Abstract

The future of interurban public transport will be significantly affected by public sector decisions concerning investment in infrastructure, particularly the construction of new high-speed rail lines in medium-distance corridors where cars, buses, airplanes and conventional trains are the competing modes of transport. The distribution of traffic between the alternative modes of transport depends on the generalized prices, which fundamentally consist of costs, time and government's pricing decisions. High-speed rail investment, financed by national governments and supranational institutions such as the European Union (EU), has drastically changed the previous equilibrium in the affected corridors. This paper discusses the economic rationale for allocating public money to the construction of high-speed rail infrastructure and how the present institutional design affects the selection of projects by national and regional governments, with deep long-term effects in these corridors and beyond.

Abstract

This whitepaper provides an overview perspective on the foundation of crowdsourcing and crowdsensing, detailing related notions such as collective intelligence and citizen science. As all crowd-based initiatives are usually built upon a core of volunteers participating to an “open call” to perform tasks, crowdsensing in particular relies on the willingness of participants to invest time and interest in a cause, sacrifice limited resources of their mobile devices, and provide implicit or explicit efforts, including ignoring risks that impact the privacy of their data. This document describes how incentives and rewarding schemes are adopted in this context to attract a community of users and to keep it engaged. Two incentive schemes in particular are described, both of which have been developed within the CROWD4ROADS project: a game mode that transforms collected data into generated terrain for a 2D platform game and a voucher exchange system that acts as a platform for any initiative for the common good. Both incentive schemes are fully anonymous and integrate within a fully anonymous data collection scheme.

Abstract

Electrification of mobility exceeds personal transport to increasingly focus on particular segments such as city logistics and taxis. These commercial mobility segments have different motives to purchase a full electric vehicle and require a particular approach to incentivize and facilitate the transition towards electric mobility. A case where a municipality was successful in stimulating the transition to electric mobility is the taxi sector in the city of Amsterdam. Using results from a survey study (n = 300), this paper analyses the differences in characteristics between taxi drivers that either have or do not have interest in purchasing a full electric taxi vehicle. Results show a low intention across the sample to adopt a full electric vehicle and no statistically significant differences in demographics between the two groups. Differences were found between the level of acceptability of the covenant, the rated attractiveness of the incentives, the ratings of full electric vehicle attributes and the consultation of objective and social information sources. These results can be used by policy makers to develop new incentives that target specific topics currently influencing the interest in a full electric taxi vehicle. Document type: Article

Abstract

This research looks at the socioeconomic effects between the procurement and use of an electric vehicle compared to a conventional vehicle under today´s policy measures. In order to get a sufficient comparison between electric and vehicles the cost-benefit analysis was chosen. The cost-benefit analysis was done in three separate scenarios, where each scenario included different variables. This was done in order to see which impact each of the variables had, and in turn evaluate the policy measures and results based on this. With the assumption that an electric vehicle has a lifetime of 14 years and an annual driving distance of 13.000, the marginal socioeconomic net present value was estimated to be 262.956 NOK for choosing an electric vehicle instead of a conventional vehicle, given today´s policy measures throughout the lifetime. The estimated cost-benefit model showed that the difference in the marginal net benefit in the private costs of owning an electric vehicle compared to a conventional vehicle had a big impact on the results. The greater the difference was the more socioeconomic beneficial the electric vehicle became compared to the conventional vehicle. For future policies it was recommended that policy measures toward road transportation should aim at making the use of vehicles a more costly choice compared to public transport, walking or cycling than they are today. At the same time make sure that the private costs of electric vehicles are significantly less than for the conventional vehicles.

Abstract

International audience; The decarbonization of the transportation sector needs a major rise in the electric vehicle (EV) market share in order to totally switch into electromobility. Boosting the electric vehicle market requires a cooperation between automotive industries by developing this technology especially batteries, charging infrastructure by installing more charging points especially fast ones and EV owners by giving them subsidies and offers. We collected data from different sources to analyze PEV sales in French departments and to know the reason that has the highest impact on the client's choice. Based on existing literature, we identified the most important factors and tried to build the French econometrics model using RStudio. Our model found that the vehicle price, autonomy, department's population density, local subsidies and fuel price to be significant and positively correlated to local PEV sales. However, charging infrastructure had negative impact and no significancy on the electromobility market. Results suggest boosting the study on a more detailed concept such as cities and suburbs as well as adding factors that reflect a department's and a client's characteristics in order to conclude with results that are more accurate.

Abstract

Significant efforts to incentivize the uptake of energy efficient vehicles (EEVs) are evident across the globe. Given EEV markets are dynamic, and consumer demand may fluctuate in response to incentives, this may also lead to other market forces influencing prices. An analysis of EEV incentives, therefore, must account for the possible endogeneity between demand and pricing. Here we estimate the effects of different types of incentives on the demand and price premiums of a specific group of EEVs: plug-in and conventional hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). For the first time we dis-entangle the endogeneity between HEV demand and price, using error components three-stage least squares (EC3SLS) regression, and establish that increased HEV price premiums lead to reduced demand. In turn, we also establish that increased HEV demand leads to lower price premiums. Additionally, we find that one-off subsidies are associated with higher consumer demand, however, unlike other types of incentives, are also associated with higher HEV price premiums. This finding suggests that HEV manufacturers and/or dealers are absorbing a significant monetary benefit from one-off subsidies, raising a question regarding the appropriateness of HEV subsidies, particularly in non-HEV manufacturing nations. We also find that higher fuel prices are associated with higher HEV demand and price premiums. Document type: Article

Abstract

Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD) insurance links an individual's driving behaviour to the insurance fee that they pay, making car insurance more actuarially accurate. The best known PAYD insurance format is purely mileage based and is estimated to reduce accidents by about 15% (Litman, 2011). However, these benefits could be further enhanced by incorporating a wider range of driving behaviours, such as lateral and longitudinal accelerations and speeding behaviour, thereby stimulating not only a safe but also an eco-friendly driving style. Currently, feedback on rewards and driver behaviour is mostly provided through a web-based interface, which is presented temporally separated from driving. However, providing immediate feedback within the vehicle itself could elicit more effect. To investigate this hypothesis, two groups of 20 participants drove with a behavioural based PAYD system in a driving simulator and were provided with either delayed feedback through a website, or immediate feedback through an in-car interface, allowing them to earn up to 6 extra. To be clear, every participant in the web group did actually view their feedback during the one week between sessions. Results indicate clear driving behaviour improvements for both PAYD groups as compared to baseline rides and an equal sized control group. After both PAYD groups had received feedback, the initial advantage of the in-car group was reduced substantially. Taken together with usability ratings and driving behaviours in specific situations these results show a moderate advantage of using immediate in-car feedback. However, the study also showed that under conditions of feedback certainty, the effectiveness of delayed feedback approaches that of immediate feedback as compared to a naive control group. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.