This paper studies intertemporal changes in the value of travel time (VTT) and investigates whether the change of VTT over time can be studied based on national VTT data, collected at two points in time. We use repeated national VTT data from the Netherlands and Sweden, collected 13 and 14 years apart. The results show mostly a declining VTT for a given income level. The results show also a large within-country heterogeneity across modes and purposes, in the cross-sectional income elasticity of the VTT, and in its development over time. The explanation most consistent with our results and those of others is that the VTT has in fact increased due to income increases, but that the repeated stated choice data cannot detect this given the data, methodology and population changes. In particular, it seems that the response rate has dropped considerably in the later surveys partly due to a higher share of (busy) respondents declining to be recruited. The main contribution of this paper is to document the differences between the studies carried out in different years, indicating the reasons why it is difficult to identify temporal changes in the VTT.

We approximate the spatial and temporal distribution of the Pigouvian kilometre tax for road traffic in the most urbanized part of Sweden, with four million inhabitants and a similar "degree of urbanization" to the Netherlands and the UK, in a future scenario where most vehicles are electric. We apply the national transport model and include all links and four time-of-day periods. We find that roughly half of the vehicle kilometres travelled in Ma center dot lardalen has a marginal external cost (congestion and other external costs included) below 0.04 euro/km which is below the fuel tax in 2019). The mean marginal external cost is higher, at 0.09 euro/km. Our focus is not the exact numbers but the magnitudes and the vast variation across links in a country-like region: 90 percent of the revenue is collected on 10 percent of the road network. Hence, a nation-wide kilometre tax, implying high enforcement cost, is likely not the best option. Instead, the marginal external cost could probably be internalized fairly accurate by a congestion tax in the big cities in combination with for instance an ownership tax. We find that the Pigouvian tax would cover the public costs for our target road system. We relate our findings to the mainstem fiscal tax literature.

Amidst the current period of urgent and costly climate abatement policies being implemented, company cars as a fringe benefit receive surprisingly little attention from policy and research, despite evidence showing that they not only result in substantial welfare losses but also in increased car ownership and use. Therefore, this paper adds to the evidence on how company cars increase car use. We estimate how the possession of a company car impacts the households probability of possessing at least one car and the total car possession (the sum of privately owned and company cars). We use register micro-panel data, covering all households in Sweden, allowing us to study the effect of company cars in the full population while accounting for household-specific time-invariant unobserved preferences. It also allows us to study asymmetric effects of gaining versus losing a company car. We regress temporal changes in car possession on temporal changes in company car possession, applying a fixed effect (FE) estimator for single and couple households separately. A company car increases the probability of having at least one car in single and couple households by 38% and 14%, respectively. For couple households, we find a small asymmetric effect, such that the impact of the company car on car possession is slightly larger when the car is received than when it is lost. For single households the effect is symmetric. Moreover, a company car increases car possession by on average 0.26 cars for couple households possessing at least one car. Since roughly 80% of the mileage of these cars is attributed to private purposes in Sweden, these results indicate that the current company car taxation also increases car use.

We develop a model for empirical evaluation of the social costs and benefits of street parking charges. From the model, we derive an expression for optimal parking charges and occupancy levels: in optimum, parking search costs are balanced against the loss of consumer surplus from unused parking spaces. Contrary to rules-of-thumb common in practice, optimal occupancy levels are not constant but depend on parking turnover rates and parking search costs. We demonstrate the models applicability in a case study from Stockholm, where parking charges were recently introduced in suburban residential areas. The charges had considerable effects on parking de-mand, but our analysis shows that the overall welfare effect was a substantial welfare loss. Using parameters and demand functions estimated from the case study, we calculate optimal parking charges and occupancy levels, and show that the welfare loss arises because the introduced charges were considerably higher than the optimal ones.

In this paper we develop two methods for the use of mobile phone data to support the estimation of long-distance mode choice models. Both methods are based on logit formulations in which we define likelihood functions and use maximum likelihood estimation. Mobile phone data consists of information about a sequence of antennae that have detected each phone, so the mode choice is not actually observed. In the first trip-based method, the mode of each trip is inferred by a separate procedure, and the estimation process is then straightforward. However, since it is not always possible to determine the mode choice with certainty (although it is possible in the majority of cases), this method might give biased results. In our second antenna-based method we therefore base the likelihood function on the sequences of antennae that have detected the phones. The estimation aims at finding a parameter vector in the mode choice model that would explain the observed sequences best. The main challenge with the antenna-based method is the need for detailed resolution of the available data. In this paper we show the derivation of the two methods, that they coincide in case of certainty about the chosen mode and discuss the validity of assumptions and their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, we apply the first trip-based method to empirical data and compare the results of two different ways of implementing it.

In this paper we present a method for evaluating social benefits of electric roads and apply it to the Swedish highway network. Together with estimated investments costs this can be used to produce a cost benefit analysis. An electric road is characterized by high economies of scale (high investment cost and low marginal cost) and considerable economies of scope (the benefit per kilometre electric road depends on the size of the network), implying that the market will produce a smaller network of electric roads, or charge higher prices for its use, than what is welfare optimal. For this reason, it is relevant for governments to consider investing in electric roads, making the cost-benefit analysis a key decision support. We model the behaviour of the carriers using the Swedish national freight model system, SAMGODS, determining the optimal shipment sizes and optimal transport chains, including mode and vehicle type. We find that if the user charge is set as to optimize social welfare, the revenue will not fully cover the investment cost of the electric road. If they are instead set to optimize profit, we find that the revenue will cover the costs if the electric road network is large enough. Electric roads appear to provide a cost-effective means to significantly reduce carbon emissions from heavy trucks. In a scenario where the expansion connects the three biggest cities in Sweden, emissions will be cut by one-third of the overall emissions from heavy trucks in Sweden. The main argument against a commitment to electric roads is that investment and maintenance costs are uncertain and that, in the long run, battery development or hydrogen fuel cells can reduce the benefit of such roads.

This paper provides two microeconomic models that derive the social cost of a low emission zone (LEZ) for light vehicles. We apply the models to a proposed LEZ for light vehicles in Stockholm, which would prohibit diesel cars of Euro 5 or lower and gasoline cars of Euro 4 or lower in the inner city (25 km2) and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed LEZ. The first model is based on how an increase in user cost impacts traffic volumes in the inner city. This rather conventional user cost calculation of drivers loss requires however some strong assumptions. The second model shows that drivers losses can be calculated based on price changes observed on the used car market. Our empirical results indicate that the welfare loss resulting from the two models are of the same magnitude. The forecast benefits of the LEZ consist primarily of air quality improvements leading to health benefits. Even if our empirical results must be interpreted with caution, it seems clear that the costs considerably outweigh the benefits in this case study.

Sweden has been a front runner in vertical separation. We use data from the business long-distance corridor in Sweden to calibrate and define a demand and supply model. We simulate how the profit, welfare, fares, frequencies, modal shares and train size depend on the level of the track charges. We simulate the welfare optimal track charges, given different levels of congestion on the track, hence using the charges as a pricing instrument to allocate the train slots efficiently. We find that increases in charges have a limited impact on fares but larger impacts on the frequency. When the length of the trains can be extended and when the crowding penalty is high, the impact of higher track charges on the frequencies is larger. Higher track charges increase the length of the trains if possible. The intermodal competition from road and air has a significant impact on rail fares.

Stated choice surveys have established themselves as the preferred approach for value of travel time elicitation with the help of choice models. However, major differences exist in the approach used across regions and contexts. In Europe (particularly Northern Europe), value of travel time is often estimated in large national studies, which continue to rely extensively on simple time-money trade-offs. On the other hand, studies in Australia and South America in particular tend to have a more local focus and follow the notion that more complex setups are preferable. The European studies however are also those where the results are actually used in cost-benefit analysis and data from European studies have formed a testbed for many advanced model specifications. The present paper aims to provide a critical appraisal of the use of simple time-money trade-offs, drawing from our experience in recent European studies. We highlight a number of issues, in terms of differences in valuations across formats as well as a lack of clarity on how respondents actually interpret travel time in these simple time-money trade-offs.

We analyze the distribution of transit subsidies across population groups in Stockholm. We develop a novel methodology that takes into account that the subsidy per passenger varies across transit links, since production costs and load factors vary. With this, we calculate the subsidy per trip in the transit network and analyze the distribution of subsidies across population groups. The average subsidy rate in Stockholm is 44%, but the variation across trips turns out to be large: while 34% of the trips are not subsidized at all but generates a profit, 16% of the trips have a subsidy rate higher than 2/3. We calculate the concentration index to explore the distribution of subsidies across income groups. The average subsidy per person is similar for all income groups, except for the top income quintile. This holds not only for the current flat-fare system, but also for distance-based fares and fares with a constant subsidy rate. Transit subsidies is hence not effective as a redistribution policy in Stockholm. The largest systematic variation we find is across residential areas: the average subsidy per person is five times higher in the peripheral areas of the region compared to the regional core, and the subsidy per trip is ten times higher.

Statens intäkter från beskattning av vägtrafik kommer att minska i takt med den påbörjade utfasningen av fossila drivmedel. Rapportens syfte är att belysa konsekvenserna av denna omställning med utgångspunkt från två generella principer för beskattning; skatter som syftar till att bekosta offentlig verksamhet respektive skatter som tas ut för att minska mängden externa effekter. En huvudslutsats är att också de fordon som inte använder fossila drivmedel bör beskattas för att minska mängden externa effekter. De viktigaste sådana konsekvenser av den framtida trafiken består av den tunga trafikens slitage på vägarna liksom den trängsel som en stadigt växande trafik kan komma att förorsaka även utanför Stockholm och Göteborg. Dessa skatter kommer att generera intäkter till statskassan, men mycket talar för att de samlade skatteintäkterna från vägtrafiken kommer att minska jämfört med idag. Ett ytterligare resultat av analysen är att staten inte bör ta ut högre skatt än vad som ges av fordonens marginalkostnader. Om så skulle ske kommer kostnaden för fossilfria fordon att öka och övergången till nya teknologier att bromsas.

Statens intäkter från beskattning av vägtrafik kommer att minska i takt med den påbörjade utfasningen av fossila drivmedel. Rapportens syfte är att belysa konsekvenserna av denna omställning med utgångspunkt från två generella principer för beskattning; skatter som syftar till att bekosta offentlig verksamhet respektive skatter som tas ut för att minska mängden externa effekter. En huvudslutsats är att också de fordon som inte använder fossila drivmedel bör beskattas för att minska mängden externa effekter. De viktigaste sådana konsekvenser av den framtida trafiken består av den tunga trafikens slitage på vägarna liksom den trängsel som en stadigt växande trafik kan komma att förorsaka även utanför Stockholm och Göteborg. Dessa skatter kommer att generera intäkter till statskassan, men mycket talar för att de samlade skatteintäkterna från vägtrafiken kommer att minska jämfört med idag. Ett ytterligare resultat av analysen är att staten inte bör ta ut högre skatt än vad som ges av fordonens marginalkostnader. Om så skulle ske kommer kostnaden för fossilfria fordon att öka och övergången till nya teknologier att bromsas.

The optimal supply of rail and bus in low density areas is studied by calibrating a demand and supply model with three modes (car, bus and rail) to an existing low density corridor. Varying the length of the network, the frequencies and the size of the populations, allows to study the trade-off between the consumer surplus losses of the public transport users and the transit operation and maintenance costs savings. We find that for an existing rail network, the optimization of frequency is the prime source of welfare gains. The rail network is marginally beneficial in the sense that keeping the network is welfare improving as long as there is no major repair or replacement investment needed. When population in the smaller towns decreases strongly, it becomes welfare improving to close the existing rail network but a bus service remains beneficial for at least part of the network. © 2020 The Authors

Street parking fees are common in many cities across the world. Knowledge on how such fees impact parking demand is crucial for designing charging schemes. Empirical studies of parking fees are however scares and often hampered by a lack of data systematically collected before and after policy changes. Moreover, almost all studies analyzing the impact of fees on parking demand focuses on dense city centers. This paper aims as showing how on-street parking count conducted before and after the introduction of parking fees of in the suburbs of Stockholm impact parking demand. This paper analyses data conducted before and after the implementation of the new parking policy in 2017, where on-street parking fees were introduced for the first time in the inner suburbs. At the same time, the amount of the fee was also increased in the inner city. Moreover, the fine was raised for the parking ticket issued to cars parked in breach of parking regulations. We find a 35-40 percent reduction in the number of parked cars in response to the introduction of parking fees in the suburbs. However, the increase in the parking fees in the inner city had a substantially lower effect or no effect at all on demand. The effect of increasing the amount of the fine had no impact on the number of the cars violating parking restrictions.

We explore how transport improvements impact agglomeration defined as accessibility and thereby productivity in mid-Sweden including Stockholm 1995–2006. We apply an accessibility index derived from a multi-modal transport model. This is a more accurate measure of agglomeration than those previously used and also necessary for understanding how governments can impact agglomeration, and thereby productivity, by transport investments. We regress temporal changes in wages on temporal changes in agglomeration by applying a FE estimator. We deal with the potential endogeneity using a novel instrumental variable. Our best estimates of the agglomeration elasticity on productivity lie within the interval 0.028–0.035.

This paper suggests Delay Fees (DF) to handle temporary congestion during road works. The DF is paid by the contractor based on road users' loss of travel time due to construction. This decentralises the trade-off between construction costs and user time to the contractor, increasing social welfare. The contractor not only will account for user time during each single project, but also is incentivised to develop innovative construction techniques. Compared to other means in the literature for reducing temporary construction, the DF is more general in its focus on user time rather than lane closure.

We compare the optimal public transport subsidies for a representative bus corridor in a small city and in a big city in Sweden, derived by assuming optimal pricing, frequency, bus stop spacing, and bus lane policies. The optimal cost-recovery of the buses depends on the relative size of two costs: waiting time and crowding/congestion. In the big city the high crowding cost is dominating, approaching full cost-recovery in the first-best optimum. In the small city the waiting time dominates, implying larger optimal subsidies. The subsidy is also more effective as a redistribution policy in the small city.

We analyse customer satisfaction surveys conducted among public transport passengers over 15 years in Stockholm. We analyze satisfaction and importance of many attributes and their temporal trends, focusing on attributes that stand out from the rest in some way, which is primarily crowding. Crowding is the attribute with the lowest satisfaction and the only attribute for which satisfaction declines over time. However, in spite of the low satisfaction, crowding is still less important for the total satisfaction than the cognitive attributes reliability and frequency (the most important attributes). Only when crowding levels reach high levels, like that of the most crowded bus services in central Stockholm, does crowding become as important as the cognitive attributes. Also the attribute reliability stands out – it is the most important attribute. For the attributes reliability and crowding, data allow us to compare satisfaction and importance with performance. We find that that satisfaction and importance are influenced by the performance level for both attributes.

We explore the issue of differentiating the valuation of travel time savings (VTTS) in transport cost-benefit analysis, summarising and discussing theories forming the basis for arguments for and against VTTS differentiation. We stress some important implications, insights and consequences of different assumptions relating to these theories, many of which we feel have been underappreciated in much of the CBA literature and practice. We derive a welfare rule including a social cost for monetary redistributions and show the implications for how the VTTS can be defined in different choice situations. Crucially, the applicable VTTS definition depends on whether travel costs (fares) are under public control and to whom benefits accrue in the long run. In some choice situations, the VTTS should be controlled for differences in income, but it is important to always take into account differences in marginal utilities of time (e.g. across travel time components, modes and trip purposes). Using Swedish data, we show that controlling the VTTS for income differences changes the VTTS only slightly; the variation in VTTS across modes, trip lengths, trip purposes apparently stems primarily from differences in marginal utilities of time rather than income.

This study utilised the Swedish national travel survey covering a period of over 30 years. We investigated the long-term trends in activity-travel patterns of individuals in different life-cycle stages and generations using cohort analysis and a path model. The main findings are summarised as follows. The women, including mothers, in younger generations have become more active in out-of-home non-work activities and their trip chaining has become more complex, compared to their male counterparts. While men are still driving more than women, the gap is decreasing in the younger generations. The gender difference among teenagers in terms of out-of-home time use diminishes in younger generations. Teenagers of younger generations spend more of their leisure time inside their homes, possibly due to the rise of online activities and gaming and more time-consuming school trips, the latter attributed to changes in school choice policy. Older adults travel more, possibly due to better paratransit transport service, supported by better health services.

This paper optimises the number of bus stops, and prices for car, bus and cycling in the busiest inner city corridor in Stockholm. We adopt the representative consumer approach and calibrate the current equilibrium using the quasi-linear utility function. We find that the number of bus stops is already close to optimal. Welfare would increase if the peak frequency was increased, if the bus fares were lowered and differentiated between long trips and short trips and, and that the toll for longer car trips was increased. The optimal toll for cyclists, and the welfare benefit from it, is small and does not compensate the transaction costs. The distributional effects of bus fare changes and higher car tolls are small because on one hand, high income groups place more value on travel time gains, but on the other hand, low income groups travel less frequently by car. Surprisingly, we find that in the welfare optimum, the bus service only requires a small subsidy due to congestion in the bus lane, crowding in the buses, and extra boarding and alighting time per passenger. The Mohring effect is limited because the demand, and thereby the baseline frequency, is already high.

This paper develops a methodology for testing and implementing differences in preferences for a set of public transport modes, relating to observed and unobserved attributes, in state-of-practice large-scale travel demand models. Results of a case study for commuters in the Stockholm public transport system suggest that there are preference differences among public transport modes. We found that the value of time for train is lower than for bus and metro, and that it is higher for auxiliary modes than for the main mode. Surprisingly, we found no evidence for differences proportional to the in-vehicle time between bus and metro, suggesting that characteristics of in-vehicle time in these two modes are valued equally by the travellers. Nevertheless, unobserved preference for metro is higher than the preference for bus. Regarding the existence of a rail factor, we find evidence to support the hypothesis that rail-based modes have in fact a smaller time parameter (train) or higher alternative specific constant (metro), indicating that rail modes are preferable to bus, ceteris paribus.

Travel time and travel cost are key variables for explaining travel behaviour and deriving the value of time. However, a general problem in transport modelling is that these variables are subject to measurement errors in transport network models. In this paper we show how to assess the magnitude of the measurement errors in travel time and travel cost by latent variables, in a large-scale travel demand model. The case study for Stockholm commuters shows that assuming multiplicative measurement errors for travel time and cost result in a better fit than additive ones, and that parameter estimates of the choice model are impacted by some of the key modelling assumptions. Moreover, our results suggest that measurement errors in our dataset are larger for the travel cost than for the travel time, and that measurement errors are larger in self-reported travel time than software-calculated travel time for car-driver and car-passenger, and of similar magnitude for public transport. Among self-reported travel times, car-passenger has the largest errors, followed by car-driver and public transport, and for the software-calculated times, public transport exhibits larger errors than car. These errors, if not corrected, lead to biases in measures derived from the models, such as elasticities and values of travel time.

In this paper, we explore how valuations of trip attributes by train commuters differ between a short-run (departure time choice) and a long-run (travel routine choice) context using a unique SP experiment explicitly designed for this purpose. In the short-run version of the SP experiment, the respondents receive information about available travel options shortly before they had planned to travel. In the long-run version, the respondents receive information about available travel options one month ahead of the planned travel. The short-run context concerns temporary changes in available travel options, while the long-run context concerns permanent changes. We find significantly higher valuations of trip attributes in the long-run context. Moreover, our results indicate that the usual arrival time at work as well as the intrinsically preferred arrival time at work serve as reference points in the short-run as well as the long-run choice context, with the former dominating in the short-run context and the latter in the long-run context.

This paper analyses changes in individual travel behaviour in Stockholm County over 30 years, using three large cross-sectional travel survey data sets. It shows that travel patterns have diverged over time between city, suburban and rural residents. The trends in travel behaviour that we find are consistent with changes in the labour market, ICT use, land-use and transport policy, gender equality, and population composition trends. The inner city has become increasingly attractive: the share of trips is to the inner city is increasing for all purposes, socio-economic groups, and residential locations. The reduction of car traffic in response to the introduction of the congestion charges in 2006 is more than compensated by an increase in bicycle and transit trips to the inner city. Travel times by car are increasing in the city, although the car traffic volumes have decreased. The travel behaviour gender gap has closed completely in the inner city, but not further out in the region or in the rest of the country. Understanding long term trends in travel behaviour in different population segments, and the context under which they occur, helps to understand how the conditions, opportunities and constraints for different population segments are changing, which is key for transport policy and land-use planning. Since the societal trends driving travel behaviour in Stockholm and Sweden are much the same in many cities and countries, the findings are of general relevance.

This paper performs an ex-post cost–benefit and distribution analysis of the Gothenburg congestion charges introduced in 2013, based on observed effects and an ex-post evaluated transport model. Although Gothenburg is a small city with congestion limited to the highway junctions, the congestion charge scheme is socially beneficial, generating a net surplus of €20 million per year. From a financial perspective, the investment cost was repaid in slightly more than a year and, from a social surplus perspective, is repaid in < 4 years. Still, the sums that are redistributed in Gothenburg are substantially larger than the net benefit. In the distribution analysis we develop an alternative welfare rule, where the utility is translated to money by dividing the utility by the average marginal utility of money, thereby avoiding putting a higher weight on high-income people. The alternative welfare rule shows larger re-distribution effects, because paying charges is more painful for low-income classes due to the higher marginal utility of money. Low-income citizens pay a larger share of their income because all income classes are highly car dependent in Gothenburg and workers in the highest income class have considerably higher access to company cars for private trips. No correlation was found between voting pattern and gains, losses or net gain.

The charging systems in Sweden show that congestion charges can be an efficient (socio-economically beneficial) and effective policy measure for combating urban congestion. Furthermore, the technology of the Swedish charging systems has proven to work well, with high accuracy of correctly identified vehicles using the video technique with ANPR. The case of Gothenburg demonstrates this measure is not only less efficient if initial congestion levels are low, but also less efficient in the long run: the effects are declining in the long run. In Stockholm, the effects have increased over the years. The difference between the cities in this respect could be a result of the lower density city structure and high car dependence in Gothenburg. From this perspective, congestion charges are likely most successful in cities where congestion levels are high and where there exist good alternatives to driving.

Time-of-day dependent cordon-based congestion charging systems were introduced in Stockholm in 2006, and in Gothenburg in 2013. The Stockholm system was significantly extended in 2016, and the peak charge has been increased in the two cities. This paper analyses the effects of the first decade with the Swedish congestion charges, specifically effects of the system updates, and draws policy lessons for the years to come. Should we introduce congestion charges in more cities? Should we extend the systems that we have? We synthesize previous research findings and focus on the long-term effects that have varied over time including the recent years: the price elasticities on the traffic volume across the cordon, the revenue and system operating cost, the public and political support, and consequences for the transport planning process. We also explore the effects on peak and off-peak, and different types of traffic (trucks, company cars and private passenger cars), because of access to novel data that make this analysis possible. We find that the price elasticities have increased over time in Stockholm, but decreased in Gothenburg. We find that the public support increased in the two cities after their introduction until the systems were revised; since then, the public support has declined in both cities. We find that the price elasticity was substantially lower when the charging levels were increased, and when the Stockholm system was extended, than when the charges were first introduced, a likely reason being that the most price-sensitive traffic was already priced off-the road at the introduction.

This paper analyses the trade-off between equity and efficiency in the design of the Stockholm congestion charging systems. Comparing different designs for Stockholm, the paper shows that the most efficient system is the least equitable. Indeed, we show that moving towards a more efficient system design favours high-income-users most. The reason is the uneven distribution of workplaces and residential areas, combined with richer socio-economic groups living in areas with more workplaces. Hence, the conflict between efficiency and equity of this policy arises from the spatial mismatch of residential areas and locations of employment, and the spatial separation between low-income and high-income groups that characterise most cities. This paper shows that these spatial patterns have a large effect on the distribution effects of the congestion charges and that the system design can have a major impact on equity.

This paper estimates the relationship between temporal changes in unemployment and changes in labour market accessibility in Sweden. The accessibility measure is derived from the national transport model taking consumer behaviour, all travel modes, and different travel time components into account. The measure is more accurate than those used in previous studies and it is consistent with cost-benefit analyses (CBA). We find a negative relationship, which is more pronounced for low-educated workers, between changes in labour market accessibility and changes in unemployment.

Many public transport services are heavily subsidized. One of the main justifications is the expected beneficial effect on road congestion. Stockholm introduced congestion pricing in 2006 and the effects on car and public transport demand were carefully monitored. The change in prices provides unique estimates on price-and cross-price elasticities. This paper uses these data to model how the optimal pricing, frequency, bus size and number of bus lanes for a corridor depends on the presence of congestion pricing for cars. Results show that the presence of road pricing makes the current subsidies for peak bus trips too high. However, the major welfare benefits of re-optimizing the current bus supply stem from a decrease in frequencies during the off-peak period and the use of larger buses.

This paper explores the accuracy of the transport model forecast of the Gothenburg congestion charges, implemented in 2013. The design of the charging system implies that the path disutility cannot be computed as a sum of link attributes. The route choice model is therefore implemented as a hierarchical algorithm, applying a continuous value of travel time (VTT) distribution. The VTT distribution was estimated from stated choice (SC) data. However, based on experience of impact forecasting with a similar model and of impact outcome of congestion charges in Stockholm, the estimated VTT distribution had to be stretched to the right. We find that the forecast traffic reductions across the cordon and travel time gains were close to those observed in the peak. However, the reduction in traffic across the cordon was underpredicted off-peak. The necessity to make the adjustment indicates that the VTT inferred from SC data does not reveal the travellers’ preferences, or that there are factors determining route choice other than those included in the model: travel distance, travel time and congestion charge.

This paper performs an ex-post evaluation of the transport model forecast of the effects of the Gothenburg congestion charges, implemented in 2013. We find that the predicted traffic reductions across the cordon and travel time gains were close to those observed in the peak. However, the reduction in traffic across the cordon was under-predicted in off-peak. The design of the charging system implies that the path disutility cannot be computed as a sum of link attributes. The route choice model is therefore implemented as a hierarchical algorithm, including a continuous value of travel time (VTT) distribution. The VTT distribution was estimated from stated choice (SC) data, but had to be adjusted to be consistent with observed outcome. One reason for the discrepancy may be that VTT inferred from SC data does not reveal travellers’ long-term preferences. Another reason may be that apart from distance, travel time and charge there are other factors that determine drivers’ route choice.

This paper performs an ex-post cost- benefit and equity analysis of the Gothenburg congestion charges introduced in 2013. We base the analysis on observed effects transport model that is able to predict the effect of the charges on travel times and traffic volumes with high accuracy. We find that the net social benefit of the charge is positive. However, we also show that the system is regressive. Low income citizens pay a larger share of their income for three reasons. First, all income classes are highly car dependent in Gothenburg, due to the relatively low public transport share. Second, workers in the highest income class have considerably higher access to company cars, and are therefore either exempt from paying the charge, or can deduce the charge from their income tax. Third, high income individuals have higher values of time. Moreover, the revenue is spent mainly on a rail tunnel, which primarily benefits commuters residing far out in the region.

We explore how benefit-cost efficiency and electoral support affect road investment decisions in Sweden and Norway. In Norway, neither benefits nor costs seem to affect project selection. In Sweden, civil servants’ decisions are strongly affected by projects’ benefit-cost ratios, with a stronger effect for more expensive projects, while politicians’ decisions are only weakly affected, and only for small projects. In both countries, governments tend to favour investments in regions where they enjoy strong local electoral support. Using cost efficiency as a final selection criterion seems to filter out many inefficient projects already at an early stage of the planning process. We argue that even if political decisionmakers are apparently mostly governed by other concerns than cost efficiency, civil servants at the administrations should not shy away from preparing efficient project suggestions for decisionmakers to choose from.

Different assumptions about travelers' scheduling preferences yield different measures of the cost of travel time variability. Only few forms of scheduling preferences provide non-trivial measures which are additive over links in transport networks where link travel times are arbitrarily distributed independent random variables. Assuming smooth preferences, this holds only for specifications with a constant marginal utility of time at the origin and an exponential or affine marginal utility of time at the destination. We apply a generalized version of this model to stated preference data of car drivers' route and mode choice under uncertain travel times. Our analysis exposes some important methodological issues related to complex non-linear scheduling models. One issue is identifying the point in time where the marginal utility of being at the destination becomes larger than the marginal utility of being at the origin. Another issue is that models with the exponential marginal utility formulation suffer from empirical identification problems. Though our results are not decisive, they partly support the constant-affine specification, in which the value of travel time variability is proportional to the variance of travel time.

Based on an across-the-board survey conducted among residents of Stockholm, Helsinki and Lyon, we explore the opinions on three policy measures to combat road congestion: congestion charging, free public transport and building more roads. The support for the two latter policies is substantially higher than the support for congestion charging, which is only supported by a majority in Stockholm. Self-interest is important for the formation of the opinion to all three policies. However, fundamental values and general political views, indicated by four attitudinal factors, are even more important in forming opinions towards the three transport policies. Of all attitudinal factors, the one indicating environmental concern most influences the support for all policies. Equity concerns, however, increase the support for free public transport and opposition to taxation increases the support for building more roads. Our results further suggest that the opinions towards free public transport and building more roads can be mapped along the left right political axis, where Environment and Equity are to the left and Pricing and Taxation are to the right. However, the opinion towards congestion charging cuts right through the political spectrum. The impact of the fundamental values and self-interest variables are similar for Stockholm and Helsinki, indicating that even if experience increases the overall support for charging, it does not change the relative strength of different political arguments to any major extent.

In this paper we argue that there is no reason to a priori reject the use of CBA for the evaluation of cycling policies. A CBA can be very helpful to ex ante evaluate the impacts of candidate cycling policies although the outcomes need to be carefully examined and could be misleading. This is firstly due to current practice and modelling tools which do not address cycling well, key issues being the poor inclusion of cycling in transport models even in countries with high bicycle levels, and the use of aggregate average risk data which do not reflect marginal risk changes in specific cases. In addition it is doubtful whether the value of travel time gains can be captured by the cyclist's willingness to pay. Secondly, some important effects are generally ignored, typically difficulties in quantifying and monetizing the potential impacts on the urban environment, social exclusion and the option value. We point out some research and modelling challenges essential for improving CBA for the evaluation of cycling policies.

Rapporten är upplagd på följande sätt. I kapitel 2 beskrivs vad som ingår i en samhällsekonomisk kalkyl och hur den tas fram. Kapitel 3 redovisar våra slutsatser om hur samhällsekonomiska kalkyler påverkar beslut om infrastrukturinvesteringar. I kapitel 4 diskuteras vanliga invändningar mot kalkyler, till exempel att inte alla effekter finns med eller att den är att resultatet påverkas starkt av antagande om förutsättningar, till exempel framtida bränslepriser etc. Kapitel 5 diskuterar mer utförligt vad det svaga sambandet mellan samhällsekonomisk effektivitet och beslut kan bero på, vilka problem det kan leda till och vad man skulle kunna göra åt det för att få en effektivare resursanvändning i transportsektorn.