Transport tax reform, commuting, and endogenous values of time

We consider a model of urban transport with two trip purposes, commuting (assumed perfectly complementary to labour supply) and noncommuting, to analyse the effects of transport tax reform on the value of time and marginal external congestion costs. Higher commuting taxes plausibly reduce time values, but higher noncommuting transport prices will typically raise the value of time. The intuition for this latter finding is that the reduction in congestion that follows from the tax increase itself raises net wages per hour of work (inclusive of commuting time). Empirical illustrations with Belgian data show a potentially large effect of transport tax reform on time values. In quite a few of the tax reforms studied traffic levels are reduced, but the increase in time values implies that marginal external congestion costs actually increase.     

A behavioural model of traffic congestion: Endogenizing speed choice, traffic safety and time losses

Conventional economic models of traffic congestion assume that the relation between traffic flow and speed is a technical one. This paper develops a behavioural model of traffic congestion, in which drivers optimize their speeds by trading off time costs, expected accident costs and fuel costs. Since the presence of other drivers affects the latter two cost components and hence the Nash equilibrium speed, a ‘behavioural’ speed-flow relationship results for which external congestion costs include expected accident costs and fuel costs, in addition to the time costs considered in the conventional model. It is demonstrated that the latter in fact even cancel in the calculation of optimal congestion tolls. The overall welfare optimum in our model is found to be off the speed-flow function, and off the average and marginal cost functions derived from it in the conventional approach. This full optimum requires tolls to be either accompanied by speed policies, or to be set as a function of speed. Using an empirically calibrated numerical simulation model, we illustrate these qualitative findings, and attempt to assess their potential empirical relevance.     

Multivariate time series analysis of traffic congestion measures in urban areas as they relate to socioeconomic indicators

Traffic congestion has significant adverse implications for the environment and economy. Many state and local transportation agencies have implemented traffic congestion management practices to alleviate the negative implications of urban traffic. One of the major drawbacks of traffic congestion management practices is that they do not account for socio-demographic and economic factors, which have a significant impact on traffic congestion. Understanding the influence of these factors is very crucial because they can help to communicate the system's performance management and target setting. Only a few studies analyzed the relationship between traffic conditions (e.g., traffic demand and vehicular traveling speed) with a limited number of socio-economic factors. Moreover, most of the existing models ignore the temporal and spatial autocorrelations of traffic congestion, which may significantly limit their reliability and effectiveness. This study is developed with the purpose of identifying the most relevant external factors that affect traffic congestion performance measures. To conduct the research, we have used three urban congestion performance measures collected from 51 metropolitan areas across the U.S. over a four-year period, 2013–2016: travel time index, planning time index, and congested hours. We have used multivariate time series models to account for the complex inter-relationships among the performance measures and socioeconomic factors to identify the most influential factors affecting system performance. We have finally developed predictive models to estimate the traffic congestion measures using these factors. The results of rigorous modeling show that the factors influencing the traffic congestion measures are monthly average daily traffic (MADT), the number of employed, rental vacancy rate, building permits, fuel price index, and Economic Conditions Index (ECI). The prediction models indicated that the effects of these factors are statistically significant and could be used to forecast future trends in three performance measures accurately.     

Alternative congestion pricing schedules

It is important that alternative congestion pricing schedules are compared with respect to a broad spectrum of their effects. This paper uses an equilibrium simulation model of peak-period commuting along an urban highway to compare quantitatively both positive and normative effects of six congestion pricing schedules. Three of these schedules have been investigated qualitatively in the literature; the others are new. The results indicate that flat tolls are favored over smoothly varying tolls for revenue generation or increase in vehicle occupancy, but are disfavored for efficiency maximization, increase in consumer surplus, or reduction in congestion delays.     

城市交通拥堵的经济学分析和元胞自动机模拟

分析了城市道路系统的公共性和外部性。使用均衡分析的方法对城市交通拥堵进行了经济学分析,认为当城市道路的使用者超过一定数量时,道路交通的外部性凸显出来,由于这种外部性,道路交通系统总数处于过度使用的状态。最后使用元胞自动机对城市交通拥堵现象进行了模拟,发现为了改善城市交通堵塞,虽然需要增加交通供给,但是更为重要的是如何优化车流使得现有的交通供给得到充分的利用。     

Stochastic Route Choice Equilibrium Assignment for Travelers with Heterogeneous Regret Aversions

Most route choice models assume that people are completely rational. Recently, regret theory has attracted researchers’ attentions because of its power to depict real travel behavior. This paper proposes a multiclass stochastic user equilibrium assignment model by using regret theory. All users are differentiated by their own regret aversion. The route travel disutility for users of each class is defined as a linear combination of the travel time and anticipated regret. The proposed model is formulated as a variational inequality problem and solved by using the self-regulated averaging method. The numerical results show that users’ regret aversion indeed influences their route choice behavior and that users with high regret aversion are more inclined to change route choice when the traffic congestion degree varies.     

City size,network structure and traffic congestion

This paper presents an alternative approach for analyzing the relationship between land use and traffic congestion by employing the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD). The MFD is an empirically observed relationship between traffic flow and traffic density at the level of an urban region, including hypercongestion, where flow decreases as density increases. This approach is consistent with the physics of traffic and allows the parsimonious modeling of intra-day traffic dynamics and their connection with city size, land use and network characteristics. The MFD can accurately measure the inefficiency of land and network resource allocation due to hypercongestion, in contrast with existing models of congestion. The findings reinforce the ‘compact city’ hypothesis, by favoring a larger mixed-use core area with greater zone width, block density and number of lanes, compared to the peripheral area. They also suggest a new set of policies, including the optimization of perimeter controls and the fraction of land for transport, which constitute robust second-best optimal strategies that can further reduce congestion externalities.     

Urban growth and subcenter formation: A trolley ride from the Staples Center to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl

The long-term trends of urbanization suggest: not only have more cities formed, but the leading metropolises have grown larger, with a number of peripheral subcenters developing over time. Conventional models of urban growth are limited, in that commuting cost and congestion eventually result in decreasing returns in a monocentric city as population becomes very large. We construct a general-equilibrium model with dynamic interactions between spatial agglomeration and urban development, driven by location-dependent knowledge spillovers. Our contribution allows endogenous development of subcenters to capture benefits from knowledge spillovers and offset diminishing returns from urban congestion, thus permitting more sustained city growth.     

The new urban economics: An evaluation

This paper reviews and evaluates the branch of urban economic theory labelled the “New Urban Economics.” This sub-field attempts to integrate welfare economics and urban economics within a general equilibrium framework using mathematical methods of analysis. Particular attention is given to the assumptions behind these models (one-dimensional space, monocentricity, homogeneous households, exclusive zoning, long-run equilibrium, etc.) and their implications. Extensions of the basic model—the treatment of utility, road congestion, other externalities, dynamics and optimum geography—are also examined.     

Peak-Load Pricing of a Bottleneck with Traffic Jam

This paper generalizes the model of bottleneck congestion such that formation and development of traffic jams is explicitly formulated. The model is applied to the peak-load problem for the morning rush hour: every morning, a fixed number of commuters travel across a roadway, and each of them chooses departure time to minimize commuting cost consisting of travel time cost, scheduling cost, and toll. Equilibrium and optimal patterns of departure are solved and optimal peak-load toll is derived. Incorporating traffic jams alters the earlier results in the literature. That is, road users may be better off from paying the optimal peak-load toll. Conditions under which such a result is obtained are identified by simulations.     

基于TDM的城市交通拥挤分析的进一步思考——以南京市为例

本文针对城市交通拥挤现状,立足城市交通拥挤的实质,基于TDM城市交通拥挤分析,从中长期交通拥挤治理的角度,提出城市交通拥挤的治理措施。     

Commuter Responses to Travel Time Uncertainty under Congested Conditions: Expected Costs and the Provision of Information

A simulation methodology for analyzing policies for reducing traffic congestion and the effect of providing commuters with pre-trip information is developed. This combines a model incorporating travel time uncertainty to determine optimal home departure times with a supply-side congestion model of a highway facility. Congestion is endogenously generated for different scenarios using a randomly generated normal distribution of work start times and previously estimated parameters. The results suggest that greater reductions in the expected costs of commuting may be achievable by policies that reduce travel time variance rather than just travel times. Policy simulations which analyze the congestion effects of providing commuters with pre-trip information are found to not necessarily provide many benefits to those using the information, although gains may be minor because the only behavioral response is limited to departure time changes.     

基于博弈论的城市交通拥堵问题分析

通过建立交通参与者之间抢行的博弈模型,对双方的博弈行为进行均衡分析,分析结论表明宣传教育和交通处罚可以促成交通礼让行为,然后从博弈的角度提出了解决城市交通拥堵问题的一些对策。     

城市交通拥堵的系统动力结构分析

城市交通拥堵是当前我国很多城市在发展过程中所面临的难题。虽然人们从理论和实践两个方面都在做着积极的探索,但至今尚没有找到统一的理想解决方案。从系统动力学的角度出发,选取五个最基本的因素组建城市交通系统模型,并根据城市发展与交通演变之间的相互作用关系构建了城市交通系统动力结构模型。利用该结构模型,对产生城市交通拥堵的机理进行了分析,提出了优化发展城市交通系统,解决城市交通拥堵的五点建议,并对威海城市交通发展进行了实例分析。注重对问题的宏观把握,构建了一个研究城市交通系统演变规律的基本理论框架,这对城市交通系统的进一步细化研究具有一定的参考价值。     

The impact of traffic congestion when optimising delivery routes in real time. A case study in Spain

This paper studies the importance of considering congestion costs when optimising delivery routes. Through the analysis of two study areas (the region of Catalonia and the city of Barcelona, in Spain), four different scenarios have been implemented and compared in which different objective functions are minimised: Euclidean distance, real distance, real time with static congestion, and real time with dynamic congestion. The data have been collected from Google Maps, which allows us to obtain information on traffic conditions in real time. The results indicate that minimising real time considering congestion as a dynamic attribute which varies throughout the day is the most efficient method to optimise delivery routes, especially within urban areas. For the two study areas, and using this dynamic approach in which real-time congestion costs are reflected into the vehicle routing problem, savings in time up to 11% have been obtained.     

Tiebout's tale in spatial economies: Entrepreneurship, self-selection, and efficiency

This paper establishes the existence and efficiency of equilibrium in a local public goods economy with spatial structures by formalizing Hamilton's [Hamilton, B.W., 1975. Zoning and property taxation in a system of local governments Urban Studies 12, 205–211] elaboration of Tiebout's [Tiebout, C., 1956. A pure theory of local public expenditures. Journal of Political Economy 64, 416–424] tale. We use a well-known equilibrium concept from Rothschild and Stiglitz [Rothschild, M., Stiglitz, J.E., 1976. Equilibrium in competitive insurance markets: an essay on the economics of imperfect information. Quarterly Journal of Economics 40, 629–649] in a market with asymmetric information, and show that Hamilton's zoning policy plays an essential role in proving the existence and efficiency of equilibrium. We use an idealized large economy following Ellickson, Grodal, Scotchmer and Zame [Ellickson, B., Grodal, B., Scotchmer, S., Zame, W.R., 1999. Clubs and the market, Econometrica 67, 1185–1217] and Allouch, Conley and Wooders [Allouch, N., Conley, J.P., Wooders, M.H., The Tiebout Hypothesis: On the Existence of Pareto Efficient Competitive Equilibria, (2004), mimeograph]. Our theorem is directly applicable to the existence and efficiency of a discrete spatial approximation of mono- or multi-centric city equilibria in an urban economy with commuting time costs, even if we allow the existence of multiple qualities of (collective) residences, when externalities due to traffic congestion are not present.     

Congestion Caused by Speed Differences

This paper investigates road traffic congestion caused by speed differences using both analytical and numerical simulation models. Especially outside peak hours, speed differences are probably one of the most important reasons for congestion. Some main conclusions are that optimal tolls for slow vehicles are higher than those for fast drivers, that the marginal external costs and the optimal tolls for slow drivers are actually decreasing in the equilibrium number of slow drivers, and that “platooning” may become an attractive option especially when the desire for a low speed is caused by a lower value of time.     

城市交通拥堵的定量化研究——以西安市为例

文章从城市道路交通网络的典型结构布局入手,提出衡量交通拥堵的定量化指标——交通拥堵影响因子,以西安市城市道路交通网络中出现的交通拥堵为例,选取符合文章研究目的的相关路段进行实证分析。     

The opportunity costs of commuting: the value of a commuting satellite account framework with an example from Lisbon Metropolitan Area*

Commuting affects regional and urban economies. It shapes urban areas, defines their relationships with neighboring regions, intensifies economic flows and exacerbates energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper sets out a proposal for an innovative commuting satellite account (CSA), integrated in a multi-regional input–output model. This framework combines commuting activities with regional distribution of income, distinct household consumption structures, real estate renting activities and the energy consumption and environmental flows incorporated in the different industries. To assess the opportunity costs of commuting, the CSA framework is applied to the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. The socio-economic-environmental impacts of a scenario in which commuters become non-commuters by moving their residence to the municipality in which they work are estimated. The analysis indicates that: commuting, in general, induces significant economic and environmental opportunity costs. Finally, the adoption of policy-oriented recommendations contributing to limit sprawling in metropolitan regions is discussed.     

When worlds collide: Different comparative static predictions of continuous and discrete agent models with land

This paper presents a difference in the comparative statics of general equilibrium models with land when there are finitely many agents, and when there is a continuum of agents. Restricting attention to quasi-linear and Cobb–Douglas utility, it is shown that with finitely many agents, an increase in the (marginal) commuting cost increases land rent per unit (that is, land rent averaged over the consumer's equilibrium parcel) paid by the consumer located at each fixed distance from the central business district. In contrast, with a continuum of agents, average land rent goes up for consumers at each fixed distance close to the central business district, is constant at some intermediate distance, and decreases for locations farther away. Therefore, there is a qualitative difference between the two types of models, and this difference is potentially testable.