Decisions to Renovate and to Move

Housing renovation is the main alternative means of housing supply besides construction of new housing. Relatively little is known about the factors that affect decisions by households about whether to renovate and which sort of renovations to undertake. These questions are explored empirically. Separate analyses are conducted of the decision to undertake "major structural renovations" as opposed to other sorts (such as remodeling the kitchen or bathroom), and also of the decision to conduct renovations that add to the living space of the housing unit. Financial, household and geographic factors affecting this decision are analyzed econometrically.

The Inversion of the Land Gradient in the Inner City of Haifa, Israel

While suburbanization and decentralization are familiar concepts in urban economics, there is a possibility that land gradients will not simply flatten over time, but actually invert themselves. This would mean that the traditional CBD or downtown ceases to act as the pinnacle or nucleus of the land/housing pricing function within the metropolitan area. Such a possibility has been noted in the theoretical literature and has been demonstrated empirically in a few cases. Such an urban ‘‘inversion’’ is shown to have occurred in Haifa, Israel. Beginning in the 1960s, the stock of privately-owned cars grew in Israel at one of the most rapid rates ever seen in any industrial country, with relatively little growth in transportation infrastructure.

The relevance of social factors in sharing a trip with strangers: Creating travel communities in the autonomous vehicles era

There has been a growing interest in autonomous vehicles (AVs) for the past few years due to technological innovation and their far-reaching expected impacts on urban mobility. The impact of AVs depends ultimately on how the technology will be adopted, e.g. privately or shared AVs (SAVs), and integrated into the socio-technical mobility system. In this study, we evaluate how social considerations and the AV technology may enhance new social arrangements for travel, especially for groups suffering from some disadvantages in accessing transport. Particularly, we explore a proposed new form of social arrangement, coined “Travel Community” (TC), to create shared AVs trips based on individual preferences. An online national representative sample in Israel was conducted (N = 1009). The data was analyzed using multivariate methods including multinomial logistic regression models for the willingness to adopt TC in two contexts: commuting (TCC) and travel leisure (TCL). The findings suggest that TC was well accepted by the participants under certain assumptions and could address latent demand for improving travel options for people with different constraints accessing transport, such as women, young, sporadic travelers, and low-income individuals. The personal social preferences option might help overcome psychological barriers regarding shared mobility, such as the fear of sharing the trip with strangers and a social value promoting a new kind of social interaction. Planners and stakeholders should consider social considerations' relevance (opportunities and risks) for promoting and creating new forms of mobility and improving urban sustainability and social inclusion

Privatization of Transportation Investments

Over the past decade, there has been a wave of public support in many countries for privatization and deregulation in a number of indus­ tries. One of the industries in which privatization is most controversial is urban transportation. In some ways, urban transportation has been the most resistant to privatization, both in the intellectual/theoretical realm and in the political realm. Nevertheless, there is increasing dis­ cussion of privatization to transportation. Recently, the Governor of Massachusetts appointed a task force to study the possibility of privatiz­ ing the maintenance of highways, commuter rail lines, and Boston's Logan Airport (Wall Street journal, May 1, 1991) . There are talks of privatizing the airports of Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and of privatiz­ ing transportation services in other cities. In any case, the arguments for and against privatization are different in many ways for the transpor­ tation sector because of the unique characteristics of urban transporta­ tion markets. Among the special characteristics is the common expecta­ tion that urban transportation, unlike most commodities and services, should operate in order to meet a variety of social goals beyond mere efficiency, including distributional, environmental, and political goals

The intra-household choices regarding commuting and housing

This paper is an empirical analysis of the relationships between commuting decisions of spouses in dual-income households, where the role of housing and housing tenure is taken into account. The study is based on a large survey of US commuters and actual commuting and housing choices. Household commuting decisions are analyzed together with housing choices using the data from the 2001 American Housing Survey. A sample of dual-career spouses who commute to work by car only is used to explore the inter-relationship between male and female commuting decisions in such households and the effect of housing choices on their commuting. The inter-relationships between spousal commuting decisions are examined separately for the two forms of housing tenure: ownership and renting. In general, men commute further than women and owners commute further than renters. It is shown that for both renters and homeowners, journeys to work by men and women in such dual-earner households appear to be "complements" and not "substitutes". This means that commute trips are jointly chosen to be longer (or shorter) for both spouses, as part of household selection of preferred housing and neighborhood characteristics. The residuals of equations explaining commute times and commute distances for men are strongly positively correlated with those for women. Many of the explanatory factors affect the men and women in similar ways. In particular, housing value is positively correlated with commute times and distances for both genders. The commute distance for women owners appears more sensitive to housing value than that of men, meaning women adjust their trips to work even more so than men do, as part of obtaining better housing. For both homeowners and renters, longer commute distances were correlated with higher salaries for both spouses. Somewhat surprisingly, it was found that commuting distances for women are similarly or even more sensitive to income increments than are those of men. Household size appears to affect women who own housing in ways opposite from those who rent. Other housing and neighborhood factors also affect the joint commuting decisions of these men and women.

Transportation-communications relationships in industry

Relationships between transportation and communications have generally been analyzed at the household level. Yet most transportation and communications services are used by industry. This paper examines the relationship between uses of transportation and communications services by industry in the countries of the European Community. It is shown that a clear pattern of complementarity appears to hold for such industrial uses throughout Western Europe. The complementarity appears to hold for all subsectors of the transportation service industry.

Economic and Travel Impacts of Bypass Roads: A Comparative Study of Israel and the U.S.

In this study we are documenting and comparing the economic and travel impacts of bypass roads in the United States and Israel on the towns near which they are constructed. Using historical research, on-site observations, interviews, surveys, and data analyses we consider the effects of bypasses on local and through traffic, travel patterns, development patterns, and the local urban economy in the immediately affected communities. We aim elucidate how road design, market forces, local politics, land use policies, planning and zoning and location-specific factors interact to produce the effects we observe. The incidence of costs and benefits upon various interest groups within the local community is a particular focus of the research.In Israel, we are examining the impacts of a regional road affecting three towns. In the United States, we are examining the impact of two different regional roads, one in New Hampshire and the other in California, each road affecting two towns. For all the cases, the bypasses divert traffic from the centers of small communities that are along major corridors for through traffic. The bypasses have been built at different times and some towns have not been bypassed, allowing us to consider with/without effects as well as the effects of the bypasses over time. We will consider not only overall impacts of the roads but the spatial and socio-economic distribution of those impacts