Jean-Loup Madre

THE MAIN DETERMINANTS OF THE DEMAND FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE USING SHRINKAGE ESTIMATORS

This study analyses the impacts of changes in fares, service supply, income and other factors on the demand for public transport on the basis of panels of English counties and French urban areas. The analysis is based on dynamic econometric models, so that both short- and long-run elasticities are estimated. Conventional approaches (i.e. fixed- and random-effect models) rely on the hypothesis that elasticities are the same for all areas. Having shown that this hypothesis is not valid for these data sets, the heterogeneity amongst areas is accounted for using a random-coefficients approach, and Bayesian shrinkage estimators. Estimated elasticities for France and England are compared, by using a common set of variables, similar time period and a common methodology. The results show a considerable variation in elasticities among areas within each country. The major conclusion is that public transport demand is relatively sensitive to fare changes, so that policy measures aimed at fare reduction (subsidisation) can play a substantial role in encouraging the use of public transport, thus reducing the use of private cars.

Transport survey methods : keeping up with a changing world

At the 2008 International Conference on Transport Survey Methods in Annecy, France, transport survey methodologists and practitioners shared their experience with keeping abreast of the data needs of a rapidly changing world. Over the past decade, this has translated into the need for: an expanded travel survey toolkit; methodological innovation for surveys of freight and public transport operations; a growing use of data collection and processing technologies; a need to align surveys with other data streams; and an increased interest in the comparability of international datasets on personal travel and commodity movements in an era of globalisation. We discuss how these guided the choice and scope of the five themes around which both the Annecy Conference and this book were organised. The International Steering Committee for Travel Survey Conferences (ISCTSC) organises periodic international conferences on the survey methods that support planning, policy development, modelling and evaluation through the observation of person, vehicle and commodity movements at the urban, rural, regional, intercity and international scales. The evolution of the underlying issues, and the methodological response, can be seen in the series of publications that drew on previous conferences, most recently the 1997 Grainau Conference (Stopher & Jones, 2000), Transport Survey Methods Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISBN: 978-1-84855-844-1 the 2001 Kruger Conference (Stopher & Jones, 2003) and the 2004 Costa Rica Conference (Stopher & Stecher, 2006). That evolution includes: a gradual expansion of the travel survey toolkit beyond the needs of ‘core business’ urban area household travel surveys and national travel surveys; a growing recognition of the need for new approaches to collecting data on freight movements and public transport operations; an increasing expectation that data from transport user surveys should be aligned with other data streams from administrative and commercial sources; a growing application of digital technologies to aid data collection and processing; an increased attention to international (and within nation) comparisons of data on personal travel and commodity movements, and to international flows in the context of a progressive globalisation of national economies. With this in mind, the Transport Survey Methods Conference held in Annecy, France, in May 2008 was designed to continue the emphasis of previous meetings on transport survey quality and on the standards for assessing and maintaining quality (e.g. Stopher, Wilmot, Stecher, & Alsnih 2006), and also to look ahead to transport survey data harmonisation and comparability within and across countries. It was a concerted response to the evolving need to track and compare key policy measures and statistics, and their implications for sustaining mobility, in today’s global, interconnected world. For example, how can we track and compare long distance mobility in Belgium versus the United States when the two nations employ different definitions of a long distance trip? (Bonnel, Madre, & Armoogum, 2005) What does it mean that the mobility rate is around three trips per day in a Netherlands metropolitan area and around four trips per day in the Grenoble metropolitan area? Can we attribute this difference to policy measures in respective areas, true travel behaviour differences, different survey methodologies or different spatial boundary definitions? (Bonnel, 2003). As a community, transport survey researchers, practitioners and planners need advance knowledge of the components of survey and data collection design that are upstream from reliable and accurate intra-national and international comparisons. The topics of the Annecy Conference were intended to facilitate such discussions, and in a few cases to initiate them. It was also hoped that progress would be made towards the development of a framework for harmonising passenger transport survey data and statistics along the lines of what has been done for road freight data at European level (Pasi, 2008). At the same time, it was recognised that some classes of transport surveys are not yet ready for such a framework, and may require some fairly fundamental methodological research in the shorter term. Other classes — for example those that explore hypothetical travel behaviour under a range of possible future environmental pressures — are not intended to generate national statistics, but merit our attention for other sound reasons. The Annecy Conference thus sought a balance between the themes of data harmonisation and the data quality. With its workshop format, the conference continued the ISCTSC tradition to create an opportunity for networking, collaboration 4 Patrick Bonnel et al.

Continuous Mobility Surveys: The State of Practice

Abstract In this paper we challenge the prevailing practice of conducting one‐off cross‐sectional mobility surveys, making a case for change on the basis of usefulness and cost‐effectiveness. We believe that urban areas over say, one million inhabitants, should collect mobility data on a continuous basis as part of their efforts to guarantee sustainable development. This would allow them to gain a proper understanding of the pressing environmental and transport‐related issues of today’s world, as well as of the effects of economic growth and price (especially for fuel) volatility. In our scope we include panel data (i.e. information from a smaller sample of respondents who are interviewed at different points in time, hopefully during several years), as this type of information is unique in its ability to help understanding behavioural changes and the impact of time‐related effects, such as habit and inertia. We revise the state of affairs in different parts of the world, not limiting ourselves to urban data.

Immobility and mobility seen through trip-based versus time-use surveys

Abstract Nationwide Transport Surveys and Time‐Use Surveys both reflect the daily agendas and schedules of the reporting individuals and should therefore yield comparable indicators of travel behaviour; for instance: immobility rate (share of persons not leaving the home on any one day), daily travel time, and number of trips per day. These two surveys exist in three countries from the same time period: Belgium, France, Great Britain. The comparisons demonstrate that they tell parallel stories, but that the levels of the variables are significantly different with lower immobility rates and longer travel times reported in the Time‐Use Surveys. These surveys should therefore be integrated in the analysis of travel behaviour analysis as a crucial yardstick. In Europe, where Nationwide Travel Surveys are intermittent and not harmonized, the harmonised Time‐Use Surveys allow for crucial European‐wide comparisions across time and space.

Projection of the Daily Travel of an Ageing Population: The Paris and Montreal Case, 1975–2020

Abstract Ageing of the population, urban sprawl and car dependency will change travel patterns. The main objective of this paper is to give elements for a better understanding of the impact of changing demographics on the long‐term evolution of daily mobility using demographic‐based models to forecast, for the elderly population, car‐ownership, trip frequency, distance travelled, average trip distance. A second objective is to measure the impact of the long‐term tendencies observed on the appearance of new needs of travel demand such as a rapid increase of demand‐responsive transport. The paper compares two agglomerations, both in a strong ageing process, but in cultural contexts: a large European metropolis, Paris; and a medium sized North‐American city, Montreal. Many common conclusions derived from the two different cases studies reinforce the possibility of generalizing the conclusions to other situations.

Postprocessing Procedures for Person-Based Global Positioning System Data Collected in the French National Travel Survey 2007-2008

A challenge in the postprocessing of data for a passive Global Positioning System–based travel survey, which constitutes the essence of this paper, is the development of a series of methods for automatically restoring continuous sequences, both in space and in time. Thus trips and activities occurring during the survey period should be identified in chronological order and should respect conventional definitions. On the basis of previous research results and a combination of the experience from the French National Travel Survey 2007–2008 and the Personal Mobility Survey in Lille, France, a series of methods has been developed and applied: (a) filtering invalid data, (b) cutting the data chains into “moving” and “stopping” segments, (c) estimating missing data, (d) assuming mode choice, (e) grouping stop points into visited locations, (f) identifying the type of visited points, (g) map-matching, and (h) connecting segments to trips. To use the maximum available information and guarantee the quality of the results, some feedback between the methods is implemented within the algorithm. The resulting processing system is ready for use in other applications.

Vers la saturation ? Une approche démographique de l'équipement des ménages en automobile dans trois régions urbaines

Bussiere (Yves), Armoogum (Jimmy), Madre (Jean-Loup). - i Hacia la saturacion ? Un anali- sis demografico del equipamiento automovilistico de los hogares en tres regiones ur- banas Partiendo de los limites de alcance dinamico de los modelos clasicos, que a menudo se basan en una estimacion transversal de los efectos de renta, los autores elaboran un analisis longitudinal basado en el seguimiento del comportamiento de generaciones sucesi- vas a lo largo de su ciclo de vida. El articulo ofrece una sintesis de las proyecciones a largo plazo de la motorizacion de los hogares en Ile-de-France (11 millones de habitantes), la region metropolitana de Montreal (3 millones) y la region urbana de Grenoble (0,5 millones). La historia de la motorizacion, mas antigua en America del Norte que en Europa, cla- rifica el concepto de saturacion (disminucion progresiva del crecimiento hacia las asimpto- tas determinadas por el modelo y no fijadas a priori). El segundo coche es en todos los casos la razon principal del crecimiento del parque automovil y la expansion urbana hace prever una explosion del numero de vehiculos en la periferia ; el crecimiento seria mucho mas moderado en las zonas densas.

Determinants of Urban Sprawl in France An Analysis Using a Hierarchical Bayes Approach on Panel Data

This paper studies the determinants of urban sprawl in France using panel datasets for the four largest metropolitan areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille) over the period 1985–98. A measure of urban sprawl is proposed at municipality level. Due to the huge heterogeneity of the panels, it seems difficult to make the fundamental homogeneity assumption underlying pooled models. Thus, random coefficient models under heteroscedasticity of the disturbances are estimated for each metropolitan area using a hierarchical Bayes approach based on the Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation method. It is found that urban sprawl is positively related to the income growth of the tax payers’ fiscal households for the period of rapid growth in the late 1980s. At the opposite extreme, the income effects are negative for non-tax payers. During the recession, income effects are significant neither for tax payers’ nor for non-tax payers’ fiscal households and are significantly positive for tax payers and negative for non-tax payers over the recovery. Finally, on average, the inequality index—difference of average net income between tax payers and exempted fiscal households—has a lower impact on urban sprawl than the income effect.

Generating Internationally Comparable Figures on Long-Distance Travel for Europe

This paper discusses available household survey data on long-distance travel (LDT) and presents harmonized figures on LDT in Europe. First, there is a comparison of the results of different household travel surveys about LDT. The findings of this comparison have important implications for the methodology of surveying LDT: conventional mobility diary surveys are better than LDT surveys in capturing journeys up to 200 km. LDT surveys perform better in capturing travel only beyond 400 km. Second, the paper presents the first internationally comparable figures on LDT demand for Europe. These figures have been compiled by using different sources of information, avoiding the drawbacks of the different surveys. The results indicate that in northern and central Europe there is higher demand for LDT than in the south. Moreover, the results illustrate how policies and public-transport supply affect the modal split in LDT: in countries with a high-quality railroad supply, such as Switzerland, the railroad share is significantly higher than in other countries. Countries with a liberalized, interurban bus market, in contrast, have a significantly higher bus mode share.

CAR OWNERSHIP DYNAMICS SEEN THROUGH THE FOLLOW-UP OF COHORTS: COMPARISON OF FRANCE AND THE UNITED KINGDOM

The dynamics of car ownership based on age-cohort data constructed from repeated cross-section surveys is investigated for France and the United Kingdom, both nationally and for different geographic areas. Two different modeling strategies are used: a demographic approach and a dynamic econometric approach. The demographic approach is primarily oriented toward long-term forecasting. It takes into account changes in car ownership over the life cycle for each generation, differences between generations, and period effects explained by income and prices. The dynamic econometric approach is mainly concerned with estimating the elasticity of car ownership with respect to income and prices in the short and long run. It is based on a dynamic model in which household car ownership is specified as a function of income, prices, sociodemographic factors, and previous car ownership. The results using the two approaches are quite similar. The income elasticity is significantly higher in the United Kingdom than in France, is higher in rural than in urban areas, and decreases over time as car ownership increases. Generation gaps, which have been important between older generations, are not significant for households whose head was born after the 1940s, which implies that the diffusion of car ownership over generations is nearing completion. In addition, a declining income elasticity confirms a progressive evolution toward saturation. Finally, car ownership is considerably more sensitive to car purchase prices than to gasoline prices and both appear to be more significant in densely populated zones than in rural areas.