Stefanos Tsigdinos (p), Theodore Tsekeris

Mahmoud Arbouch

Job accessibility is a critical factor in commuting and local labour markets. For this purpose, public authorities invest in large-scale projects to enhance transport infrastructure and services, aiming to deliver significant accessibility benefits to local workers and visitors. Nevertheless, transport infrastructure projects also raise concerns about the accessibility distribution and equity. In this framework, the present study aims to examine how such projects may have a varying impact on job accessibility at the local level of municipal entities.
By considering the island region of Crete in Greece as a case study, we explore the potential accessibility benefits or pitfalls of major infrastructure projects. The first project refers to a comprehensive motorway network under construction, currently lacking on the island. The second one relates to the construction of the new international airport in the regional unit of Heraklion, along with a motorway connecting neighbouring regional units. Additionally, we employ a hypothetical third scenario: the construction of a railway line covering a substantial part of the region, which is not currently part of the formal planning agenda.
The analysis relies on processing a unique rich dataset of commuting flows, land use and socio-economic characteristics for the Region of Crete at the sub-municipal (LAU-2) level originating from the National Population Census. These data are processed with the use of advanced computational (GIS) tools and the calculation of accessibility indices, based on suitable assumptions concerning the development and characteristics of the surface transport infrastructure projects under investigation. More specifically, we incorporate a gravity model for calculating job accessibility, considering various building uses, such as offices, shops and factories, as opportunities. To address equity issues, we first examine the horizontal aspect through the Gini index and Lorenz curves. Next, we delve into vertical equity conditions (zero-car households, commuters, and economic profile), through utilising the concentration index and Bivariate Moran’s I analysis (LISA).
The outcomes are quite interesting, as these new projects are found to considerably favour accessibility, albeit heterogeneously across space, thus arising equity concerns (especially in the eastern and western parts of the island). The findings could be useful for public decision-makers, planners and investors seeking for simple and coherent ways to assess the accessibility impacts of a transport project portfolio. Among others, policy recommendations call for more holistic and inclusive strategies to enhance job accessibility accounting for different spatial scales (regional, cross-municipal, municipal, sub-municipal), while ensuring adequate options for different transport modes.

Mahmoud Arbouch (p), Eduardo Haddad

Chiara F. Del Bo

There is a long tradition in transportation planning research of quantifying remoteness using accessibility indicators. By considering the structure of an existing network and the performance of its components, it is possible to assess the socio-economic impacts of changes in the physical characteristics of specific links affecting critical locations. However, the connection between changes in accessibility and their socio-economic consequences often relies on parameters estimated econometrically within partial equilibrium frameworks.
More recently, the integration of transportation network models with computable general equilibrium (CGE) models has gained increasing attention from researchers. This paper contributes to this growing literature by examining the case of a planned highway between the cities of Marrakech and Fès in Morocco, which will traverse several remote and underserved provinces. Morocco’s transportation network provides a particularly relevant setting for understanding the economic costs of isolation. To analyze the potential effects of this infrastructure project, we calibrate a province-level spatial CGE model for Morocco and incorporate inter-provincial trade flows into the transportation network. This allows us to simulate the broader economic impacts of improving hinterland provinces’ access to the country’s core economic regions.

Chiara F. Del Bo (p), Andrea Bastianin, Luqman Shamsudin

Fumitoshi Mizutani

We map the mining sector in Europe, with a focus on Energy Transition Metals (ETMs), and present an in-depth analysis of the environmental impact and associated monetary costs, at the regional level, of extraction activities. We aim to offer a spatially disaggregated view of the current mining projects and associated environmental costs in terms of CO2 emissions and their monetary value. To do this, we collected global warming potential (GWP) data from Life Cycle Assessment Impact Analysis (LCIA) and linked these to their expected monetary value. By considering the full spectrum of sourced ETMs, we map the environmental, physical, and monetary impact of current mining activities in Europe, and understand what a further increase in exploiting European reserves to reduce dependence from abroad and facilitate the green transition, could imply for European regions.

Fumitoshi Mizutani (p), Shuji Uranishi

Stefanos Tsigdinos

Railway services are generally regulated by the government due to the inherent nature of railways as natural monopolies. However, under regulated circumstances, inefficiency problems are often said to arise in railway organizations. Unbundling policies such as horizontal separation and vertical separation of rail operation from infrastructure management have often been adopted in order to avoid these problems.

As for structure in the railway industry, vertical separation is common in Europe, while vertical integration is common in Japan. In Europe, vertical separation occurs in varying types: for example, the complete organizational separation type, the holding company type, and the key power separation type. In Japan, although vertical integration is prevalent, vertical separation does exist. There are four types of vertical separation in Japan: (i) complete separation, (ii) the holding of rolling stock, (iii) separation of land for rail track, and (iv) virtual vertical separation. In contrast to the situation in Europe, the main purpose of vertical separation in Japan is to reduce infrastructure costs for railway operators. And, unlike in Europe, there is no competition among railway operators for the use of rail track.

This study focuses on the costs of railway operations and analyzes how the type of vertical separation and the competitive situation affect costs. Previous research was centered on large-scale intercity railways such as nationwide state-owned railways. However, it has not yet been verified whether these results will hold with regional railways, which provide regional passenger rail services. Fortunately, as the more than 100 regional railways in Japan create suitable conditions for research, the above-mentioned issues can be easily investigated.

With these issues in mind, this study uses econometric methods to estimate cost functions for regional railways in Japan, and aims to clarify the extent to which differences in the vertical structure type and competitive situations affect costs. After explaining the types of vertical separation in Japan, specifically, the following points are analyzed: (i) whether there is a relationship between the differences in the vertical structures of railways and costs, (ii) whether cost-effective vertical structure types, as revealed in previous studies, can be explained in the same way by train density, and (iii) to what extent other factors, such as ownership type, size of railways, regulatory situations, and competitive conditions with other transport modes, affect costs. It is intended that the results found in this study will be compared with results from previous studies.