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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Passmore, Reid; Watkins, Kari E; Guensler, Randall |
| Abstract: | Planners and engineers need to know how to assess the impacts of proposed cycling infrastructure projects, so that projects that have the greatest potential impact on the actual and perceived cycling safety are selected over those that would be less effective. Planners also need to be able to communicate these impacts to decision-makers and the public. This research addresses these problems using the BikewaySim cycling shortest path model. BikewaySim uses link impedance functions to account for link attributes (e.g., presence of a bike lane, steep gradients, the number of lanes) and find the least impedance path for any origin-destination pair. In this project, BikewaySim was used to assess the impacts of using time-only and time with attribute impedances, as well as two proposed cycling infrastructure projects, on 28, 392 potential trips for a study area in Atlanta, Georgia. These impacts were visualized through bikesheds, individual routing, and betweenness centrality. Two metrics, percent detour and change in impedance, were also calculated. Results demonstrate that BikewaySim can effectively visualize potential improvements of cycling infrastructure and has additional applications for trip planning. An expanded study area was also used to demonstrate bike + transit mode routing for four study area locations. Visualizations examine the accessibility to TAZs, travel time, and the utilized transit modes for each location. Compared to the walk + transit mode, the bike + transit mode provided greater access to other TAZs and reached them in a shorter amount of time. The locations near the center of the transit network where many routes converge offered the greatest accessibility for both the bike + transit and walk + transit modes. The difference in accessibility was greatest for locations near fewer transit routes. This research demonstrated how BikewaySim can be used to both examine the current cycling network and show changes in accessibility likely to result from new infrastructure. Both BikewaySim and TransitSim are open-source Python based tools that will be made available for practitioners to use in bicycle network planning. Future research will focus on calibrating link impedance functions with revealed preference data (cycling GPS traces) and survey response data (surveys on user preference for cycling infrastructure). View the NCST Project Webpage |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences, bicycle networks, shortest path routing, bicycle route choice, bicycle facility preference, first and last mile travel |
| Date: | 2024–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt7pt4d1tk&r=tre |
| By: | Volker, Jamey; Hosseinzade, Rey; Handy, Susan |
| Abstract: | Senate Bill (SB) 743 (2013) and its related regulations eliminated automobile level of service (LOS) and replaced it with vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as the primary transportation impact metric for land development projects under the California Environmental Quality Act. Actual implementation of the LOS-to-VMT shift was left up to lead agencies, primarily local governments. The LOS-to-VMT shift was expected to create many challenges, given the often-limited resources of local governments, the entrenched use of LOS, and the perceived lack of established practice regarding VMT estimation, mitigation, and monitoring. With those concerns in mind, researchers at the University of California, Davis investigated how local governments have been implementing the LOS-to-VMT shift for land development projects. This policy brief summarizes the findings from that investigation. View the NCST Project Webpage |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, implementation, land use, level of service, metrics, urban development, vehicle miles of travel |
| Date: | 2024–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt4764h534&r=tre |
| By: | Eliasson, Jonas |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the accuracy of cost estimates at different planning stages for Swedish transport infrastructure projects 2004-2022. Changes in project costs are tracked between the national investment plans established in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. Cost estimates tend to increase considerably during the planning stages on average, while cost estimates at start of construction do not deviate systematically from final costs. The distributions of cost escalations between subsequent investment plans are highly skewed, with modes close to zero, but means in the order of 20-30 percent for projects in the planning stages. Average cost escalations are larger for rail projects than for road projects. The paper also briefly describes the Swedish infrastructure planning and decision process, summarizes previous Swedish studies, and discusses possible causes and remedies of cost overruns. |
| Keywords: | cost overruns; transport infrastructure; project management; decision processes; transport policy |
| JEL: | R42 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:120340&r=tre |
| By: | Lucas Epstein; Erich Muehlegger |
| Abstract: | In 2018, California voters rejected Proposition 6, a ballot initiative that sought to repeal state gasoline taxes and vehicle fees enacted as part of the 2017 Road Repair and Accountability Act. We study the relationship between support for the proposition, political ideology and the economic burdens imposed by the Act. For every hundred dollars of annual per-household imposed costs, we estimate that support for the proposition rose by 3 - 9 percentage points. Notably, we find that the relationship between voting and the economic burden of the policy is seven times stronger in the most conservative tracts relative to the most liberal tracts. Since conservative areas in California and elsewhere tend to bear a higher burden from transportation and energy taxes than liberal areas, heterogeneity in the response to economic burdens has important implications for the popular support for environmental taxes and the ongoing policy debate about how to finance future road infrastructure. |
| JEL: | H23 R48 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32311&r=tre |
| By: | Tsanko, Ilona |
| Abstract: | Understanding how consumers respond to price increases is key when designing price-related policies. Using microdata on vehicle usage and paid fuel prices, I analyze consumers' response, focusing on three channels of mitigation: distance driven, fuel efficiency, and search. On average, consumers mitigate 38 percent of a price increase through these channels. Reducing distance driven is the primary channel of mitigation. Increased search efforts mitigate up to 11 percent of a price increase. Response levels vary significantly with newer vehicles' owners mitigating up to 88 percent of a price increase, while older vehicle owners achieve can mitigate up to 45 percent. |
| Keywords: | Demand response, Gasoline prices, Consumers search, Fuel consumption |
| JEL: | D12 Q41 L91 L98 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:289454&r=tre |
| By: | Pan-Yang Su; Chinmay Maheshwari; Victoria Tuck; Shankar Sastry |
| Abstract: | The rise of advanced air mobility (AAM) is expected to become a multibillion-dollar industry in the near future. Market-based mechanisms are touted to be an integral part of AAM operations, which comprise heterogeneous operators with private valuations. In this work, we study the problem of designing a mechanism to coordinate the movement of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, operated by multiple operators each having heterogeneous valuations associated with their fleet, between vertiports, while enforcing the arrival, departure, and parking constraints at vertiports. Particularly, we propose an incentive-compatible and individually rational vertiport reservation mechanism that maximizes a social welfare metric, which encapsulates the objective of maximizing the overall valuations of all operators while minimizing the congestion at vertiports. Additionally, we improve the computational tractability of designing the reservation mechanism by proposing a mixed binary linear programming approach that is based on constructing network flow graph corresponding to the underlying problem. |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2403.18166&r=tre |
| By: | Brandily, P.; Rauch, F. |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the role of within-city roads layout in fostering city growth. Within-city roads networks have not been studied extensively in economics although they are essential to facilitate human interactions, which are at the core of agglomeration economies. We build and compute several simple measures of roads network and construct a sample of over 1800 cities and towns from Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a simple econometric model and two instrumental variable strategies based on the history of African cities, we then estimate the causal impact of within-city roads layout on urban growth. We find that over the recent decades, cities with greater road density and road evenness in the centre grew faster. |
| Keywords: | urbanisation; road layout; Sub-Saharan Africa; urban planning |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–03–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:122580&r=tre |
| By: | Coskun, Sena (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany); Dauth, Wolfgang (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany); Gartner, Hermann (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany); Stops, Michael (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany); Weber, Enzo (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany ; Univ. Regensburg) |
| Abstract: | "This paper examines how the shift towards working from home during and after the Covid-19 pandemic shapes the way how labor market and locality choices interact. For our analysis, we combine large administrative data on employment biographies in Germany and a new working from home potential indicator based on comprehensive data on working conditions across occupations. We find that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the distance between workplace and residence has increased more strongly for workers in occupations that can be done from home: The association of working from home potential and work-home distance increased significantly since 2021 as compared to a stable pattern before. The effect is much larger for new jobs, suggesting that people match to jobs with high working from home potential that are further away than before the pandemic. Most of this effect stems from jobs in big cities, which indicates that working from home alleviates constraints by tight housing markets. We find no significant evidence that commuting patterns changed more strongly for women than for men." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| Keywords: | IAB-Open-Access-Publikation ; Integrierte Erwerbsbiografien |
| JEL: | J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2024–04–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:20246&r=tre |
| By: | Vanda Almeida; Claire Hoffmann; Sebastian Königs; Ana Moreno Monroy; Mauricio Salazar-Lozada; Javier Terrero-Dávila |
| Abstract: | People’s ability to access essential services is key to their labour market and social inclusion. An important dimension of accessibility is physical accessibility, but little cross-country evidence exists on how close people live to the services facilities they need. This paper helps to address this gap, focusing on three types of essential services: Public Employment Services, primary schools and Early Childhood Education and Care. It collects and maps data on the location of these services for a selection of OECD countries and links them with data on population and transport infrastructure. This allows to compute travel times to the nearest service facility and to quantify disparities in accessibility at the regional level. The results highlight substantial inequalities in accessibility of essential services across and within countries. Although large parts of the population can easily reach these services in most countries, some people are relatively underserved. This is particularly the case in non-metropolitan and low-income regions. At the same time, accessibility seems to be associated with the potential demand for these services once accounting for other regional economic and demographic characteristics. |
| JEL: | H00 I24 J01 O18 R12 |
| Date: | 2024–04–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:elsaab:307-en&r=tre |