Essays in urban transportation
Abstract
Transportation is very important for long-run economic growth. There is no doubt that advance in the division of labor plays an important role in the economic growth. The division of labor takes place in a bigger market. Bigger markets are tend to develop in big cities such as New York, London, and Tokyo. Obviously these cities cannot sustain themselves without efficient transportation systems. Urban mass transit is one relevant aspect of urban transportation. In many cities, the economic cost of the commuting time is huge, and alleviating this would bring a significant improvement in the economy's efficiency. One objective of this dissertation is therefore to provide wide range of policy implication on the optimal mass-transit system, namely, service frequency, capacity, and scheduling of train runs, number of train stock, as well as the pricing schedule. The dissertation investigates the social optimum where the transit authority has the ability to set the time-varying fare, and the second-best mass-transit system where the transit authority is constrained to set time-invariable fare. In the second-best case, two types of queuing are possible: first-in-first-out (FIFO) queuing and random-access queuing. As one of the major results, it is shown that, under one reasonable parameter setting, the second-best policy of the transit authority should not be affected by the queuing principle that passengers follow. Another objective is to find the optimal commuting network of a city. The model describes the commuter's modal choice between road and rail, on their commuting to the business district in a two-dimensional city. Road is slow but densely provided. Rail is fast; however, it is accessible only from discrete points, namely, stations. Solving the model by maximizing the global-equilibrium utility level involves an interesting new question: where to locate stations optimally? A general algorithm to solve for the optimal network of a city, as well as a set of solutions under specific formulations of the model are provided. The dissertation then analyzes comparative statics of a population change.
Recommended Citation
Yuichiro Yoshida,
"Essays in urban transportation"
(January 1, 2001).
Boston College Dissertations and Theses.
Paper AAI3008599.
http://escholarship.bc.edu/dissertations/AAI3008599
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