Parking policy,parking location decisions and the distribution of congestion

The paper develops and tests a model which characterizes the parking location decisions of individual tripmakers. The model is designed to offer information concerning the effects of alternative parking policies on parking location decisions and therefore the effects on the distribution of congestion in an urban area.Own price, time price and full price elasticities for alternative parking locations are estimated. The own price elasticity is found to rise with distance from the destination point while the time price elasticity falls with distance. The full price elasticity is found to be relatively stable.One is able to determine from the calculated elasticities, the effects of alternative parking policies such as raising parking fees, time restrictions, or increasing search or transaction costs on the distribution of individuals consuming parking services; from this one can infer the impact on the distribution of congestion.The paper also offers some explanation for the low elasticity of auto use with respect to changes in parking costs found in some modal choice studies.The author is indebted to Adolf Buse, Ken Norrie and Richard Westin for helpful comments and criticism.     

Estimating the value of time: An additional misspecification error

This note is an extension of arguments made in an earlier article by J. Guttman in this journal. It points out a specification error in estimating the value of time when parking costs are added to modal running costs, to create a single cost variable. After developing arguments for separating modal costs from parking costs, estimates for Toronto are provided. These estimates demonstrate the magnitude of this type of aggregation bias.The author is indebted to Adolf Buse, Don Dewees and Richard Westin for helpful comments.     

The structure of intercity travel demands in Canada: Theory tests and empirical results

This paper presents results of an econometric study study of intercity travel demands in Canada, 1961–1976. A translog form of reciprocal indirect utility function is used to test the structure of preferences in five demand sectors: three travel modes, goods and other services. Travel sector preferences are found to be time- and season varying but independent of average weekly work hours. The aggregate results indicate that the demands for all three passenger modes are price-elastic; bus and rail exhibit moderate complementarity, while rail and air are weakly complementary. The most important result derived from our tests of separability was that the demand system for the three passenger modes is inextricably tied to the rest of the economy, and therefore, may not be studied in isolation from the goods and other services sectors.