Josh O'driscoll (p)

Chiara Lodi

New motorways transform the spatial structure of cities and regions by reducing the costs of commuting to employment centres and improving accessibility in peripheral areas. There is substantial evidence that highways induce suburbanisation, reduce population densities in central cities, and increase population levels and economic performance of peripheral areas. Understanding the spatial and economic consequences of large-scale transportation infrastructures is important as access to markets and proximity to workers and jobs are prominent criteria in the location decisions of firms and households, meaning transportation infrastructures are an important determinant of individual welfare and regional disparities.

Our rectified dataset, comprised of seven Irish Census of Population from 1986 to 2016 at the Electoral Division (ED) level, covers 3,384 EDs in the Republic of Ireland. Additionally, we use OSi PRIME2 data and Transport Infrastructure Ireland data to identify off-ramps. We use POWSCAR data to examine commuting patterns in the areas which benefit from off-ramps.

We contribute to the existing literature in the following ways. First, there has been great interest in the role of accessibility on population changes. The natural experiment provided by Ireland allows us to examine the role of proximity to motorway off-ramps on population change. The Irish case is a particularly interesting study. Most of the motorway in Ireland was developed over the course of the 30-year period, 1986-2016. Secondly, one potential gap in the literature consists of the role of transport infrastructure on commuting to work patterns, particularly cars. Thirdly, most studies on the effects of motorway are at a larger spatial scale, such as cities or NUTS 2/3 data. We operate at a smaller spatial scale, LAU2, to examine the local level effects of motorway construction on population change on the surrounding areas.

Leticia Serrano-Estrada (p), Pablo Martí-Ciriquián, Mariana Huskinson, Álvaro Bernabeu (p)

Josh O'driscoll

Urban accessibility to transportation systems has been identified as a key factor in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, with a particular focus on Goals 5 (Gender Equality), 10 (Reducing Inequalities) and 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). This research seeks to build knowledge about the underlying relationship between the perceived urban accessibility to transport infrastructures and the physical and social aspects of the built environment. Specifically, the aim of this study is to assess the potential of Light Rail Transit (LRT) stops and their surrounding areas to facilitate a transition towards more accessible, multimodal, and active mobility in cities. Three specific aspects are adopted as a proxy to estimate the degree to which the built environment contributes to the perceived accessibility of an LRT stop: the amount and diversity of economic and urban activities of the LRT surrounding areas; the citizen preferences; and the spatiotemporal presence of people. Data from technology-based participatory sources such as social media are adopted as they have been found to be reliable for identifying citizen perceptions, preferences, and opinions, as well as for monitoring spatiotemporal patterns in the physical and functional configuration of the city. The findings of this study will provide insights into the extent to which LRT stops and their surrounding areas can encourage a more accessible mobility.

Valeria Bernardo (p), Xavier Fageda, Jordi Teixidó

Leticia Serrano-Estrada

We examine the causal impact of flight ticket taxes on airline supply and emissions and analyse its distributional effects between airlines and travellers and within travellers. We use a dataset on flights within Europe at the airline-route level and apply a staggered difference-in-differences approach considering potential bias of the standard two-way fixed effects and the potential distorting effects of heterogeneities between treated and control routes. We find that flight ticket taxes have a significant overall effect on airline supply and derived emissions, providing evidence that the supply elasticity of airlines is high: ticket taxes reduce the number of flights per airline-route by 12% on average compared to the counterfactual scenario, resulting in a 14% reduction in carbon emissions.
In addition, as demand is relatively inelastic to prices, we show that a great part of the tax burden is borne by passengers. Finally, the burden is higher for passengers paying low fares, so taxes have a proportionally stronger effect on avoidable flights with less added value and a smaller internalization of the total costs of flying.

Chiara Lodi (p), Giovanni Marin, Paolo Polidori, Desiree Teobaldelli

Valeria Bernardo

This paper aims at analysing the environmental consequences of commuting modes and choices in the context of a medium-sized public university (University of Urbino Carlo Bo) in Italy, also accounting for changes in commuting preferences and patterns occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. Results are based on a survey on students and personnel run in 2020 and consider a random utility model for both revealed and stated preferences. The University of Urbino is an interesting case study: i. enrolled students (about 15 thousands) overcome the number of residents in the municipality (less than 15 thousands); ii. the city is located far from the main roads and transport infrastructures (45 minutes drive or bus ride from the closest train station or highway).