Distributional effects of road pricing: Assessment of nine scenarios for Paris

The starting point of this paper is to consider that there is no general answer to the question of the equity of urban road pricing. We therefore simulate and compare the distributional effects on commuters of nine toll scenarios for Paris, assuming that utility is nonlinear in income. We show that the distributional pattern across income groups depends crucially on the level of traffic reduction induced by tolling. Stringent tolls are more favourable to low-income motorists. Equity effects also vary with toll design. Compared to a reference scenario which uniformly charges all motorists driving within Paris, an inbound cordon toll is detrimental to low-incomes. Conversely, granting a rebate to low CO₂ emission cars slightly improves their situation while an exemption for Paris residents is neutral. Surprisingly, it matters little for social equity whether toll revenues are allocated to all commuters or solely to public transport users.     

Suburbanization of jobs and the journey to work: A submarket analysis of commuting in the San Francisco bay area

Inrecent years, a debate has brewed over whether the decentralization of employment has been beneficial from a regional standpoint. In this article, we focus on one aspect of the debate: how the relocation of office workers from a downtown to a suburban location affects commuting patterns and mode choice. From a survey of 320 former downtown San Francisco workers who now work in the suburbs, we found that the average distance traveled remained essentially unchanged and that the average commuting speed increased. The most dramatic change, however, was the switch from public transit to drive-alone commuting. In the aggregate, we estimate that the change in job location was associated with nearly a threefold increase in vehicle miles traveled to work. While from a personal standpoint, employees seemed better off since they got to work faster and more comfortably, from a larger social and environmental perspective, the costs could be significant. More detailed analyses of commuter submarkets revealed that the transportation impacts vary considerably depending on whether the original residence was in the suburbs or central city and whether relocated workers had moved their residences in recent years. In general, those who remained in San Francisco and became reverse commuters were worst off whereas those who moved their residences out of the city were much better off in terms of job access. The article concludes that road pricing would be the best way to force motorists to internalize the external costs of increased drive-alone commuting. Second-best options would be to introduce development impact fees or employer-based trip reduction regulations.     

Identifying transit deserts for low-income commuters in Wuhan Metropolitan Area,China

The rapid expansion of many Chinese cities has put increasing pressure on existing urban transportation systems. Using Baidu users’ location data, this research analyzes the spatial patterns of the transit systems and commuter flows in Wuhan Metropolitan Area, China, and identifies transit deserts affecting low-income commuters. The results show that, first, most transit demand are generated by trips between neighboring communities, while large transit supply tends to occur between distant communities in the region. Second, about 11.21% of low-income commuters are affected by transit deserts in Wuhan Metropolitan Area. In detail, 61.30% of them commute within the city centers and 36.06% of them commute within the suburbs. Only about 2.64% of them actually travel between city centers and suburbs. Third, for low-income suburban commuters, transit deserts occur when they are surrounded by low-density transit infrastructure and low-frequency transit services, which makes it very difficult for them to connect to rest of the region. However, for low-income commuters residing in the city centers, transit deserts are mainly caused by the large numbers of transit-dependent people competing for limited transit supply in the areas. This research explores the relationship between transit systems and commuting demand in a major Chinese metropolitan area. The findings could help guide future transit system planning in China and beyond.     

If London is more spread out than Paris,why don't Londoners travel more than Parisians?

London and Paris are two megalopoleis with much in common but one main distinguishing feature, their densities: London is considerably more spread out than Paris. Since so many of their other features are similar, such as their population, their household structure, their employment structure, their household incomes, their car ownership levels, their public transport systems, their road networks, this separating characteristic allows a good test of some of the current theories about the relation of travel to land use, and about the influence of travel on the expansion of cities and especially about the changing relation between the central city, the inner core and the outer ring.In order to show more clearly the nature of the similarities and differences, the available data for London and Paris are presented in rings by distance from the centre, using the smallest available analysis units for each data set with the appropriate geographical coding and allocating to 2 km wide bands. This avoids all the problems caused by arbitrary political units.Analyses are presented to justify the contention that many of their features are similar, as noted above, with the notable exception of density. Paris may, in fact, be characterised as having a population distribution equivalent to that of London forty years earlier, though, because Paris is now expanding faster than London was then, this time lag is diminishing.The daily travel patterns of the inhabitants are then presented, using the same distance from centre basis, using both distance travelled and time taken, and separating travellers according to the modes or mode combinations used in the course of a day. These patterns are taken from the various travel surveys which, with the 1981 surveys, now span up to 20 years.The contrast between the traditional land use transport model philosophy, as embodied in the models operated by both city administrations, and as represented in the continuous space, monocentric, radially symmetric conception of the city in Angel and Hyman's model, and the philosophy of Zahavi with his emphasis on time and money budgets as the starting point of such modelling is discussed in the context of the results presented. Some comments on the possible ways this might help to illuminate the question of the expansion of cities are given.     

Beyond the journey to work

This paper analyses the Nationwide Personal Transportation Study (NPTS) surveys of 1977 and 1983–1984 that reveal a remarkable increase in nonwork travel. This growth occurred among all city size classes but was stronger for suburban residents. Also interesting is that the rate of increase in nonwork trips was higher in the peaks (especially in the morning peak) than in the off-peak period. Some, but not all, of these trips may be price-elastic and might be diverted by congestion pricing strategies. The nonwork trip growth is concentrated in the “family and personal” and the “social and recreational” categories. Although higher-income households make more trips than low-income households, the increase in nonwork travel is common to all income groups. The growth in nonwork travel does not appear to be closely associated with the growth in female employment or trips related to the children of working women. The most convincing explanation of the growth in nonwork travel is that the trip cost savings (less time and distance) experienced because of more efficient spatial settlement patterns have provided an incentive to undertake more trips. Another implication is that urban economic models and urban transport policies have overemphasized the journey to work, especially to the central business district (CBD).     

Commuting trip satisfaction in Beijing: Exploring the influence of multimodal behavior and modal flexibility

In the past decade, many studies have explored the relationship between travelers’ travel mode and their trip satisfaction. Various characteristics of the chosen travel modes have been found to influence trip experiences; however, apart from the chosen modes, travelers’ variability in mode use and their ability to vary have not been investigated in the trip satisfaction literature. This current paper presents an analysis of commuting trip satisfaction in Beijing with a particular focus on the influence of commuters’ multimodal behavior on multiple workdays and their modal flexibility for each commuting trip. Consistent with previous studies, we find that commuting trips by active modes are the most satisfying, followed by trips by car and public transport. In Beijing, public transport dominates. Urban residents increasingly acquire automobiles, but a strict vehicle policy has been implemented to restrict the use of private cars on workdays. In this comparatively constrained context for transport mode choice, we find a significant portion of commuters showing multimodal behavior. We also find that multimodal commuters tend to feel less satisfied with trips by alternative modes compared with monomodal commuters, which is probably related to their undesirable deviation from habitual transport modes. Furthermore, the relationship between modal flexibility and trip satisfaction is not linear, but U-shaped. Commuters with high flexibility are generally most satisfied because there is a higher possibility for them to choose their mode of transport out of preference. Very inflexible commuters can also reach a relatively high satisfaction level, however, which is probably caused by their lower expectations beforehand and the fact that they did not have an alternative to regret in trip satisfaction assessments.     

Household-level commuting mode choices,car allocation and car ownership level choices of two-worker households: the case of the city of Toronto

The paper presents a comprehensive investigation on household level commuting mode, car allocation and car ownership level choices of two-worker households in the City of Toronto. A joint econometric model and a household travel survey dataset are used for empirical investigations. Empirical models reveal that significant substitution patterns exist between auto driving and all other mode choices in two-worker households. It is revealed that, female commuters do not prefer auto driving, but in case of a one car (and two commuters with driving licenses) household, a female commuter gets more preference for auto driving option than the male commuter. Reverse commuting (commuting in opposite direction of home to central business district) plays a critical role on household level car allocation choices and in defining the stability of commuting behaviour of two-worker households. Two worker households in higher income zones and with longer commuting distances tend to have higher car ownership levels than others. However, higher transit accessibility to jobs reduces household car ownership levels. The study reveals that both increasing two worker households and reverse commuting would increase dependency on private car for commuting.     

A novel permit scheme for managing parking competition and bottleneck congestion

Morning commuters may have to depart from home earlier to secure a parking space when parking supply in the city center is insufficient. Recent studies show that parking reservations can reduce highway congestion and deadweight loss of parking competition simultaneously. This study develops a novel tradable parking permit scheme to realize or implement parking reservations when commuters are either homogeneous or heterogeneous in their values of time. It is found that an expirable parking permit scheme with an infinite number of steps, i.e., the ideal-scheme, is superior to a time-varying pricing scheme in the sense that designing a permit scheme does not require commuters’ value of time information and the performance of the scheme is robust to the variation of commuters’ value of time. Although it is impractical to implement the ideal-scheme with an infinite number of steps, the efficiency loss of a permit scheme with finite steps can be bounded in both cases of homogeneous and heterogeneous commuters. Moreover, considering the permit scheme may lead to an undesirable benefit distribution among commuters, we propose an equal cost-reduction distribution of parking permits where auto commuters with higher value of time will receive fewer permits.     

Urban form,commuting patterns and CO2 emissions: What differences between the municipality’s residents and its jobs?

This article investigates the links between urban form and commuting patterns, and the CO₂ emissions associated with them, in the municipalities that comprise the New Town of Marne-la-Vallée (NTMV) located in the Paris Region. The paper distinguishes between the commutes performed by residents and those generated by the jobs located in a municipality. The contribution of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it shows that the CO₂ emissions of commutes differ greatly depending on whether one considers residents or jobs: hence focusing on the travel behaviour of residents can lead to significant errors in the assessment of the CO₂ emissions generated by a municipality, and therefore its environmental sustainability. Secondly, the paper explores the relationship between commuting trips and several indicators of urban form: density, compactness, jobs-to-residents ratio, accessibility to public transport and distance from Paris. We highlight that high jobs-to-residents ratios tend to increase the proportion of jobs held by residents. Density and compactness are associated with more sustainable travel behaviour among residents, but not non-residents. Finally, the shape of the public transport system, which mainly connects the municipalities of the NTMV with Paris, tends to decrease the proportion of jobs held by residents, especially in the municipalities that are close to Paris, and does not allow non-residents, most of whom do not travel from Paris, to use public transport.     

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.     

Commuters’ willingness-to-pay for improvement of transfer facilities in and around metro stations – A case study in Kolkata

Although several cities in India are developing the metro system, there are lacunas associated with transfer facilities in and around metro stations. The present work aims to investigate the perception of commuters of Kolkata city, India in terms of their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for improvement of transfer facilities. A stated preference survey instrument was designed to collect choice responses from metro commuters and the database was analysed by developing random parameter logit (RPL) models. The decomposition effects of various socioeconomic and trip characteristics on mean estimates were also investigated in random parameter logit models with heterogeneity. The work indicates significantly high WTP of metro commuters as compared to the average metro fare for improvement of various qualitative attributes of transfer facility such as ‘facility for level change’, ‘visual communication’, ‘pedestrian crossing’, and ‘pedestrian environment’. The WTP values are also found to vary across different groups of commuter formed on the basis of ‘trip purpose’, ‘monthly household income’, ‘station type’ and ‘metro fare’. ‘Work trip’ commuters are found to have higher WTP for improvement of access time, pedestrian environment and use of an escalator over the elevator. On the other hand, ‘high-income group’ commuters have shown higher WTP for improvement of access time, pedestrian crossing, and pedestrian environment. While ‘high fare group’ commuters have higher WTP for access time and pedestrian environment, heterogeneity is also observed in WTP for facility for level change, pedestrian crossing, and pedestrian environment across commuters using different ‘station type’ (underground, at-grade, and elevated). The findings from the study provide a basis for formulating policies for the improvement of transfer facilities in and around metro stations giving due attention to the preference of commuters having different socioeconomic and trip characteristics.     

Traffic rationing and pricing in a linear monocentric city

This paper presents a simple spatial equilibrium model for a linear monocentric city to investigate the effects of rationing and pricing on morning commuters' travel cost and modal choice behavior in each location. Under rationing and pricing, every day in the morning peak hour, each commuter is classified as either “free” or “rationed”. “Free” commuters are allowed to use the highway without paying the toll, whereas “rationed” commuters can avoid the toll only if they travel by transit. Each day, a fraction of commuters are rationed in their free use of the highway, and the rationing fractions are determined systematically so that everyone is equally rationed in a given period. It is found that Pareto‐improving rationing and pricing scheme might be obtained as a combination of the rationing degree and the toll associated with rationing. Extension to the rationing and pricing scheme with cordon and park‐and‐ride service has been made. Cordon and park‐and‐ride might help in improving the efficiency of rationing and pricing strategy although remains its Pareto‐improving property. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transportation serviceability analysis for metropolitan commuting corridors based on modal choice modeling

Major commuting corridors in metropolitan areas generally comprise multiple transportation modes for commuters, such as transit (subways or buses), private vehicles, or park-and-ride combinations. During the morning peak hour, the commuters would choose one of the available transportation modes to travel through the corridors from rural/suburban living areas to urban working areas. This paper introduces a concept of transportation serviceability to evaluate a transportation mode’s service status in a specific link, route, road, or network during a certain period. The serviceability can be measured by the possibility that travelers choose a specific type of transportation service at a certain travel cost. The commuters’ modal-choice possibilities are calculated using a stochastic equilibrium model based on general travel cost. The modeling results illustrate how transportation serviceability is influenced by background traffic flow in a corridor, value of comfort for railway mode, and parking fee distribution.     

The design of interurban bus networks in city centers

This paper proposes a bilevel formulation for solving the Bus Network Design Problem (BNDP) of interurban services entering a major city. It is focused in interurban services because it is a growing problem in most of major cities, yet new in the literature. The layout of interurban bus routes and the locations of transfer stations in the main city are the key factors to provide a competitive public transportation service to commuters in a metropolitan area. The number of commuters in huge urban concentrations is growing due to the difficulties of living near the city center. The objective function of the first level is defined with the aim of reducing user and agency costs. In the second level the performance of users is addressed. Furthermore, a local search method based on the Tabu Search algorithm was carried out to guide the exploration in the solution domain. The results obtained in a set of test problems have demonstrated that the restart parameters of the algorithm play a significant role in the efficiency of the algorithm. Finally, implementation in the large network of Barcelona (Spain) reduces the total cost by 5% with regard to the present situation.     

Net tax incidence for urban public transit subsidies in New Zealand

This paper examines the impact of policy changes in the funding of New Zealand public transit modes.These changes, introduced in 1983, are evaluated in terms of the net incidence of public transit subsidy assistance, taking into account its source of funding and the income class of those commuters benefiting from the subsidy. The general conclusion is that the net incidence of subsidy assistance remains progressive (i.e., a transfer from high to low income commuters) following the introduction of shared funding on the predominant public transit modes (rail and bus), sourced from income tax (central government) and property tax (regional/local government). However, because of the predominance of medium to high income commuters on rail vis-a-vis bus and the traditional source of funding on these modes in terms of income tax (a progressive tax source) and property tax (a regressive tax source), the degree of progressivity previously associated with public transit subsidies has now substantially reduced.The analysis and opinions expressed in this paper are the responsibility of the author alone and do not purport to represent the views of the Ministry of Transport.     

Parking subsidies and travel choices: Assessing the evidence

This article reviews empirical studies of how employer-paid parking affects employees' travel choices. A strong effect is found: parking subsidies greatly increase solo driving. When employers reduce or remove parking subsidies, a significant number of solo drivers shift to carpools and/or transit. This conclusion is based on studies of parking subsidies in a variety of circumstances, including central city and suburban areas, private and public employers, and clerical and professional employees. Three measures are developed to compare changes in commute patterns: changes in the share of solo drivers. changes in the number of autos driven to work per 100 employees, and the parking price elasticity of demand for solo driving. The studies reviewed here show that 19 to 81 percent fewer employees drive to work alone when they pay for their own parking. Because 90 percent of American commuters who drive to work receive employer-paid parking, these findings are significant for designing transportation policies to reduce air pollution, traffic congestion, and energy consumption.     

An equilibrium analysis of commuter parking in the era of autonomous vehicles

This study is the first in the literature to model the joint equilibrium of departure time and parking location choices when commuters travel with autonomous vehicles (AVs). With AVs, walking from parking spaces to the work location is not needed. Instead, AVs will drop off the commuters at the workplace and then drive themselves to the parking spaces. In this context, the equilibrium departure/arrival profile is different from the literature with non-autonomous vehicles (non-AVs). Besides modeling the commuting equilibrium, this study further develops the first-best time-dependent congestion tolling scheme to achieve the system optimum. Also, a location-dependent parking pricing scheme is developed to replace the tolling scheme. Furthermore, this study discusses the optimal parking supply to minimize the total system cost (including both the travel cost and the social cost of parking supply) under either user equilibrium or system optimum traffic flow pattern. It is found that the optimal planning of parking can be different from the non-AV situation, since the vehicles can drive themselves to parking spaces that are further away from the city center and walking of commuters is avoided. This paper sheds light on future parking supply planning and traffic management.     

A latent class joint mode and departure time choice model for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area

This paper presents a closed-form Latent Class Model (LCM) of joint mode and departure time choices. The proposed LCM offers compound substitution patterns between the two choices. The class-specific choice models are of two opposing nesting structures, each of which provides expected maximum utility feedback to the corresponding class membership model. Such feedback allows switching class membership in response to the changes in choice contexts. The model is used for an empirical investigation of commuting mode and departure time choices in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) by using a large sample household travel survey dataset. The empirical model reveals that overall 38% of the commuters in the GTHA are more likely to switch modes than departure times and 62% of them are more likely to do the reverse. The empirical model also reveals that the average Subjective Value of Travel Time Savings (SVTTS) of the commuters in the GTHA can be as low as 3 dollars if a single choice pattern of departure time choices nested within mode choices is considered. It can also be as high as 67 dollars if the opposite nesting structure is assumed. However, the LCM estimates the average SVTTS to be around 27 dollars in the GTHA. An empirical scenario analysis by using the estimated model indicates that a 50% increase in morning peak period car travel time does not sway more than 4% of commuters from the morning peak period.

     

The evening commute with cars and transit: Duality results and user equilibrium for the combined morning and evening peaks

This paper extends Vickrey’s (1969) commute problem for commuters wishing to pass a bottleneck for both cars and transit that share finite road capacity. In addition to this more general framework considering two modes, the paper focuses on the evening rush, when commuters travel from work to home. Commuters choose which mode to use and when to travel in order to minimize the generalized cost of their own trips, including queueing delay and penalties for deviation from a preferred schedule of arrival and departure to and from work. The user equilibrium for the isolated morning and evening commutes are shown to be asymmetric because the schedule penalty in the morning is the difference between the departure and wished curves, and the schedule penalty in the evening is the difference between the arrival and wished curves. It is shown that the system optimum in the morning and evening peaks are symmetric because queueing delay is eliminated and the optimal arrival curves are the same as the departure curves.The paper then considers both the morning and evening peaks together for a single mode bottleneck (all cars) with identical travelers that share the same wished times. For a schedule penalty function of the morning departure and evening arrival times that is positive definite and has certain properties, a user equilibrium is shown to exist in which commuters travel in the same order in both peaks. The result is used to illustrate the user equilibrium for two cases: (i) commuters have decoupled schedule preferences in the morning and evening and (ii) commuters must work a fixed shift length but have flexibility when to start. Finally, a special case is considered with cars and transit: commuters have the same wished order in the morning and evening peaks. Commuters must use the same mode in both directions, and the complete user equilibrium solution reveals the number of commuters using cars and transit and the period in the middle of each rush when transit is used.     

Making do: The effects of a mass transit strike on travel behavior

A brief transit strike in early December 1976 disrupted bus services to the city of Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County. That strike provided an opportunity for testing a variety of approaches to increase ride-sharing and to reduce traffic congestion, and for examining the effect of the strike on traffic congestion and on individual travel behavior. Even though over 60% of the commuters to the CBD use transit, the effects of the strike were relatively mild. There was some increase in traffic flow into the CBD and some spreading of the peak period. The largest proportion of the transit commuters who made trips to the CBD during the strike were dropped off by a non-commuter, increasing highway traffic. The most severe impact was felt by those transit commuters who had no cars in the household; 25% of these commuters (only 3% of the total CBD commuters) stayed home from work on the first day of the strike. Most attempts to mitigate the impact of the strike had little effect, largely because most commuters were able to manage adequately during the short strike. The anticipated parking problem, on which much of the contingency planning was focused, did not emerge, largely because of the use of carpooling and drop-off mode by many of the transit users.