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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Fulton, Lewis; Lipman, Timothy; Coffee, Daniel |
| Abstract: | California is investing in a hydrogen system as part of its strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and industry. While much of the state’s hydrogen planning has focused on demand from cars and trucks, other transportation sectors—including ports, aviation, and rail—could provide significant demand. At the same time, uncertainty surrounding federal support, including the suspension of $1.2 billion in federal funding for the ARCHES hydrogen hub, has raised new questions about how California should prioritize and coordinate future hydrogen investments to best support decarbonization and public health goals. There has been limited analysis of how demand could develop across multiple transportation modes and where hydrogen production and refueling infrastructure should be located to maximize efficiency and reduce costs. The potential environmental and workforce impacts of a statewide hydrogen system are also not well understood. |
| Keywords: | Engineering |
| Date: | 2026–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt1jn345jc |
| By: | Middleton Manning, Beth Rose; Sabate, Kealohi |
| Abstract: | The Tribal Sustainable Transportation Transitions study was conducted by faculty and graduate students in the departments of Native American Studies and Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis, respectively, as part of the Center for Efficiency, Resiliency, and Community Engagement in Transportation (CERCET). The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and opportunities facing Tribal Nations in California considering the transition to more sustainable transportation systems. This study began with a literature review on tribal sustainable transportation initiatives in California. A pilot survey was then distributed via email to tribal transportation, public works, and/or environmental directors at federally recognized tribes in California, conducted in-person with attendees at the 2026 UC Davis Big Time and Powwow, and conducted via interview with tribal public works and environmental staff. Thirty-eight individual survey responses were received, providing current perspectives and needs within tribal communities regarding implementing sustainable transportation initiatives. The results from the survey reveal that respondents view sustainable transportation as a contextual concept, dependent upon infrastructure capabilities, geography, and community preferences. While most respondents identify advanced transportation infrastructure and active transportation as primary sustainable transportation initiatives, these were identified predominantly as a means for addressing fundamental transportation challenges such as road construction and maintenance as well as public transit availability. The study further identified major transportation barriers including staff shortages, funding constraints, and difficulty receiving aid from regional and state agencies which make it challenging for tribes to pursue many transportation opportunities. This pilot study provides important methodological lessons for more comprehensive research on the definition of “sustainable transportation” and specific transportation needs in Indian Country in California. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tribal transportation, sustainable transitions, transportation gaps |
| Date: | 2026–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt97m9b8sc |
| By: | Julián Barbella (LVMT - Laboratoire Ville, Mobilité, Transport - Université Gustave Eiffel - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris); Nicolas Coulombel (LVMT - Laboratoire Ville, Mobilité, Transport - Université Gustave Eiffel - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris); Guillaume Monchambert (LAET - Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transports - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENTPE - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Fuel-price changes may affect not only whether motorists travel but also their driving speeds on trips they continue to make. This study examines the latter adjustment on French toll motorways using approximately 28.5 million six-minute observations from 135 detector sites on 11 corridors. The outcome is travel time per kilometre, constructed from harmonic-mean speeds. A composition-aware panel specification relates this mixed-traffic outcome to separate light-and heavy-vehicle fuel-price channels, conditional on flexible traffic-flow and vehicle-mix controls, weather, calendar conditions, and site-specific diurnal patterns. In the preferred specification, the light-vehicle price × share coefficient is positive (0.0084 min/km per euro/litre); the heavy-vehicle channel is likewise positive (0.0171) but more sensitive to modelling and inference choices. The light-vehicle estimate translates mechanically into approximately 2.5 extra minutes over 600 km for a €0.50-per-litre increase, under fixed operating conditions and a light-vehicle-dominated composition. These estimates describe conditional changes in speeds among motorway users observed by detectors, not individual desired speeds or total travel demand. The analysis highlights both the potential for speed-related fuel-cost adjustment and the importance of traffic-state and selection effects in interpreting aggregate speed data. |
| Keywords: | traffic composition, intensive margin, travel time per kilometre, driving speed, fuel prices, toll motorways, France |
| Date: | 2026–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05840585 |
| By: | David M. Levinson (TransportLab, School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney) |
| Abstract: | At 168 Sydney intersections, estimated pedestrian delay averages 39.8 seconds per crossing if everyone waits for Walk, or 29.8 seconds under observed crossing behavior, compared with 10.4 seconds per detected vehicle. We test earlier pedestrian service while holding pedestrian and vehicle volumes at their current levels. With a 30-second first-call wait target, the 95-site experiment saves 440 pedestrian-hours but adds 886 vehicle-hours, assuming full Walk compliance. At 1.2 occupants per vehicle, pedestrian waiting must count more than 2.42 times as much as vehicle-occupant waiting for the weighted time savings to exceed the added delay. In the seven-day experiment at 35 intersections, the weighted time savings exceed the added delay when pedestrian waiting counts more than 2.22 times as much as vehicle-occupant waiting. |
| Keywords: | pedestrian delay; vehicle delay; traffic signals; modal comparison; signal timing; time allocation |
| JEL: | R40 |
| Date: | 2026–11–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nex:wpaper:paper-2026-29 |
| By: | Matt Hopkins (Academic-Industry Research Network); William Lazonick (Academic-Industry Research Network) |
| Abstract: | On January 4, 1990, Roger Smith, CEO of General Motors (GM), announced that his company was about to launch a program to develop a zero-emission electric vehicle (EV). Between 1996 and 1999, GM produced 1, 117 units of the EV1, leasing them to selected customers. In April 2003, GM announced the termination of the EV1 program, and proceeded to reclaim the cars and literally crushed them out of existence. Recognizing the opening created by GM's destruction of the EV1, on July 1, 2003, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in California. Seven months later, Elon Musk became Tesla's third co-founder by investing $6.35 million of the $7.5 million that Tesla raised in its first round of venture funding. Flash forward 15 years to 2019, when Tesla sold 367, 656 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) worldwide, with 51.5 percent delivered outside the United States, including 42, 715 BEVs produced and sold in China. The first new car company to achieve mass-production status in the United States since Chrysler was founded in 1925, it appeared that, with Tesla's success, the United States had emerged as the global leader in the EV transition. Not so fast! China-based BYD, which sold just 147, 185 BEVs in 2019, delivered 2, 256, 714 BEVs in 2025, compared with Tesla's 1, 636, 129. In addition, BYD sold 2, 288, 709 plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), compared with zero for Tesla. BYD could claim global leadership in both types of EV. Moreover, inside every single vehicle that BYD delivered in 2025 was a BYD battery, making the company the second largest EV battery maker in the world. BYD's 16.4-percent share of the global EV battery market was less than half the 39.1-percent share of China-based CATL, a pure-play battery maker, but far surpassed Korea-based LG Energy Solution's 9.3-percent share. As for Tesla, the batteries for its cars produced in the United States come from a joint venture with Japan-based Panasonic, which held a 3.9-percent share of the global EV battery market in 2005. Batteries drive the EV transition. All the leading EV battery companies are based in Asia, while there are no major EV battery makers based in the United States. This paper documents the rise to dominance of the Asian EV battery companies, focusing on Panasonic, LG Energy Solution, BYD, and CATL, providing an accurate historical foundation for our larger project on innovation and competition in the global EV battery industry. Building on the contents of this paper, we are currently deploying the "theory of innovative enterprise" to explain fully, in future papers, the sources of competitive advantage of the Asian battery makers and the reasons why the United States has fallen so far behind in the development and production of this critical technology. |
| Keywords: | Lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles, global leadership, innovative enterprise, Sony, Sanyo, Matsushita, Panasonic, LG Chem, LG Energy Solution, BYD, ATL, CATL, Tesla, General Motors |
| JEL: | B52 D21 D22 F23 F63 L1 L2 L62 L65 N85 O3 Q42 |
| Date: | 2026–08–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp253 |
| By: | Salomo, Katja; George, Sarah; Rösner, Vanessa; Scheidler, Viktoria |
| Abstract: | Urban sustainability policies are widely promoted as key instruments for mitigating climate change and improving urban quality of life. At the same time, concerns have grown that such interventions may reproduce socio spatial inequalities through selec-tive siting, uneven benefits, and exclusionary planning processes. This paper examines both the distribution and lived experience of sustainable transport measures, combining a citywide spatial analysis with a qualitative neighborhood case study. Using 1 km × 1 km grid level data for Berlin, we analyze the socio economic correlates of multiple transport sustainability measures, including ride sharing stations, EV charging points, cycling infrastructure, traffic calming measures, and low traffic zones. Spatially Lagged X (SLX) models reveal policy specific patterns: infrastructure ena-bling alternative modes of transport tends to cluster in and around more affluent but also, in some cases, more diverse neighborhoods, while grids with higher child poverty are systematically less likely to feature traffic calmed street space. Low traffic zones are more prevalent in affluent areas, too. Complementary focus group discussions conducted during the implementation of a low-traffic zone show that residents from diverse and poorer neighborhoods as well as small business owners frequently interpret such street space interventions through the lens of gentrification and displacement. Participants describe feelings of alienation and criticize unclear communication and tokenistic participation. Our findings suggest that gentrification concerns may become a significant barrier to public support for urban sustainability transitions. |
| Date: | 2026–10–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:m5rvd_v1 |
| By: | Lion Hirth |
| Abstract: | Studies on price-optimized EV charging consistently find that the common price signal synchronizes charging of the entire fleet of cars in the cheapest hours and creates new "rebound" load peaks in low-voltage grids. Almost all of these studies treat wholesale prices as exogenous, i.e., unaffected by the shifting EV load. This paper argues that this assumption overstates the problem: charging in low-price hours raises the wholesale price in those hours, which spreads charging across hours in equilibrium. I simulate price-optimized charging under real-time prices calibrated to German 2025 data. Even when adjusting for the increase in electricity demand, the coincident import peak of the local grid rises by 260%. After adding a model of equilibrium wholesale prices that takes the price-quantity feedback into account, the increase is reduced to a mere 5%. Allowing for vehicle-to-grid, the export peak rises by 115% and falls by 6%, respectively. The result holds across vehicle and charging parameters, charging constraints, renewable scenarios, network charges, price functions, peak measures, and simulation assumptions. Rebound peaks remain possible where vehicle adoption runs ahead of the national average or where charging power is high, but they are much smaller than the literature consensus suggests. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.34133 |
| By: | Javier Morales Sarriera (World Bank); Lourdes Rodriguez Chamussy (World Bank); Jorge Puig (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP & CEFIP-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Evelyn Vezza (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the distributional effects of bus transport subsidies in Argentina, a country with a longstanding system of fare support. A key feature of this subsidy scheme is the coexistence of a universal flat subsidy for all users and targeted mechanisms aimed at protecting lower-income groups, alongside integrated fare discounts for multistage trips. Using household survey data, mobility microdata, and administrative records, we estimate the distributional incidence of these subsidies. We find that while subsidies are progressive in relative terms, they exhibit weak targeting in absolute terms, with a substantial share of benefits accruing to middle- and high-income users. This pattern is largely driven by the dominance of the universal subsidy over more targeted instruments. The paper highlights the equity challenges inherent in mixed subsidy structures and offers policy lessons for countries seeking to redesign fare systems, improve targeting, or rationalize public transport subsidies under fiscal constraints. |
| JEL: | H22 D31 D78 Q48 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0383 |
| By: | Ricardo Marto |
| Abstract: | A new measure using satellite vessel-tracking data reveals how much potential U.S.-bound shipping capacity was reduced by disruptions such as port congestion, canal bottlenecks and rerouting. |
| Keywords: | shipping; satellite data |
| Date: | 2026–10–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:l00001:103987 |
| By: | Georges Dionne (HEC Montréal) |
| Abstract: | In this short story, I describe the origin of the Québec public automobile insurance pricing based on demerit points. |
| Keywords: | Automobile insurance pricing; demerit points; road safety prevention; road accidents |
| JEL: | B15 B26 D81 D82 G22 |
| Date: | 2026–10–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:riskmr:023859 |
| By: | Shao, Qifan; Giuliano, Genevieve; Boarnet, Marlon; Zhang, Jiachen; Hu, Hao; Liu, Shu |
| Abstract: | Onshoring vehicle manufacturing in the US has potential for economic development and increased security of manufacturing supply chains. Onshoring may also have social benefits if production processes are moved from countries with low wages and few protections for worker safety to the US., where wages are higher and labor protection is extensive. This project examines the potential social benefits of moving one part of the vehicle supply chain, batteries for heavy duty trucks, from China to the US. We use a life cycle approach and consider the resource extraction and manufacturing phases of battery production. We assume that only the manufacturing phase changes. We use specialized software to compare estimates of social risks in five categories (labor rights, health and safety, society, governance, and community), Our results suggest that relocating battery manufacturing from China to the US would substantially reduce associated social risks particularly with respect to labor rights, health and safety, and governance. Given the potentially significant environmental and social benefits to shifting heavy-duty truck manufacturing from China to the US, a next step would be to evaluate the economic feasibility of onshoring and identify policies that could incentivize such a shift. |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Social life cycle assessment, Supply chains, Lithium-ion batteries, Social Hotspots Database |
| Date: | 2026–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt4hk4q90q |
| By: | Minyu Shen; Xiaowen Bi; Weihua Gu; Zhandong Xu; Yuezhong Wu; Feng Xiao; Lu Li |
| Abstract: | Bus operations are inherently unstable---buses initially dispatched at equal headways will inevitably end up bunching up. This issue exacerbates passenger waiting times, creates load imbalances between buses, and undermines service reliability. Reinforcement learning (RL) has proven highly effective for mitigating bus bunching and outperforms traditional model-based approaches. However, existing RL approaches require agents to continuously interact with the environment, which potentially disrupts the bus system before effective policies are learned. This paper proposes an Offline Graph-based Multi-agent Actor-Critic (Offline-GMAC) method that trains bus holding policies using only readily available logged GPS data collected during normal uncontrolled operations, thereby eliminating the need for disruptive online interaction or exploration. The method employs general graph neural networks for multi-agent credit assignment. A key innovation of our method is a data augmentation scheme that synthesizes unperformed holding actions from historical uncontrolled bus trajectories. The scheme exploits the equivalence between stochastic link travel time delays and deliberate holding interventions. Under mild assumptions, we prove that the 1-Wasserstein distance between synthesized and target state transition distributions is bounded above by a term that scales linearly with the standard deviation of link travel times plus a tunable synthesis-dependent term. Evaluations using real-world bus data demonstrate that the proposed offline method achieves performance comparable to, and in some cases, even better than its online counterpart. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.14632 |
| By: | Pawlak, Julian |
| Abstract: | In the Strait of Hormuz since the beginning of the war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran, it has become evident how vulnerable sea lanes are and how fragile the global political and economic order is. Today, actors willing and able to use instruments of power can threaten key maritime chokepoints and thereby exert political pressure. Germany, acting in concert with its European partners, should adapt to this reality of power politics. Among other things, it should establish a strategic framework for maritime security policy and cooperate closely with old and new partner states to defend the international order. |
| Keywords: | law of the sea, international maritime law, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Gulf of Aden, Strait of Malacca, chokepoint, transit passage, innocent passage, weaponized interdependence, lawfare, Operation Atalanta, Combined Task Force 151, EUNAVFOR Aspides, piracy, submarine cable, Freedom of Navigation Operation, FONOP, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, INI |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:344275 |
| By: | San Román del Pozuelo, Álvaro |
| Abstract: | Can public goods expansion generate electoral backlash against incumbents? Do voters hold incumbents accountable for policies from which they derive no direct benefit? Conventional accountability models suggest that public goods provision rewards incumbents, yet the dynamics through which grievances translate into punishment remain both theoretically underdeveloped and empirically underexplored. This paper explores how infrastructure construction can provoke voter backlash in areas unaffected by new developments. Infrastructure provision has inherent characteristics that create particular scenarios for accountability. The visibility and salience of infrastructure, coupled with its differentiated, non-universal spatial impacts and slow expansion, set the stage for territorial competition across constituencies. When policymakers decide the location of new facilities, non-winners are confronted with a tangible counterfactual: the opportunity to enhance their own situation. The perception of having missed a chance to benefit—rather than material loss per se—is at the core of their grievance and becomes the main motivation to punish the incumbent responsible. Using a novel dataset on hospital construction in Spain (2002–2019) and municipality-level electoral results, I analyze how the allocation of 81 new hospitals affected support for regional incumbents. Compared with regions without hospital expansion, municipalities whose accessibility improved increased their support for the incumbent by 2.14 percentage points, whereas non-impacted municipalities reduced it by 1.85 points. Punishments manifest both as lower turnout (-2.26 pp) and as gains for opposition parties (+0.81 pp). Contrary to expectations, however, these punishments do not vary with prior accessibility. This study provides insights into nuanced electoral dynamics around public goods, emphasizing the critical role of unequal allocations in shaping electoral accountability. |
| Date: | 2026–10–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:fuez5_v1 |
| By: | Gergely Cs\'aji; D\'avid Csercsik |
| Abstract: | We study the route-set allocation problem between end nodes in capacity-constrained flow networks with transfer costs. We introduce an origin--destination (OD) bidding language, in which a participant bids for bounded conic combinations of inlet--outlet--quantity licences and the mechanism performs the routing through a network-flow optimising winner-determination problem. We then study payment rules for the OD mechanism. Under a restricted model with openly and uniformly priced sources and bidders who are indifferent to the source of the gas, the Vickrey--Clarke--Groves (VCG) payment is core-stable; the key structural fact is that in this regime some optimal aggregate flows never use a physical pipe in both directions, so the winner-determination problem reduces to a single-commodity network flow whose value is submodular in the set of active bidders. If source access is allowed to depend on the individual consumer -- a realistic feature, e.g. when gas deals are embedded in bilateral political bargaining -- the reduction fails and VCG payments may lie strictly outside the core. For this general model we propose a dual (nodal) pricing rule derived from the shadow prices of the flow-conservation constraints, and prove it is always core-stable, at the cost of dominant-strategy incentive compatibility. Illustrative examples accompany each result. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.20125 |