Express delivery to the suburbs. The effects of transportation in Europe’s heterogeneous cities

This paper provides evidence for the causal effect of the highway and railway infrastructure on the suburbanization of population in European cities. We adopt different measures of transportation infrastructure and estimate their joint effects on suburbanization using a two-step panel approach. Our main results suggest that an additional highway ray displaced approximately 4% of the central city population in European cities over a 10-year period, whereas we find no significant effect for the railways on average. However, railways did cause suburbanization those located in Central-North Europe. When employing the full time span covered by our data and accounting for the diversity of European cities, we find a smaller effect of highways on suburbanization during more recent decades and for “cities with history”. Factors such as historical urban amenities, traffic congestion, urban policies etc. appear to provide reasonable explanations for these differences. The findings of this paper are novel and provide valuable insights for European regional and transport policies

Congestion in Highways when tolls and railroads matter: Evidence from European cities.

Using data from the 545 largest European cities, we studywhether the expansion of their highway capacity provides a solutionto the problem of traffic congestion. Our results confirm that in thelong run, and in line with the ’fundamental law of highway congestion’,the expansion in cities of lane kilometers causes an increase invehicle traffic that does not solve urban congestion. We disentanglethe increase in traffic due to the increases in coverage and in capacity.We further introduce road pricing andpublic transit policies in orderto test whether they moderate congestion. Our findings confirm thatthe induced demand is considerably smaller in cities with road pricingschemes, and that congestion decreases with the expansion of publictransportation

Congestion in highways when tolls and railroads matter : evidence from European cities

Using data from the 545 largest European cities, we study whether the expansion of their highway capacity provides a solution to the problem of traffic congestion. Our results confirm that in the long run, and in line with the 'fundamental law of highway congestion', the expansion in cities of lane kilometers causes an increase in vehicle traffic that does not solve urban congestion. We disentangle the increase in traffic due to the increases in coverage and in capacity. We further introduce road pricing and public transit policies in order to test whether they moderate congestion. Our findings confirm that the induced demand is considerably smaller in cities with road pricing schemes, and that congestion decreases with the expansion of public transportation

Shopping externalities and retail concentration:Evidence from dutch shopping streets

Why do shops cluster in shopping streets? We argue that retail firms benefit from shopping externalities. We identify these externalities for the main Dutch shopping streets by estimating the effect of footfall – the number of pedestrians that pass by – and the number of shops in the vicinity on store owners’ rental income. We address endogeneity issues by exploiting spatial variation within shopping streets combined with historic long-lagged instruments. Our estimates imply an elasticity of rental income with respect to footfall as well as number of shops in the vicinity of (at least) 0.25. We show that these shopping externalities are unlikely to be internalised. It follows that substantial subsidies to shop owners are welfare improving, seemingly justifying current policies. Finally, we find limited evidence for heterogeneity between retail firms located in shopping streets in their willingness to pay for shopping externalities

Urban transport externalities

[eng] 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

Congestion in highways when tolls and railroads matter: Evidence from European cities

Using data from the 545 largest European cities, we study whether the expansion of their highway capacity provides a solution to the problem of traffic congestion. Our results confirm that in the long run, and in line with the 'fundamental law of highway congestion', the expansion in cities of lane kilometers causes an increase in vehicle traffic that does not solve urban congestion. We disentangle the increase in traffic due to the increases in coverage and in capacity. We further introduce road pricing and public transit policies in order to test whether they moderate congestion. Our findings confirm that the induced demand is considerably smaller in cities with road pricing schemes, and that congestion decreases with the expansion of public transportation

Congestion in highways when tolls and railroads matter : evidence from European cities

Using data from the 545 largest European cities, we study whether the expansion of their highway capacity provides a solution to the problem of traffic congestion. Our results confirm that in the long run, and in line with the 'fundamental law of highway congestion', the expansion in cities of lane kilometers causes an increase in vehicle traffic that does not solve urban congestion. We disentangle the increase in traffic due to the increases in coverage and in capacity. We further introduce road pricing and public transit policies in order to test whether they moderate congestion. Our findings confirm that the induced demand is considerably smaller in cities with road pricing schemes, and that congestion decreases with the expansion of public transportation