The effects of highway development on housing prices

The purpose of this research is to estimate the effects of highway development projects on the price of housing. Transportation development projects, highways in particular, improve a certain area’s accessibility but also increase its levels of exposure to traffic intensity and noise pollution. These externalities are evaluated by homeowners and residents and are reflected in the price of housing. In this paper, we use several repeat sales model specifications, including difference-in-differences estimators, and control for neighborhood effects to examine housing price trends in the municipalities around two newly developed highways in the Netherlands. The results of the research demonstrate that changes in accessibility result in a significant positive effect on the price of housing in nearby municipalities, but that increased noise pollution and traffic intensity levels result in a decrease in prices. The findings also confirm that combining the total effects of all externalities, the effect of highway development on the price of housing is generally positive, and this effect is salient even before the project is completed due to public anticipation effects.     

Spatial analysis of the competitiveness of the high-speed train and air transport: The role of access to terminals in the Madrid–Barcelona corridor

This paper analyzes the effect of access and egress time to transport terminals over the spatial competiveness of the high-speed train (HST) in the Madrid–Barcelona (Spain) corridor, one of the densest airline domestic markets in the world. Applying spatial data from 2010 provided by a geographical information system (GIS) to a mode choice model estimated with sample travelers in this corridor, the present study examines whether and how the level-of-service of transport terminals spatially affects the competitiveness or modal distribution of HST and air transport in the provinces of Madrid and Barcelona; and, in particular, the degree of competitiveness that can be accrued by the access time provided by private car and transit in different market segments, especially mandatory and leisure trips. In a number of urban zones near train stations and airports, terminal accessibility clearly favors one transport mode in comparison to the other. Improving terminal accessibility via private car or public transit not only affects the relative access to terminals, but also represents a key strategy for readjusting the market shares of the competing modes in the corridor.     

An Evaluation of the Accessibility Benefits of Commuter Rail in Eastern Massachusetts using Spatial Hedonic Price Functions

We estimate spatial hedonic price functions to examine local and regional accessibility benefits of commuter rail service in Eastern Massachusetts, while controlling for proximity-related negative externalities and other confounding influences. The data include 1,860 single-family residential properties from four municipalities with commuter rail service, and three municipalities without commuter rail service. We find some evidence of the capitalization of accessibility to commuter rail stations. Two model specifications suggest that properties located in municipalities with commuter rail stations exhibit values that are between 9.6% and 10.1% higher than properties in municipalities without a commuter rail station. With a third model we detect weak evidence of the capitalization of auto access time or walking time to the stations, suggesting that properties located within a one-half mile buffer of a station have values that are 10.1% higher than properties located outside of this buffer area and that an additional minute of drive time from the station is related to a decrease of 1.6% in property values. Our results also indicate that proximity to commuter rail right-of-way has a significant negative effect on property values, which suggests that for every 1,000 ft. in distance from the commuter rail right-of-way, property values are between $732 and $2,897 higher, all else held equal. At the mean sample values, this result translates into an elasticity of between 0.03 and 0.13, depending on the functional form of the hedonic price equation.     

An integrated measure of accessibility and reliability of mass transit systems

The growth of a city or a metropolis requires well-functioning transit systems to accommodate the ensuing increase in travel demand. As a result, mass transit networks have to develop and expand from simple to complex topological systems over time to meet this demand. Such an evolution in the networks’ structure entails not only a change in network accessibility, but also a change in the level of network reliability on the part of stations and the entire system as well. Network accessibility and reliability are popular measures that have been widely applied to evaluate the resilience and vulnerability of a spatially networked system. However, the use of a single measure, either accessibility or reliability, provides different results, which demand an integrated measure to evaluate the network’s performance comprehensively. In this paper, we propose a set of integrated measures, named ACCREL (Integrated Accessibility and Reliability indicators) that considers both metrics in combination to evaluate a network’s performance and vulnerability. We apply the new measures for hypothetical mass transit system topologies, and a case study of the metro transit system in Seoul follows, highlighting the dynamics of network performance with four evolutionary stages. The main contribution of this study lies in the results from the experiments, which can be used to inform how transport network planning can be prepared to enhance the network functionality, thereby achieving a well-balanced, accessible, and reliable system. Insights on network vulnerability are also drawn for public transportation planners and spatial decision makers.     

Effects of land-use transport scenarios on travel patterns: a multi-state supernetwork application

Understanding travellers’ response is essential to address policy questions arising from spatial and transport planning sectors. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of the multi-state supernetwork approach to investigate the effects of land-use transport scenarios on individuals’ travel patterns. In particular, it illustrates that multi-state supernetworks are capable of representing activity-travel patterns at a high level of detail, including the choice of mode, route, parking and activity location. Multi-faceted activity-travel preferences can be accommodated in supernetworks. Using a micro-simulation approach, the adaptation of individuals’ travel patterns to policies can be readily captured. The illustration concerns hypothetical land-use and transport scenarios for the city of Rotterdam (The Netherlands), focusing on accessibility changes, modal substitution and shift in the use of transport and location facilities.     

Modelling the resilience of rail passenger transport networks affected by large-scale disruptive events: the case of HSR (high speed rail)

This paper deals with modelling the dynamic resilience of rail passenger transport networks affected by large-scale disruptive events whose impacts deteriorate the networks’ planned infrastructural, operational, economic, and social-economic performances represented by the selected indicators. The indicators of infrastructural performances refer to the physical and operational conditions of the networks’ lines and stations, and supportive facilities and equipment. Those of the operational performances include transport services scheduled along particular routes, their seating capacity, and corresponding transport work/capacity. The indicators of economic performances include the costs of cancelled and long-delayed transport services imposed on the main actors/stakeholder involved—the rail operator(s) and users/passengers. The indicators of social-economic performances reflect the compromised accessibility and consequent prevention of the user/passenger trips and their contribution to the local/regional/national Gross Domestic Product. Modeling resulted in developing a methodology including two sets of analytical models for: (1) assessing the dynamic resilience of a given rail network, i.e., before, during, and after the impacts of disruptive event(s); and (2) estimation of the indicators of particular performances as the figures-of-merit for assessing the network’s resilience under the given conditions. As such, the methodology could be used for estimating the resilience of different topologies of rail passenger networks affected by past, current, and future disruptive events, the latest according to the “what-if” scenario approach and after introducing the appropriate assumptions. The methodology has been applied to a past case—the Japanese Shinkansen HSR network affected by a large-scale disruptive event—the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011.     

Economic resilience to transportation failure: a computable general equilibrium analysis

This study develops and applies a multimodal computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework to investigate the role of resilience in the economic consequences of transportation system failures. Vulnerability and economic resilience of different modes of transportation infrastructure, including air, road, rail, water and local transit, are assessed using a CGE model that incorporates various resilience tactics including modal substitution, trip conservation, excess capacity, relocation/rerouting, and service recapture. The linkages between accessibility, vulnerability, and resilience are analyzed. The model is applied to the transportation system failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate its capabilities. The analytical framework, however, has broader applications and can provide insights for resource allocations to enhance emergent responses to unexpected events and to improve resilient design of transportation infrastructure systems.     

Estimation and validation of a microscopic model for spatial economic effects of transport infrastructure

The spatial economic effects in integrated land use and transport models are increasingly disaggregate and can benefit from improved knowledge into the effect of accessibility and agglomeration on the spatial behaviour of firms. This article strives to contribute to this knowledge by first analysing the influence of accessibility and agglomeration on firm behaviour with exceptionally detailed firm data for the province of South Holland in The Netherlands. Next the added value of incorporating such effects in urban simulation models is tested with two series of validation runs with a microscopic model for firm dynamics.The presented Spatial Firm-demographic Micro-simulation (SFM) model simulates transitions and events in the firm population, including firm relocations, firm growth, firm dissolution and firm formation. Accessibility is measured with proximity to infrastructure access points and logsums of business and commuting trips from a transport model. Agglomeration measures are based on theories from urban economics and integrate travel time range bands into measures for specialisation and diversification. Estimation results confirm a significant influence of accessibility and agglomeration on the choice behaviour of firms. Application of these measures prove to increase the validity of the firm-demographic simulation model to a significant but modest extend.     

Is accessibility relevant in trip generation? Modelling the interaction between trip generation and accessibility taking into account spatial effects

The influence of accessibility to opportunities in trip generation continues to be debated in the specialised literature given its relevance to simulate phenomena such as induced demand. This article estimates multiple linear regression models (MLR), spatial autoregressive models (SAR), spatial autoregressive models in the error term (SEM) and spatially filtered Poisson regression models (SPO) to discover whether or not accessibility is a significant factor in trip generation using data from the urban area of Santander (Spain). The results obtained provide evidence which shows that, on an intraurban scale, more accessibility to opportunities decreases trip production in private vehicle for work purpose, whereas it increases trip production in other transport modes for non—mandatory purposes. For the correct interpretation of the estimated parameters it was important to consider the direct and indirect effects of the independent variables in the SAR production models. Finally, the validation of the models showed that the SAR and SEM models had a mean squared error slightly lower than the MLR models in predicting overall trip production. This was because the spatial models reduced the correlation of the residuals present in the MLR models. Furthermore, the SPO models performed better in validation mode than all the continuous models.     

Resilience in railway transport systems: a literature review and research agenda

ABSTRACT

Critical infrastructure networks, such as transport and power networks, are essential for the functioning of a society and economy. The rising transport demand increases the congestion in railway networks and thus they become more interdependent and more complex to operate. Also, an increasing number of disruptions due to system failures as well as climate changes can be expected in the future. As a consequence, many trains are cancelled and excessively delayed, and thus, many passengers are not reaching their destinations which compromises customers need for mobility. Currently, there is a rising need to quantify impacts of disruptions and the evolution of system performance. This review paper aims to set-up a field-specific definition of resilience in railway transport and gives a comprehensive, up-to-date review of railway resilience papers. The focus is on quantitative approaches. The review analyses peer-reviewed papers in Web of Science and Scopus from January 2008 to August 2019. The results show a steady increase of the number of published papers in recent years. The review classifies resilience metrics and approaches. It has been recognised that system-based metrics tend to better capture effects on transport services and transport demand. Also, mathematical optimization shows a great potential to assess and improve resilience of railway systems. Alternatively, data-driven approaches could be potentially used for detailed ex-post analysis of past disruptions. Finally, several rising future scientific topics are identified, spanning from learning from historical data, to considering interdependent critical systems and community resilience. Practitioners can also benefit from the review to understand a common terminology, recognise possible applications for assessing and designing resilient railway transport systems.     

Benchmarking road safety performance by grouping local territories: A study in the Netherlands

The method of benchmarking provides an opportunity to learn from better performing territories to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of activities in a particular field of interest. Such a field of interest could be road safety. Road safety benchmarking can include several indicators, ranging from performance indicated by crash statistics, to indicators that also account for consequences in costs or the underlying state of the road safety system and relevant organisation and processes at actor level. The structure and culture of a territory is identified as a basic context of road safety performance. This is regarded as important information to use in grouping of territories to get more homogenous or equal and comparable conditions to learn from ‘the best in class’.The main aim of this study is to assess the usability of different groupings using the physical structure for benchmarking road safety performance at local territorial level. A traditional grouping of municipalities in the Netherlands was compared with a simple grouping of these municipalities based on their level of urbanisation and an advanced grouping in which more indicators such as differences in demography, growth and road structure were taken into account. As in other studies, urbanisation showed to be the most predominant structural factor for grouping local territories and related to differences in road safety performance. However, if information would be needed for specific target groups, other factors like age and gender distribution or the distribution of the road network can provide valuable additional insight and better homogenous starting points for benchmarking. Especially benchmarking of rural territories may profit from such extra distinctive characteristics.     

Does a circular high-speed rail network promote efficiency and spatial equity in transport accessibility? Evidence from Hainan Island,China

This paper investigates the efficiency and spatial equity impacts of a unique island-looping high-speed rail (HSR) network in Hainan province, China. An integrated network and raster-based model is applied to accurately measure the accessibility indicators. We perform analysis at four different geographical planning levels – island, corridor, spillover, and county level. The HSR with a non-polarized topology can increase the accessibility of the entire island and corridor, but only leads to a slight increase in the spillover areas without HSR stations. HSR construction also leads to spatial cohesion for the entire island and corridor. Although the circular HSR network consists of several HSR stations distributed relatively equally, the results show that counties contribute differently to the cohesion of the entire island due to the varied initial level of accessibility values. Moreover, the county-level analysis reveals that the internal changes of each county are also different with balancing, polarization, and neutral effects appearing. Therefore, the internal equity of counties needs to be combined with their external contributions to global equity. Our framework permits policymakers to make customized HSR transport policies at different planning levels, particularly for an isolated area.     

Modeling access to public transport in urban areas

It is important to measure public transport accessibility to help improve the sustainability of transport systems in metropolitan areas. Although many studies have defined different approaches for measuring public transport accessibility, there have been limited methods developed for measuring accessibility levels that incorporate spatial aspects. Population density is an important distributional indicator that has also been ignored in previous methods developed for quantifying accessibility. This paper outlines the research context for measurement of public transport accessibility and then describes a methodology developed as well as an application the Public Transport Accessibility Index in Melbourne area, Australia. Using the Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity dataset, we applied separate‐ordered logit regression models to examine how the new index performs with a series of predictor variables compared with two existing approaches. Key findings indicate that there is a higher probability of public transport patronage in areas with higher levels of accessibility. Furthermore, it was found using statistical modelling that the new index produces better results compared with previous approaches. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analysis of the Spanish high capacity road network criticality

The analysis of complex networks has been carried out in different fields using an ample variety of method and concepts. Recently, in the general literature of regional economics, the concepts of resilience, connectivity, vulnerability and criticality have been gaining their momentum. The aim of this paper is to provide an analytical framework, using well-known accessibility indicators, in order to calculate the critical links or road sections of the Spanish high-capacity road network. Our analysis will be based on approximately four hundred sections that will be classified in five different groups according to their criticality degree in the whole network. Our analysis will be complemented with the comparison of the results obtained in five different scenarios, namely the average criticality using the effects on the whole country, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Pontevedra. Furthermore, the paper will also analyze what kind of intrinsic characteristics of the sections favor or not the links’ criticality using a method based on a classification and regression tree. This analysis is crucial to understand other important concepts that are recently being studied in network and spatial economics, like, for example, resilience and vulnerability. It is concluded that the number of relations or routes, being a trunk or not, the road density and the time to Madrid capital play an important role in the criticality of the roads section in the high capacity road network.     

Exploring spatial variety in patterns of activity-travel behaviour: initial results from the Toronto Travel-Activity Panel Survey (TTAPS)

Studies of urban travel behaviour typically focus on weekday activities and commuting. This is surprising given the rising contribution of discretionary activities to daily travel that has occurred during the last few decades. Moreover, current understanding of the relationship between travel behaviour and land use remains incomplete, with little research carried out to explore spatial properties of activity-travel behaviour during the off-peak and weekend time periods. Weekend behaviours, for example, influenced by the availability of time and the spatiotemporal distribution of “weekend” destinations, likely produce spatially and temporally distinct activity-travel patterns. Using data from the first wave of the Toronto Travel-Activity Panel Survey (TTAPS), this paper examines an area of research that has received little attention; namely, the presence of spatial variety in activity-travel behaviour. The paper begins by looking at the extent to which individuals engage in spatially repetitive location choices during the course of a single week. Area-based measures of geographical extent and activity dispersion are then used to expose differences in weekday-to-weekend and day-to-day activity-travel patterns. Examination of unclassified activities carried out over a 1 week period reveals a level of spatial repetition that does not materialise across activities classified by type, travel mode, and planning strategy. Despite the inherent spatial flexibility offered by the personal automobile, spatial repetition is also found to be surprisingly similar across travel modes. The results also indicate weekday-to-weekend, and day-to-day fluctuations in spatial properties of individual activity-travel behaviour. These findings challenge the utility of the short-run survey as an instrument for capturing archetypal patterns of spatial behaviour. In addition, the presence of a weekday-to-weekend differential in spatial behaviour suggests that policies targeting weekday travel reduction could have little impact on travel associated with weekend activities.

Measuring the performance of airport resilience to severe weather events

The increased severe weather events in recent years as a result of global climate change has created a substantial challenge for aviation system operation. Although transportation engineers and planners have attempted to improve system resilience through the adaptation of new technologies and the implementation of various strategies to achieve effective risk management, it remains unclear how resilience performance (measured by the speed of recovery) of airports varies in different severe weather events and what factors may explain such variations. This paper addresses these fundamental questions using the aviation system in China as an example. A resilience metric, which reflects the speed of recovery (bounce back) from a shock, was developed to measure the performance of airport resilience under various severe weather conditions. In addition, an empirical econometric analysis was conducted based on a dataset that includes both detailed aviation performance and weather conditions for the period of October 2016 – September 2017. The research findings show that airport resilience to severe weather events does vary substantially based on factors, such as weather conditions, airport capacity, and the level of modal substitution. In particular, the recovery time of air services in central and south China tends to be relatively longer in thunderstorms than other weather conditions. The study also confirms that modal substitution is a very effective resilience tactic of the transportation system as the recovery speed of air service was found to be faster by 22.9% if an alternative mode, such as high-speed rail (HSR) service was also available in the city.     

A new measure of resilience: An application to the London Underground

The many varied views on resilience indicate that it is an important concept which has significance in many disciplines, from ecology to psychology to risk/disaster management. Therefore, it is important to be able to quantifiably measure the resilience of systems, and thus be able to make decisions on how the resilience of the system can be improved. In this paper we will work with the definition, due to Pimm (1991), that resilience is “how fast a variable that has been displaced from equilibrium returns to it.” We will think of a system as being more or less resilient depending on the speed with which a system recovers from disruptive events or shocks. Here we consider systems which revert to an equilibrium state from shocks, and introduce a measure of resilience by providing a quantification of the rapidity of these systems’ recovery from shocks.We use a mean-reverting stochastic model to study the diffusive effects of shocks and we apply this model to the case of the London Underground. As a shock diffuses through the network, the human-flow in the network recovers from the shock. The speed with which the passenger counts return to normal is an indicator of how quickly the line is able to recover from the shock and thereafter resume normal operations.     

A method to evaluate equitable accessibility: combining ethical theories and accessibility-based approaches

In this paper, we present the case that traditional transport appraisal methods do not sufficiently capture the social dimensions of mobility and accessibility. However, understanding this is highly relevant for policymakers to understand the impacts of their transport decisions. These dimensions include the distribution of mobility and accessibility levels over particular areas or for specific population groups, as well as how this may affect various social outcomes, including their levels of participation, social inclusion and community cohesion. In response, we propose a method to assess the socially relevant accessibility impacts (SRAIs) of policies in some of these key dimensions. The method combines the use of underlying ethics principles, more specifically the theories of egalitarianism and sufficientarianism, in combination with accessibility-based analysis and the Lorenz curve and Gini index. We then demonstrate the method in a case study example. Our suggestion is that policymakers can use these ethical perspectives to determine the equity of their policies decisions and to set minimum standards for local transport delivery. This will help them to become more confident in the development and adoption of new decision frameworks that promote accessibility over mobility and which also disaggregate the costs and benefits of transport policies over particular areas or for specific under-served population groups.     

A cluster analysis of cyclists in Europe: common patterns,behaviours, and attitudes

Transportation - This study uses cluster analysis on a sample of regular cyclists from six European countries (the U.K., the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, and Spain) to shed light on common...     

A comparative analysis of transportation-based accessibility to mental health services

The demand for mental health services has been growing stronger over the last couple of decades. This indicates the need to study and assess the access to these mental health services especially with a focus on the vulnerable populations having the greatest need. As such, this paper presents a Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based analysis in order to study and evaluate the accessibility of mental health facilities using the information on the spatial distributions of population and facilities, and regional traffic characteristics. For this purpose, different age group segments are utilized including the total population as well as those aged between 18 and 21, 22 and 49, 50 and 64, and those aged over 65 and 85. Focusing on the State of Florida, spatially detailed accessibility metrics are calculated with regard to healthcare facilities using travel times between population block groups and these critical mental health facilities. These estimates are used to calculate the weighted county accessibility scores for each county. Findings clearly delineate those counties that lack access to mental facilities, especially those in Northwest Florida, a demographically diverse and substantially rural region. This type of analysis can help planners and policy makers develop better strategies in order to provide adequate mental health care options needed in targeted locations.