this derives from a recognition that in many countries increased capacity cannot easily cater for the forecast rates of traffic growth, and the tools of demand management therefore have greater importance. Among these tools, use of the price mechanism is particularly important because of its contribution to generating funds for public or private expenditure, and helping markets to operate more efficiently by ensuring that the external costs of pollution and congestion are met by those who cause them. Therefore it is important for policy-making to be informed by the best available knowledge about the sensitivity of travel demand to the prices operating on it. During the 1980s, some important developments were taking place in the under standing of travel demand ? not, primarily, generated by policy interests, but in the context of empirical and theoretical studies that emphasised the broad range of behavioural responses that existed, and the complex dynamic processes of adaptation that were implied by these responses. The papers edited by Jones (1990) summarise these developments. At the same time, a very large number of elasticity studies were being carried out, with very little consistency in method or assumptions.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20052977.pdf

A review of new demand elasticities with special reference to short and long run effects of price changes

There is an active contemporary debate about how emerging technologies such as automated vehicles, peer-to-peer sharing applications and the ‘internet of things’ will revolutionise individual and collective mobility. Indeed, it is argued that the so-called ‘Smart Mobility’ transition, in which these technologies combine to transform how the mobility system is organised and operates, has already begun. As with any socio-technical transition there are critical questions to be posed in terms of how the transition is managed, and how both the benefits and any negative externalities of change will be governed. This paper deploys the notion of ensuring and enhancing public value as a key governance aim for the transition. It sets out modes and methods of governance that could be deployed to steer the transition and, through four thematic cases explores how current mobility governance challenges will change. In particular, changing networks of actors, resources and power, new logics of consumption, and shifts in how mobility is regulated, priced and taxed – will require to be successfully negotiated if public value is to be captured from the transition. This is a critical time for such questions to be raised because technological change is clearly outpacing the capacity of systems and structures of governance to respond to the challenges already apparent. A failure to address both the short and longer-term governance issues risks locking the mobility system into transition paths which exacerbate rather than ameliorate the wider social and environmental problems that have challenged planners throughout the automobility transition.

https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/29707/1/The%20governance%20of%20smart%20mobility.pdf

The governance of smart mobility

https://research.vu.nl/ws/files/1773918/140307.pdf

Price elasticities of demand for passenger air travel: a meta-analysis

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the Journal of Air Transport Management (2002). Volume 8, issue 3, pages 165-175. The demand for air transport is largely determined by the spending capacity of customers. Thispaper aims to offer more insight into the determinants of price elasticities in the aviation sector. Itseeks to identify both common and contrasting factors that influence the price elasticities, on thebasis of a comparative analysis among a large number of empirical studies in this field. By meansof meta-analytical methods the relative importance of several driving forces (e.g., distance, type ofticket, nature of study etc.) is investigated.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/85990/1/01047.pdf

Price Elasticities of Demand for Passenger Air Travel

This article presents a realistic teletraffic modeling framework for personal communications services. The framework captures complex human behaviors and has been validated through analysis of actual call and mobility data. Using the proposed framework, a large-scale simulation was performed on a model of the San Francisco Bay area. Simulation results showing the performance of IS-41 are presented.

Teletraffic modeling for personal communications services

Marginal cost transport pricing - if implemented in European cities - may give rise to substantial welfare benefits for the urban populations. Depending on the local conditions and on the policy instruments used, annual welfare gains may typically amount to 100-400 euros per capita, as measured by the willingness-to-pay within the affected urban population. These welfare gains have been estimated by means of transport models applied to the cities of Edinburgh, Helsinki, and Oslo. Real-world instruments considered include cordon toll rates, parking charges, fuel tax, vehicle tax, distance based charges, and public transport fares and level-of-service. Not all of these instruments are currently available to local urban authorities - some belong at the national level government. Thus the study distinguishes between second-best policies "under current institutions", and those which are practicable only "after institutional reform". In the latter variant, it is assumed that local authorities are allowed access to certain instruments that are not presently at their disposal, or that national authorities accept to tune the level of certain instruments so as to maximise the welfare of the urban population.

Economic and Equity Effects of Marginal Cost Pricing in Transport

A direct demand intercity gravity model has been developed with the purpose of forecasting air traffic volumes on the entire conventional Norwegian network. The model has been calibrated econometrically using combined cross-sectional and time series data on traffic flows, fares, travel time, income, and population. Fares and travel time are taken into account for air travel as well as for the fastest surface means of mass transportation. Medium- and long-term elasticities are derived and have the expected sign and order of magnitude,with one disturbing exception.

An econometric air travel demand model for the entire conventional domestic network: The case of Norway

Since 2007, the Norwegian vehicle purchase tax includes a large CO2 emission component. At the same time, generous tax exemptions and privileges are granted to battery electric vehicles. Continued application of the purchase tax instrument may induce large-scale penetration of electric cars into the passenger car stock, thus halving the fleet’s fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions within two or three decades. The main tangible cost of this low carbon policy is the extra cost of acquiring novel products with currently small economies of scale. This cost difference will decline over time. The main benefits consist in reduced energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. We calculate the gross and net tangible cost of the low carbon policy in a long-term perspective, i.e. towards the 2050 horizon. A crucial cost determinant is the speed at which the manufacturing costs of battery and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will fall. Under moderately optimistic assumptions about impending economies of scale, net tangible costs by 2050 come out in the range €48 to 278 per tonne CO2, depending on the discount rate and on battery replacement costs.

/pdf/the-vehicle-purchase-tax-as-a-climate-policy-instrument-44j3ocizj6.pdf

The vehicle purchase tax as a climate policy instrument

Various regulatory and fiscal policy instruments are in force to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases and local pollutants emitted by private cars. The incentives operate primarily—or exclusively—on the newest generation of cars. But how fast will technological developments affecting new vehicle models penetrate into the car fleet? The speed at which the adverse effects of private car use will be mitigated through the normal vehicle renewal process, or through an accelerated one, carries considerable interest. Suitable modelling tools are needed. This paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness and flexibility of a bottom-up stock-flow modelling approach to private car fleet forecasting and policy analysis. In the BIG model of the Norwegian automobile fleet, the annual stocks and flows characterising the car fleet are specified as matrices of 682 mutually exclusive and exhaustive cells, formed by cross-tabulations between 22 vehicle segments and 31 age classes. New car registrations follow from a disaggregate generic discrete choice model based on two decades of complete sales data for individual passenger car models. Example projections are presented onto the 2050 horizon under a low carbon fiscal policy scenario as well as a business-as-usual scenario. The fiscal policy is seen to make a large difference in terms of long term fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Stock-flow cohort modelling of the automobile fleet is a powerful and handy tool for policy analysis. Even quite simple and straightforward accounting relations may provide important insights into the dynamics of fleet development. It is possible to incorporate, into the stock-flow modelling framework, interesting and useful behavioural relations, explaining aggregate automobile ownership and travel demand, scrapping and survival rates, or consumer choice in the market for new cars.

/pdf/a-stock-flow-cohort-model-of-the-national-car-fleet-e3o7wthqq2.pdf

Lasse Fridstrøm

Papers

Economic and Equity Effects of Marginal Cost Pricing in Transport

An econometric air travel demand model for the entire conventional domestic network: The case of Norway

The vehicle purchase tax as a climate policy instrument

A stock-flow cohort model of the national car fleet

From innovation to penetration: calculating the energy transition time lag for motor vehicles