Pedro Donoso

The MUSSA II Land Use Auction Equilibrium Model

In this chapter the description of a new version of the MUSSA model is presented. The supply side of the model leading to new equilibrium problems and a solution algorithm that enhances the model performance has been significantly improved. The model is designed to forecast the expected location of agents, residents and firms, in an urban area. The model stands upon the paradigm of static market equilibrium.

The Kyoto Protocol and Sustainable Cities: Potential Use of Clean-Development Mechanism in Structuring Cities for Carbon-Efficient Transportation

This paper assesses the possibility for changing urban development patterns to reduce transportation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The analysis was carried out as part of a larger project exploring the possibility of using the clean development mechanism (CDM) to reduce transportation GHG emissions in Santiago, Chile. The paper provides an overview of the analytical approach, which includes an integrated travel demand model with sensitivity to mesolevel land use variations, a method to generate optimal land use scenarios that relate to emission reductions, and a process to estimate the level of subsidies needed to produce those land use scenarios. Limitations to the approach and suggestions for future research are discussed. The paper concludes with an assessment of the results in the face of the fairly strict requirements for project development and implementation implied by the CDM.

Optimizing location and size of rural schools in Chile

The Chilean Ministry of Education oversees preschool, primary, and secondary education in both urban and rural areas. Many parts of Chile are sparsely populated and there are currently over 4,000 rural schools (almost 38% of all schools in Chile) educating 9.5% of the students in the country. Many of the rural schools are small with only one teacher responsible for instruction of all local students (multigrade schools). The geographical distribution of the rural schools has not been coordinated and this has resulted in unequal utilization of existing schools and some unreasonably long travel distances by students. Good management of the rural schools is fundamental to meeting Chiles goal of providing quality education to its citizens. Seeking to improve the situation, the Ministry of Education ordered a study of the optimal location and size of rural schools with the general goals of reducing the number of lesser quality multigrade schools and reducing student travel distances while maintaining reasonable costs. This paper presents results of this study obtained using an integer linear program that has been embedded in a geographical information system. We present computational results for the entire country. Recommendations include where to open new rural schools as well as where to expand, reduce, close, or leave unchanged existing schools. We show how recommendations are sensitive to key parameters such as the cost of transportation.

Best partial flow aggregation in transportation cost functions

Full description of transportation output as a vector of flows would make the estimation of transportation cost functions unfeasible in most real cases. In this paper we generate procedures to aggregate flows in an optimal way (i.e. such that a pseudo cost function specified in terms of aggregates, best approximates a true cost function in a previously defined manner). The problem is stated and solved in terms of the search for an aggregation matrix that fulfills the required properties. The case of disjoint aggregation, where each component of the flow vector contributes to the generation of only one aggregated variable, is particularly analyzed. The approach is is applied using previously reported data, comparing the results with those obtained with other forms of partial aggregation.

Measuring User Satisfaction in Transport Services: Methodology and Application

Abstract Purpose — New methods of measuring user satisfaction in transport services have been proposed and applied in the literature. In this paper, we compare three alternative measures for estimating user satisfaction: the numerical rating, the ordinal rating and the choice. Approach — We analysed these measures considering their differences and limitations and the models that use these measures as dependent variables. We developed and applied a methodology to build these models. It comprises a preliminary qualitative analysis and a quantitative survey to identify the most relevant attributes of the satisfaction function, and a stated preference survey to obtain information of the alternative satisfaction measures for modelling purpose. Findings — The ordinal rating may be a better user response to estimate satisfaction than score and choice based on its characteristics. The results obtained in the application reinforced this approach. Research limitations — It is assumed that choice, score and ordinal valuation depend upon a latent stochastic satisfaction function of the same attributes. Further research is needed to analyse this assumption and how these responses vary according to the context for decision and exogenous factors, including the response scale of ratings. Practical implications — Gathering alternative satisfaction responses simultaneously from users allowed for the consistency analysis and filtering of data, which greatly benefited the model estimation process. Originality/value — The paper provides a methodology to estimate user satisfaction models in transit services, which can be applied in other transport services. The conceptual analysis and the application suggest that ordinal ratings are key user responses to uncover the underlying satisfaction function.

ON THE BIAS CAUSED BY SPATIAL AGGREGATION OF FLOWS ON THE ESTIMATION OF THE DEGREE OF SCALE ECONOMIES

From an economic viewpoint, transportation supply has been historically characterized through very aggregated descriptions of the output of a transportation firm. The use of measures like ton-miles or passenger-kilometers was standard practice through the end of the 1970s. Currently, the accepted description of transportation output is in terms of a vector of flows; aggregate measures have empirically been shown to be the source of significant problems in the economic analysis of transportation systems. In particular, the scarce empirical work on multioutput cost functions shows that the scalar volume-distance measure generates biased estimates of both marginal costs and degree of scale economies. In this paper, these biases are analyzed from an econometric viewpoint, using linear cost functions as first order approximations. Biases are expressed as differences of weighted sums, which are then used to show that, under reasonable statistical assumptions, the aggregated model causes a systematic overestimation of the degree of scale economies. This phenomenon is generalized to include a fairly general dependence of marginal costs on flows and distances.