Peak Car Research Articles

Peak Car Use and the Rise of Global Rail: Why This Is Happening and What It Means for Large and Small Cities

The 21st century promises some dramatic changes—some expected, others surprising. One of the more surprising changes is the dramatic peaking in car use and an associated increase in the world’s urban rail systems. This paper sets out what is happening with the growth of rail, especially in the traditional car dependent cities of the US and Australia, and why this is happening, particularly its relationship to car use declines. It provides new data on the plateau in the speed of urban car transportation that supports rail’s increasing role compared to cars in cities everywhere, as well as other structural, economic and cultural changes that indicate a move away from car dependent urbanism. The paper suggests that the rise of urban rail is a contributing factor in peak car use through the relative reduction in speed of traffic compared to transit, especially rail, as well as the growing value of dense, knowledge-based centers that depend on rail access for their viability and cultural attraction. Finally, the paper suggests what can be done to make rail work better based on some best practice trends in large cities and small car dependent cities.

Briefing: Peak car use – what does it mean for urban design and planning?

The trends in urban car use are now demonstrating a new phenomenon where a peak has occurred and rapid declines are setting in. Some of the causes of peak car use are suggested, but more importantly the need for urban design and planning to change their practice is suggested. This should include: first, not increasing road capacity and using the road space freed up for sustainable transport improvements, especially walkability; second, planning for 50% reductions in cars with all the growth being electric vehicles; third, ensuring quality electric transit is the key facilitator of further urban growth and is tied into it through value capture; and fourth, facilitating green urban renewal as the main game in urban planning to achieve the polycentric city.

The Paradox of Public Transport Peak Spreading: Universities and Travel Demand Management

ABSTRACT The characteristics which make public transport attractive and contribute to high public transport use by specific market segments create the paradox in which encouragement of peak spreading of public transport services may lead to lower overall use of public transport. As an example of this potential paradox, the challenges of spreading peak demand for public transport for a large inner city trip generator, the University of Sydney in inner Sydney NSW, Australia are investigated, from both the demand side and supply side. While there is a range of university and government initiatives which would reduce peak use and encourage peak spreading such as class scheduling, provision of student housing, travel planning, and changes to public transport supply and pricing, they may not achieve either a reduction in peak use or a spread of public transport demand to other times of the day. Education users are the most dedicated users of public transport and, for a peak spreading campaign to be successful, finely balanced messages are required to encourage peak public transport users such as students to shift to the off-peak, and for peak car drivers such as staff not to replace these users on peak public transport services.

A Rank Dependent Scheduling Model

This paper proposes an analytical framework for scheduling decisions of road travelers that takes into account probability weighting using rank dependent utility theory. The fundamental difference with the standard scheduling model based on expected utility is that the probabilities of arrivals are treated in a non-linear way. This paper shows how scheduling decisions are affected by the weighted probabilities of the traveler. We derive the costs of non-optimal chosen departure times because of probability weighting and show that if the parameterized probability weighting function is similar to what has been found for gambling, the costs of probability weighting for morning peak car travelers are around 3 per cent. For the full range of parameters tested, we find costs in the range of 0-24 percent of total travel costs.

Marginal tax reform, externalities and income distribution

The paper examines welfare improving revenue neutral marginal policy reforms for an economy with non-identical individuals and an externality with a feedback on the consumption of taxed commodities. The instruments considered are: indirect taxes, the uniform poll transfer and public abatement. This extends the framework of Ahmad and Stern [Journal of Public Economics, 25 (1984) 259–298], Bovenberg and de Mooij [American Economic Review, 84 (1994) 1085–1089] and Schöb [Oxford Economic Papers 48 (1996) 537–555]. The theory is illustrated for congestion caused by peak car transport. The desirability of a higher externality tax is shown to depend on: the efficiency effect of the revenue recycling, the externality benefit, the distributional characteristic of the commodities and the externality and the feedback effect.