Impacts of combining partial and general equilibrium modelling in freight transport analyses – a forest sector case study from Norway

Abstract

The forest sector in Norway is very transport intensive, accounting for approximately 14% of total domestic freight transport traffic on Norwegian roads. This paper presents an analysis linking a general equilibrium freight transport modelling tool with a partial equilibrium model of the forest sector. The freight transport model predicts transport costs, modal split and transport patterns, and the results are treated as inputs to the forest sector model. The objective of the paper is to analyse the modelling effect of taking forest sector model effects back into the freight transport model and treated as new demand. Compared to a base scenario for the year 2020, we compare analyses with and without this new demand from the forest sector model back into the freight transport modelling tool.     

Review of Road Hauliers' Measures for Increasing Transport Efficiency and Sustainability in Urban Freight Distribution

This paper analyses a set of measures for transport efficiency improvements from the perspective of the road haulier, particularly regarding improvements suitable for urban distribution and their effects. The first part of the paper addresses literature within the area of transport efficiency. The second part reviews potential transport efficiency improvements with respect to environmental impact and the number of actors involved in the decision. The third part presents results from interviews with the CEOs of two road hauliers regarding their opinions of the transport efficiency measures. Finally, the conclusions about transport efficiency measures are summarized in a matrix, taking into account whether these measures can be considered as costs or benefits for the actors involved. The results show ambiguous and often intricate relations with regard to costs and benefits for the actors in the system. They also explain part of the inertia to change within the freight industry. However, an increasing number of transport operators are now offering more sustainable transport solutions and this service might gain them a competitive advantage in the future.     

Energy use in passenger transport in OECD countries: Changes since 1970

This paper analyzes some of the changes that took place in the structure of energy use for passenger travel in industrialized countries. Data is presented on energy use and travel activity for the four major modes of travel — automobile, bus, rail and air — for eight OECD countries: the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and Norway. We use the Laspeyres and Divisia indices to analyze the causes of the change in energy use between 1970 and 1987. The total change in energy use for travel is explained by changes in domestic passenger transport volumes, the mix of modes of travel, and the energy intensities of each mode. We have found two important effects that have a fundamental impact on energy use for travel since 1970. First, shifts among modes of transport towards more energy-intensive ones and large increases in volumes of travel (measured in passenger-kilometers) increased energy use for travel in many OECD countries, often more rapidly than the overall growth in GDP. Second, energy intensities, measured in mJ/passenger-kilometer, of passenger transport fell only in a few countries between 1970 and 1987. Even though individual automobiles have become more energy-efficient, greater size, power, and weight, worsening traffic conditions in Japan and Europe, and fewer people in cars restrained or even offset efficiency improvements. Particularly notable are the increases in intensities in Japan and Germany. The most important exception to this trend was the United States, but the intensities of land-based travel remain higher there than in most other countries. These findings lead to a pessimistic outlook for future energy use for travel. After all, if little or no energy was saved during the decades of high fuel prices, what can be expected in the 1990s?     

Transport policy prioritisation for Dublin

Internalisation of the external costs of transport is currently the subject of much debate. Estimation of costs such as those of pollution and congestion is a primary element in any strategy involving policies for use in the internalisation of these costs. The objective of the TRENEN II STRAN project, funded by the EU, was to develop a methodology for estimation of the marginal external costs of transport. The model developed during the project was used in a series of case studies. One of the case studies, that conducted for Dublin, is reported in this paper. A brief summary of the TRENEN approach is presented followed by the results for Dublin produced from policies such as Do Nothing, Uniform pricing (internalising external costs by means of fuel taxation), Congestion Pricing (cordon pricing) and a first-best policy, the Full Optimum where one assumes that the policy maker has perfect pricing instruments available. As one would expect, the model shows that the greatest reduction in traffic level and external costs would occur if it were possible to introduce a highly differentiated and sophisticated pricing system. Increased taxation on fuel is not an efficient policy as it does not address the marginal external costs of congestion in a way that time-differentiated road-use pricing would. The results from testing of the different measures are interesting particularly those relating to parking and the way in which residents within the CBD and commuters to the CBD are dealt with. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Empirics of multi-modal traffic networks – Using the 3D macroscopic fundamental diagram

Traffic is multi-modal in most cities. However, the impacts of different transport modes on traffic performance and on each other are unclear – especially at the network level. The recent extension of the macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) into the 3D-MFD offers a novel framework to address this gap at the urban scale. The 3D-MFD relates the network accumulation of cars and public transport vehicles to the network travel production, for either vehicles or passengers. No empirical 3D-MFD has been reported so far.In this paper, we present the first empirical estimate of a 3D-MFD at the urban scale. To this end, we use data from loop detectors and automatic vehicle location devices (AVL) of the public transport vehicles in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. We compare two different areas within the city, that differ in their topology and share of dedicated lanes for public transport. We propose a statistical model of the 3D-MFD, which estimates the effects of the vehicle accumulation on car and public transport speeds under multi-modal traffic conditions. The results quantify the effects of both, vehicles and passengers, and confirm that a greater share of dedicated lanes reduces the marginal effects of public transport vehicles on car speeds. Lastly, we derive a new application of the 3D-MFD by identifying the share of public transport users that maximizes the journey speeds in an urban network accounting for all motorized transport modes.     

Should subsidies to urban passenger transport be increased? A spatial CGE analysis for a German metropolitan area

In many countries passenger transport is significantly subsidized in a variety of ways for various reasons. The objective of this paper is to examine efficiency, distributional, environmental (CO₂ emissions) and spatial effects of increasing different kinds of passenger transport subsidies discriminating between household types, travel purposes and travel modes. The effects are calculated by applying a numerical spatial general equilibrium approach calibrated to an average German metropolitan area. In extension to most studies focusing on only one kind of subsidy, we compare the effects of different transport subsidies within the same unified framework that allows to account for two features not yet considered simultaneously in studies on transport subsidies: endogenous labor supply and location decisions. Furthermore, congestion, travel mode choice, travel related CO₂ emissions and institutional details regarding the tax system in Germany are taken into account. The results suggest that optimal subsidy levels are either small or even zero. While subsidizing public transport is welfare enhancing, subsidies to urban road traffic reduce aggregate urban welfare. Concerning the latter it is shown that making investments in urban road infrastructure capacity or reducing gasoline taxes may even be harmful to residents using predominantly automobile. In contrast, pure commuting subsidies hardly affect aggregate urban welfare, but distributional effects are substantial. All policies cause suburbanization of city residents and (except for subsidizing public transport) contribute to urban sprawl by raising the spatial imbalance of residences and jobs but the effect is relatively small. In addition, the policies induce a very differentiated pattern regarding distributional effects, benefits of landowners and environmental effects.     

Technical and environmental effects of biodiesel use in local public transport

Biodiesel use in local public transport could be especially significant in improving air quality in cities. The purpose of the experiments described in this paper was to evaluate the various (10, 20 and 50%) blends of biodiesel with diesel in the context of the engine and pollution aspects. As regards the experimental use of these findings on municipal buses, these experiments were the first reference in Hungary. The ages (15–20 years) and types of buses (Ikarus-280, Ikarus-260) used in the experiments are still common vehicles in Hungarian public transport. During our measurements, there was a significant difference between the change in fuel consumption of articulated and solo buses in traffic when compared to test bench measurements. The proportion of the engine performance reduction is nearly the same as that for biodiesel share in the blends. Most pollutants were decreasing (both at idle and full rpm), but this reduction is not directly proportional to the increase of the blending percentage. However, as for CO₂, emission increase was observed in the case of idle rpm in comparison to normal diesel operation, even though this phenomenon was not due to biodiesel use, but the catalytic converter and the fact that biodiesel was used for the first time in the engine concerned.     

An intermodal freight transport system for optimal supply chain logistics

Complexity in transport networks evokes the need for instant response to the changing dynamics and uncertainties in the upstream operations, where multiple modes of transport are often available, but rarely used in conjunction. This paper proposes a model for strategic transport planning involving a network wide intermodal transport system. The system determines the spatio-temporal states of road based freight networks (unimodal) and future traffic flow in definite time intervals. This information is processed to devise efficient scheduling plans by coordinating and connecting existing rail transport schedules to road based freight systems (intermodal). The traffic flow estimation is performed by kernel based support vector mechanisms while mixed integer programming (MIP) is used to optimize schedules for intermodal transport network by considering various costs and additional capacity constraints. The model has been successfully applied to an existing Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) distribution network in India with encouraging results.     

On the distribution of urban road space for multimodal congested networks

Transport systems in real cities are complex with many modes of transport sharing and competing for limited road space. This work intends to understand how space distributions for modes and interactions among modes affect network traffic performance. While the connection between performance of transport systems and general land allocation is the subject of extensive research, space allocation for interacting modes of transport is an open research question. Quantifying the impact of road space distribution on the performance of a congested multimodal transport system with a dynamic aggregated model remains a challenge. In this paper, a multimodal macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) is developed to represent the traffic dynamics of a multimodal transport system. Optimization is performed with the objective of minimizing the total passenger hours traveled (PHT) to serve the total demand by redistributing road space among modes. Pricing strategies are also investigated to provide a higher demand shift to more efficient modes. We find by an application to a bi-modal two-region city that (i) the proposed model captures the operational characteristics of each mode, and (ii) optimal dynamic space distribution strategies can be developed. In practice, the approach can serve as a physical dynamic model to inform space distribution strategies for policy makers with different goals of mobility.     

Impacts of trade related sustainability strategies on freight transportation: Modelling framework and application for France

The circular and functional economies are being presented in the literature as potential strategies for future sustainable societies. In terms of the consequences for supply chains, they will promote a much more dispersed and diversified, local and network based usage of goods than the current economy, which is comparatively linear, concentrated, long distance oriented and scale economy based. A gap in the literature is the assessment of the effects of these systems on freight transport flows. In our paper, we present a first attempt at estimating this impact using freight transport scenario building and quantitative modelling. In order to translate the main parameters that characterize these systems into factors determining freight transportation volumes, we develop a framework based on a typology of goods categories describing functional and spatial proximity between producers and consumers. In order to simulate changes in the economy, we develop scenarios for the shifting of goods from one category to another and, additionally, include internalization policies that should guide their realization. We calculate the impacts on freight flows using a new interregional transport model for France that includes distribution chains and produces estimates of external costs of transport. Our results show that circular and functional economies could lead to a 2–5% reduction of air pollutant emissions and up to a 14–26% reduction if combined with the internalization of external costs. The scenario with ongoing mass production for differentiated demand is found to lead to a 5% increase of environmental impacts compared to the baseline.     

On the use of Lagrangian observations from public transport and probe vehicles to estimate car space-mean speeds in bi-modal urban networks

The Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) has been recognized as a powerful framework to develop network-wide control strategies. Recently, the concept has been extended to the three-dimensional MFD, used to investigate traffic dynamics of multi-modal urban cities, where different transport modes compete for, and share the limited road infrastructure. In most cases, the macroscopic traffic variables are estimated using either loop detector data (LDD) or floating car data (FCD). Taking into account that none of these data sources might be available, in this study we propose novel estimation methods for the space-mean speed of cars based on: (i) the automatic vehicle location (AVL) data of public transport where no FCD is available; and (ii) the fused FCD and AVL data sources where both are available, but FCD is not complete. Both methods account for the network configuration layout and the configuration of the public transport system. The first method allows one to derive either uni-modal or bi-modal macroscopic fundamental relationships, even in the extreme cases where no LDD nor FCD exist. The second method does not require a priori knowledge about FCD penetration rates and can significantly improve the estimation accuracy of the macroscopic fundamental relationships. Using empirical data from the city of Zurich, we demonstrate the applicability and validate the accuracy of the proposed methods in real-life traffic scenarios, providing a cross-comparison with the existing estimation methods. Such empirical comparison is, to the best of our knowledge, the first of its kind. The findings show that the proposed AVL-based estimation method can provide a good approximation of the average speed of cars at the network level. On the other hand, by fusing the FCD and AVL data, especially in case of sparse FCD, it is possible to obtain a more representative outcome regarding the performance of multi-modal traffic.     

Roadway determinants of bicyclist exposure to volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide

Few studies have quantified relationships between bicyclist exposure to air pollution and roadway and traffic variables. As a result, transportation professionals are unable to easily estimate exposure differences among bicycle routes for network planning, design, and analysis. This paper estimates the effects of roadway and travel characteristics on bicyclist exposure concentrations, controlling for meteorology and background conditions. Concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and carbon monoxide (CO) are modeled using high-resolution data collected on-road. Results indicate that average daily traffic (ADT) provides a parsimonious way to characterize the impact of roadway characteristics on bicyclists’ exposure. VOC and CO exposure increase by approximately 2% per 1000 ADT, robust to different regression model specifications. Exposure on off-street facilities is higher than at a park, but lower than on-street riding – with the exception of a path through an industrial corridor with significantly higher exposure. VOC exposure is 20% higher near intersections. Traffic, roadway, and travel variables have more explanatory power in the VOC models than the CO model. The quantifications in this paper enable calculation of expected exposure differences among travel paths for planning and routing applications. The findings also have policy and design implications to reduce bicyclists’ exposure. Separation between bicyclists and motor vehicle traffic is a necessary but not sufficient condition to reduce exposure concentrations; off-street paths are not always low-exposure facilities.     

Modelling the full costs of an intermodal and road freight transport network

This paper develops a model for calculating comparable combined internal and external costs of intermodal and road freight transport networks. Internal costs consist of the operational-private costs borne by the transport and intermodal terminal operators, and the time costs of goods tied in transit. The external costs include the costs of the impacts of both networks on society and the environment such as local and global air pollution, congestion, noise pollution, and traffic accidents. The model is applied to the simplified configurations of both networks using the inputs from the European freight transport system. The objective is to investigate some effects of European Union policy, which aims to internalise the external costs of transport, on the prospective competition between two networks from a social perspective.     

When are subsidies to trans-European network projects justified?

The trans-European transport network (TEN-T) encompasses the major planned transport infrastructure in Europe, ranging from high speed rail to port infrastructure. Projects in this category are considered priority projects and receive European subsidies; but these have been insufficient to get these projects off the ground. This paper addresses two research questions. First, it sketches the basic economics of cross-boundary infrastructure projects: what pricing and investment policies can we expect, what is the role of through traffic and high fixed costs of infrastructure? Second, it examines briefly what lessons the EU could draw from the experience of other existing federal funding institutions like the US and Germany. These ideas are used to propose a new subsidy scheme for the TEN-T projects.     

Environmental benefits from better freight transport management: freight traffic in a VAR model

Most macro empirical studies on the price elasticity in the freight transport sector focus on the demand for transport. However, most of the external costs from the freight transport sector are more closely linked with the traffic volumes. In the paper an explicit distinction between traffic and transport demand is made by regarding traffic as an input in the shippers’ production of transport services, while transport demand is derived from firms’ production of output. An empirical analysis based on aggregate time series is carried out in a VAR model, where the stationary long run relationships are estimated using the so-called ‘Johansen Procedure’. The estimated price elasticity with respect to traffic (−0.81) is considerably higher than the elasticity with respect to transport (−0.47).     

A framework to evaluate policy options for supporting electric vehicles in urban freight transport

Electric vehicles (EVs) are considered as a feasible alternative to traditional vehicles. Few studies have addressed the impacts of policies supporting EVs in urban freight transport. To cast light on this topic, we established a framework combining an optimization model with economic analysis to determine the optimal behavior of an individual delivery service provider company and social impacts (e.g., externalities and welfare) in response to policies designed to support EVs, such as purchase subsidy, limited access (zone fee) to congestion/low-emission zones with exemptions for EVs, and vehicle taxes with exemptions for EVs. Numerical experiments showed that the zone fee can increase the company’s total logistics costs but improve the social welfare. It greatly reduced the external cost inside the congestion/low-emission zone with a high population, dense pollution, and heavy traffic. The vehicle taxes and subsidy were found to have the same influence on the company and society, although they have different effects with low tax/subsidy rates because their different effects on vehicle routing plans. Finally, we performed a sensitivity analysis. Local factors at the company and city levels (e.g., types of vehicle and transport network) are also important to designing efficient policies for urban logistics that support EVs.     

An assessment of the performance of the European long intermodal freight trains (LIFTS)

Intermodal rail/road freight transport has always been considered as a competitive alternative to its road freight counterpart in the European medium- to long-distance corridors (markets). Such consideration has been based on the increasing competitiveness of some innovative rail services and the existing and prospective performance of both modes in terms of the full social – internal or operational and external – costs. The most recent innovation of rail technologies and related services launched by some European railway companies, still at the conceptual level, is the Long Intermodal Freight Train (LIFT). This is supposed to be a block train operating in long-distance corridors (markets) with a substantial and regular freight demand.This paper develops analytical models for assessing the performance of the LIFTs, the already-operating Conventional Intermodal Freight Trains (CIFTs), and their road counterpart as well. The performance consists of the full – internal (private) and external – costs of the door-to-door delivery of loading units – containers, swap-bodies, and semi-trailers. The internal costs embrace the operational costs of the transport (rail and road) and intermodal terminal operators. The external costs include the costs of the impacts of door-to-door delivery of loading units on society and the environment. These negative externalities include noise, air pollution, traffic accidents, and congestion.The models are applied to a simplified version of intermodal and road transport system using inputs from the European freight transport sector. The aims are to compare the full costs of particular modalities in order to investigate the potential of the LIFTs as compared with the CIFTs in improving the internal efficiency of the rail freight sector and its competitiveness with respect to its road counterpart. In addition, the paper attempts to assess some effects on the potential modal shift of EU (European Union) transport policies on internalizing transport externalities.     

Estimating the marginal cost of railway track renewals using corner solution models

Economic theory advocates marginal cost pricing for efficient utilisation of transport infrastructure. A growing body of literature has emerged on the issue of rail marginal infrastructure wear and tear costs, but the majority of the work is focused on costs for infrastructure maintenance. Railway track renewals are a substantial part of an infrastructure manager’s budget, but in disaggregated statistical analyses they cause problems for traditional regression models since there is a piling up of values of the dependent variable at zero. Previous econometric work has sought to circumvent the problem by aggregation in some way. In this paper we instead apply corner solution models to disaggregate (track-section) data, including the zero observations. We derive track renewal cost elasticities with respect to traffic volumes and in turn marginal renewal costs using Swedish railway renewal data over the period 1999–2009. This paper is the first attempt in the literature to apply corner solution models, and in particular the two-part model, to disaggregate renewal cost data in railways. It is also the first paper that we are aware of to report usage elasticities specifically for renewal costs and therefore adds important new evidence to the previous literature where there is a paucity of studies on renewals and considerable uncertainty over the effects of rail traffic on renewal costs. In the Swedish context, we find that the inclusion of marginal track renewal costs in the track access pricing regime, which currently only reflects marginal maintenance costs, would add substantially to the existing track access charge. EU legislation requires that access charges reflect the ‘costs directly incurred as a result of operating the train service’, which should include a marginal renewal cost component. This change would also increase the cost recovery ratio of the Swedish infrastructure manager, thus meeting a policy objective of the national government.     

Distance and time in intermodal goods transport networks in Europe: A generic approach

This paper is about distance and time as factors of competitiveness of intermodal transport. It reviews the relevance of the factors, evaluates time models in practice, compares network distances and times in alternative bundling networks with geometrically varied layouts, and points out how these networks perform in terms of vehicle scale, frequency and door-to-door time. The analysis focuses on intermodal transport in Europe, especially intermodal rail transport, but is in search for generic conclusions. The paper does not incorporate the distance and time results in cost models, and draws conclusions for transport innovation, wherever this is possible without cost modelling. For instance, the feature vehicle scale, an important factor of transport costs, is analysed and discussed.Distance and time are important factors of competitiveness of intermodal transport. They generate (direct) vehicle costs and – via transport quality – indirect costs to the customers. Clearly direct costs/prices are the most important performance of the intermodal transport system. The relevance of quality performances is less clarified. Customers emphasise the importance of a good match between the transport and the logistic system. In this framework (time) reliability is valued high. Often transport time, arrival and departure times, and frequency have a lower priority. But such conclusions can hardy be generalised. The range of valuations reflects the heterogeneity of situations. Some lack of clarity is obviously due to overlapping definitions of different performance types.The following parts of the paper are about two central fields of network design, which have a large impact on transport costs and quality, namely the design of vehicle roundtrips (and acceleration of transport speed) and the choice of bundling type: do vehicles provide direct services or run in what we call complex bundling networks? An example is the hub-and-spoke network. The objective of complex bundling is to increase vehicle scale and/or transport frequency even if network volumes are restricted. Complex bundling requires intermediate nodes for the exchange of load units. Examples of complex bundling networks are the hub-and-spoke network or the line network.Roundtrip and bundling design are interrelated policy fields: an acceleration of the roundtrip speed, often desirable from the cost point of view, can often only be carried out customer friendly, if the transport frequency is increased. But often the flow size is not sufficient for a higher frequency. Then a change of bundling model can be an outcome.Complex bundling networks are known to have longer average distances and times, the latter also due to the presence of additional intermediate exchange nodes. However, this disadvantage is – inside the limits of maximal vehicle sizes – overruled by the advantage of a restricted number of network links. Therefore generally, complex bundling networks have shorter total vehicle distances and times. This expression of economies of scale implies lower vehicle costs per load unit.The last part of the paper presents door-to-door times of load units of complex bundling networks and compares them with unimodal road transport. The times of complex bundling networks are larger than that of networks with direct connections, but nevertheless competitive with unimodal road transport, except for short distances.