The distribution of crowding costs in public transport: New evidence from Paris

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWhilst congestion in automobile traffic increases trip durations, this is often not the case in rail-based public transport where congestion rather leads to in-vehicle crowding, often neglected in empirical studies. Using original survey data from Paris, this article assesses the distribution of comfort costs of congestion in public transport. Estimating willingness to pay for less crowded trips at different levels of in-vehicle passenger density we cannot reject a simple linear relationship between crowding costs and density. We apply our results to the cost-benefit analysis of a recent Parisian public transport project.

The economics of crowding in rail transit

“…They find that crowding costs are approximately linear above a threshold load factor or passenger density. Linearity is also supported by Wardman and Whelan (2011) in a comprehensive analysis of crowding cost estimates for the UK, and Haywood and Koning (2015) who estimate time multiplier coefficients in the Paris subway. 13 In light of this evidence, for much of the paper we assume that g (n) is linear.…”

“…It causes stress and feelings of exhaustion (Mohd Mahudin et al, 2012). Disutility from in-vehicle time increases with the number of users (Wardman and Whelan, 2011;Haywood and Koning, 2015). In a comprehensive analysis, Wardman and Whelan (2011) find that the monetary valuation of the disutility from public transport travel time is, on average, multiplied by a factor of 2.32 if a rider has to stand.…”

Estimation of crowding discomfort in public transport: Results from Santiago de Chile

“…The literature on crowding valuation has progressed quickly during the past ten years, and today we are aware of studies estimating the sensitivity of the value of travel time savings (VTTS) to dierent vehicle or station crowding conditions in Great Britain (Whelan and Crockett, 2009;Wardman and Whelan, 2011), the Paris region (Kroes et al, 2014;Haywood and Koning, 2015), Sydney (Hensher et al, 2011), Mumbai (Basu and Hunt, 2012), Los Angeles (Vovsha et al, 2013), Singapore (Tirachini et al, 2016), Hong Kong (Lam et al, 1999;Hörcher et al, 2017) and Santiago (Batarce et al, 2015(Batarce et al, , 2016, amongst other cities. Even in cycling research it was recently found that crowding (with other bicyclists) signicantly inuence route choice for bicyclists in Copenhagen (Vedel et al, 2017).…”

Crowding in public transport: Who cares and why?

“…To determine the factors causing discomfort in high-density PT, interviewers showed interviewees the most crowded situation on the 3 An active anti-car policy has been there implemented and succeeded to enhance a huge modal shift toward rail-based PT. Since PT supply could not adapt as fast as PT demand, however, IVD grew by 10% over [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009] whilst service regularity remained unchanged, see Haywood and Koning (2015). …”

“…Theoretical models thus increase the cost of time in crowded PT -either discretely once users have to stand (Kraus, 1991), continuously with in-vehicle density (IVD) (Jara-Díaz and Gschwender, 2003), or a mix of both (de Palma et al, 2015). Signicant welfare costs of crowded public transport are also found empirically (Wardman and Whelan, 2011;Haywood and Koning, 2015). Crowding is not only important for workers' welfare and their choices about working times (Tirachini et al, 2013), but also for rms scheduling working hours (Henderson, 1981).…”