IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v38y2004i4p287-303.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Welfare evaluation with a road capacity constraint

Author

Listed:
  • Romilly, Peter

Abstract

Severe traffic congestion in and around many cities across the world has resulted in programmes of extensive road building and other capacity increasing projects. But traffic congestion has often not fallen in the long run and neither has journey speed increased. Demand for peak period road travel, particularly by car, has grown so strongly that increases in road capacity have been quickly matched by increased road use. This paper develops a model of a road network characterised by insatiable road passenger (car and bus) demand. The model parameters are calibrated on a typical urban road network, and a number of simulations conducted to determine social welfare after the introduction of a road capacity constraint into the optimisation process. The empirical results have an important policy implication for the evaluation of projects that increase road capacity, namely that standard methods of cost-benefit analysis may tend to overestimate the net benefits of such projects by a significant amount. Although the model is developed in the context of roads and road traffic congestion, it could also be applied to air travel.

Suggested Citation

  • Romilly, Peter, 2004. "Welfare evaluation with a road capacity constraint," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 287-303, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:38:y:2004:i:4:p:287-303
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965-8564(03)00117-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glaister, Stephen & Lewis, Davis, 1978. "An integrated fares policy for transport in London," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 341-355, June.
    2. Peter Romilly & Haiyan Song & Xiaming Liu, 2001. "Car ownership and use in Britain: a comparison of the empirical results of alternative cointegration estimation methods and forecasts," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(14), pages 1803-1818.
    3. William C. Wheaton, 1978. "Price-Induced Distortions in Urban Highway Investment," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 622-632, Autumn.
    4. Mohring, Herbert, 1970. "The Peak Load Problem with Increasing Returns and Pricing Constraints," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(4), pages 693-705, September.
    5. Hansen, Mark & Huang, Yuanlin, 1997. "Road supply and traffic in California urban areas," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 205-218, May.
    6. Yang, Hai & Bell, Michael G. H., 1998. "A capacity paradox in network design and how to avoid it," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 539-545, September.
    7. Robert Cervero & Mark Hansen, 2002. "Induced Travel Demand and Induced Road Investment: A Simultaneous Equation Analysis," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 36(3), pages 469-490, September.
    8. Pas, Eric I. & Principio, Shari L., 1997. "Braess' paradox: Some new insights," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 265-276, June.
    9. Glaister, Stephen, 1974. "Generalised Consumer Surplus and Public Transport Pricing," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 84(336), pages 849-867, December.
    10. Yang, Hai & Bell, Michael G. H., 1997. "Traffic restraint, road pricing and network equilibrium," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 303-314, August.
    11. Keeler, Theodore E & Small, Kenneth A, 1977. "Optimal Peak-Load Pricing, Investment, and Service Levels on Urban Expressways," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 1-25, February.
    12. Wilson, John D., 1983. "Optimal road capacity in the presence of unpriced congestion," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 337-357, May.
    13. d'Ouville, Edmond L. & McDonald, John F., 1990. "Optimal road capacity with a suboptimal congestion toll," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 34-49, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hyman, G. & Mayhew, L., 2008. "Toll optimisation on river crossings serving large cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 28-47, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erik T. Verhoef & Jan Rouwendal, 2004. "Pricing, Capacity Choice, and Financing in Transportation Networks," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 405-435, August.
    2. Tsai, Jyh-Fa & Chu, Chih-Peng, 2010. "Analysis of the optimal length of road expansion - A case study of the Taipei metropolitan area," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 147-158, March.
    3. de Palma, André & Lindsey, Robin, 2007. "Chapter 2 Transport user charges and cost recovery," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 29-57, January.
    4. De Borger, Bruno & Wouters, Sandra, 1998. "Transport externalities and optimal pricing and supply decisions in urban transportation: a simulation analysis for Belgium," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 163-197, March.
    5. Zhang, Anming & Zhang, Yimin, 2006. "Airport capacity and congestion when carriers have market power," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 229-247, September.
    6. Conrad, Klaus, 1994. "Traffic, Transportation, Infrastructure and Externalities : a Theoretical Framework for a CGE Analysis," Discussion Papers 504, Institut fuer Volkswirtschaftslehre und Statistik, Abteilung fuer Volkswirtschaftslehre.
    7. Erik T. Verhoef & Herbert Mohring, 2007. "Self-Financing Roads," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-068/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Jyh-Fa Tsai & Chih-Peng Chu, 2003. "The analysis of regulation on private highway investment under a build-operate-transfer scheme," Transportation, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 221-243, May.
    9. Kraus, Marvin, 2003. "A new look at the two-mode problem," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 511-530, November.
    10. Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2011. "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2616-2652, October.
    11. Hsu, Wen-Tai & Zhang, Hongliang, 2014. "The fundamental law of highway congestion revisited: Evidence from national expressways in Japan," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 65-76.
    12. Georgina Santos & Erik Verhoef, 2011. "Road Congestion Pricing," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 23, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Kraus, Marvin, 2012. "Road pricing with optimal mass transit," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 81-86.
    14. Bichsel, Robert, 2001. "Should Road Users Pay the Full Cost of Road Provision?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 367-383, September.
    15. Kim, Jinwon, 2022. "Does roadwork improve road speed? Evidence from urban freeways in California," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    16. Richard Arnott & An Yan, 2000. "The Two-Mode Problem: Second-Best Pricing and Capacity," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 474, Boston College Department of Economics.
    17. Beaudoin, Justin & Farzin, Y. Hossein & Lin Lawell, C.-Y. Cynthia, 2015. "Public transit investment and sustainable transportation: A review of studies of transit's impact on traffic congestion and air quality," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 15-22.
    18. Arnott, Richard, 2007. "Congestion tolling with agglomeration externalities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 187-203, September.
    19. Ian W. H. Parry & Antonio Bento, 2001. "Revenue Recycling and the Welfare Effects of Road Pricing," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 103(4), pages 645-671, December.
    20. Ian W. H. Parry & Kenneth A. Small, 2009. "Should Urban Transit Subsidies Be Reduced?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 700-724, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:38:y:2004:i:4:p:287-303. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.