Eva Valeri

A Stated Ranking Experiment to Study Policy Acceptance: The Case of Freight Operators in Rome’s LTZ

City logistics require an understanding of a number of issues that are seldom accounted for in current research. Policies may produce unsatisfactory results because behavioural and contextual aspects are not considered. Relevant data is crucial for forecasting the reactions of agents to policy changes. Despite recent methodological advances the development of appropriate survey instruments is still lacking to test policy acceptability. This paper expands and innovates the methodological literature by describing a stated ranking experiment to study freight agent interactive behaviour.

Urban Freight Policy Innovation for Rome’s LTZ: A Stakeholder Perspective

City distribution plays a key role in supporting urban lifestyles, helping to serve and retain industrial and trading activities, and contributing to the competitiveness of regional industry. Despite these positive effects, it also generates negative (economic, environmental and social) impacts on cities worldwide. Relatively little attention has been paid to these issues by researchers and policymakers until recently. The analyses found in City Distribution and Urban Freight Transport aim to improve knowledge in this important area by recognizing and evaluating the problems, with a focus on urban freight transport systems.

Does habitual behavior affect the choice of alternative fuel vehicles

ABSTRACT Because of the recent improvements in the electrification process of cars, several types of alternative fuel vehicles are appearing in the car market. However, these new engine technologies are not easily penetrating the market around the world and the conventional ones are still the leaders. A vast literature has explored the reasons for such low market penetration, due mainly to cars features. Using a hybrid choice model approach, in this research we study if, and to which extent, habitual car use influences individual propensity to buy a specific type of engine technology. We found significant latent habitual effect on choices of type of car engine. This effect is important only for some of the car alternatives considered in the study. In particular, habitual car users prefer to buy a new car with liquefied petroleum gas and compressed natural gas types of engine technology instead of a conventional one. The importance of taking into account this latent construct is demonstrated also with the results of the simulated elasticity measures. In fact, the exclusion of latent habitual effect significantly underestimates the elasticity of diesel and hybrid cars and overestimates the elasticity of liquefied petroleum gas car.

The Potential Demand for Carsharing by University Students: An Italian Case Study

The paper presents a methodology to estimate the potential demand for carsharing by university students. The methodology is based on three surveys: a paper-and-pencil questionnaire; a detailed computer-assisted personal interview, and a contingent valuation interview. The data collected are used to operationalize a model that estimates the generalized cost under alternative scenarios, with and without carsharing. A Monte Carlo simulation procedure is used to estimate the probability that a person would use carsharing. The methodology has been tested with students enrolled at the University of Trieste. The main finding is that, under the prevailing conditions, a quite large number of the sample students (32%) would benefit in terms of generalised cost from the use of carsharing if a private car were unavailable. The model is also used to perform scenario analysis.

Understanding the demand for carsharing : lessons from Italian case studies.

The aim of this paper is to estimate the potential demand for carsharing, to this aim a model which calculates the total generalized cost for a given mobility pattern and transport mode mix is developed. The model considers : a) that a person sometimes travels with friends and family, and therefore shares the travel expenses and/or satisfies several travel needs, and b) that uses in given time period more than one mode of transport. The parameters of the model are derived by detailed, face-to-face, computer-assisted interviews. A limited number of interviews have been so far completed. However, they hint to some very interesting empirical evidence. It is found that car ownership is currently very high in the Italian families and that the car is used extensively both for work\study and, especially, for other-than-work\study trip purposes. Offering a carsharing service (CS) would enhance the mode choice and could, in some cases, lower the total mobility costs. The respondents assign quite a large value to the pleasure of owning a car, much more so than the pleasure of being carsharing users, both for workers and for students. Consequently, the respondents would dislike not owing a private car, while having the choice between the private and the carsharing car is preferred especially by the students. The mobility cost indicators reflect, but not perfectly, the preference-based choices of the sample. Three individual case studies are further analyzed. They have been defined as : a low, a medium and a high mobility case study. The low mobility case study shows that these persons would largely benefit from the existence of a CS service, they would use it occasionally and they would probably be willing to forgo the private car. The medium mobility case study shows that the variables parking time, access time and CS fare can easily switch the balance between convenience and inconvenience of using CS. The higher mobility case study in a small town setting demonstrates that in such circumstances the prospects for a viable CS service are rather bleak.

Energy efficiency in the transport sector: policy evolution and evaluation in some european countries

In the last years Energy Efficiency (EE) has become an important issue in the public policy makers’ agenda due to ambitious objectives of the European Commission to reduce energy consumption by 20% in 2020. Many countries have adopted state-level EE programs targeted to include Energy Saving (ES) policy mixes in different sectors including transportation that is among the most energy intensive ones. The aims of this paper are to: i) report briefly the macroareas of state-level transport EE policies related to the transport sector, ii) verify the level of implementation of these policies among some European countries, iii) highlight, for each country considered, the EE measures adopted up to 2007 and compare the results obtained, iv) evaluate the implementation of EE transport successful measures adopted by each respective National Energy Agency (NEAs), and finally v) compare the main results deriving from EE policy implementation. In particular, in this last objective we adapted the good practice policy mix framework for car passenger transport proposed by the AID-EE Project at the information obtained from countries’ National Energy Programmes (NEPs) updated to 2007.