The paper analyzes the political acceptability of policies targeted at relieving urban congestion. The paper combines a stylized model of an urban transport network with a somewhat more detailed model of the political process that incorporates interactions between voters, special interest groups...

Many cities have seen public support for congestion charges increase substantially after charges have been introduced. Several alternative explanations of this phenomenon have been suggested, but so far little evidence has been available to assess the relative importance of these explanations....

This is the first paper in the literature to formally study the cost impact of competitive tendering in rail maintenance. Sweden progressively opened up the market for rail maintenance services, starting in 2002. We study the cost impacts based on an unbalanced panel of contract areas between...

Congestion pricing was introduced in Stockholm 2006, first as a trial followed by a referendum, and permanently from 2007. Public attitudes to the charges became more negative during the period from the decision to the start of the system. Once the system started, public attitudes became...

This paper compares the experience of three European countries with long experience of competition in rail transport – Britain, Sweden and Germany. Britain is characterised by complete separation of infrastructure from operations, competition either for or in the market for the entire...

A common approach for procuring large construction projects is through Unit Price Contracts. By the means of a simple model, we study the optimal quantity to procure under uncertainty regarding the actual required quantity given that the procurer strives to minomize expected total costs. The...

The productivity of public infrastructure has been hte subject of jumerous studies during the last two decades, often with vastly differing results. Matters of concern for these estimates have been the level of aggregation of the data, the measurement of the infrastructure stock, and endogeneity...

Congestion charges were introduced in Stockholm in 2006 as a seven-month trial, followed by a referendum where a majority voted in favour of the charges. This led to the reintroduction of congestion charges in August 2007, and they have been operational since then. The system has attracted...

This paper addresses the lack of reliability within the Swedish rail network by identifying passenger train delay distributions. Arrival delays are analyzed in detail using data provided by the Swedish Transport Administration, covering all train departures and arrivals during 2008 and 2009. The...

In this paper we examine the stochastic properties that long term aggregate traffic demand exhibits. Based on the results of the time series analysis, we examine how fractionally integrated processes affect real option valuation in road projects. We conclude that the long memory property we find...