Charging users of the roads for the costs they impose on the system is not new. Economists have been promoting its virtues for as long as arguments about economic efficiency have been in print. What is different today is that a growing number (but by no means all) of decision makers are showing...

Freight demand elasticity studies vary significantly in terms of the demand measure, data type, estimation method, commodity type, etc. This wide variation makes it difficult to compare empirical estimates when the differences may arise in part from the methods and data used. In this paper we...

The French experience in developing policies to reduce car use in metropolitan areas is presented in this paper as an illustration of the lack of recognition of the broader set of criteria on which specific policy frameworks should be judged. One of the major challenges, and often failings of...

This paper discusses a number of initiatives undertaken in Australia to improve the efficiency of the transport sector, long recognized as one of the most inefficient links in the economic cycle of production, distribution and consumption. We use examples of practice in government trading...

This paper reviews public transport crowding valuation research, using a number of primary studies conducted in the UK, USA, Australia and Israel. We identify three measures used to value crowding (a time multiplier, a monetary value per time unit and a monetary value per trip), and associated...

Voting support for congestion charging has a very recent history with, until now, only two congestion charging schemes approved by a majority in referendum voting (Stockholm and Milan). This paper presents a review of referendum voting behaviour in road pricing reform, in which a number of key...

Using a sample of 245 direct petrol price elasticities of car travel collected from 52 published mode choice studies, a random coefficient regression model is estimated to account for heterogeneity in the influence of the type of data used in the various studies (RP, SP and a combination of...

There are many empirical studies on the estimation of values of travel time savings (VTTS), with varying degrees of rigour and relevance, mostly based on the observation that travellers are prepared to spend money to save time. These values are applied to both forecasting the effects of speed...

Public transport in urban Australia is dominated by the automobile. As we approach the end of the 20th century, there is much renewed interest in revitalising urban public transport as one way of combating the increasing levels of traffic congestion, deterioration in air quality and global...

Traditionally, the empirical valuation of travel time savings (VTTS) is obtained from a linear utility specification in a discrete choice model, which implicitly assumes a risk-neutral attitude. This paper draws on recent contributions by the authors that accommodate the attitude towards risk...