Extending the Scope of Highway Planning: Accessibility,Negative Externalities and the Residential Context

The objectives of this review-based paper were twofold. Firstly, we aimed to explore the need and possibilities for broadening the scope of highway planning by taking account of the residential context, including residential satisfaction. Satisfaction appears to be an interesting, and in our opinion, valuable mediating planning concept between road infrastructure planning and the accompanying external effects on the one hand and household coping strategies on the other. Households living near highway infrastructure are influenced by both positive (i.e. accessibility gains) and negative road-related factors (e.g. noise nuisance and air pollution). Changes in these factors may trigger people to accept the new situation, adjust preferences, try to influence plans and/or even relocate. The second aim was to gain a greater understanding of the influence of both accessibility characteristics and negative externalities on the residential context of households. With respect to context, we make a distinction between residential satisfaction, housing prices and residential relocation. We see changes in residential satisfaction as a potential early predictor of opposition to plans, not only from active opposers but also from the more ‘silent majority’, and as a predictor of housing price changes and residential migration. Insights into residential satisfaction around highways may help transportation planners to relieve locational stress and may also prevent protests and relocations. Our literature review indicated that households prefer to live close to highways to benefit from high regional accessibility, but do not want to contend with the nuisances. This is also reflected in property values. However, the literature appears to put more emphasis on studying the impact of (regional) accessibility and externalities on location behaviour than on residential satisfaction. Because of the added value that the concept of residential satisfaction may provide in road planning, and the limited scientific insights, it is important to gain greater insight into how residential satisfaction is influenced by negative and positive externalities and into how residential satisfaction changes over time—from the stage when new road projects are discussed through to concrete planning, realization and the period after completion. Moreover, it would be worthwhile to gain a deeper understanding of the extent to which house prices, location behaviour and residential satisfaction near highways interrelate.     

Modelling Externalities using Dynamic Traffic Assignment Models: A Review

Recently, there has been a growing interest in externalities in our society, mainly in the context of climate and air quality, which are of importance when policy decisions are made. For the assessment of externalities in transport, often the output of static traffic assignment models is used in combination with so-called effect models. Due to the rapidly increasing possibilities of using dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) models for large-scale transportation networks and the application of traffic measures, already several models have been developed to assess the externalities using DTA models more precisely. Different research projects have shown that there is a proven relation between the traffic dynamics and externalities, such as emissions of pollutants and traffic safety. This means that the assessment of external effects can be improved by using temporal information about flow, speed and density, which is the output of DTA models. In this paper, the modelling of traffic safety, emissions and noise in conjunction with DTA models is reviewed based on an extensive literature survey. This review shows that there are still gaps in knowledge in assessing traffic safety, much research is available concerning emissions, and although little research has been conducted concerning the assessment of noise using DTA models, the methods available can be used to assess the effects. Most research so far has focused on the use of microscopic models, while mesoscopic or macroscopic models may have a high potential for improving the assessment of these effects for larger networks.     

Noise prediction for highways in Thailand

A model of highway traffic noise is formulated based on vehicle types. The data were collected from local highways in Thailand with free-flow traffic conditions. First, data on vehicle noise was collected from individual vehicles using sound level meters placed at a reference distance. Simultaneously, measurements were made of vehicles’ spot speeds. Secondly, are data for building the highway traffic noise model. This consists of traffic noise levels, traffic volumes by vehicle classification, average spot speeds by vehicle type, and the geometric dimension of highway sections. The free-flow traffic noise model is generated from this database. A reference energy mean emission level (the basic noise) level for each type of vehicles is developed based on direct measurement of Leq (10 s) from the real running condition of each type of vehicles. Modification of terms and parameters are used to make the model fit highway traffic characteristics and different types of vehicle.     

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

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

Residential moving intentions at highway locations: The trade-off between nuisances and accessibility in the Netherlands

This study investigates how highway nuisances are traded off against accessibility gains and other residential characteristics in the moving intentions of people living near highways. It studies a potential mediating role for residential satisfaction and potential mitigating relationships with highway nuisance perceptions. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test a proposed framework based on survey data collected from 1220 respondents living within 1000 m from a highway in the Netherlands.The results show that higher levels of perceived highway nuisances are associated with increased intentions to move, mediated by lower residential satisfaction. However, better perceived accessibility was not associated with either lower moving intentions or lower highway nuisance perception. Highway usage/interest and other residential characteristics – such as satisfaction with buildings, traffic safety, and amount of greenery – seem to countervail perceived highway nuisances as they reduce moving intentions and reduce highway nuisance perception. Finally, the results show that some groups – for example home owners – were less inclined to move (direct effect), independently of their residential satisfaction.From a practical perspective, a more inclusive perspective on highway planning, which accounts for accessibility and other residential characteristics as potential compensators and mitigators for highway nuisances, would be effective to reduce residential stress which could prevent protest and consequent cost overruns of projects.     

Agricultural vehicles and sustainable safe road traffic: solving conflicts on arterial highways

Addressing the issues of traffic safety in rural areas presents a constant challenge. The mix of light and heavy vehicles and the considerable differences in speed among these traffic participants result in high risks and delays for the faster vehicles. Agricultural vehicles (AVs) in particular have such an impact on traffic, especially when using arterial highways. This paper reviews the problems of safety and delays that AVs cause on arterial highways, and the appropriate mitigation. The concept of 'sustainable safety' in The Netherlands focuses on these problems, because of the proposed construction of parallel roads alongside all arterial highways. However, Dutch accident statistics cannot justify the high costs for the construction of parallel roads alongside 7000 km of arterial highways. Delays experienced by fast traffic are another reason for separating AVs from other road users with parallel roads. Alternative measures alongside the arterial highway, such as passing bays, restricting AVs to travelling at off-peak only and improving the conspicuity of the AVs, may be more cost-effective ways of reducing delays and/or improving traffic safety on arterial highways. Another solution may be to eliminate the need for AVs to use the arterial highway by altering their routes. For this purpose, land reallocation projects (as practised in Holland) can provide a useful tool.     

Hierarchal assessment of noise pollution in urban areas – A case study

Noise pollution in urban areas has many harmful effects on the citizens. There are varieties of noise generation sources of which the traffic noise could be a major source. The point which is perhaps less noticed is that sound level is not the only parameter to indicate the extent and intensity of noise pollution. Situation of urban land uses, distribution of population centers and types of passages can deeply affect the concern on this environmental issue but not with a similar ratio. This article presents an overlaying technique to define noise prone areas using all different factors involved. A case study was carried out in the District 14 of Tehran Metropolitan City where there are busy streets and highways. For this purpose, the share of each criterion in noise pollution intensity was determined using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Afterwards, the map layers were overlaid based upon the relative importance of the criteria to get the final map on which the noise prone areas are specified. The developed method could be used as a tool for indirect estimation of noise pollution by which instead of direct measurement of the equivalent sound level, it would be possible to predict noise susceptible areas considering the most important influential factors.     

Asymmetric responses of highway travel demand to changes in fuel price: An explanation via fuel price uncertainty

Previous research has examined asymmetric effects of fuel price uncertainty on energy demand. If we consider that energy demand is related to travel demand, the changes in fuel prices may have asymmetric effects on highway travel demand via fuel price uncertainty. In other words, when in general fuel price is steadily rising, the highway traffic volume decreases by a small percentage. On the other hand, the highway traffic volume increases by a large percentage when fuel prices are falling. We hypothesize that the uncertainty in fuel prices generates this kind of asymmetric effect on highway traffic volume in Korea. We use the Korean monthly fuel price and highway traffic volume data from 2001 to 2009, and define the intra-month (weekly) fuel price changes as monthly fuel price volatility which is a proxy for monthly fuel price uncertainty. We found that the direction of the change in fuel prices had asymmetric effects on highway travel demand and that the fuel price uncertainty led drivers to respond asymmetrically to the changes in fuel prices.     

高等级沥青公路路面水损害及防治措施分析

沥青路面作为我国高等级公路中最常见的路面形式,具有施工速度快、行车舒适度高、噪音小等优点,但在公路的使用过程中,极易产生水损害现象,尤其是在南方降雨量多的季节。本文通过分析沥青公路路面产生水损害的主要原因,针对具体原因提出了相应的防治措施,希望为公路工程的建设和维护提供参考,以提高高等级沥青公路的建设质量和使用年限。     

Measuring post-disaster transportation system performance: the 1995 Kobe earthquake in comparative perspective

Recent earthquake disasters have caused major damage to transportation networks, leading to significant economic disruption. While this suggests the need to evaluate total system performance in transportation risk assessment, in addition to examining the vulnerability of individual components such as bridges, no appropriate measures currently exist. This paper develops post-disaster system performance measures and applies them to the urban rail and highway transportation systems in the Kobe, Japan, region devastated by the 1995 Hyogoken–Nanbu earthquake. Performance is evaluated in terms of network coverage and transport accessibility. Performance degradation was much more severe for highways and railways than for other lifeline infrastructure systems. Both transportation systems fared poorly in the disaster but service restoration proceeded much more rapidly for rail. The restoration of highway system performance correlated closely with the recovery of highway traffic volumes. The paper further develops a measure of subarea transport accessibility and applies this to Kobe’s constituent city wards. Results indicate substantial spatial disparity that is maintained throughout the restoration period. Comparisons with the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge earthquakes in the US show that although these disasters caused notable damage to highway bridges, system performance degradation was small in comparison with the Kobe experience. The paper argues that explicitly measuring transportation system performance can greatly facilitate both understanding the effects of historic disasters and preparing for future hazard events.     

Highway impacts on regional employment

Economic development is increasingly used by state DOT's as a criterion in arriving at highway funding decisions. However, there exists little evidence in the literature justifying the use of such a criterion, especially since existing techniques only determine correlations between highways and development. In this paper a time-series methodology is developed to differentiate the effects of highways on development from the effects of development on highways. This methodology includes structural plot analysis and causality tests and is based on pooled time-series and cross-sectional data on highway construction expenditures and county employment. The results indicate that increases in highway expenditures do not, in general, lead to statewide increases in employment other than temporary increases in the year of construction. However, in counties that are economic centers of the state, highway expenditures do have a positive long-term effect, i.e. employment increases above the normal trend of the economy. Such gains are apparently counterbalanced by employment losses in counties adjacent to the economic centers.     

公路噪声预测达标距离超出评价范围现象的探讨

文章根据公路项目环保竣工验收的交通噪声监测结果,通过理论值与实测值的比较,分析了典型路段交通噪声预测达标距离超出评价范围现象产生的原因,并提出了相应的解决措施及建议,为公路建设项目环境影响评价工作提供参考。     

公路交通噪声监测方法和防治措施研究

本文分析了交通噪声产生的危害,强调交通噪声防治的重要性,结合现行高速公路交通噪声声环境功能区质量监测、衰减断面监测等监测方法,从路线选择、新技术运用、声传递控制等方面综述了可行且有效的交通噪声防治方法,并提出应基于降低噪声污染源源强角度出发,加强降噪路面及低噪声运输工具研发工作,从源头控制噪声污染,从根本上解决噪声污染问题的建议。     

Transport and environment interactions: the italian framework

With road traffic in Europe forecast to increase, strategies are needed to keep transportation sector growth within the bounds imposed by a sustainable development. Research is contributing through a large number of projects dealing with transport–environment interactions. This paper reviews international research activities in this field, focusing on technological innovations, air and noise pollution prediction models, and existing tools for socioeconomic evaluation of traffic impacts on the environment. In particular, research projects of the Second Special Project on Transport (PFT2) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) are outlined.     

Highway traffic noise effects on land price in an urban area

The study evaluates the monetary effect of traffic noise on property values in Seoul, Korea. Hedonic price models are estimated using the zone-based data that includes traffic noise levels, official land price, land use classification, distance to roadways, type of nearby roadway facilities, and traffic characteristics. It is found that a 1% increase in traffic noise associated with a 1.3% decline in land price. Based on this, the annual cost per kilometer due to traffic noise is about $347 thousand.     

Ship emissions and their externalities in cruise ports

This paper presents an estimation and analysis of ship exhaust emissions and their externalities in the popular cruise destinations of Dubrovnik (Croatia) and Kotor (Montenegro) along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. To this extent, the recent record (2012–2014) of cruise ships calling at these ports is used to model and estimate the ship exhaust emission inventories and externalities within the associated bays and ports.The results indicate that cruise ship traffic produces continuously increasing air pollution in both ports over recent years. More importantly, however, the analysis of the ship operating characteristics reveals that for any given ship traffic involving specific vessels using marine fuel of a given quality, the presence of other factors (e.g. berth availability, berth accessibility etc) can also influence the ship emission levels. This is particularly evident in the case of the port of Kotor where berth space insufficiency dictates the need for ship anchorage thus leading to increased air pollution and costs of associated damage.The application and results of the aforementioned ship activity-based methodology to the ports of Dubrovnik and Kotor improves our understanding of ship emissions in cruise bays and ports, and contributes toward the implementation of port policies for the effective control of air quality in such environmentally sensitive locations.     

The impact of road pricing on housing prices: Preliminary evidence from Milan

Road pricing is increasingly used as an economic tool to decrease the burden of transport externalities. Following the examples of several cities worldwide, on 2nd January, 2008, the city of Milan introduced a charge for accessing the city centre with the aim of curbing air pollution and congestion. The aim of this paper is to evaluate empirically the effect of such a charge on the housing market. By applying a difference-in-differences methodology, I find empirical support for a decrease in housing prices in the coverage area.     

Walking accessibility and property prices

Walking is an imperative travel mode, especially for short trips. Walking accessibility, which is defined as the ease of reaching essential destinations in the walk-in catchment area, may affect property prices because residents are more likely to be willing to pay for this attribute. In addition, different categories of public services may have varied influencing directions and magnitude. These two hypotheses are tested in this study. Taking Xiamen, China as a case study, we estimate the cumulative opportunities of public services on foot and develop a set of hedonic pricing models (more specifically, two pre-specified ordinary least squares models, four Box-Cox transformed models, and two spatial econometric models) to estimate, whether and to what extent, walking accessibility contributes to price premiums (or discounts). Using a database of 22,586 second-hand residential properties in 358 multi- or high-storey residential complexes, we find that (1) walking accessibility to public services contributes to the variations in housing prices and plays a role in determining housing prices; (2) different categories of services have vastly divergent, even opposite, influencing impacts; and (3) walking accessibility to primary schools, commercial centers, and sports and cultural centers have positive effects on house prices whereas walking accessibility to comprehensive hospitals adversely affects housing prices. Methodologically, we confirm that spatial econometric methods improve estimation accuracy and have more explanatory power relative to the standard non-spatial models. Robustness check analysis further guarantees the plausibility of this study.     

济青高速公路绿化带对交通噪声和铅污染的防护作用

公路绿化带可对交通噪声和汽车尾气带来的铅(Pb)污染产生一定防护作用,这对于减轻路域环境污染具有重要意义。采用原位调查和取样分析相结合的方法,研究了山东省济青高速公路路侧绿化带对交通噪声和铅污染的衰减效果。研究结果表明,高速公路绿化带对交通噪声有一定的减轻作用,但在不同的绿化模式下,衰减效果存在较大差异。济青高速公路两侧土壤存在一定程度的Pb污染,在不同绿化模式下,路侧绿化林带对公路Pb污染的防护作用也有较大差别,宽度过大的林带并不是防护Pb污染的理想措施。     

Effects of the Los Angeles transit strike on highway congestion

In this paper we investigate the effect of the Los Angeles transit strike on highway congestion through analysis of highway sensor data, using both a before-and-after comparison, and a control group comparison. We found that average 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. traffic speeds declined by as much as 20% during the strike, and the average length of the rush period increased by as much as 200%, even though increases in traffic were small, despite the fact that transit riders constitute a small fraction of the traveling population. Speeds declined the most at locations upstream from the places where queues normally end. We believe that highways are especially susceptible to congestion during strikes because travelers have little opportunity to adjust and equilibrate their travel patterns, as is possible during ordinary periods of traffic growth.