Using individual travel diary data collected before and after the rail transit coverage expansion in urban Beijing, this paper estimates the impact of rail accessibility improvement on the usage of rail transit, automobiles, buses, walking, and bicycling, measured as percent distance traveled by...

Economists have long advocated congestion pricing as an efficient way of allocating scarce roadway capacity. However, with a few exceptions, congestion tolls are rarely used in practice and strongly opposed by the public and elected officials. Although high implementation costs and privacy...

The discrepancy between transit’s large share of local transportation resources and its generally low share of local trips has raised questions about the use of scarce transportation funds for this purpose. We use a regional transport model consistent with utility theory and calibrated for the...

An issue of major concern to politicians and policy-makers around the world today is whether transport infrastructure investments, such as those in roads and airports, generate enough economic benefits to justify their very large price tag. Beginning in the mid 1970s, nearly all OECD countries...

Abatement can be performed by measures that have an impact on present emissions, but no lasting effect, and by long-lived infrastructure investments. We study the optimal combination of short and long-lived options for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, by specifying abatement cost...

Higher battery storage capacity in electric vehicles (EV) can potentially serve two purposes: First, the larger the capacity, the less need for inconvenient recharging during long trips. Second, the larger the capacity, the larger the potential gains from vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electricity supply...

Reduced transportation costs are usually associated with lower import prices, increased trade and price convergence. In this paper we show that the lower costs can actually lead to higher import prices in some regions, and price divergence between import regions. Using both a general theoretical...

Previous literature has suggested that the urban form (i.e., city size, density, and center distribution pattern) influences urban energy consumption. It has been argued that more dense development is likely to result in more energy-efficient and sustainable cities. However, very little is known...

In this paper we analyze household's car ownership and private car use decisions in a model proposed by de Jong (1990). The model, which incorporates variable and fixed costs of car use, can be used to predict the effects of changes in policy measures on the car stock and aggregate use. The...

This article studies environmental and distributional effects from a differentiated tax system on a set of disaggregated transportation goods. Empirical examination on Norwegian data indicates that higher tax rates on high-pollution luxury modes of transportation such as air flights and taxis...