IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tou/journl/v59y2024p11-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How unequal are travel costs? Evidence from the Paris Region

Author

Listed:
  • Rayane AL AMIR DACHE

    (Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Université Paris-Est, France)

  • Nicolas COULOMBEL

    (Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Université Paris-Est, France)

Abstract

This paper studies the distribution of transport costs borne by the Paris region households and the issues of vertical (income) and horizontal (location) equity. Using the 2018 household travel survey, we estimate the following costs: monetary costs, time costs, air pollution costs (distinguishing between the cost caused and borne by the household) and CO2 emission costs. We study the distribution of each dimension alone, as well as the relationship between them. Results show that monetary costs are regressive and represent the most unequal distributed dimension across income groups and space, with the lowest quartiles living in the outer suburbs (those car dependent) facing the highest effort ratios. Time costs are randomly spread across space, but do increase with income. Pollution costs are the lowest for households living in the outer suburbs, and are almost equal across income quartiles. We do find evidence of (slight) compensation between the various costs as the total private cost – the sum of monetary, time and pollution costs – has a lower Gini index than each cost alone. Time costs contribute the most (around 75%) to private cost inequalities due to their large cost share, while monetary costs contribute to around 25%. Our findings stress the importance of considering 1) both horizontal and vertical equity in policy design as both issues are empirically significant, and 2) all the main cost dimensions (money, time, and environment), and not just only one as it is often the case, as the various costs may (or may not) compensate each other.

Suggested Citation

  • Rayane AL AMIR DACHE & Nicolas COULOMBEL, 2024. "How unequal are travel costs? Evidence from the Paris Region," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 59, pages 11-32.
  • Handle: RePEc:tou:journl:v:59:y:2024:p:11-32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://regionetdeveloppement.univ-tln.fr/wp-content/uploads/2_Coulombel_OK.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jin, Tanhua & Cheng, Long & Wang, Kailai & Cao, Jun & Huang, Haosheng & Witlox, Frank, 2022. "Examining equity in accessibility to multi-tier healthcare services across different income households using estimated travel time," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-13.
    2. Bocarejo S., Juan Pablo & Oviedo H., Daniel Ricardo, 2012. "Transport accessibility and social inequities: a tool for identification of mobility needs and evaluation of transport investments," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 142-154.
    3. Dagum, Camilo, 1997. "A New Approach to the Decomposition of the Gini Income Inequality Ratio," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 515-531.
    4. Nicolas, Jean-Pierre & Vanco, Florian & Verry, Damien, 2012. "Mobilité quotidienne et vulnérabilité des ménages," Revue d'économie régionale et urbaine, Editions NecPlus, vol. 2012(01), pages 19-44, July.
    5. Valenzuela-Levi, Nicolás, 2021. "The rich and mobility: A new look into the impacts of income inequality on household transport expenditures," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 161-171.
    6. Stéphanie Souche & Aurelie Mercier & Nicolas Ovtracht, 2016. "The impacts of urban pricing on social and spatial inequalities: The case study of Lyon (France)," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(2), pages 373-399, February.
    7. F. Chantreuil & A. Trannoy, 1999. "Inequality decomposition values : the trade-off between marginality and consistency," THEMA Working Papers 99-24, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    8. Mercedes Sastre & Alain Trannoy, 2002. "Shapley inequality decomposition by factor components: Some methodological issues," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 51-89, December.
    9. Rafael H. M. Pereira & Tim Schwanen & David Banister, 2017. "Distributive justice and equity in transportation," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 170-191, March.
    10. Abdelwahab, Bilal & Palm, Matthew & Shalaby, Amer & Farber, Steven, 2021. "Evaluating the equity implications of ridehailing through a multi-modal accessibility framework," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    11. Christoffel Venter, 2011. "Transport expenditure and affordability: The cost of being mobile," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 121-140.
    12. Nicolas Coulombel & Fabien Leurent, 2012. "Les ménages arbitrent-ils entre coût du logement et coût du transport ? Une réponse dans le cas francilien," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 457(1), pages 57-75.
    13. Leroutier, Marion & Quirion, Philippe, 2022. "Air pollution and CO2 from daily mobility: Who emits and Why? Evidence from Paris," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    14. Golub, Aaron & Martens, Karel, 2014. "Using principles of justice to assess the modal equity of regional transportation plans," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 10-20.
    15. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1984. "A note on the calculation and interpretation of the Gini index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 15(3-4), pages 363-368.
    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. Gandelman, Néstor & Serebrisky, Tomás & Suárez-Alemán, Ancor, 2019. "Household spending on transport in Latin America and the Caribbean: A dimension of transport affordability in the region," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Serra, Bernardo & Oliveira, Gabriel T. & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2020. "Accessibility measurements in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Recife, Brazil," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Stéphane Mussard, 2006. "Une réconciliation entre la décomposition en sous-groupes et la décomposition en sources de revenu de l'indice de Gini. La multi-décomposition de l'indicateur de Gini," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 81, pages 169-193.
    4. Stéphane Mussard & Michel Terraza, 2009. "Décompositions des mesures d'inégalité : le cas des coefficients de Gini et d'entropie," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 75(2), pages 151-181.
    5. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2007:i:25:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Costa, Cayo & Ha, Jaehyun & Lee, Sugie, 2021. "Spatial disparity of income-weighted accessibility in Brazilian Cities: Application of a Google Maps API," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    7. Plyushteva, Anna, 2023. "Affording mobility: Attending to the socio-material affordances of transport un/affordability," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    8. virginie terraza & stephane mussard, 2007. "New trading risk indexes: application of the shapley value in finance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(25), pages 1-7.
    9. Giovanni Vecchio & Ignacio Tiznado-Aitken & Bryan Castillo & Stefan Steiniger, 2024. "Fair transport policies for older people: accessibility and affordability of public transport in Santiago, Chile," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 689-715, April.
    10. Oviedo, Daniel & Cavoli, Clemence & Levy, Caren & Koroma, Braima & Macarthy, Joseph & Sabogal, Orlando & Arroyo, Fatima & Jones, Peter, 2022. "Accessibility and sustainable mobility transitions in Africa: Insights from Freetown," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    11. Chan, Ho-Yin & Chen, Anthony & Li, Guoyuan & Xu, Xiangdong & Lam, William, 2021. "Evaluating the value of new metro lines using route diversity measures: The case of Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway system," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    12. Stéphane Mussard & Kuan Xu, 2006. "Multidimensional Decomposition of the Sen Index: Some Further Thoughts," Cahiers de recherche 06-08, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    13. Daniel Oviedo & Luis A. Guzman, 2020. "Revisiting Accessibility in a Context of Sustainable Transport: Capabilities and Inequalities in Bogotá," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-22, June.
    14. Masato Okamoto, 2009. "Decomposition of gini and multivariate gini indices," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(2), pages 153-177, June.
    15. Jacques Silber & Sasiwimon Warunsiri Paweenawat & Lusi Liao, 2022. "On the measurement of non-random mating and of its change over time," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 161-198, March.
    16. Mussard, Stéphane, 2007. "La décomposition des mesures d’inégalité en sources de revenu : méthodes et applications," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 83(3), pages 415-445, septembre.
    17. Ryan, Jean & Martens, Karel, 2023. "Defining and implementing a sufficient level of accessibility: What’s stopping us?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    18. Arthur Charpentier & Stéphane Mussard, 2011. "Income inequality games," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 529-554, December.
    19. Nazari Adli, Saeid & Donovan, Stuart, 2018. "Right to the city: Applying justice tests to public transport investments," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 56-65.
    20. Krapp, Agustina & Barajas, Jesus & Wennink, Audrey, 2021. "Equity-oriented Criteria for Project Prioritization in Regional Transportation Planning," SocArXiv xcbhy, Center for Open Science.
    21. Luz, Gregorio & Barboza, Matheus Henrique Cunha & da Silva Portugal, Licinio & Giannotti, Mariana & van Wee, Bert, 2022. "Does better accessibility help to reduce social exclusion? Evidence from the City of São Paulo, Brazil," SocArXiv 2p896, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Equity; Distributional impacts; Travel costs; Gini index;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:tou:journl:v:59:y:2024:p:11-32. 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: Christophe Van Huffel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/letlnfr.html .

    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.