Understanding Willingness to Support Higher Taxes for Urban Transportation Services: The Case of an American City

This paper examines how a respondent’s socioeconomic characteristics influence her willingness to support tax increases for spending on highway transportation infrastructure and four modes of public transportation (i.e., bus, light rail, commuter rail, and streetcar) in a fast growing urban area in the United States. We use and analyze detailed survey data at household level collected from a phone interview survey conducted in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. We consider two types of response bias in the survey data. One is a systematic response bias which arises from protest zeros and respondents’ tendency to under-report their willingness. The other is from the randomized response when a respondent answers survey questions by guessing because she does not have memory or knowledge of the questions and choices. Along with random utility model, these two response bias models are estimated and compared to each other. Empirical results show that an individual’s attitudes towards paying higher taxes are affected by the individual’s location, home ownership, and the level of educational attainment. It is found that respondents tend to grossly under-report their willingness to support higher taxes for investments on highways, bus, and commuter rail in the survey. Respondents also exhibit positive tendency to choose no increase in taxes in the survey about highway, bus, and commuter rail, although they actually prefer an increase over no increase. They have positive chance of randomly choosing slightly higher taxes for more investment on streetcar whatever her true preference is. We discuss policy implications of the empirical results.

Comparing Approaches to Winter Highway Maintenance Operations Through User Mobility Performance

This paper compares the winter maintenance performances of sections of two limited access highways operated by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) and the New York State Thruway Authority (NYSTA). Performance is assessed by two user mobility indicators: speed reduction during snowstorms and speed recovery duration following the end of snow events. Multivariate linear regressions are estimated to model these mobility indicators. The results show major discrepancies in level of service between the two agencies, particularly in the early stages of snowstorms. Another result is that speed recovery is indistinguishable in the hour following the end of snow events. It also found that NYSTA's higher outlay of resources appears to be effective only during short storms and in the early stages of storms

Measuring relative opinion from location-based social media: A case study of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Social media has become an emerging alternative to opinion polls for public opinion collection, while it is still posing many challenges as a passive data source, such as structurelessness, quantifiability, and representativeness. Social media data with geotags provide new opportunities to unveil the geographic locations of users expressing their opinions. This paper aims to answer two questions: 1) whether quantifiable measurement of public opinion can be obtained from social media and 2) whether it can produce better or complementary measures compared to opinion polls. This research proposes a novel approach to measure the relative opinion of Twitter users towards public issues in order to accommodate more complex opinion structures and take advantage of the geography pertaining to the public issues. To ensure that this new measure is technically feasible, a modeling framework is developed including building a training dataset by adopting a state-of-the-art approach and devising a new deep learning method called Opinion-Oriented Word Embedding. With a case study of the tweets selected for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we demonstrate the predictive superiority of our relative opinion approach and we show how it can aid visual analytics and support opinion predictions. Although the relative opinion measure is proved to be more robust compared to polling, our study also suggests that the former can advantageously complement the later in opinion prediction

COVID-19 Pandemic Severity, Lockdown Regimes, and People Mobility: Early Evidence from 88 Countries

This study empirically investigates the complex interplay between the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, mobility changes in retail and recreation, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas, and lockdown measures in 88 countries of the word. To conduct the study, data on mobility patterns, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of people, lockdown measures, and coronavirus pandemic were collected from multiple sources (e.g., Google, UNDP, UN, BBC, Oxford University, Worldometer). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique is used to investigate the direct and indirect effects of independent variables on dependent variables considering the intervening effects of mediators. Results show that lockdown measures have significant effects to encourage people to maintain social distancing. However, pandemic severity and socioeconomic and institutional factors have limited effects to sustain social distancing practice. The results also explain that socioeconomic and institutional factors of urbanity and modernity have significant effects on pandemic severity. Countries with a higher number of elderly people, employment in the service sector, and higher globalization trend are the worst victims of the coronavirus pandemic (e.g., USA, UK, Italy, and Spain). Social distancing measures are reasonably effective at tempering the severity of the pandemic.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 6 table

Understanding Willingness to Support Higher Taxes for Urban Transportation Services: The Case of an American City

Abs tract This paper examines how a respondent's socioeconomic characteristics influence her willingness to support tax increases for spendi ng on highway transportation infrastructure and four modes of public transportation (i.e., bus, light rail, commuter rail, and streetcar) in a fast growing urban area in the United States. We use and analyze detailed survey data at household level collected from a phone interview survey conducted in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. We consider two types of response bias in the survey data. One is a systematic response bias which arises from protest zeros and respondents' tendency to under-report their willingness. The other is from the randomized response when a respondent answers survey questions by guessing because she does not have memory or knowledge of the questions and choices . Along with random utility model, thesetwo response bias models are estimated and compared to each other. Empirical results show that an individual's attitudes towards paying higher taxes are affected by the individual's location, home ownership, and the level of educational attainment. It is found that respondents tend to grossly under-report their willingness to support higher taxes for investments on highways, bus, and commuter rail in the survey. Res pondents also exhibit positive tendency to choose no increase in taxes in the survey about highway, bus, and commuter rail, although they actually prefer an increase over no increase. They have positive chance of randomly choosing slightly higher taxes for more investment on streetcar whatever her true preference is. We discuss policy implications of the empirical results

Fallas del estado, violencia y comercio: rutas comerciales peligrosas en Colombia

En este documento se investiga el efecto de la violencia armada doméstica provocada por la inestabilidad política sobre las fricciones de la distancia en la movilidad de carga. Además, el efecto de esas fricciones sobre el acceso diferencial de las regiones a los mercados globales. Se concluye que el sistema de transporte colombiano se ve obstaculizado por deficiencias en la infraestructura e instituciones de transporte terrestre y por entornos políticos fragmentados. El análisis a nivel micro de los registros de exportaciones hacia Estados Unidos corrobora que el envío de carga de exportación desde las regiones del interior se redirige para evitar exposiciones a la violencia armada doméstica a pesar de las amplias distancias de envío marítimo y terrestre existentes. Aprovechamos las trayectorias del transporte de carga desde las regiones colombianas y los patrones espaciales de los conflictos armados violentos para ver cómo los entornos geopolíticos inestables son perjudiciales para la movilidad del transporte de carga y la apertura del mercado. A través de un modelo de elección discreta se muestra que el flujo de envío se ve frenado por el desvío debido a la violencia armada doméstica y que las regiones del interior tienen acceso restringido al mercado global. La percepción de riesgo y comportamiento de redireccionamiento se considera heterogénea entre los envíos y está condicionada a las características del envío, como el tipo de mercancía, el tamaño y el valor del flete. Los resultados resaltan que el conseguir la estabilidad política puede ayudar a mejorar la movilidad de carga y el desarrollo económico orientado a la exportación en el Sur globalWe investigate the effect of domestic armed violence brought about by political instability on the geography of distance frictions in freight mobility and the resulting differential access of regions to global markets. The Colombian transportation system has been found to be impeded by deficiencies in landside transport infrastructure and institutions, and by fragmented political environments. The micro-level analysis of U.S.-bounded export shipping records corroborates that export freight shipping from inland regions is re-routed to avoid exposures to domestic armed violence despite greatly extended landside and maritime shipping distances. We exploit the trajectories of freight shipping from Colombian regions and spatial patterns of violent armed conflicts to see how unstable geopolitical environments are detrimental to freight shipping mobility and market openness. The discrete choice model shows that the shipping flow is greatly curbed by the extended re-routing due to domestic armed violence and that inland regions have restricted access to the global market. The perception of risk and re-routing behavior is found heterogeneous across shipments and conditional to shipment characteristics, such as commodity type, freight value and shipper sizes. The results highlight that political stability must be accommodated for improved freight mobility and export-oriented economic development in the global South.Fallas del estado, violencia y comercio: Rutas comerciales peligrosas en Colombia Enfoque En este artículo se investiga cómo el efecto la violencia armada, que surge en medio de entornos geopolíticos inestables, es perjudicial para la movilidad de carga y el acceso de las regiones a las cadenas globales de logística de mercancías. Nuestro análisis se centra en el caso de Colombia en 2006-2007, por ser un periodo que estuvo muy permeado por la violencia y delincuencia, en muchas de las rutas principales de transporte al interior del país. El objetivo es determinar cómo la inseguridad durante este período de tiempo actuó como un impedimento para el movimiento del transporte marítimo de carga en el comercio internacional, actuando como otros de sus determinantes, tales como los factores arancelarios y no arancelarios. De esta manera, se propone la hipótesis de que los encargados de la logística del transporte buscarían reducir su exposición a conflictos armados domésticos a lo largo de las rutas, desplazándose a puertos más lejanos, a los que se pueda acceder de manera más segura, pese a tener que opotar por distancias de envío más extendidas. Para este efecto, este trabajo explota la existencia de registros de embarque proveniente de las bases de datos de Port Import Export Reporting Services y los datos georreferenciados de conflictos armados nacionales de Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Contribución La visión tradicional en la literatura comercial se ha concentrado en cómo el efecto de los aranceles, las cuotas, el acceso al mar, las fronteras internacionales o la calidad de la infraestructura logística limitan las actividades de exportación y el comercio internacional. Nuestra principal contribución a la discusión está relacionada con los efectos que puede tener la inseguridad como otro impedimento importante para el cruce de fronteras de mercancías. Específicamente, calculamos las equivalencias en distancia del riesgo observado de conflictos armados internos para medir el costo del cambio de ruta y evaluamos hasta qué punto estos restringen el acceso a los mercados globales. Conclusiones Encontramos evidencia sobre Colombia, centrados en el período 2006-2007, de que el riesgo de violencia a lo largo de las rutas de transporte marítimo terrestre resulta en una geografía de la movilidad de carga alterada, con rutas de envío más riesgosas a los puertos que se evitan, en favor de otras opciones más seguras. Los transportistas cambiarían una ruta más corta, pero más riesgosa, por una ruta más segura a puertos ubicados más lejos del origen del envío. Además, estarían dispuestos a tomar la ruta de envío terrestre a puertos donde haya mayor seguridad, incluso en el caso en que el segmento marítimo de la distancia de envío, asociada al puerto de entrada de los Estados Unidos, sea más extenso. Nuestro estudio plantea que la falta de control de la violencia armada a lo largo de las rutas comerciales impide extensamente el transporte de carga, aumenta el costo de hacer negocios y limita en gran medida el acceso al mercado global, lo que podría desalentar las actividades económicas orientadas a la exportación. Frase destacada: Nuestro estudio plantea que la falta de control de la violencia armada a lo largo de las rutas comerciales impide extensamente el transporte de carga, aumenta el costo de hacer negocios y limita el acceso al mercado global, lo que podría desalentar las actividades económicas orientadas a la exportación