Research in Transportation Economics最新文献

This paper investigates ride-share related personal safety of young adults in Cape Town in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a response to gender-based violence, the focus is on the different perceptions of females and males. Additionally, this paper considers how having access to a private vehicle affects an individual's perception of their safety. Data was collected amongst university students in Cape Town, as they have previously been identified as likely ride-share users.

Uncertainty in using ride-share services is explored in the scenarios of ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ Covid-19 to see possible impacts of the pandemic. This study shows that access to a private vehicle is a significant factor when considering ride-share trips ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ the Covid-19 pandemic. Being female, especially with access to a private vehicle, has a negative correlation to making ride-share trips ‘at night’, ‘alone’ or ‘alone at night’.

By understanding the Covid-19 pandemic influences on individuals’ perceptions, strategies and policies can be better informed. This ensures that the negative impacts of similar future disruptive events are mitigated. Supporting the progress of the case city, Cape Town, into having a more inclusive, multi-modal transport culture, this study proposes the implementation of several policies and strategies.

On February 2020, the Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE) issued a resolution on lack of effective competition in 20 routes of freight railway transportation of chemical products originating in southern Mexico. As a response, the Mexican rail regulator, the Regulatory Agency of Rail Transport (ARTF) responsible for overseeing different aspects of rail transportation, such as the economic regulation regarding tariffs, established the regulation and determined maximum rates for the provision of the rail service concerning three different concessionaires in twenty origin-destination pairs for the transportation of chlorine, ethylene oxide, anhydrous ammonia, and caustic soda.

The model used in the economic regulation consisted of establishing a maximum rate per tonne-kilometre for each combination of route and product. The maximum rate was calculated from the average total costs plus a reasonable profit given by the rate that allows a reasonable return on assets, determined through the Weighted Average Cost of Capital that allows the concessionaires to invest in a sector that is particularly capital intensive. Thus, the maximum regulated rate is equal to the rate where the concessionaire breaks even, that is makes zero profit (average cost pricing or “second best”), plus the Weighted Average Cost of Capital.

The results of the rate regulation of the Mexican rail concessions showed a significant reduction of the rates actually charged in 66% on average and 77% with respect to the registered rates. Although the implementation is not complete, as the regulation is being analyzed in the tribunals, the economic regulation showed that the rates are very far from the average cost in the absent of effective competition. More research needs to be done to evaluate the real impact of the first economic regulation of the Mexican rail concessions.

The paper investigates passengers' preferences and demand induction (or reduction) patterns for the London-Paris passenger market. By leveraging an integrated model calibrated on an extensive dataset about passenger flows between London and Paris during the period 2009–2019, we investigate key dimensions by which travelers evaluate transport modes and how both socio-economic characteristics and supply-attribute variations contribute to stimulating or reducing the overall demand. The research confirms the importance of attributes, such as travel times, fares, and frequencies on passenger modal choice, providing some sketches about passengers' propensity toward air or high-speed rail (HSR) mode. Based on data in this study, we find that ceteris paribus a one-trip increase in the daily frequency of Eurostar would stimulate demand for more than 94,500 passengers per year (2.3% of current ridership), while a reduction of HSR travel time by 10 min would increase current flows by at least 1.3%. Analyzing the demand implications of a possible policy of ending air routes for environmental purposes, we prove that the cancellation of air connections would result in a reduction of current demand higher than 6%. HSR service providers could offset the reduction in service levels resulting from air routes closure mainly by leveraging service frequency.

In response to the health and mobility issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Philippine government took advantage of opportunities to expedite public transport reforms by converting a portion of Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (EDSA), Metro Manila's busiest thoroughfare, into a dedicated busway. This deserves a closer look since historically, solutions catering to EDSA have been bereft with challenges given the overlapping powers of various authorities and multitude of interests that benefit from the status-quo. Through semi-structured interviews with key actors followed by a policy capacity analysis, the authors found that the pandemic provided opportunities for the key institutions to gain political legitimacy and authority that pushed its stakeholders to cooperate. However, this new solution forced them to take on tasks that are outside their regular responsibilities so while they were able to provide measures to make EDSA Busway succeed in the short-term, much work needs to be done to sustain the gains achieved.

Public transport is critical for urban dwellers as it is a key link to access economic opportunities and social services. However, transit services in most developing nations are characterized by longer journey time, high fare, unsafe and uncomfortable travel. Hence, this study seeks to analyze the travel experience of public transit users through the lens of vulnerability. The main objective of the research is to investigate transit users’ expenditure on travel, both in terms of time and money, which are regarded as “budgets” allocated to travel. The analysis is based on a survey distributed to 457 public transit users in Addis Ababa. The study applied proportions, percentages and cross-tabulation of key variables and statistical methods, such as one-way ANOVA to analyze the level of vulnerability of transit users. The result shows that low- and middle-income groups bear a higher level of travel burden, in terms of total travel time and percentage of income spent on transport than high income groups. Transport expenditure accounted above 20% of household income for 88% of low-income groups. However, it is below 15% of household income for high income groups, which reveals less financial burden on them. In terms of travel time, 63.8% of middle income groups experience a total travel time of more than 2 h and 52.3% of low-income groups but only 36.3% of high-income groups devote a total travel time above 2 h. Therefore, transport policy formulation should consider the needs and challenges of various groups of transit users.

Drone delivery is a fast delivery mode that has gained tremendous attention from academia and various companies in recent years. However, due to limited battery and payload capacities which may reduce the system's efficiency, it is better to coordinate ground vehicles and drones to take advantage of both trucks' large capacity and the drone's high speed. As a restriction for realistic parcel delivery systems, customer presence is only sometimes deterministic. For instance, a customer makes an order from an e-retailer, but due to various probable reasons, he cannot be present at home to get service. In this paper, we have introduced a sustainable hybrid truck-drone delivery model with stochastic customer presence. We have modeled the system with the Markov chain and proposed a linear mathematical model. This work processes with a heuristic and a Branch-and-Bound algorithm. Also, we have carried out numerous computational experiments to evaluate the proposed solution methods' performance, where the results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithms. Finally, we performed a detailed sensitivity analysis on a case study and studied various aspects of the problem. The results highlight that truck and drone coordination reduces completion time, operational costs, truck emissions, and social penalties.

This research aims to structure the workshop framework ‘empowering local stakeholders to create a “place strategy”’, a spatial planning and management strategy for enhancing place function in a district. This strategy primarily focuses on the team-up phase for stakeholders with human and financial resources, whose mission is to bridge a backcasting vision to the next step involving others and users of the streets. Referring to the ‘link and place’ theory, originally developed in England and adapted to fit the alternative plans suggested by municipal officials at the community level, the paper establishes a toolkit and sessions for the conduct of a community-led workshop in Japan. The prototype workshop was implemented for the place strategy of Omotesando, a mixed land-use district with a famous shopping avenue in Tokyo. The validity of the workshop was examined based on opinion changes and the feedback of participants at each session. The results show that the prototype can draw the participant's consciousness on both the link and place functions, including a perspective on effective bus service. The policy option guides affected the participants' choice of flexible tactics by illustrating the relationship of link and place, which is not necessarily a trade-off.

This study examines the potential bubbles' shipping freight rates during the pandemic through the Generalized Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller test. The results explore multiple bubbles in the freight rates during corona disease (COVID-19). Moreover, the result finds that Baltic Dry Index is the most explosive and shows four bubbles, followed by Baltic Clean Tanker Index. The volatile behavior has been more frequent and pronounced since the second quarter of 2021, mainly instigated by the economic recovery. The results detect four bubbles in Baltic Dry Index caused by strong demand for raw materials and uncertainty restrictions. Furthermore, a single bubble in the Baltic Dirty Tanker Index is caused by the increasing oil price, growing demand for floating storage while burst due to new restrictions of the second wave, declining oil prices, and shortages of vessels. The need for oil products, logistical problems and the highest oil prices are the leading determinants of Baltic Clean Tanker index bubbles.

Gigs were once heralded as work ushering in flexibility, freeing workers from the constraints of time, space, and nagging human managers. However it has been marked by long work hours and an unstable income. This has led to a situation where gig workers are increasingly demanding labor rights. Gig work has been qualitatively explored, highlighting the elements of control exercised by the platform companies. However, there is a dearth of quantitative assessment of the economic sustainability of gig work. In this context, this study explores gig work using the case of hyper-local food delivery in India. The first part uses an agent-based and discrete event simulation (parameterized using primary data) to map the net earnings of workers under varying wage rates. The results show that, at the present wage rate, the food delivery worker has an average net earning of INR 265/day (USD 12.10), considering both the fixed and variable cost of operation. This earning is far below that of an average self-employed worker and casual laborer in urban India. Finally, this study proposes a fixed hourly wage rate of INR 37.84 (USD 1.72) to eliminate the variability in worker earnings without inflating the cost of food delivery.

In the 1990s Great Britain embarked on one of the most radical railway reforms undertaken anywhere in the world, with full vertical separation and privatisation of all aspects of the railway and the introduction of competition throughout the sector. However, since then Britain's railways have been plagued with multiple problems, most notably a failure to control costs, as well as multiple franchise failures and problems with developing sensible timetables, with consequent impacts on train performance. Multiple attempts to reform the initial model have failed and in 2018/2019 a fundamental review was undertaken which culminated in the publication of the Williams–Shapps plan for rail which proposes a major step back towards vertical integration with the establishment of a new government owned organisation to take charge both of infrastructure and services, although the latter will be operated by private companies under concessions. This paper reviews the reasons behind the problems experienced by Britain's railways – which led to the review – before setting out the proposed reforms and discussing whether they might solve the problems and what some of the critical success factors might be.