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on Transport Economics |
| By: | André de Palma; Carlos Ordás Criado; Laingo M. Randrianarisoa |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes rivalry between transport facilities in a model that includes two sources of horizontal differentiation: geographical space and departure time. We explore how both sources influence facility fees and the price of the service offered by downstream carriers. Travellers’ costs include a fare, a transportation cost to the facility and a schedule delay cost, which captures the monetary cost of departing earlier or later than desired. One carrier operates at each facility and schedules a single departure time. The interactions in the facility-carrier model are represented as a sequential three-stage game in fees, times and fares with simultaneous choices at each stage. We find that duopolistic competition leads to an identical departure time across carriers when their operational cost does not vary with the time of day, but generally leads to distinct service times when this cost is time dependent. When a facility possesses a location advantage, it can set a higher fee and its downstream carrier can charge a higher fare. Departure time differentiation allows the facilities and their carrier to compete along an additional differentiation dimension that can reduce or strengthen the advantage in location. By incorporating the downstream carriers into the analysis, we also find that a higher per passenger commercial revenue at one facility induces a lower fee charged by both facilities to their carrier and a lower fare charged by both carriers at their departure facility, while a lower marginal operational cost for one carrier implies a higher fee at its departure facility, a lower fee at the other facility served by the rival carrier and a lower fare at both facilities. |
| Keywords: | Airline and facility competition, Horizontal differentiation, Location model, Spatial asymmetry, Service timing. |
| JEL: | D43 L13 L22 L93 R4 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:creacr:2017-01&r=tre |
| By: | Elbert, R.; Seikowsky, L. |
| Date: | 2017–01–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:85074&r=tre |
| By: | Timo Hintsch (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz); Stefan Irnich (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) |
| Abstract: | The clustered vehicle-routing problem (CluVRP) is a variant of the classical capacitated vehicle-routing problem (CVRP) in which customers are partitioned into clusters, and it is assumed that each cluster must have been served completely before the next cluster is served. This decomposes the problem into three subproblems, i.e., the assignment of clusters to routes, the routing inside each cluster, and the sequencing of the clusters in the routes. The second task requires the solution of several Hamiltonian path problems, one for each possibility to route through the cluster. We pre-compute the Hamiltonian paths for every pair of customers of each cluster. We present a large multiple neighborhood search (LMNS) which makes use of multiple cluster destroy and repair operators and a variable-neighborhood descent (VND) for postoptimization. The VND is based on classical neighborhoods such as relocate, 2-opt, and swap all working on the cluster level and a generalization of the Balas-Simonetti neighborhood modifying simultaneously the intra-cluster routings and the sequence of clusters in a route. Computational results with our new approach compare favorably to existing approaches from the literature. |
| Keywords: | Vehicle Routing, Clustered Vehicle Routing, Large Neighborhood Search |
| Date: | 2017–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1701&r=tre |
| By: | Eliasson, Jonas; Fosgerau, Mogens |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the problem of measuring the welfare benefits of a transport improvement. We formulate and analyze a rich spatial model that allows for spillovers, matching and income tax, in a setting with multiple work and residential locations and very general worker heterogeneity. The conventional consumer surplus captures part of the benefits and is calculated based on predictions of changes in travel demand and transport costs. The issue is to determine which so-called wider impacts to add to this. We find that adding the change in total output as a wider impact leads to double-counting of benefits. The output change due to spillovers should be added, while the output change due to matching is already partly included in the consumer surplus. These results are useful for applied cost-benefit analysis of transport policies. |
| Keywords: | Agglomeration; spillovers; matching; cost-benefit analysis; transport policy |
| JEL: | D6 H4 R1 R4 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:76526&r=tre |
| By: | Hunt Allcott; Christopher Knittel |
| Abstract: | It has long been argued that people are poorly-informed about and inattentive to fuel economy when buying cars, and that this causes us to buy low-fuel economy vehicles despite our own best interest. We test this assertion by running two experiments providing fuel economy information to people shopping for new vehicles. We find zero statistical or economic effect of information on average fuel economy of vehicles purchased. In the context of a simple optimal policy model, the estimates suggest that imperfect information and inattention are not valid as significant justifications for fuel economy standards at current or planned levels. |
| JEL: | D12 D83 L15 L91 Q41 Q48 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23076&r=tre |
| By: | Börjesson , Maria (KTH); Kristoffersson, Ida (VTI) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the effects of the Swedish congestion charges 10 years on. We find that the price elasticity of the traffic across the cordon was lower when the charging levels were increased than when they were first introduced, in Stockholm and in Gothenburg. The price elasticity was also lower when the Stockholm system was extended to include the Essinge bypass (E4/E20). The implication of these results is that adjustments in charging levels between days and seasons would have a limited effect on traffic volume. Moreover, the elasticity is substantially higher in the off-peak period than in the peak. A third finding is that the long-term elasticity is declining in Gothenburg but increasing in Stockholm. Public support is also declining in Gothenburg but increasing in Stockholm. The operating costs of the systems have declined. |
| Keywords: | Congestion charges; Behavioural adaptation; Time-dependent cordon; Tolling system; Traffic effects; Public support; Transferability; System design |
| JEL: | R41 R42 R48 |
| Date: | 2017–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2017_002&r=tre |
| By: | Louis-Philippe Beland; Daniel A. Brent |
| Abstract: | We study the link between crime and emotional cues associated with unexpected traffic. Our empirical analysis combines police incident reports with observations of local traffic data in Los Angeles from 2011 to 2015. This rich dataset allows us to link traffic with criminal activity at a fine spatial and temporal dimension. Our identification relies on deviations from normal traffic to isolate the impact of abnormally bad traffic on crime. We find that traffic above the 95th percentile increases the incidence of domestic violence, a crime shown to be affected by emotional cues, but not other crimes. The results represent a lower bound of the psychological costs of traffic; an externality that is not typically quantified in contrast to pollution, health impacts and lost time that have been established in the literature. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsu:lsuwpp:2017-02&r=tre |
| By: | Nakakeeto, Gertrude; Pope, Jaren; Shaikh, Rahman; Asare, Eric |
| Abstract: | Recent empirical studies have investigated the impact of noise barriers on housing prices of adjacent homes. Their results have conflicting evidence. One important observation is that the existing literature examines the impact of berm barriers. Missing in this literature is the impact of barriers made out of other materials. This paper investigates the impact of Noise Barrier Walls (made out of other materials) on the market value of adjacent residential homes. We use a data set containing 141 noise barriers built in 12 counties of Washington State, U.S.A. The data on the location of noise barrier walls is obtained from Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), Environmental Service Office (ESO) -Environmental Information Program. Two models are employed, the hedonic price model and a mofied hedonic model in a quasi-random experiment. The modified Hedonic price method results are very impressive: On average, Noise Barrier walls increase prices of residential homes within 300m by 15.24% . This impact decreases as the distance from the noise barriers increases. We estimate an increase in housing prices of 6.96 % more for houses between 300m and 600m away from the noise barrier. |
| Keywords: | Highway traffic noise, noise barriers, hedonic pricing method, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:saea17:252857&r=tre |