | The Mobilit\"at.Leben study investigated travel behavior effects of a natural experiment in Germany. In response to the 2022 cost-of-living crisis, two policy measures to reduce travel costs for the population in June, July, and August 2022 were introduced: a fuel excise tax cut and almost fare-free public transport with the so-called 9-Euro-Ticket. The announcement of a successor ticket to the 9-Euro-Ticket, the so-called Deutschlandticket, led to the immediate decision to continue the study. The Mobilit\"at.Leben study has two periods, the 9-Euro-Ticket period and the Deutschlandticket period, and comprises two elements: several questionnaires and a smartphone-based passive waypoint tracking. The entire duration of the study was almost thirteen months. In this paper, we report on the study design, the recruitment strategy, the study participation in the survey, and the tracking parts, and we share our experience in conducting such large-scale panel studies. Overall, 3, 080 people registered for our study of which 1, 420 decided to use the smartphone tracking app. While the relevant questionnaires in both phases have been completed by 818 participants, we have 170 study participants who completed the tracking in both phases and all relevant questionnaires. We find that providing a study compensation increases participation performance. It can be concluded that conducting year-long panel studies is possible, providing rich information on the heterogeneity in travel behavior between and within travelers. |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2308.04973&r=tre |
| By: | Karner, Alex; Pereira, Rafael H. M.; Farber, Steven |
| Abstract: | Transportation systems play a pivotal role in facilitating access to out-of-home activities, enabling participation in various aspects of social life. But because of budgetary and physical limitations, they cannot provide equal access to all locations; inevitably, some places will be better served than others. This realization gives rise to two fundamental concerns in transportation equity: 1) accessibility inequality and 2) accessibility poverty. Accessibility inequalities may rise to the level of injustice when some socioeconomic groups systematically have lower access to opportunities than others. Accessibility poverty occurs when people are unable to meet their daily needs and live a dignified, fulfilling life because of a lack of access to essential services and opportunities. In this paper, we review two of the most widely used approaches for evaluating transport justice concerns with accessibility inequality and accessibility poverty: Gini coefficients/Lorenz curves and needs-gap/transit desert approaches, respectively. We discuss how their theoretical underpinnings are inconsistent with egalitarian and sufficientarian concerns in transport justice, and show how the underlying assumptions of these methods and their applications found in the transportation equity literature embody many previously unacknowledged limitations that severely limit their utility. We substantiate these concerns by analysing the equity impacts of Covid-19-related service cuts undertaken in Washington, D.C. during 2020. The paper also discusses how alternative methods for measuring transportation equity both better comport with the known impacts of such changes and are consistent with underlying moral concerns. |
| Date: | 2023–08–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:y246u&r=tre |
| By: | Samuelsson, Karl; Brandt, S Anders; Barthel, Stephan; Linder, Noah; Lim, Nancy Joy; Giusti, Matteo |
| Abstract: | To inform spatial planning promoting low-carbon travel and well-being, we investigate the potential for experiential diversity by active travel across different residential contexts. We use spatiotemporal tracking and experience data from the Gävle city-region, Sweden, generated by 165 participants over the course of 15 months. Findings reveal a discrepancy between typical travel distances to locations of positive experiences (1.5–5 km) and the distances at which active travel dominates (up to 1.5 km). This discrepancy largely persists across urban, suburban, and peripheral contexts, with urban dwellers travelling further for nature experiences, whereas peripheral dwellers travel further for urbanicity experiences. These results illustrate the importance of spatial scale for promoting diverse positive experiences by active travel, regardless of residential context. Planning strategies include enhancing environmental diversity close to people’s homes and providing infrastructure that promotes switching from motorised to active travel for trips of a few kilometres. |
| Date: | 2023–07–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:2m3st&r=tre |
| By: | Mostafa Pazoki; Hamed Samarghandi; Mehdi Behroozi |
| Abstract: | Supply chain disruption can occur for a variety of reasons, including natural disasters or market dynamics. If the disruption is profound and with dire consequences for the economy, the regulators may decide to intervene to minimize the impact for the betterment of the society. This paper investigates the minimum quota regulation on transportation amounts, stipulated by the government in a market where transportation capacity is below total production and profitability levels differ significantly among different products. In North America, an interesting example can happen in rail transportation market, where the rail capacity is used for a variety of products and commodities such as oil and grains. This research assumes that there is a shipping company with limited capacity which will ship a group of products with heterogeneous transportation and production costs and prices. Mathematical problems for the market players as well as the government are presented, solutions are proposed, and implemented in a framed Canadian case study. Subsequently, the conditions that justify government intervention are identified, and an algorithm to obtain the optimum minimum quota is presented. |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2308.00681&r=tre |
| By: | Ferdinando Monte (Georgetown University); Charly Porcher (Georgetown University); Esteban Rossi-Hansberg (University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | We study the adoption of remote work within cities and its effect on city structure and welfare. We develop a dynamic model of a city in which workers can decide to work in the central business district (CBD) or partly at home. Working in the CBD allows them to interact with other commuters, which enhances their productivity through a standard production externality, but entails commuting costs. Switching between modes of labor delivery is costly, and workers face idiosyncratic preference shocks for remote work. We characterize the parameter set in which the city exhibits multiple stationary equilibria. Within this set, a coordination mechanism can lead to stationary equilibria in which most workers commute or most of them work partially from home. In these cases, large shocks in the number of commuters, like the recent lockdowns and self-isolation generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, can result in dynamic paths that make cities converge to a stationary equilibrium with large fractions of remote workers. Using cell-phone-based mobility data for the U.S., we document that although most cities experienced similar reductions in CBD trips during the pandemic, trips in the largest cities have stabilized at levels that are only about 60% of pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, smaller cities have, on average, returned to pre-pandemic levels. House price panel data by city show consistent changes in house price CBD-distance gradients. We estimate the model for 274 U.S. cities and show that cities that have stabilized at a large fraction of remote work are much more likely to have parameters that result in multiple stationary equilibria. Our results imply welfare losses in these cities that average 2.7%. |
| Keywords: | city structure, commuting, COVID-19 |
| JEL: | R23 J24 C62 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2023-016&r=tre |