Vilmos Oszter (p)

Javier Conde Trugeda

During the nationwide “Origin-Destination” travel survey carried out during autumn 2016 in Hungary over 100 thousand of railway and bus passengers were interviewed about their travel patterns. Combining with relational ticketing statistics the flow of passengers is known more precisely than ever before. Travel demand data is generally hard to access due to business privacy issues or it is often treated as a black-box derived directly from population number or income. Research is generally focused on daily regular and predictable trips which is the major challenge for planners and operators. Therefore there is an abundant research available about commuting statistics around daily catchment areas but less attention has been paid in Hungary for long-distance, interregional trips. Their share is lower but since travel distance is significantly longer their environmental impact per trip is obviously higher. By determining the travel intensity taking into account regional statistic indicators a better understanding of travel flows and the Hungarian Urban Network is expected. The relationship between places (nodes) measured by the flow of people (bus and rail passengers) for longer-distances shows heterogeneity between the different settlements not just by its population size and location but the social structures of their average age, economic activity, unemployment rate, income and education level. Due to privacy issues the travel survey wasn’t able to record all of the above indicators but with a combination of regional statistical data and ticket type statistics several travel clusters have been identified.

Shani Vertlib, Stav Rosenzweig, Ofir Rubin (p), Aviv Setern

Vilmos Oszter

Researchers and policy makers advocate the installation of car safety systems as an effective strategy to mitigate the occurrence and consequences of traffic accidents. Indeed, over the past decade, the popularity of installing advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) in cars has increased markedly. However, the effectiveness of ADAS is subject to debate, primarily because these systems intervene in drivers’ perceptions and actions and could lead to adaptive behavior. Moreover, it is unclear whether adaptive behavior is susceptible to policy measures incentivizing or regulating the installation of such systems. Using complete national data for the installation of safety systems and speeding tickets issued over the course of a single year, we were able to differentiate between the responses of drivers of cars purchased during three policy regimes (before government intervention, incentivized intervention, and mandatory intervention). When disregarding the role of policy, we found that the safety systems do not have a significant impact on driver behavior, as manifested in the prevalence of speeding tickets. However, when we took policy regimes into account, the desired negative association between safety systems and the prevalence of speeding tickets was evident only for cars sold before any policy promoting safety systems was introduced. These findings suggest that adaptive behavior that offsets the benefits of safety systems is accentuated when policy measures are in play.

Javier Conde Trugeda (p)

Ofir Rubin

The eight Canary Islands form an archipelago located in the middle Atlantic and belong to Spain. In 2019 the region had 2,2 million inhabitants and received 16 million tourists. There is a robust interisland transport system consisting in well-developed aerial and maritime networks.
The objective of the presentation is to analyse the feasibility of possible improvements of the existing maritime network served by Ro-Pax ships. The alternative routes proposed require construction or improvement of port infrastructure but would provide reduced total travel time for large segments of the market.
Methodology: Net social benefits and financial results of the operating companies are used as performance indicators, as well as a generalized travel cost. These magnitudes are projected onto a long-term potential scenario 25 years ahead.
The net social benefit is calculated with consumer and producer surplus, what requires a modelling of both demand and supply for all these markets. They are estimated with econometric tools based on time series of transported quantities, prices, and macroeconomic variables. In addition, some important non-market effects are considered in the model through their monetization, which requires application of several models. Examples of these externalities are atmospheric and noise pollution, destruction of territory, accidentality, public subsidies or the profit made by infrastructure providers.
The potential demand for the future scenario is estimated using a series of gravity models for both tourists and local passengers, passenger vehicles and freight transported in Ro-Pax ships. Econometrics is used to estimate the parameters based on time series of transported quantities.
Financial profits of producers are calculated by estimating pricing and cost structure of the industry, whereas the generalized travel cost is calculated with ticket prices and monetized door-to-door travel time.
Findings: Alternatives to routes connecting Tenerife and Gran Canaria (1), Tenerife with La Palma (2) and Gran Canaria with Lanzarote (3) are analysed. In case (1) the proposal has positive net social benefit but would imply negative financial results to the operators. The same would happen en case (2), whereas in case (3) both social profits and the shipping company’s results would be negative.