IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v40y2006i9p744-766.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impacts of time of day pricing on the behavior of freight carriers in a congested urban area: Implications to road pricing

Author

Listed:
  • Holgui­n-Veras, José
  • Wang, Qian
  • Xu, Ning
  • Ozbay, Kaan
  • Cetin, Mecit
  • Polimeni, John

Abstract

This paper describes the key findings from a major research project aimed at assessing the impacts of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's time of day pricing initiative on the behavior of commercial carriers. The paper, believed by the authors to be the first comprehensive study on the subject, highlights key implications for road pricing policy. One of the most interesting findings is that carriers respond to time of day pricing by implementing multi-dimensional responses involving Productivity increases, Cost transfers, and Change in facility usage. This implies a more nuanced response than suggested by micro-economic theory, which would only predict a change in facility usage. In fact, no carrier was found to have responded by implementing only changes in facility usage, which leads to the authors to believe that this is a last resort alternative. In terms of numerical importance, three combinations of strategy groups represent almost 90% of the cases: Productivity increases (42.79%), followed by Changes in facility usage and Cost transfers (27.60%) and Productivity increases and Changes in facility usage and Cost transfers (19.32%). The fact that some of these responses impact only the carrier (i.e., Productivity increases) while others mostly impact the receivers (Changes in facility usage and Cost transfers) lead the authors to believe that the nature of the response is determined by the balance of power between carriers and receivers. If carriers dominate the relationship, then it is likely that policies that mostly impact receivers are implemented; otherwise, the carriers have no choice but implementing strategies that help them cope with the impacts of pricing without impacting their customers, i.e., productivity increases. In this context, the authors' conjecture is that carriers consider changes in facility usage to be a very disruptive alternative that forces them--and more importantly their customers--to alter their shipping/delivery patterns. It should be pointed out that, although carriers stand to benefit from working during the off-peak hours, they could only do so if their customers are willing to work during the off-peak hours. The data indicate that 36 carriers (20.2%) changed behavior because of the time of day pricing initiative. This number includes 17 carriers (9.0%) that reacted by increasing shipping charges to receivers, which illustrates the need to find out more about how receivers reacted to the time of day pricing initiative. If the carriers that only increased shipment charges are excluded, 15.3% of carriers changed behavior because of time of day pricing.

Suggested Citation

  • Holgui­n-Veras, José & Wang, Qian & Xu, Ning & Ozbay, Kaan & Cetin, Mecit & Polimeni, John, 2006. "The impacts of time of day pricing on the behavior of freight carriers in a congested urban area: Implications to road pricing," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 744-766, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:40:y:2006:i:9:p:744-766
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965-8564(05)00180-1
    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. Vickrey, William S, 1969. "Congestion Theory and Transport Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 251-260, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. de Palma, André & Lindsey, Robin, 2001. "Optimal timetables for public transportation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 789-813, September.
    2. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2011. "Price Discrimination," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 22, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Terry E. Daniel & Eyran J. Gisches & Amnon Rapoport, 2009. "Departure Times in Y-Shaped Traffic Networks with Multiple Bottlenecks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2149-2176, December.
    4. Arnott, Richard & Inci, Eren, 2010. "The stability of downtown parking and traffic congestion," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 260-276, November.
    5. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    6. Golob, Thomas F. & Recker, Wilfred W., 2001. "Relationships Among Urban Freeway Accidents, Traffic Flow, Weather and Lighting Conditions," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt2fh4x5hp, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    7. Jacek Buko & Marek Bulsa & Adam Makowski, 2022. "Spatial Premises and Key Conditions for the Use of UAVs for Delivery of Items on the Example of the Polish Courier and Postal Services Market," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-17, February.
    8. Tarduno, Matthew, 2021. "The congestion costs of Uber and Lyft," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    9. Akamatsu, Takashi & Wada, Kentaro & Hayashi, Shunsuke, 2015. "The corridor problem with discrete multiple bottlenecks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 81(P3), pages 808-829.
    10. Janusch, Nicholas, 2016. "A note on the distortionary effects of revenue-neutral tolls in a bottleneck congestion game," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 95-103.
    11. Duong Viet Thong & Aviv Gibali & Mathias Staudigl & Phan Tu Vuong, 2021. "Computing Dynamic User Equilibrium on Large-Scale Networks Without Knowing Global Parameters," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 735-768, September.
    12. Peer, Stefanie & Knockaert, Jasper & Koster, Paul & Tseng, Yin-Yen & Verhoef, Erik T., 2013. "Door-to-door travel times in RP departure time choice models: An approximation method using GPS data," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 134-150.
    13. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan & Reimann, Felix, 2021. "On employer-paid parking and parking (cash-out) policy: A formal synthesis of different perspectives," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 499-516.
    14. Wang, Wei (Walker) & Wang, David Z.W. & Zhang, Fangni & Sun, Huijun & Zhang, Wenyi & Wu, Jianjun, 2017. "Overcoming the Downs-Thomson Paradox by transit subsidy policies," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 126-147.
    15. Loukas Dimitriou & Theodore Tsekeris, 2009. "Evolutionary game-theoretic model for dynamic congestion pricing in multi-class traffic networks," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 103-121, April.
    16. de Jong, Gerard & Kouwenhoven, Marco & Ruijs, Kim & van Houwe, Pieter & Borremans, Dana, 2016. "A time-period choice model for road freight transport in Flanders based on stated preference data," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 20-31.
    17. Arnott, Richard & de Palma, Andre & Lindsey, Robin, 1991. "A temporal and spatial equilibrium analysis of commuter parking," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 301-335, August.
    18. Jesper Breinbjerg & Alexander Sebald & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2016. "Strategic behavior and social outcomes in a bottleneck queue: experimental evidence," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 20(3), pages 207-236, September.
    19. Platz, Trine Tornøe & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2017. "The curse of the first-in–first-out queue discipline," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 165-176.
    20. Chen, Hongyu & Nie, Yu (Marco) & Yin, Yafeng, 2015. "Optimal multi-step toll design under general user heterogeneity," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 81(P3), pages 775-793.

    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:40:y:2006:i:9:p:744-766. 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.