Access for appraisal: a systematic review of estimating transport benefits via real-estate uplift

Most variable message sign (VMS) installed on the urban freeway only provide information about traffic conditions of urban freeway, but they do not provide traffic information about local streets. This study explores urban freeway users' diversion response to the D-VMS (VMS that display explicitly the travel time of both urban freeway and local streets) in the context of China. An on-site stated preference questionnaire survey was conducted to collect behavioural data. A cross-sectional binary probit model and a panel binary probit model are estimated to identify factors that influence drivers' diversion behaviour in response to D-VMS. The study showed that drivers' en-route decision on diverting from freeway to local streets can be significantly influenced by D-VMS and the extent of D-VMS impacts depends on driver characteristics, local street characteristics and D-VMS messages. Main findings regarding D-VMS impacts are, (a) travel time saving and drivers' years of driving experience serve as positive factors in diverting, (b) number of traffic lights on the local street, frequency of urban freeway use, being a mid-age driver, and being an employer-provided car driver, serve as negative factors in diverting. On the modelling aspect, it was shown that the panel model does not provide substantially different model coefficients but more robust statistical inferences for model coefficients as compared to the cross-sectional model, and the cross-sectional model tends to seriously overestimate t-test values for explanatory variables changing across drivers (e.g. demographic characteristics) but slightly underestimate t-test values for explanatory variables changing across scenarios (e.g. travel time savings). The findings have implications for better design and operation of advanced traveller information systems and for future effort on survey design, data collection and model estimation.

By tradition, transport appraisal relies primarily on travel time savings and monetary values. Assessment tools rarely factor in the perspective of travellers in terms of their subjective travel experience while on the move. Worthwhile travel time introduces the idea that travel can be pleasant, meaningful or worthwhile and not exclusively associated with the economic utility of the activity at the destination of the trip and the work-related productivity during the trip. This paper explores how the “worthwhile use of travel time” can be conceptualised and unpacked, so that it can be adequately captured and integrated into transport appraisal practice. We reviewed the literature on worthwhile travel time and perceived travel experience in psychology, economics, public health and travel behaviour research and we formulated the conceptual framework of worthwhile travel time that is grounded on the traveller’s perception of three forms of value emerging from existing literature: enjoyment, productivity, and health. Our conceptual framework of worthwhile travel time suggests that experience factors (i.e. travel conditions as experienced by the traveller) can enable travel activities (i.e. the trip itself or activities on-the-move), which in turn unlock the values of enjoyment, productivity and fitness that influence the perceived worthwhileness of a trip to a different degree each. Additional (explanatory) factors such as the door-to-door trip characteristics, the traveller’s personal characteristics and attitude, and the spatial and temporal conditions can also influence the perceived worthwhileness of a trip. On a policy level, the integration of the worthwhile travel time concept into transport appraisal practice could allow future transport investments to offer a better balance between reduced travel times and improved quality and experience of a trip for the traveller.

Value capture offers the promise of recouping the additional value that public transportation infrastructure investments confer to local property. The totality of the empirical evidence supports the contention that such investments do indeed add value to proximate residential property. However, little research to estimate just how much any additional property value changes from year to year is evident in the empirical literature. The absence of evidence on the reliability of accessibility premiums is problematic from a policy perspective because transit operators need dedicated sources of funds to compensate for the retrenchment of government sources. Adoption of a multilevel approach expands the temporal scale of analysis to more than a decade and the spatial scale of analysis to an entire heavy rail system, Metro in Washington, District of Columbia (DC), in order to estimate just how much accessibility premiums change year over year. Results advance the state of knowledge on value capture since public rail infrastructure adds property value across an entire heavy rail system, but the additional value is modest and the year-to-year changes are dramatic. Overall, a strategy to capture any additional property value to fund public transportation may technically qualify as a dedicated source of funds, but it is not a reliable source of funds.

This paper suggests an alternative approach to estimate the value of travel time (VTT) savings, using a case study with exogenous variation in travel costs and data from automatic traffic counts (ATC). With this revealed preferences approach, we address a possible bias of VTT estimates because of self-selection. Compared to the VTT estimates used in transport appraisals, the results produce substantially higher estimates of VTT. Unfortunately, our analysis does allow us to distinguish the self-selection bias from other possible sources of bias. The cost of using ATC data is that there is no direct information regarding the motorists, and the analysis must be done using aggregated data at an hourly interval. Still, this alternative approach may complement the results with more detailed data.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the availability of transportation infrastructure and services and the pattern of house prices in an urban area and to assess whether public investment in transportation can modify residential property values. This study was developed for the Lisbon, Portugal, metropolitan area (LMA) as part of a broader study that intends to develop new value-capture financing schemes for public transportation in the LMA. The paper focuses on three central municipalities in Portugal (Amadora, Lisbon, and Odivelas), where these effects could be more easily measured because of the existence of a significant variability of public transportation services. The paper tries to determine, with different spatial hedonic pricing models, the extent to which access to transportation infrastructure currently is capitalized into house prices and isolates the influence of three different transportation infrastructures: metro, rail, and road. The results suggest that the proximity to one or two metro lines leads to significant property value changes. Results further indicate that the classic hedonic price model (ordinary least-squares estimation) leads to similar coefficient values of the local accessibility dummy variables compared with the spatial lag model and thus provides a steady basis to forecast the property value changes derived from transportation investment for the study area in the absence of a significant property value database.

The wicked problem of travel time use and the effects of ICTs

This paper problematizes the tendency to study Internet use disorders from a perspective of addiction. It is argued that an addiction perspective, grounded in our understanding of substance use disorders, has not contributed much to an improved understanding of the antecedents and etiology of Internet use disorders. Despite this, researchers continue to frame Internet use disorders as an addiction, recently exemplified by the inclusion of Internet gaming disorder in the DSM-5 research appendix as a behavioral addiction. This paper claims that the decision to use an addiction framework to study Internet use disorders has consequences for the way in which results are interpreted, which impacts the potential for theoretical and etiological contributions negatively. The paper argues that a perspective of addiction may not be the most useful approach because it causes a mismatch between theory and findings in empirical work: it is not uncommon to find that a study is positioned as a study of addiction, but presents findings more illustrative of coping behaviors. The paper draws on two examples from the literature to illustrate this mismatch and discusses how this hinders theoretical and etiological development. The question that is asked going forward is what alternative explanations we might identify by not exclusively adhering to an addiction framework for purposes of research. Recommendations are given for how to usefully approach the study of Internet use disorders outside a framework of addiction. It also discusses how scholars who still prefer a framework of addiction might strengthen their conceptual position to ensure improved contributions to etiology and theoretical development.

The chapter addresses cable cars as a new mode of public transportation in large city contexts. The advances of doctoral research attempt to analyze the phenomenon through the sociotechnical approach. The empirical work has been carried out in the Valley of Mexico through interviews with users, promoters, public, and private allies. The research aims to describe and explain the sociotechnical trajectories and the degree of tensions and interactions between relevant social actors. The preliminary results account for the controversies present regarding these new artifacts. Sustainability, the economic value given the savings in travel times for users and new public-private conditions that are imposed after the adoption of the new public transportation service are the characteristics that stand out.

This chapter addresses one of the current problems in transport planning, namely how to finance public transport investment from land value gains (known as value capture) rather than from direct government financing or through the fare box. The implementation of value capture provides the opportunity to open up new and equitable financing because the burden of funding is spread amongst the beneficiaries. The chapter begins by outlining the theory as to why developments in transport infrastructure can lead to land value gains. A central part of the chapter is the evidence as to the size of potential gain, because this underpins the ability of value capture mechanisms to be successful. The chapter then turns to value capture strategies, which are evaluated against a number of normative criteria and with illustrative examples. As the size of the value uplift determines the ability of value capture to deliver on finance, the penultimate section of the chapter presents new empirical work to predict value uplift. The conclusion summarises the chapter content and makes suggestions for future research.

PurposeAustralia’s Future Tax System (2009) among its recommendations identified the need for realignment of tax revenue across the tiers of government in Australia, as well as the need to raise additional revenue from land-based taxes. In achieving these objectives, this paper aims to examine the revenues generated from land and how capital gains tax may be reconceptualised as a value capture tax resulting from the rapid urbanisation of Australia’s cities. The development of a theoretical framework realigns the emerging rationale of a value capture tax, as a means for revenue to be divested from central government in the form of capital gains, to sub-central government as a value capture tax.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research methodology comprising grounded theory and phenomenological research is used in undertaking the review of tax revenue collection from state land tax, conveyance stamp duty, local government rating and Commonwealth capital gains tax. Grounded theory is applied for constant comparison of the data with the objectives of maximising similarities and differences in these revenues with an analytical construct as defined by Strauss and Corbin (1990, p. 61).FindingsThe paper finds that realigning revenue from land-based taxes against the principles of good tax design provides greater opportunity to raise additional revenue to fund public infrastructure while decentralising revenue from central government. It provides an alternate mechanism for revenue transfer from central to sub-central government while conceptually improving own source revenue from value capture taxation as a new revenue source.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this paper is the ability to quantify the potential increase that would be generated in the form of value capture revenue. It is demonstrated in the paper that capital gains tax took over 15 years for revenue generation to crystallise, a factor that would likely occur in the potential introduction of a value capture tax for funding transport infrastructure.Practical implicationsThe pathway to introducing a value capture tax is through re-innovating capital gains tax as a value capture tax directly hypothecated to funding transport infrastructure that results in the uplift in values of the surrounding property from which revenue is raised.Originality/valueThis paper provides a new approach in contributing to funding the capital outlay of public infrastructure in lieu of central government consolidated revenue allocated through the Commonwealth Grants Commission. It provides a much-needed approach to decentralising revenue from the Commonwealth to sub-central government in Australia which has one of the most centralised tax systems in the OECD.

Numerous research studies have elicited willingness‐to‐pay values for transport‐related noise. However, in many industrialized countries including the UK, noise costs and benefits are still not incorporated into appraisals for most transport projects and policy changes. This paper describes the actions recently taken in the UK to address this issue, comprising: primary research based on the city of Birmingham; an international review of willingness‐to‐pay evidence; the development of values using benefit transfers over time and locations; and integration with appraisal methods. Amongst the main findings are: that the willingness‐to‐pay estimates derived for the UK are broadly comparable with those used in appraisal elsewhere in Europe; that there is a case for a lower threshold at 45 dB(A)Leq,18h rather than the more conventional 55 dB(A); and that values per dB(A) increase with the noise level above this threshold. There are significant issues over the valuation of rail versus road noise, the neglect of non‐residential noise and the valuation of high noise levels in different countries. Conclusions are drawn regarding the feasibility of noise valuation based on benefit transfers in the UK and elsewhere, and future research needs in this field are discussed.

The United Kingdom has had a series of unsuccessful attempts at securing land value capture in 1909, 1947, 1967, and 1975. The 1909 land duties would have taxed increases in land values irrespective of the source. The latter three combined public bodies, acquiring development land with levies on developers. For them, value uplift was limited to that arising from the granting of planning consent. None of the measures were fully implemented and were reversed by incoming governments. One of the key problems with value capture policies has been the lack of political consensus. Since 1979, consensus has developed around the use of three types of value capture instruments. Development corporations have been created for the regeneration of local areas by acquiring development land and improving it. Local authorities have been able to use planning obligations and community infrastructure levies to oblige developers to mitigate externalities. Governments have made it clear that these are not to be used as value capture devices and therefore are really applications of the polluter pays principle. Thirdly, there are national taxes that fall on increases in the value of land, namely, business rates, stamp duty land tax, capital gains tax, and inheritance tax.

Research on the governance of IS outsourcing has recognized two moments of governance: the formal outsourcing contract (promissory contract) and post-contractual relationship management (psychological contract). While this research has been prescriptive of contract terms that lead to successful outsourcing, there is need for clarity on what specific governance options are available at each moment of governance and how governance choices at one moment affect those at another, and consequently affect outsourcing outcomes. This paper draws on theoretical and empirical work in the areas of governance and contracts to develop a model of IS outsourcing governance, delineating specific moments of governance (MoG). It describes how the IS outsourcing context circumscribes market, hierarchy, and network governance options that are available at the promissory contract and psychological contract moments. Processes and structures that constitute governance choices at each moment of governance are identified. This analysis of outcomes recognizes an inherent tension in interorganizational relationships: firms’ desire for value capture or efficiency vs their desire for value creation or innovation. We explore how choices in formulating the promissory contract affect the psychological contract, and how psychological contract choices impact value capture and creation. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the MoG model for practitioners and suggesting areas in which further conceptualization and empirical work may be beneficial.

This paper discusses whether changes in mobility practices affect value of travel time savings. It considers the relationship between the theory of the value of time and its practical application in traffic models and cost-benefit analysis. The discussion covers the need to distinguish variations in utility due to changes in the quantity and quality of time spent in travelling, the relationships between changes in value of time and mobility practices and between collective and individual values of time.

Bird flight and optimal migration