Abatement cost functions for incentive-based policies in the automobile market

This paper compares the outcomes of policies that target vehicle holdings with those that target vehicle usage using data from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey. Results show that a higher price of gasoline shifts vehicle holdings towards more fuel efficient vehicles and reduces the annual demand for miles, whereas imposing a fee on vehicles or a feebate program only shifts vehicle holdings towards more fuel efficient vehicles and has little to no impact on the demand for miles. While it is relatively expensive to reduce CO₂ emission through incentive-based policies, achieving any abatement level is more expensive through imposing fees on vehicles than gasoline taxes. In addition, the maximum amount of abatement attainable by a feebate program is relatively small and the same amount could be achieved by imposing a $0.73 gasoline tax per gallon.     

造价工程师对工程造价的控制和管理

工程造价的有效控制和管理是工程建设管理的重要组成部分。对造价工程师在投资决策阶段、设计阶段、实施阶段公路建设项目的造价控制进行了论述。     

The development of public attitudes towards the Stockholm congestion trial

A full-scale congestion charging trial was carried out in Stockholm the first months of 2006. Almost half of respondents in a county-wide survey stated that they changed their attitudes towards congestion charges during the trial. Most of them became more positive.An analysis of media shows that the attitudinal change in media towards the trial coincides with the attitudinal change of the public. There was no dramatic change in the proportion of articles expressing a negative view. Instead, the result indicates that the increase in positive views was driven by a shift from neutral to positive articles during the trial.In order to ascertain why the public attitudes swung, we have analysed the anticipated and perceived effects of the trial. Generally, the analysis seems to indicate that improved understanding of the type and magnitude of concrete effects was not a main driving force behind the attitudinal change. Instead, it seems that the public attitude changed because personal experience gave a new understanding of the implications of the charges for the personal well-being. This would imply that trials, generally, may be a more useful tool than information in the process of implementing ‘difficult’ policy measures, such as congestion charges.     

The cost of equity: Assessing transit accessibility and social disparity using total travel cost

Social equity is increasingly incorporated as a long-term objective into urban transportation plans. Researchers use accessibility measures to assess equity issues, such as determining the amount of jobs reachable by marginalized groups within a defined travel time threshold and compare these measures across socioeconomic categories. However, allocating public transit resources in an equitable manner is not only related to travel time, but also related to the out-of-pocket cost of transit, which can represent a major barrier to accessibility for many disadvantaged groups. Therefore, this research proposes a set of new accessibility measures that incorporates both travel time and transit fares. It then applies those measures to determine whether people residing in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada experience the same levels of transit accessibility as those living in other neighborhoods. Results are presented in terms of regional accessibility and trends by social indicator decile. Travel time accessibility measures estimate a higher number of jobs that can be reached compared to combined travel time and cost measures. However, the degree and impact of these measures varies across the social deciles. Compared to other groups in the region, residents of socially disadvantaged areas have more equitable accessibility to jobs using transit; this is reflected in smaller decreases in accessibility when fare costs are included. Generating new measures of accessibility combining travel time and transit fares provides more accurate measures that can be easily communicated by transportation planners and engineers to policy makers and the public since it translates accessibility measures to a dollar value.     

The effects of non-optimal pricing and investment policies for transportation facilities

A simulation model was used to show the impacts of non-optimal pricing and investment timing policies for a major airport and an urban expressway. It was found that: the losses of economic surplus due to non-optimal pricing and investment policies were relatively small (less than 1% of the net present value of economic surplus for optimal pricing and investment), that marginal cost pricing covers the capital cost of all but the first increment of capacity, that higher user fees will permit the facilities to break even with relatively small losses of economic surplus, that marginal cost pricing has some effect relative to existing pricing policies in delaying the dates new capacity is required and achieving better capacity utilization, and that the shape of the cost function has a substantial impact on the amount of capacity required.     

The marginal social cost of headway for a scheduled service

This brief paper derives the marginal social cost of headway for a scheduled service, i.e. the cost for users of marginal increases to the time interval between departures. In brief we may call it the value of headway in analogy with the value of travel time and the value of reliability. Users have waiting time costs as well as schedule delay costs measured relative to their desired time of arrival at the destination. They may either arrive at the station to choose just the next departure or they may plan for a specific departure in which case they incur also a planning cost. Then planning for a specific departure is costly but becomes more attractive at longer headways. Simple expressions for the user cost result. In particular, the marginal cost of headway is large at short headways and smaller at long headways. The difference in marginal costs is the value of time multiplied by half the headway.     

The transaction cost approach to modeling the demand for automobiles

The purchase of an automobile involves significant transaction costs in addition to the purchase price. Therefore, the assumptions implied by static car holding models are invalid. This paper describes a dynamic approach to the modeling of level-of-ownership and auto-type choice, based on a transaction choice model which utilizes information on past car ownership. The cost or disutility of a transaction depends on the attributes of the household and the purchased car, as well as on past car-ownership characteristics. A set of assumptions underlying the incorporation of transaction costs in the model is presented. The paper discusses the econometric implications of omitting the dynamic attributes (i.e., past ownership characteristics). A disaggregate model was estimated, using a choice-based sample consisting of a random sample of households enriched with a sample of households which transacted in the car market during the study period. This sampling method combined with a random choice of a subset of the car alternatives provides for a cost-effective method to estimate a transaction model.     

国家级综合运输枢纽型城市发展策略研究

以南京市为例,从枢纽型城市整体构建、综合运输通道系统、综合运输枢纽集疏运体系、保障策略四个方面综合提出构建国家级综合运输型城市的发展策略。     

Planning for cycling in the dispersed city: establishing a hierarchy of effectiveness of municipal cycling policies

Transportation - Urban utility cycling is being promoted widely due to various health, social, economic and environmental benefits. This study seeks to identify and rank which municipal-level...     

The influence of personality on acceptability of sustainable transport policies

Previous research has shown that fairness, infringement on freedom, and perceived effectiveness are determinants of transport pricing acceptability. In the present study we investigate determinants of acceptability of environmental (carbon) taxation for which trust in government and environmental concern are additional determinants. Carbon taxation is an extension of fuel taxes and may thus be viewed as transport pricing. Our main focus is on the role played by personality traits. Structural equation modeling reveals that acceptability is related to the personality traits extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Extraverted individuals have higher levels of trust in government which leads to higher acceptability. Also correlations between agreeableness and conscientiousness as well as environmental problem awareness and personal norm are observed. We discuss strategies for effective marketing of transportation policies considering how acceptability is related to personality traits.     

The cost saving potential of carsharing in a US context

Carsharing is a vehicle sharing service for those with occasional need of private transportation. Transportation planners are beginning to see great potential for carsharing in helping to create a more diversified and sustainable transport system. While it has grown quickly in the US in recent years, it is still far from the level where it can deliver significant aggregate benefits. A key element to the potential growth of carsharing is its ability to provide cost savings to those who adopt it in favor of vehicle ownership. This research seeks to quantify these potential cost savings. The costs of carsharing and vehicle ownership are compared based on actual vehicle usage patterns from a large survey of San Francisco Bay Area residents. The results of this analysis show that a significant minority of Bay Area households own a vehicle with a usage pattern that carsharing could accommodate at a lower cost. Further research is required to indentify how these cost savings translate to the adoption of carsharing.     

The abatement cost function for a representative vehicle inspection and maintenance program

Mandatory inspection and maintenance programs require on-road vehicles to be tested regularly and repaired if they are not in compliance with air emission regulations. We estimate the abatement cost function for a representative inspection and maintenance program. This is done by constructing a model of the statistical process that leads to non-compliance, parameterizing the model, and then by simulating the total abatement cost function. The model predicts that the marginal abatement cost for a major representative program is so high that even a small reduction in the abatement target leads to substantial cost savings to motorists. In addition, even for quite high levels of the abatement target, the optimal minimum testing age is substantially higher and the frequency of testing is much lower than is common in many jurisdictions.     

An ensemble approach for conflict detection in Free Flight by data mining

Airborne separation assurance is a key requirement for Free Flight operations. A variety of conflict detection (CD) and resolution algorithms have been developed for this task. A lack of rigorous evaluation and the existence of an infinite number of possible conflict geometries in Free Flight makes the choice of which algorithm to be placed in the cockpit a challenging task for the designers of future air traffic management (ATM) systems. In this paper, we propose an ensemble approach for CD in Free Flight. The ensemble consists of several CD algorithms, a rule set for each algorithm describing its learned behavior from its past performance and a switch mechanism to choose an appropriate CD algorithm given probe characteristics. A novel mechanism to evolve complex conflict scenarios, using genetic algorithms (GA), is developed and integrated in a fast time air traffic simulator to generate the performance data of CD algorithms. Data mining techniques are then employed to identify implicit patterns in the probe characteristics where the CD algorithms missed or falsely identified a conflict. These patterns are formulated as rule sets for each CD algorithm and are then used by a switch in the ensemble to route a probe for conflict prediction. Given probe characteristics, the CD algorithm, which is less likely to miss or falsely identify a conflict, is selected to evaluate the probe for potential conflict. The performance of the ensemble and of individual algorithms is evaluated by comparing the Pareto efficient set of solutions generated by them. The ensemble approach demonstrates a significant reduction in the number of missed detects and false alarms as compared to individual algorithms. The proposed methodology is capable of accommodating existing as well as new CD models and can be extended to other ATM concepts as well.     

The econometric estimation of airports’ cost function

The econometric estimation of cost functions has been proposed in the literature as a suitable approach in order to obtain estimations of marginal costs, efficiency levels and scale elasticities for transport industries. However, regarding the airport industry, no significant attention has been paid in developing an airport-specific estimation methodology rather than adapting the procedures applied to other industries. The lack of comparable airport data is one of the causes which could explain the scarcity of this literature in the past, as well as the use of very limited approaches to explain airport technology. This paper tries to overcome these limitations by developing an airport-specific methodology to estimate a multi-output long-run cost function using an unbalanced pooled database on 161 airports worldwide. The specification of hedonically-adjusted aircraft operations, domestic and international passengers, cargo and commercial revenues in the output vector, as well as the calculation of input prices are discussed. Both technical and allocative inefficiencies are specified in the model using a Stochastic Frontier method that has been estimated through Bayesian Inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods.     

The marginal cost taxation of a transportation network

The paper shows that if the cost and demand functions satisfy certain weak smoothness conditions then the marginal cost taxation of a transportation network is optimal in the usual local sense. Interactions between the cost of travel along a link and flow along other links and between the demand for travel along a route and flow along other routes are permitted.     

Accounting for systematic heterogeneity across car commuters in response to multiple TDM policies: case study of Tehran

Modeling commuters’ choice behavior in response to transportation demand management (TDM) helps in predicting the consequences of TDM policies. Although research looking at choice behavior has evolved to investigate preference heterogeneity in response to factors influencing mode choice, as far as we know, no study has considered taste variation across commuters in response to multiple TDM policies. This paper investigates the presence of systematic preference heterogeneity across commuters, in response to the TDM policies that can be explained by their socio-economic or commuting-related characteristics. Analysis is based on results of a stated preference survey developed using a Design of Experiments approach. Five policies were assessed in order to study the impact they had on how commuters chose their mode of transportation. These include increasing parking cost, increasing fuel cost, implementing cordon pricing, reducing transit time and improving access to transit facilities. For the sake of assessing both systematic and random preference heterogeneity across car commuters, a form of the Mixed Multinomial Logit (MMNL) model that identifies sources of heterogeneity and consequently makes the choice models less restrictive in considering both systematic and random preference variation across individuals was developed. The sample includes 366 individuals who regularly commute to their workplace in the city center of Tehran, Iran. The likelihood function value of this model shows a significant improvement compared to the base MNL model, using the same variables. The MMNL model shows that taste variation across the studied commuters results in differences in influences estimated for three policies: increasing parking cost, reducing transit time and improving access to transit. The analysis examines several distributions for random parameters to test the impacts of restricting distributions to allow for only normality. The results confirm the potential to improve model fit with alternative distributions.     

The role of subsidy policies in modernizing the structure of the bus transit industry

Full reliance on conventional forms of bus transit for peak hour needs reduces industry productivity and creates major new subsidy requirements. Restructuring of transit is needed to enable paratransit integration and other innovations than can improve efficiency. This paper discusses the industry's long-term neglect of efficiency and describes subsidy policies that would promote necessary changes.