Urban transport externalities

Abstract

Chapter 2 of this dissertation estimates the joint causal effect of highway and railway Infrastructure on the suburbanization of population in European cities. Using a unique dataset of 579 European cities from 29 European countries during the period 1961-2011, I provide evidence that an additional highway ray displaces on average approximately 9 percent of the central city population to the suburbs in Europe's cities. However, Roman and Medieval cities appear to be more resilient to this process. Indeed, this existence of historical amenities in the cities of Europe appears to provide a reasonable explanation for these differences, providing some of the first empirical evidence for Brueckner et al. ( 1999)'s theory. Chapter 3 of this dissertation tests and confirms the 'fundamental law of highway congestion' for the cities of Europe. Using different approaches, I find an elasticity of Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) with respect to highway lane km in the range of 0. 7-1. In a second stage, I estimate the effect of the increase in highway traffic on the emissions of some of the most harmful air pollutants. For nitrogen oxides, the estimated elasticity is approximately 0.10 - I.e. a ten-percent increase in highway traffic causes a one-percent increase in nitrogen oxide emissions. Sulphur dioxide also seems to increase considerably with highway traffic. Furthermore, the heterogeneous analysis shows that the increase in traffic congestion and urban air pollution is higher in cities with- out tolls - a finding that substantiates congestion pricing - and in cities without subways - a finding that corroborates rapid transit policies. Chapter 4, in contrast, analyses the bidirectional relationship between high- way accidents and traffic congestion for highways In England. The research design is based on the daily and hourly specific mean reversion pattern of highway traffic, which can be used to define a recurrent congestion benchmark. Using this benchmark, I am able to identify the causal effect of accidents on non-recurrent traffic congestion. The results of this analysis suggest that a marginal decrease in the average speed due to an accident is about 7.8 km/h, while the journey time increases by around 27 percent when I consider the duration of this effect. Another important finding is that the effect declines by 70-75 percent after the first quarter of an hour. Finally, a back-of- the- envelope calculation suggests that an accident causes on average a 70-minute traffic delay per km for the users of that particular highway segment, while this effect Is 160 minutes in recurrently congested segments. Chapter 5 uses geo-located data of retail rents, shop vacancies and footfall in the Netherlands to quantify shopping externalities. First, a theoretical model formalizes the existence of vacancies in the property market and establishes the relationship between shop rents and footfall, as well between vacancies and footfall. Identification is obtained using a novel research design based on spatial differences of footfall between intersecting shopping streets. The estimates imply an elasticity of rental in- come with respect to footfall of about 0.25 and about 0.1 with respect to the number of shops. The latter is substantial compared to the elasticities in the agglomeration economies literature. A shop's marginal benefit of a pedestrian passing by Is about 0.004 euros. The study also shows that footfall reduces shop vacancy rates consider-ably. Using the estimated elasticity of rental income, welfare considerations can be made taking into account new and existing shops. An average annual subsidy of about 10 percent of the rent to a new shop is welfare optimal, but when subsidies are given to existing shops, subsidies to shops that generate more footfall should be substantially higher.