Event Type: Seminar

Urban development policies are usefully characterized as either “person-based,” where
directed toward individuals, or “place-based,” where eligibility is conditioned on location.
While extremely popular among local politicians, officials, and community advocates
especially for particularly poor performing neighborhoods there are many well-known
arguments against place-oriented programs. Development aid tied to geography is crudely
targeted and often introduces strong spatial distortions. That said, location contains
information helpful in identifying intended recipients, space constrains individual’s economic
activities, and the effectiveness of people-based programs vary over space. Then there is
the visibility of resources focused on a particular place, a key element of political support.
Geography thus matters as parameter, as externality, as marker, and as political economy,
even as it also introduces distortions: Location introduces both benefits and costs. Rather
than strictly a matter of either/or, the policy question appears to be more one of negotiating
the tradeoffs.

Following recent hikes in the price of gasoline, there has been increasing interest for hybrid cars. Yet, the
recent sales of some hybrid cars (notably the Honda Accord) have been disappointing. This study tries to
analyze Californians’ interest for hybrid cars based on a statewide phone survey conducted in July of
2004 by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). We develop several ordered models to explain
the respondents’ stated interest in hybrid cars. We find that males and respondents with at least some
college education who are concerned about the environment, state a higher interest for hybrid-vehicles.
However, one key reason for considering hybrid cars is the possibility to drive them in carpool lanes,
even with single occupancy. This finding has implications for policies that try to stimulate interest for
hybrid cars.

This is a joint paper with Mana Sangkapichai, a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Transportation Studies
at the University of California, Irvine.

The presentation addresses a generic macroscopic model-based approach to real-time freeway network
traffic surveillance as well as a software tool RENAISSANCE that has recently been developed to
implement the approach for field applications. On the basis of stochastic macroscopic freeway network
traffic flow modeling, extended Kalman filtering, and a limited amount of traffic measurements,
RENAISSANCE enables a number of real-time freeway network traffic surveillance tasks, including
traffic state estimation and prediction, travel time estimation and prediction, queue tail/head/length
estimation and prediction (queue tracking), and incident alarms. This presentation introduces the utilized
macroscopic freeway network traffic flow model and a real-time traffic measurement model, upon which
a complete dynamic system model for freeway network traffic is established with special attention to the
handling of some important model parameters. An outline is given of various algorithms and the
functional architecture of RENAISSANCE. Simulation testing results of the major RENAISSACNE
functions are presented with respect to a hypothetical freeway network example. A number of real-data
testing results concerning a 7-km German freeway stretch are presented, focusing on the RENAISSANCE
traffic state estimation function under various circumstances regarding congestion, weather conditions
and traffic incidents. Some recent real-data testing results of the traffic state estimator for a large-scale
freeway network in Southern Italy is also presented. Finally, an outlook of further issues and
RENAISSANCE applications is given.

Since the days of Henry Ford, employers have long argued that higher pay
induces employees to provide additional effort. While the converse is also
thought to be true, there is little empirical evidence testing such a
hypothesis. This void in the literature is due, in large part, to a lack of
available data. Not only are significant company-wide, permanent pay cuts
rarely observed in practice, measures of employee effort are typically
difficult to quantify. This paper examines the effect on effort provided by
U.S commercial airline pilots following large, permanent reductions in pay.
After controlling for other factors known to affect airline on-time
performance, we find evidence that large pay cuts lead to a statistically
significant decline in pilot effort, proxied by an increase in the rate of flight
delays and cancellations. This reduction in pilot effort, however, is typically
short-lived.

The technologies that support intelligent transportation systems (ITS) including sensing,
computing, communications, and advanced algorithms, provide enormous opportunity for
enhancing surface transportation in California, the U.S., and the world. However, the
deployment of these technologies has been slower than some advocates would hope,
mainly because of a number of institutional factors that constrain their adoption and
effective use.

This talk will identify some of the key institutional factors constraining ITS deployment,
and explore how a parallel consideration of the technological opportunities and the
institutional context can enable us to make more progress. The CLIOS Process, as a new
way of thinking about ITS and the strategic alternatives we have before us –both
technological and institutional—will be presented

With wireless communication devices becoming ubiquitous, Advanced Transportation Information Systems based on Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) are receiving increasing attention due to their fast response to incidents and resilience to disasters. In such IVC systems, vehicles equipped with wireless devices form a mobile ad hoc network, whose multi-hop connectivity is an important performance measurement. This talk presents an analytical recursive model and a Monte Carlo simulation model for computing the probability for two equipped vehicles or road-side stations to be connected through IVC. These models are derived based on the assumption that inter-vehicle communication is instantaneous with respect to vehicle movement and the concept of Most-Forwarded-within-Range communication chains. The two models, which cross-validate each other, are able to capture the impact of traffic patterns on IVC and yield results consistent with those in literature. Some future research directions will also be discussed.

Dr. Joseph (Yossi) Berechman is a CN Chair Professor in Transportation and International Logistics, Sauder School of Business, the University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Berechman has received his Bachelor degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and his Master and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His major research interests are transportation economics and planning, transportation and land use, and policy analysis. He has published numerous journal papers and four books, the most recent one on transportation investment and economic development. Presently, his major interests focus on the evaluation and selection of large scale transportation infrastructure investment projects.

For ninety years, the principal means of financing transportation facilities in America has been through user fees, primarily motor fuel taxes and tolls. Motor fuel tax revenues have been plummeting for a variety of reasons, but there is no longer the political will to increase motor vehicle taxes. Rising costs and decreasing revenues have combined to bankrupt the transportation program, especially at the state level. At the same time, local governments all over the country, led by the example of California, have been enacting local option transportation taxes; gradually, the locus of transportation decision making has been shifting to local governments. Is this trend in finance good? Do most Americans even know that it is happening? What does the longer term future hold? In this seminar, Professor Wachs will argue that the recent trend is significant yet not viable in the longer term. While a variety of electronic user fees hold more promise, the transition to this approach will take decades and should be carefully planned starting now.

The resurgence of air traffic in the U.S. has focused attention on the need for improved policies and methods for airport congestion pricing. In this presentation, I establish a simple rule for the computation of airport congestion tolls that reflects the internalization of congestion. My theory argues that the airport toll system should not fully charge each airline for the congestion damage caused by an extra flight (as would be suggested by the standard road-pricing rule). Instead, an airline should only pay for the congestion damage it imposes on other carriers. This rule is easy to implement and could help policy makers design proper toll systems at airports worldwide. I test its validity within a realistic network structure containing multiple hub airports.

Road pricing can enhance public transportation by increasing its speed and service frequency. I examine these effects with a model of local bus service in London’s city center. The model focuses on four considerations: the cost savings to transit users and operators from reduced road congestion; the service improvements made feasible by increased ridership; the potential pass-through of operator cost savings as fare reductions; and the resulting multiplier effects on ridership and service offerings. I apply the model using data from the first few months of a February 2003 pricing program. Simulation results suggest significant effects even if pricing revenues had not been used to augment the transit budget as they were in London: a ridership increase of 11%, a service increase of 7% and user cost savings equivalent to 38% of the fare. Net benefits from these effects are equal to 39% of initial operator costs. These effects, but not the net benefits, are even larger in cities with more typical values for bus subsidies and initial modal share.