|
on Transport Economics |
| By: | Barajas, Jesus M; Wang, Weijing |
| Abstract: | This report describes the scope and scale of car access in rural areas, identifies barriers that rural zero-car and car-deficit households face in their mobility and access, and proposes personal and policy-level adaptations that would help these households achieve their mobility and access needs using descriptive analysis from US census microdata and interviews with 22 residents of California’s Central Valley. Results indicate that 5% of rural residents are fully carless and 18% live in a car-deficit household with less than one vehicle per adult. Both zero-car and car-deficit households tend to be in the Central Valley. Zero-car and car-deficit households in rural areas tend to be more socioeconomically disadvantaged than in nonrural areas. Both groups earn lower household incomes, are more likely to be Black, Latino, or Asian, have lower educational attainment, have more disabilities, have higher housing-cost burdens, and are more likely to be unemployed than their counterparts in nonrural areas. Almost half of workers in rural zero-car households drive alone to work compared to about a quarter in nonrural zero-car households, while mode shares are similar for car-deficit and car fully equipped households. Rural zero-car households are more likely to carpool and far less likely to take public transit. Three major themes emerged from the interviews. First, a commonality uniting the interview participants was the practice of relying on their social networks to get rides or obtain vehicle access. Second, the cost of car ownership and operation was high, placing vehicles out of reach for many. Third, alternatives to car access included public transit, medical transportation services, and car sharing, put poor availability often caused individuals to forgo trips. Interview participants shared a variety of options they saw as solutions to overcoming their barriers to lack of car access. While obtaining a vehicle was not absent from their preferred solutions, most preferred better personal access to transportation without the burden of private car ownership. The findings from demonstrate some of the complexities to consider when addressing transportation barriers in rural areas, where carlessness is less prevalent but solutions may be harder to implement than in urban areas. View the NCST Project Webpage |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, Rural transportation, mobility justice, zero-car households, vehicle access |
| Date: | 2023–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt0dv3b769&r=tre |
| By: | Ramji, Aditya; Kankaria, Riddhi |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, electric vehicles, India |
| Date: | 2022–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt7h0820xf&r=tre |
| By: | Yit Wey Liew (Monash University); Muhammad Habibur Rahman (Durham University); Audrey Kim Lan Siah (Monash University) |
| Abstract: | This study examines how the historical rail stations condition long-run development, using Colonial Malaya as a laboratory. Constructing a novel historical data on rail stations, agglomeration centers, tin mines and rubber plantations dated back to a century and matching with contemporary data on economic activity at one-kilometer cell level, we find that the earlier a region obtains rail stations, the higher level of economic activity it performs today due to agglomeration economies. These results hold even in regions that have already abandoned colonial stations. This study signifies the role of investment on transport infrastructure to accelerate local economic activity. |
| Date: | 2023–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dur:durham:2023_01&r=tre |
| By: | Lander, Laura; Tagnon, Chris; Nguyen-Tien, Viet; Kendrick, Emma; Elliott, Robert J.R.; Abbott, Andrew P.; Edge, Jacqueline S.; Offer, Gregory J. |
| Abstract: | The electrification of the transport sector is a critical part of the net-zero transition. The mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) powered by lithium-ion batteries in the coming decade will inevitably lead to a large amount of battery waste, which needs handling in a safe and environmentally friendly manner. Battery recycling is a sustainable treatment option at the battery end-of-life that supports a circular economy. However, heterogeneity in pack designs across battery manufacturers are hampering the establishment of an efficient disassembly process, hence making recycling less viable. A comprehensive techno-economic assessment of the disassembly process was conducted, which identified cost hotspots in battery pack designs and to guide design optimisation strategies that help save time and cost for end-of-life treatment. The analyses include six commercially available EV battery packs: Renault Zoe, Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3, Peugeot 208, BAIC and BYD Han. The BAIC and BYD battery packs exhibit lower disassembly costs (US$50.45 and US$47.41 per pack, respectively), compared to the Peugeot 208 and Nissan Leaf (US$186.35 and US$194.11 per pack, respectively). This variation in disassembly cost is due mostly to the substantial differences in number of modules and fasteners. The economic assessment suggests that full automation is required to make disassembly viable by 2040, as it could boost disassembly capacity by up to 600 %, while substantially achieving cost savings of up to US$190 M per year. |
| Keywords: | battery pack design; battery pack disassembly; circular economy; electric vehicles; techno-economics |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2023–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:117716&r=tre |
| By: | Thegeya, Aaron (World Data Lab); Mitterling, Thomas (World Data Lab); Martinez Jr., Arturo (Asian Development Bank); Bulan, Joseph (Asian Development Bank); Durante, Ron Lester (Asian Development Bank); Mag-atas, Jayzon (Asian Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | Roads are vital to support the transportation of people, goods, and services, among others. To yield their optimal socioeconomic impact, proper maintenance of existing roads is required; however, this is typically underfunded. Since detecting road quality is both labor and capital intensive, information on it is usually scarce, especially in resource-constrained countries. Accordingly, the study examines the feasibility of using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to develop an efficient and cost-effective way to determine and predict the condition of roads. With this goal, a preliminary algorithm was created and validated using medium-resolution satellite imagery and existing road roughness data from the Philippines. After analysis, it was determined that the algorithm had an accuracy rate up to 75% and can be used for the preliminary identification of poor to bad roads. This provides an alternative for compiling road quality data, especially for areas where conventional methods can be difficult to implement. Nonetheless, additional technical enhancements need to be explored to further increase the algorithm’s prediction accuracy and enhance its robustness. |
| Keywords: | road quality; road maintenance; Sustainable Development Goals; remote sensing; deep learning |
| JEL: | O18 R42 |
| Date: | 2022–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:0675&r=tre |
| By: | Hiroaki Ino (School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University); Toshihiro Matsumura (Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the optimal combination of emission and fuel taxes for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases are emitted during both production and consumption stages. We present two cases in which a government should impose an additional fuel tax even when an optimal emission tax is introduced: the case in which consumers select the fuel consumption and case in which a producer selects fuel efficiency endogenously. In other words, we show that a government should maintain fuel taxes even after introducing an effective emission tax. |
| Keywords: | fuel tax, emission tax, carbon pricing, heterogeneous consumers, vehicle industry |
| JEL: | Q58 Q48 H23 L51 |
| Date: | 2023–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kgu:wpaper:243&r=tre |
| By: | Kim, Minji (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade); Lee, Jun (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade) |
| Abstract: | Secondary batteries are garnering more and more attention as a key to carbon reduction and eventually, carbon neutrality. Formerly associated mostly with IT devices such as laptop computers and mobile phones, secondary batteries are now enjoying renewed interest and rising demand as they are used to provide power for electric vehicles and to store electricity generated by renewable energy. Korea, China, and Japan are the three strongholds of the secondary battery industry on the world stage. The focus on accelerating the transition to electric vehicles has prompted both Europe and the United States to seek to enhance the stability of secondary battery supply chains, and they have both promulgated a series of measures to foster their own industries, threatening to raise the intensity of global competition and posing challenges for Asian manufacturers. Although Korean companies have been developing innovative secondary battery technologies since the early 1990s, the industry still faces key obstacles to growth, such as a high dependency on imported raw materials and limited domestic demand. In this report, we survey the structure and characteristics of the value chains of the secondary battery industry and assess comparative advantages with the goal of identifying how best to foster the future growth of the Korean secondary battery industry. In order to ensure Korea’s continued leadership in the global secondary battery market, it is critical to maintain the “super-gap” between Korean technologies and others, while also enhancing the robustness of the industry’s value chains. |
| Keywords: | Electric Vehicle; Secondary Battery Supply Chains; Korean Secondary Battery |
| JEL: | L62 O25 Q31 |
| Date: | 2022–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kietrp:2022_009&r=tre |
| By: | Emil Mihaylov (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | The paper provides new evidence on the ability to work from home (WFH) for hundreds of Dutch occupations and examines how WFH is related to various occupation-specific characteristics. This is done by linking several publicly available datasets from Statistics Netherlands, which contain different occupation-specific information (e.g., tasks descriptions, measures of physical and socio-psychological workload, autonomy of work, computer use at work, workplace accidents and injuries, job satisfaction and job turnover, actual WFH, etc.). The paper finds that WFH is possible only in high and mid-skilled occupations such as managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, and clerical support workers, while it is nearly impossible in low-skilled professions such as plant and machine operators and elementary occupations. Around 16% of the employed persons in the Netherlands work in occupations that cannot be done from home, 24% work in occupations that can be performed entirely from home, and 54% are employed in occupations with significant possibilities to WFH (i.e., their occupations contain 50% or more teleworkable tasks). Furthermore, the ability to WFH is negatively related to physical work, repetitive work, and dangerous work and positively related to working on screens and independence at work. The potential to WFH is also positively correlated with job satisfaction and negatively correlated with victimisation at work (i.e., intimidation, violence, bullying, unwanted sexual attention), incidence and duration of sick leave, and work-related reasons for sick leave. The analyses in the paper are of a descriptive nature. |
| Keywords: | working from home, occupations, job tasks, Netherlands, Covid-19 |
| JEL: | J21 J22 J24 J29 J81 |
| Date: | 2022–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20220096&r=tre |