Transport Policy Options Research Articles

Attitude changes, modelling travel behaviour, and ex ante project evaluations

The literature has increasingly recognized that people’s attitudes can change for many reasons. This paper argues that attitude changes can have important implications for modelling travel behaviour and ex ante evaluations of candidate policy options. Limiting ourselves to the transport system and the built environment, we discuss why attitudes could change, how these changes are not addressed in current aggregate travel behaviour models, mainly the four step model, and how they could influence the assessment of candidate policy options. We suggest related avenues for future research. The core point we want to make is that attitude changes are not included in aggregate models, which leads to an underestimation of the impacts (often: benefits) of unconventional transport policy options.

Scenario simulation of CO2 emissions from light-duty passenger vehicles under land use-transport planning: A case of Shenzhen International Low Carbon City

• CO 2 emissions from light-duty passenger vehicles were simulated. • Light-duty passenger vehicle emissions were calculated based on travel demand. • Travel demand were simulated under different planning policy scenarios. • A case study was conducted in a project of international cooperation in China. • This study can offer a framework for evaluating land use-transport planning. Mitigating transport emissions acts a significant role in coping with global climate change and building sustainable cities. Since light-duty passenger vehicles (LDPVs) significantly contribute to transport CO 2 emissions, it is essential to evaluate their emissions for the policy-making of sustainable transport strategies. However, related studies concerning integrated land use-transport planning are limited. Therefore, this study simulated and evaluated CO 2 emissions from LDPVs at the community level using an integrated model, where the mixed-use development (MXD) model was adopted to estimate travel demand based on mixed land-use and transport accessibility. A vehicle emission calculation model was then employed to calculate CO 2 emissions with the estimated travel demand. With this model, the policy impacts on CO 2 emissions from LDPVs were simulated under different planning policy scenarios of land use-transport planning. As a leading development project of international cooperation on sustainable urbanization in China, Shenzhen International Low Carbon City was chosen as the study case. The results indicated the significance of the spatial equalized patterns of both mixed land-use and transport facilities. This new framework can be used to evaluate and promote low-carbon transport policy options for integrated spatial planning in the sustainable urbanization of developing countries.

2339 - Model Based Policy Analysis for Infection Spread during Air Transportation

Background Public transportation in general and air travel in particular have been identified as leading factors in the spread of many different viruses. The high economic and public perception costs on the transportation sector due to pandemic events necessitates transportation policy that addresses mitigation. We formulate a multiphysics computational model that incorporates particle dynamics based pedestrian movement of travelers in transit hubs (e.g. airports), contact analysis and stochastic infectious disease spread, to frame and analyze transportation policies that can mitigate infectious disease spread. Methods In the multi-scale model, we model the pedestrian movement using a particle dynamics social force model. A location dependence of desired velocity is introduced to reduce reliance on repulsive forces that are difficult to estimate. The pedestrian trajectory information from the above model is integrated with a discrete-time stochastic Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious (SEI) model for infection transmission. The probability-distribution of infection transmission varies depending on the incubation periods and transmission rates for specific diseases. The amount of RNA virus copies in blood serum is used to estimate the infection probability profile for diseases including Ebola and SARS. The number of infected travelers for a given transportation policy (e.g. boarding strategy, gate size etc) can then be estimated using this multi-scale model. Further, the transportation policies that minimize the infection spread are evaluated and algorithms to quantify policy robustness using massively parallel supercomputers are discussed. Results Several Boarding and deplaning strategies, airplane and gate size are evaluated as policies for three directly transmitted diseases Ebola, SARS and H1N1 influenza. We found that deplaning had a smaller impact on infection dynamics because of the lower number of new contacts and lower time of exposure during the comparatively faster process. Among boarding strategies, we found that two-zone randomized boarding process results in fewer number of infections. Smaller airplanes such as 50 seaters are more effective in reducing infection. Comparing the infectivity of first day and peak day for the three diseases (day 3 for Ebola, day 5 for H1N1 and day 4 or 5 for SARS), the mean of the Poisson distribution increases marginally by one unit for Ebola and SARS but expands significantly for H1N1. The information is presented in terms of policy analysis maps. Conclusions A multi-scale pedestrian dynamics–infection dynamics model is presented as an approach for exploring air-travel policies that minimize infectious disease spread. Several transportation policy options that impact the disease spread are presented.

Public support for bicycling and transport policies in inner Sydney, Australia: a cross‐sectional survey

ObjectiveTo describe the degree of community support – and factors associated with this support – for a number of potential transport policy options among an inner‐city sample of residents in Sydney, Australia. MethodsThis study analysed data collected from a cross‐sectional online survey: Wave 3 of the Sydney Transport and Health Study, conducted in September–October 2015 (n=418). ResultsThere was a high level of overall support for policies to make public transport cheaper (85%), have more bicycle paths separated from motor vehicles (82%) and have a public bike‐share program (72%), with similar levels of support across usual commute mode, age and sex. ConclusionsDespite a natural tendency for respondents to support transport policies that were of most relevance to themselves, it appeared that, in this sample, public support for public transport and bicycling policies remained strong across all respondents. Implications for public healthPolicies that support public transport and active travel and achieve positive health outcomes would be well received by inner‐Sydney residents.

Do individuals have different preferences as consumer and citizen? The trade-off between travel time and safety

Transport policy decisions often involve a trade-off between travel time and safety. Transport economists generally evaluate the societal value of transport policy options involving travel time versus safety trade-offs in a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) through multiplying the expected change in traffic casualties with the value of a statistical life (VOSL) and multiplying the changes in travel time with the (marginal) value of time (VOT). The dominant empirical approach to infer the VOSL and the VOT is based on stated preference experiments in which respondents are asked to make choices between (hypothetical) routes which differ in terms of various characteristics (e.g. travel time and number of fatal accidents per year). This approach towards inferring the VOT and the VOSL has been criticized by scholars who argue that individuals’ preferences as consumer of mobility inferred through (hypothetical) route choices may be a poor proxy for how the same individuals in their role of citizen believe that government should trade-off safety and travel time. This study investigates the extent to which individuals indeed do have different preferences as consumer and citizen when trading off travel time and safety, by conducting five stated choice experiments in which respondents are asked to choose between hypothetical routes as consumer or hypothetical routes/policy options as citizen. Our results suggest that individuals in their role as citizen assign substantially more value to safety than travel time when compared to their consumer choices. We believe that this paper could fuel a debate about whether or not the VOT and VOSL inferred from choices individuals make as a car driver are the single most relevant metrics for the valuation of expected changes in traffic casualties and travel time in the appraisal of transport-related government policy options.

A land use and transportation integration method for land use allocation and transportation strategies in China

In this paper, we will first review literature of the land use and transportation interaction and then develop a new land use allocation methodology called Three Stages-Two-Feedback Method (Integration Method) for both land use allocation and the transportation policy options with a practical implementation. Then we apply this method in an urban general planning project in China with more than 1.2 million populations. In this project, we evaluated three land use allocation strategies and three transportation policy options using two application tools (with and without feedbacks) using this method implemented in a land use planning system UPlan and a transportation planning system Emme. The results show that the use of the feedback method (Application Two) results in a vehicle distance reduction and the increase in the service coverage area of transit bus stops at the same time. Due to the use of transportation accessibility and the congestion measures with a MSA implementation, the accessibility measure shows a convergent process over iterations. This nice feature can be used for alternative comparisons. Future research subjects are also discussed.

Ethical Theories and the Cost–Benefit Analysis-Based Ex Ante Evaluation of Transport Policies and Plans

ABSTRACTIn the policy analysis community it is widely recognized that ‘sound’ policies meet three criteria: effectiveness, efficiency and equity. In most western countries, cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is currently the standard method to ex ante evaluate transport policy options. It scores high for effectiveness and efficiency, but generally ignores equity and other ethically important implications of policies. The CBA has its roots in the ethical theory of utilitarianism. However, both utilitarianism and CBA have faced many objections. We present alternative ethical theories, based on deontological theories and contractarianism. We discuss how these theories can inspire the ex ante evaluation of transport policy options. We argue that in order to come to a moral evaluation of transport policies we need a context-sensitive approach. According to such an approach, there is a plurality of morally relevant features that have to be balanced per situation. We argue that such a context-sensitive approach is more appropriate than a priori selecting one theory such as utilitarianism, as such a theory is not appropriate in all possibly relevant circumstances. Consequently, by being based on utilitarianism, CBA overlooks issues of justice, fairness, and autonomy that are morally relevant to an evaluation of transport policies.

Using value of statistical life for the ex ante evaluation of transport policy options: a discussion based on ethical theory

This paper aims to discuss a number of questions that are highly important for the ex ante evaluation of the safety impacts of transport policy options, from the perspective of ethical theory: (1) Is it morally OK to express prevention on acceptance of fatalities or risks in monetary terms? (2) How useful is the concept of the value of a statistical life (VOSL) for ex ante evaluations of transport policy options? (3) What are the pros and cons of pricing protection of lives or prevention of risks in ex ante evaluations? (4) Which methods are available for expressing (protection of) human lives in monetary terms, and what are the main related methodological discussions? (5) Are all safety-related costs generally included in ex ante evaluations of the safety impacts of transport policy options, and if not: what is the relevance of excluded costs categories from an ethical perspective? (6) How important is the distribution of safety effects from an ethical perspective? The answer to the first question highly depends on the ethical theory that is used. With respect to question 2 we think that the VOSL is a useful concept, but that its application is not straightforward, for several reasons. Thirdly we think that probably pricing safety improves the quality of decision making, but to the best of our knowledge there is no research to underpin this expectation. The answer to question 4 is that several methods exist to estimate the value of a statistical life (VOSL), willingness-to-pay (WTP) methods being the most common category of methods. However, several methodological issues arise that make estimates of VOSL less straightforward. With respect to question 5 we conclude that behaviour-related avoidance costs are often overlooked and that these costs are relevant from an ethical perspective because the freedom to move and the freedom to participate in activities are challenged. Finally the answer to question 6 is that from an ethical perspective, in terms of the evaluation of policy measures, it might matter which groups of the population are the victims of the transport system, or are at risk. Egalitarian theories as well as sufficientarianism are useful theories to discuss distribution effects. Different theories conclude differently.

Abstract Title

Title AbstractBackground:Knowledge of health risks associated to transport (air pollution, noise, injuries and physical inactivity) indicates that substantial health co-benefits are expected from low-carbon transport policies.There is dearth of comparative analyses of health co-benefits from policies currently prescribed to reduce climate change in transport.This limits policy makers’ ability to chose among options benefiting health most, and of research bodies to extend knowledge in this domain.MethodsWHO reviewed evidence on health impacts of recommendations on climate change mitigation for transport in the IPCC. Fourth Assessment Report, includingmodified vehicles and fuels;land use factors;non-motorized transport or public transport.Health impacts from those policies were classified as negative, insignificant or positive. The strength of evidence used in this analysis was judged as weak, strong or no evidence.ResultsWhen health is considered, the best transport interventions reviewed by the IPCC are travel mode shifts. This differs from the present emphasis on technological improvements in vehicles and fuels provided in the IPCC report.There is also emerging evidence on how transport policies improve physical activity and related health outcomes:Active travel policies were associated with increased physical activity, reduced obesity and BMI.Public transport was associated with increased physical activity, less obesity and lower risk of road traffic injury.Increased car use was associated with less physical activity and more obesity.DiscussionThere is emerging research into the health impacts of actual transport interventions. Results from these studies allow health actors to advise on which transport policy options (among those being considered by panels such as the IPCC) are best for health. A new research agenda is proposed, directed at assessing the health performance of interventions in transport to mitigate climate change.

How suitable is CBA for the ex-ante evaluation of transport projects and policies? A discussion from the perspective of ethics

Nowadays in most western countries CBA is the standard method to ex-ante evaluate transport policy options. Despite its popularity CBA has often been criticized for several reasons, most of them related to the utilitarian perspective and related ethical considerations. This paper gives an overview of ethically relevant critics on CBA. Rather than rejecting CBA as the method to be preferred the paper concludes that researchers should be aware of its limitations and gives guidance on how to deal with the weaknesses of CBA from an ethical point of view.

Briefing: Reducing the carbon impact of transportation schemes

This briefing introduces the UK Department for Transport's local authority carbon tool. The tool offers a method by which the carbon dioxide emissions of different transportation policy options can be assessed.

Discussing Equity and Social Exclusion in Accessibility Evaluations

Ex ante evaluations of transport policy options (including infrastructure plans) are generally based on cost-benefit analyses (CBA). Accessibility changes are included in such analyses indirectly, via a utilitarian perspective. But accessibility is broader than is assumed by this perspective and also incorporates equity and related distribution effects as well as social exclusion. This paper aims to give an overview of the relevance of distribution effects and equity, and social exclusion for accessibility, based on the literature. The most important conclusions of our paper is that the two subjects are poorly addressed in transport appraisal in general, and in CBA in particular. Additional ethical theories could add value to the utilitarian perspective, egalitarian theories being a major competitor. Equity analysis is however complex because there are several types of equity, various ways to categorize people for equity analysis, numerous impacts to consider, and various ways of measuring these impacts. And such analysis requires normative judgements, in addition to simply presenting distribution effects. Several options are available to express distribution effects. Important choices to be made if such effects need to be reported relate to the unit of comparison (e.g. the household versus the individual), the indicator to be used, and the value of each unit to be compared (e.g. accessibility) for all units of comparison (e.g. households). We also conclude that CBA is not suitable for evaluating social exclusion policies. Based on this overview we propose an agenda for potential future research in the area of ethics and accessibility.

Estimating the impact of abnormal loads on network performance

The English Highways Agency is required to improve network performance including journey time reliability measured by average delay on the 10% slowest journeys along a specified set of primary routes in the strategic road network. Abnormal indivisible loads, which behave as moving bottlenecks, can cause significant delay, but the factors involved are complex, so methods have been developed to model their effect. These methods have been extended to estimate their impact through the Average Vehicle Delay (formerly PSA1 delay) measure, allowing mitigations through intelligent transportation system or policy options to be evaluated. Environmental impacts are also considered.

Effectiveness and Acceptability of Urban Transport Policies in Europe

ABSTRACT This article examines whether and how key changes in transport policy priorities since the beginning of the 1990s have been reflected in public concerns about urban problems and effective urban transport policy options. The article brings together a variety of evidence from across Europe and carries out analysis of Europe-wide public opinion data at three points in time since the beginning of the 1990s. The analysis reveals that opinions about the effectiveness of different transport policy options remained quite constant during the 1990s and that these opinions are remarkably similar across all European countries.

Using DALYs to Assess the Impact of Transport Measures on the Dutch Disease Burden

ISEE-234 Objective: Potential health effects of transport range from noise annoyance to injury to mortality. To compare and evaluate different transport policy options, there is a need to express these health effects in a comparable way. One of the most common methods to do this is the calculation of disability adjusted life years (DALYs), which express the number of people with a certain condition and the severity and duration of that condition in one single number. However, the outcomes of DALY calculations are often relatively uncertain, mainly due to variation in the various input factors. This can make it hard to interpret the outcomes of DALYs and to value their use, especially in more local (more uncertain) assessments. The aim was to quantify effects of speed limit reduction on highways at 9 locations in the Netherlands on health impacts related to air pollution, noise, and traffic safety. We have tried to evaluate the use of DALYs for these types of intervention studies. Material and Methods: DALYs calculations using exposure distributions, exposure-effect data, disease prevalence, and demographics. Results: It appears that the expected health benefits of speed limit reduction are small, except for the effect on traffic safety. We estimate that the disease burden attributable to road traffic noise and traffic-related air pollution decreases by 4% and 2%, respectively. The disease burden due to traffic safety decreases by around 59%. Conclusions: Because a lot of choices and assumptions have been made and the variation caused by uncertainty in the input variables is substantial, results from local impact assessments must be interpreted with caution. DALYs can be useful to support environmental health assessments and decision making, but should not be used as a sole basis for policy making.

Assessing the Health Impact of Air Pollution, Noise, and Accidents as a Function of Transport Policies

MS8-06 Abstract: Transport is an essential activity of modern society and brings about potential for development as well as adverse health implications. The HEARTS (Health Effects and Risks of Transport Systems) project had the main objective of developing tools for the integrated assessment of urban transport impacts on health. Air pollution, noise, and road accidents (including pedestrian accidents) were considered in an attempt to support the identification, development, and implementation of urban transport policies that minimize the health impacts. The project targeted several potential users such as administrations, policy-makers, departments of traffic, environment, health, land use planning, consultants companies, scientific and research institutions, environmental consultants, environmental impact assessment (EIA), and health impact assessment (HIA) practitioners. HEARTS brought together experts and modelers of traffic-related exposure, policy scenarios, and health with the main objectives of: Developing methodologies to assess the health impact of transport-related factors in the urban environment; Integrating different impacts (noise, accidents, air pollution); and Testing the proposed methodology based on policies and scenarios of 3 European cities: Leicester, Lille, and Florence. The project underlined the importance of considering the complexity of human exposure to air pollutants, noise, and traffic accidents in an integrated manner to predict the health impacts of transport policies. Dynamic geographic models were used for the assessment of transport-related exposures to air pollution and noise at the local scale, whereas population exposure models using a probabilistic simulation framework were used for broader-scale population-level exposure assessment. The dynamic geographic model was applied using a collection of specific models under a geographic information system (GIS) platform. Newly developed accident and pedestrian risk models were also included. Ad hoc survey campaigns and an additional collection of data were conducted. In the case study cities, transport policy options and different scenarios were identified and assessed in terms of their health implications.

Transport cost analysis: a case study of the total costs of private and public transport in Auckland

Abstract The current level of motorised transportation worldwide is increasingly a social, environmental and economic problem. Transport benefits come alongside injuries and death, unproductive travel time, energy dependence, and environmental damage. One reason for the increasing problem results from externalising various impacts on society. Many of these external – or ‘unpaid’ – costs have only gradually been recognised and most have either been under-valued or are considered impossible to estimate since they have no value in a market. This research assesses the external (unpaid) and internal (user paid) cost of transport. It focuses on estimating the total cost of both private and public transport, using a case study for Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. The external costs are significant −2.23% of the GDP produced by the 1.2 million Auckland region residents in 2001. Of this private transport generated 28 times more external cost than public transport. The internal cost assessment showed that total revenues collected did not even cover 50% of total transport cost. The research has shown that not only are the external costs of vehicle transport high, but that contrary to popular belief the total costs of private transport are subsidised by public transport users. This has implications for successful transport policy options.

Influencing Mobility Outside Transport Policy

Because levels of mobility and car ownership have risen substantially over recent decades (and the increase seems likely to continue), mobility management is becoming more and more important. Transport policy clearly has a direct impact on mobility and can be used to influence the supply and demand for transport. However, transport policy is not the only way to influence mobility. Other areas of policy making (such as energy or waste policies, for example) are also important determinants of mobility, although the influence of these 'non-transport policies' on mobility is often overlooked when identifying policies for mobility management. In this paper, we show that certain non-transport policies might increase mobility whilst others might reduce it. For example, macro-economic policy and land-use planning might act to reduce travel, whilst EU enlargement and cross-border trade agreements might act in the opposite direction and increase travel. Non-transport policies may also indirectly affect mobility. For example, research and development policy can stimulate the introduction of new technology, which in turn can have implications for the introduction of new transport policy options (such as electronic road pricing) and consequently mobility levels. We present a framework with examples to conceptualize the links (both direct and indirect) between transport policies, non-transport policies, social and economic trends, innovation and technology, and mobility. We then identify some of the potential impacts of non-transport policies on mobility in more qualitative terms, including a review of the role of land-use planning, ICT (information, communications and technology) and macro-economic policies in influencing mobility. We conclude that thinking must change about solutions to transport problems. Transport policies alone may not be enough to manage mobility effectively. The achievement of sustainable transport requires transport demand to be reduced at source by combining complementary transport policies and non-transport policies, including technology. We also suggest that new methods of analysis are required to reflect the true complexity of change in travel that is now taking place. This complexity has arisen from a combination of factors, including non-transport policies, and the range of responses from individuals and firms to this new flexibility needs to be understood.

Development of a microscopic activity-based framework for analyzing the potential impacts of transportation control measures on vehicle emissions

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) have defined a set of transportation control measures to counter the increase in the vehicle emissions and energy consumption due to increased travel. The value of these TCM strategies is unknown as there is limited data available to measure the travel effects of individual TCM strategies and the models are inadequate in forecasting changes in travel behavior resulting from these strategies. The work described in this paper begins to provide an operational methodology to overcome these difficulties so that the impacts of the policy mandates of both CAAA and ISTEA can be assessed. Although the framework, as currently developed, falls well short of actually forecasting changes in traveler behavior relative to policy options designed to encourage emissions reduction, the approach can be useful in estimating upper bounds of certain policy alternatives in reducing vehicle emissions. Subject to this important limitation, the potential of transportation policy options to alleviate vehicle emissions is examined in a comprehensive activity-based approach. Conclusions are drawn relative to the potential emissions savings that can be expected from efficient trip chaining behavior, ridesharing among household members, as well as from technological advances in vehicle emissions control devices represented by replacing all of the vehicles in the fleet by vehicles conforming to present-day emissions technology.

External Costs Associated with Interregional Transport

The environmental and social costs of transport are becoming an important issue in Europe as car ownership and usage levels continue to rise. A subject of current debate is the internalization of these external costs by means of road-use pricing in a fair and efficient way, particularly in urban areas. Similar theory can be applied in an interregional transport context, but little research has been conducted in this area to date. The TRENEN model has been developed under the European Union TRANSPORT Program to quantify the marginal external costs of transport. Case studies have been completed for several European cities, using the urban version of the model, and for Belgium, Ireland, and Italy, using the interregional version. The calibration of the interregional model and the related case study results for Ireland are presented. The conclusions suggest users of all transportation modes currently pay less than the marginal external costs of their transportation activities. Another finding is that traffic congestion is a major externality. The model allows comparison of different transportation policy options with a full optimum scenario (the external costs are internalized precisely). Typically, such a policy would be difficult to implement, given the sophisticated pricing instrumentation required. However, it serves as a good baseline for testing other policies. In the case of Ireland, when a congestion pricing policy—similar to that used for motorways in France—was compared with the full optimum case, it achieved 60 percent of the maximum achievable welfare.