Effects of information in road transport networks with recurrent congestion

This paper aims to gain more insight into the implications of information provision to drivers on the performance of road transport networks with recurrent congestion. For this purpose, a simulation program consisting of three components has been written. The first component is the traffic simulation model, the second component is the information provision mechanism, and the third component monitors the behavioural decision-making process of the drivers, which is modelled using a utility-based satisficing principle. Three types of information provision mechanisms will be considered: information based upon own-experience, after-trip information and real-time en route information. The findings in this paper, obtained in a hypothetical context, underline the important relationship betweenoverreaction, thelevel of market penetration and thequality of the information. High quality information allows a high level of market penetration, while low quality information, even when provided at low levels of market penetration, induces overreaction. Furthermore, real-time en route information is in particular beneficial during the process leading to a steady state; it reduces the variance in travel time considerably. The paper concludes with a discussion on the market potential of motorist information systems when commercially marketed.     

Direction dependent prices in public transport: A good idea? The back haul pricing problem for a monopolistic public transport firm

Markets for transport are often characterised by unequal demand in both directions: every morning during peak hours the trains are crowded while moving towards the direction of large cities, whereas they may be almost empty in the other direction. In this paper we discuss the implications of these imbalances for price setting of transport firms. From the viewpoint of economic theory, two regimes can be distinguished: one where – owing to price discrimination – the flows are equal, and one where unequal flows are the result. Special attention is paid to the case where the transport firm does not apply price discrimination, as is the case with most railway firms in Europe. We find that in the case of substantial joint costs, the introduction of price discrimination not only leads to an increase of profits, but also to positive effects on consumer surplus. This result differs from the standard result in the literature on industrial economics. The standard result purports that with linear demand functions price discrimination has a negative impact on the welfare of the average consumer and that this negative impact dominates the positive effect on profits of the producer.     

Access to railway stations and its potential in increasing rail use

The propensity to travel by rail, and not, for example by car, can be considered to be a factor of the rail service offered, the access to it and the characteristics of the population served. Efforts to increase rail use usually focus on the rail service itself while the accessibility of the rail network receives less attention. In this context, the paper has two broad aims. First, to evaluate how important the ‘access-to-the-station’ part of a rail journey is to passengers in their overall satisfaction with the rail journey and second, to investigate the balance between characteristics of the service, the access to it and the population served in determining rail use in different parts of the rail network. The analysis is carried out for the Netherlands. To achieve the first aim, we use the Dutch Railways customer satisfaction survey and apply principal component analysis and derived importance techniques to assess the relative importance of accessibility in determining the overall satisfaction with the rail journey. For the second aim, we use regression analysis to explain, at the Dutch postcode level, the propensity to use rail. We find that satisfaction with the level and quality of the access to the station is an important dimension of the rail journey which influences the overall satisfaction from that journey and that the quality and level of accessibility is an important element in explaining rail use. The conclusion reached is that in many parts of the rail network improving and expanding access services to the railway station can substitute for improving and expanding the services provided on the rail network and that it is probably more cost efficient when the aim is to increase rail use. These parts of the network are mainly in the periphery where the current level of rail service is relatively low.     

Airline’s choice of aircraft size – Explanations and implications

When facing a growth in demand, airlines tend to respond more by means of increasing frequencies than by increasing aircraft size. At many of the world’s largest airports there are fewer than 100 passengers per air transport movement, although congestion and delays are growing. Furthermore, demand for air transport is predicted to continue growing but aircraft size is not. This paper aims to investigate and explain this phenomenon, the choice of relatively small aircraft. It seems that this choice is associated mainly with the benefits of high frequency service, the competitive environment in which airlines operate and the way airport capacity is allocated and priced. Regression analysis of over 500 routes in the US, Europe and Asia provides empirical evidence that the choice of aircraft size is mainly influenced by route characteristics (e.g. distance, level of demand and level of competition) and almost not at all by airport characteristics (e.g. number of runways and whether the airport is a hub or slot coordinated). We discuss the implications of this choice of aircraft size and suggest that some market imperfections exist in the airline industry leading airlines to offer excessive frequency on some routes and too low frequency on others.     

The impact of climate change and weather on transport: An overview of empirical findings

This paper presents a survey of the empirical literature on the effects of climate change and weather conditions on the transport sector. Despite mixed evidence on many issues, several patterns can be observed. On a global scale especially shifts in tourism and agricultural production due to increased temperatures may lead to shifts in passenger and freight transport. The predicted rise in sea levels and the associated increase in frequency and intensity of storm surges and flooding incidences may furthermore be some of the most worrying consequences of climate change, especially for coastal areas. Climate change related shifts in weather patterns might also cause infrastructure disruptions. Clear patterns are that precipitation affects road safety by increasing accident frequency but decreasing severity. Precipitation also increases congestion, especially during peak hours. Furthermore, an increased frequency of low water levels may considerably increase costs of inland waterway transport. Despite these insights, the net impact of climate change on generalised costs of the various transport modes are uncertain and ambiguous, with a possible exception for inland waterway transport.     

Using value of statistical life for the ex ante evaluation of transport policy options: a discussion based on ethical theory

This paper aims to discuss a number of questions that are highly important for the ex ante evaluation of the safety impacts of transport policy options, from the perspective of ethical theory: (1) Is it morally OK to express prevention on acceptance of fatalities or risks in monetary terms? (2) How useful is the concept of the value of a statistical life (VOSL) for ex ante evaluations of transport policy options? (3) What are the pros and cons of pricing protection of lives or prevention of risks in ex ante evaluations? (4) Which methods are available for expressing (protection of) human lives in monetary terms, and what are the main related methodological discussions? (5) Are all safety-related costs generally included in ex ante evaluations of the safety impacts of transport policy options, and if not: what is the relevance of excluded costs categories from an ethical perspective? (6) How important is the distribution of safety effects from an ethical perspective? The answer to the first question highly depends on the ethical theory that is used. With respect to question 2 we think that the VOSL is a useful concept, but that its application is not straightforward, for several reasons. Thirdly we think that probably pricing safety improves the quality of decision making, but to the best of our knowledge there is no research to underpin this expectation. The answer to question 4 is that several methods exist to estimate the value of a statistical life (VOSL), willingness-to-pay (WTP) methods being the most common category of methods. However, several methodological issues arise that make estimates of VOSL less straightforward. With respect to question 5 we conclude that behaviour-related avoidance costs are often overlooked and that these costs are relevant from an ethical perspective because the freedom to move and the freedom to participate in activities are challenged. Finally the answer to question 6 is that from an ethical perspective, in terms of the evaluation of policy measures, it might matter which groups of the population are the victims of the transport system, or are at risk. Egalitarian theories as well as sufficientarianism are useful theories to discuss distribution effects. Different theories conclude differently.     

When strike comes to town… anticipated and actual behavioural reactions to a one-day,pre-announced,complete rail strike in the Netherlands

We conducted secondary analysis on data collected among rail users, days before and after a national rail strike in the Netherlands. Our aim was to compare anticipated and actual behavioural reactions to the rail strike, investigate associations with traveller and trip characteristics, and perceived behavioural control and satisfaction with the chosen alternative. Forty-four percent of the people who had anticipated to travel by train on the day of the strike abandoned their trip, 24% switched to car as driver, 14% switched to another mode (as passenger), 18% stayed with the train and rescheduled the planned activity to another day. Almost half of people who had anticipated travelling by car expected to change behaviour as well. Multinomial logistic regression showed low preference for car among rail users. Considerable marginal effects were found for several variables, e.g.: young people and females were less likely to switch to car; short and middle distance trips were less likely abandoned or switched to another day; commute and business trips were more likely done by car, and business trips less likely cancelled. Despite high levels of perceived behavioural control and satisfaction with the chosen alternative, permanent modal shift as result of this strike is not expected.     

Modal-split effects of climate change: The effect of low water levels on the competitive position of inland waterway transport in the river Rhine area

Future climate change is expected to affect inland waterway transport in most main natural waterways in Europe. For the river Rhine it is expected that, in summer, more and longer periods with low water levels will occur. In periods of low water levels inland waterway vessels have to reduce their load factors and, as a result, transport prices per tonne will increase. One possible consequence of these higher transport prices is a deterioration of the competitive position of inland waterway transport compared with rail and road transport, and thus a change in modal split. We study this issue using a GIS-based software model called NODUS which provides a tool for the detailed analysis of freight transportation over extensive multimodal networks. We assess the effect of low water levels on the costs of transport operations for inland waterway transport in North West Europe under several climate scenarios. It turns out, that the effect on the modal split is limited. Under the most extreme climate scenario, inland waterway transport would lose about 5.4% of the quantity that is currently being transported annually in the part of the European inland waterway transport market considered. The very dry year of 2003 can be seen as an analogue for this scenario.     

Efficiency of urban public transit: A meta analysis

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to provide a statistical overview of the literature on public transit efficiency performance. Second, to statistically explain the variation in efficiency findings reported in the literature. To this end, first some key concepts of efficiency analysis will be introduced, while next the different frontier methodologies that are used in the literature will be discussed. The empirical part of this paper consists of a statistical summary of the literature as well as meta-regression analyses for different samples of the literature in order to identify key determinants of technical efficiency (TE) of public transit operators. For a broad sample of observations, we found significant and consistent effects of the type of database, region and output measurement method. For the sample of non-parametric studies we found that the type of frontier assumptions also have an impact on the efficiency ratio. Further results show that there is no statistical difference in TE ratios between parametric and non-parametric studies. Finally, we found a positive univariate relationship between the number of inputs in the estimated specification and the efficiency ratio.     

Comparative performance analysis of European airports by means of extended data envelopment analysis

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has become an established approach for analyzing and comparing efficiency results of corporate organizations or economic agents. It has also found wide application in comparative studies on airport efficiency. The standard DEA approach to comparative airport efficiency analysis has two feeble elements, viz. a methodological weakness and a substantive weakness. The methodological weakness originates from the choice of uniform efficiency improvement assessment, whereas the substantive weakness in airport efficiency analysis concerns the insufficient attention for short‐term and long‐term adjustment possibilities in the production inputs determining airport efficiency. The present paper aims to address both flaws by doing the following: (i) designing a data‐instigated distance friction minimization (DFM) model as a generalization of the standard Banker–Charnes–Cooper model with a view to the development of a more appropriate efficiency improvement projection model in the Banker–Charnes–Cooper version of DEA and (ii) including as factor inputs also lumpy or rigid factors that are characterized by short‐term indivisibility or inertia (and hence not suitable for short‐run flexible adjustment in new efficiency stages), as is the case for runways of airports. This so‐called fixed factor case will be included in the DFM submodel of the DEA. This extended DEA—with a DFM and a fixed factor component—will be applied to a comparative performance analysis of several major airports in Europe. Finally, our comparative study on airport efficiency analysis will be extended by incorporating also the added value of the presence of shopping facilities at airports for their relative economic performance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.