Increased international trade, together with a growing concern about global emissions, raises demands to make transportation at sea more efficient. Most ways to reduce emissions will increase sea transportation costs. Dynamic route planning at sea is a concept that allows simultaneous emissions reduction and savings for ship owners. With route plans and coordination centres, ships may take shorter routes and adjust to more efficient speeds, instead of anchoring and then awaiting for berth. Using data from ships’ Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmitters, we measure the sailed distance, as well as the number and the anchored time for cargo (general cargo, bulk, container and RoRo) and tanker ships on a representative day in the Baltic Sea Region. Benefits and costs are estimated using unit prices for emissions and other costs. We find that the benefits of dynamic route planning outweigh its costs; the most decisive factors are (i) by how much distances are reduced and (ii) the unit values of emissions. For each percentage point distances that can be reduced, benefits are estimated at €102 million per year. Adding benefits of adjusted arrival times and subtracting estimated costs, net gains are found in the range of €84–98 million per year. The availability of AIS data provides new opportunities to quantify the traffic at sea and evaluate proposals to make sea transportation more efficient. The methodology can, apparently, be applied to other areas with dense sea traffic.

Grocery stores, especially local stores in rural areas, are decreasing in number. The closure of a local grocery store may be caused by a market failure due to consumers’ inability to coordinate their behaviour. This study develops a questionnaire method to estimate the costs and benefits caused by the closure of a local grocery store. We explain why the closure of local grocery stores is a social dilemma for consumers, and we outline the costs and benefits of such closures identified in previous research. To quantify and evaluate the effects of local closures, we asked all households living in the market area of two recently closed local grocery stores detailed questions about their purchases of groceries before and after the closure of the local store. We also estimated their average willingness to pay to have access to a local grocery store. We present here a cost–benefit analysis for the two studied cases and discuss the ways to sustain local grocery stores.

On-going urbanization has led to greater distances between homes and workplaces and more long-distance commuting, increasing the need for efficient inter-urban transport infrastructure. For sustainability, trains are preferred to private cars.

Two key variables affecting door-to-door train travel time are in-vehicle time (IVT) and headway ; however, there is often a trade-off between speed and frequency in a system. If different categories of travellers value IVT and headway differently, their proportions on a route should affect traffic planning. Optimal system design might differ between routes carrying many commuters and routes carrying mainly passengers on single private or business trips. Knowledge of differences in relative valuations of headway versus IVT should therefore affect railway system design.

We investigate whether the relative values of headway versus IVT differ between inter- urban commuting by train and single inter-urban trips by train, whilst also examining differences between socioeconomic groups. Stated choice (SC) data from 580 Swedish respondents are used in estimation. Individuals actually commuting and individuals not commuting but imagining that they are when answering the SC questions are asked about their preferences for headway versus IVT.

Commuters are estimated to value increased headway 19 percentage points more than do non-commuters. Young people (under age 21 years) value headway more than do older people while people with children value headway less than do the childless.

Effects on the environment are rarely valued in planning infrastructure for different modes of transport. This can detract from optimal planning and fair competition, which might be better served by valuing environmental quality changes through actual travel time savings. New transport infrastructure often creates both positive and negative effects for the same groups of users, although to different degrees for different individuals. This paper illustrates a proposed methodology to investigate the effect of a planned transport infrastructure investment through a survey of potential users of the Haningeleden road project in Stockholm. Postal questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 2400 persons living in the affected area in May and June 2013, including detailed questions about their travel patterns and visiting frequencies, and whether, after reading a description of the proposed change, they would be in favour of the proposed change. The negative encroachment costs and the positive relief from traffic in other areas were estimated in travel time savings.

This paper examines the effect of the payment vehicle on the valuation of an environmental good with the contingent valuation method (CVM). Results from three CV studies comparing different payment vehicles by using split samples when valuing environmental encroachment caused by roads in Sweden are presented and compared to results from other such split-sample studies of payment vehicle effects. The results are consistent and show that the payment vehicle affects the valuation, but not always the way expected when considering incentives to behave strategically. Copyright 2009 Western Agricultural Economics Association.

Most cost-benefit analyses used in transport infrastructure planning do not include the possibly significant cost of encroachment on valuable environments. Standardized Values are used for other effects, but encroachment costs are difficult to transfer because of heterogeneity, uniqueness, and the importance of substitutes. A problem with stated preference methods is that the choice of hypothetical payment vehicle can affect the willingness to pay. An approach using actual travel time savings as payment vehicle when valuing environmental encroachment caused by transport infrastructure is presented, including two applications. Since different people have different travel patterns the travel time saving resulting from, for example, a new road in the area will naturally vary. By asking a large number of people whether they want the encroaching road or not and correlate their answers to their actual travel time savings, it is possible to estimate the average willingness to substitute travel time for the encroachment caused by a specific planned road. This encroachment cost can be included in the CBA for the transport infrastructure project.