Congestion levels have grown substantially in recent years, while the traditional economic response to congestion -road pricing -remains politically infeasible in most locations. Tradable permits are likely to be a more viable alternative, because they do not require a net financial flow from road users to the government. It is therefore the right moment to design and empirically test tradable permit schemes for managing urban mobility. This paper presents and empirically tests a complete design of a market for tradable permits, both in terms of the conceptual set-up of the market as well as its technical implementation. The design is evaluated against a number of criteria, including: transparency and containment of transaction costs, stability of permit prices in relation to the dynamic equilibrium on the mobility market and the prevention of undesirable speculation and fraud. We present evidence of the empirical functioning of this market, using the results of a conducted lab-in-the-field experiment with virtual mobility behaviour and real financial incentives. * We thank the audiences of the 2018 ITEA conference in Hong Kong and of the spatial economics seminar at the VU Amsterdam for useful comments.
With congestion being one of the most important externalities in transportation, it remains important to investigate effective and politically feasible solutions for it. We have conducted an 8-week experiment with tradable mobility permits, specifically applied to the use of parking facilities at a Dutch employer. We combine actual mobility behaviour with trading behaviour and survey responses of participants and non-participating employees of the same company. We have analysed the choice to participate in a voluntary experiment, and the behavioural response to tradable permits. Our results provide suggestive evidence that active participants do adjust their behaviour as intended. Furthermore, participation takes less time than people anticipate, and permits are viewed as a fairer and better functioning alternative to paid parking. * We would like to gratefully acknowledge ANWB and Innovactory in general, and Geordie Kooiman and Stefan Bollars in specific, for the collaboration in organizing the experiment.
For a sustainable public transport system, it is important to unveil the spatiotemporal characteristics of ridership and identify the influence mechanisms. Some studies analysed the effects of weather and built environment separately, however, their effects when incorporated remains to be determined. Using smart card data, weather information, and point of interest data from Beijing, the Light Gradient Boosted Machine was employed to investigate the relative importance of weather and built environment variables contributing to daily ridership at the traffic analysis zone level, and investigate the non-linear relationship and interaction effects between them. Weather conditions and built environment contribute 30.22 and 55.83% to ridership fluctuations, respectively. Most variables show complex non-linear and threshold effects on ridership. The interaction effects of weather and weekend/public holiday have a more substantial influence on ridership than weekdays, indicating weather conditions have less impact on regular commuting trips than discretionary trips. The ridership fluctuations in response to changing weather conditions vary with spatial locations. Adverse weather, such as strong wind, high humidity, or heavy rainfall, has a more disruptive impact on leisure-related areas than on residence and office areas. This study can benefit stakeholders in making decisions about optimising public transport networks and scheduling service frequency. 2 Literature review 2.1 Impact of weather conditions Many previous studies have addressed the effects of rain, temperature, and wind on public transport ridership. Generally, extreme weather conditions, such as very high and low temperatures, strong wind, and heavy precipitation, reduce public transport ridership [14-17]. However, the effect of weather
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.