Thesis title: Analysis and tools to support policy makers dealing with disruptive business models, competition among alternative technologies and demand behaviour management
Recently, the passenger transport sector is going through an intense process of transformation. The main reasons are a steep increment of public attention on environmental issues, relevant technological innovations on transport mode provision (involving either the vehicles propulsion or the ICT technologies), and a progressive change in demand behaviour and expected level of services (more open to the use of e-platforms and sharing services).
Policy makers are in charge of managing these transformations, taking advantage of the possible opportunities to enhance efficiency and effectiveness while addressing the potential risks. This thesis aims to support the policy makers in this challenging role.
The focus is on public transports, which were primarily involved in the sector's transformations and are fundamental in assuring accessible and sustainable services. In particular, it is investigated the impact on rail-based and bus-based solutions. Special attention is dedicated to the congestion phenomenon, associated with significant negative externalities, including travellers’ discomfort and loss of valuable time. Considering the forecasted increment in transport demand (only slowed down, but not stopped, by the Covid-19 pandemic) and the emergence of zero and low emission vehicles technologies (which will in future limit the environmental impact issues), mitigate the congestion will be increasingly relevant.
The thesis is articulated in four sections.
At first, through a systematic literature review, it is investigated how rail transports performance is currently assessed. It is shown how it is not easy to have a clear idea of rail efficiency and effectiveness, and it is presented a general scheme on the most used variables, methodologies and types of data. It is also underlined how the externalities factors are still often overlooked.
Secondarily, it is highlighted how policy makers should be able to identify the transport mode optimal to serve a specific route, minimising the production costs while taking into account the travellers satisfaction and the generated external impacts. Rail-based services have been often considered as the most desirable solution (safer, cleaner, with higher capacity). Nevertheless, according to demand behaviour and path characteristics, it could be better to incentivise and protect alternative transport solutions if proven to have a better overall performance. Thus, a simple tool for policy makers is proposed to compare rail-based and bus-based services' performance. The tool integrates a demand model, a service dimensioning process, and social cost estimators (composed of a standard costs function for each mode, costs due to externalities and travellers value of time). Results suggest that rail services should be preferred only when the level of daily demand is sufficiently high and not too much concentrated at peak-hours.
The competition between rail-based and bus-based services is again examined considering the medium distance routes. On this kind of markets were recently introduced new disruptive bus-based business models (i.e. e-Platform Bus Service Retailers; Flixbus, BlaBlaBus), which impact traditional transport modes. The new competitive relationship is analysed in two steps. It is proposed a theoretical model à la Hotelling to perform social welfare analysis; it is then run a series of numerical simulations calibrated on a real case study (to validate the results while relaxing part of the first step assumptions). Results confirm that PBSRs could threaten the (incumbents) rail operators economic profitability, ultimately forcing them to leave the market, thus jeopardising overall demand satisfaction. Policies applying compensating treatment between the competitors are proven to be effective in improving the social welfare.
Finally, demand management measures are essential in mitigating congestion. Public transport could not be capable of addressing the increased urban mobility demand. A demand that is composed of individuals who decide when to travel (and with which mean) without considering the produce externalities. Road pricing could undoubtedly be critical for the decongestion; nevertheless, sometimes, the total elimination of the traffic queue could not be welfare optimising. It is proposed an innovative approach in congestion modelling, which aims to integrate the users' inherent trade-off between time and money (well represented in the Goods / Leisure models) in traditional basic bottleneck models. The new formulation is proven to be flexible in representing different users' preferences and could represent a new micro-foundation for the basic bottleneck model. It is also shown as time-varying toll (able to completely eliminate congestion), due to the uneven distribution of the marginal utility of income associated with this solution.