Papers by Patricia Galilea
Research in Transportation Economics, Nov 1, 2016
Cities around the world have experienced an increase in the number of cyclists, which has resulte... more Cities around the world have experienced an increase in the number of cyclists, which has resulted in a demand for more cyclist infrastructure. In Santiago de Chile, each local government is in charge of providing bicycle infrastructure according to its own technical and financial restrictions. Thus, infrastructure dedicated to bicycles has increased, but its quality and design standards differ across the city. This creates an ideal test-bed for understanding how cyclists' behaviour changes under different cycle path designs. The objectives of this research are (i) to explore the conditions of Santiago's cycle path intersections in terms of speed and urban characteristics and (ii) to understand cyclists' behaviour under different cycle path conditions. Some characteristics of cycle path intersections measured were cycle path's length, slope, lateral clearance, physical segregation, bi-directionality, obstacles, and discontinuities. Also, data taken characterise users by gender and use of helmet. Linear regression models were calibrated to explain cyclists' speed using intersection characteristics. According to our model, relevant characteristics were location of cycle path, physical segregation, percentage of female users, slope, and existence of vertical discontinuities. We hope that our results will serve as a guide for public authorities on the design of cycle paths.
Transportation Research Part A-policy and Practice, Nov 1, 2019
A great challenge that comes with cities' growth and urbanization is how to transport their inhab... more A great challenge that comes with cities' growth and urbanization is how to transport their inhabitants efficiently. Since available urban space has been progressively reducing, the attention has shifted from capacity investment to transport demand management. As a result, policies aimed at changing departure time choices have arisen. To properly analyze such policies, it is necessary to understand how and when people prefer to travel, which is a result of the activities individuals perform. This paper studies preferences towards activities to be conducted and the impact of these preferences on departure time choices. For this purpose, a stated preference survey was developed to reproduce a daily activity pattern for all respondents. With the collected data it was possible to compare alternative approaches to model activities proposed in the literature. This comparison shows that traditional formulations to model activities preferences might not be the ideal in some cases. Instead, the use of more complex formulations, such as sigmoidal functions, is encouraged since they could adequately represent the preferences regarding activity's duration and time of day, as well as activity's flexibility. Results show that activities to be conducted before and after each trip affect the departure time choices and should be considered when modelling and forecasting travel demand. Therefore, a proper benefit estimation from travel time savings should include a direct and indirect component: one related to avoid travelling (which is an undesired activity by itself) and another one related to the increase of available time to perform activities instead of travelling. Our results show that if the latter effect is not included, the value of mean travel time would be underestimated by 38% and total benefits could be miscalculated.
Transportation Research Board 97th Annual MeetingTransportation Research Board, 2018
Transport Policy, Jul 1, 2020
In many large cities worldwide, private companies operate public transport systems under concessi... more In many large cities worldwide, private companies operate public transport systems under concession contracts granted by the local governments. The performance of these concessions, including the quality of service and amount of subsidy, is often an issue of public debate. In this context, a major factor that determines performance is the concession contract. Payment mechanisms (established in the contract) influence the operator's decisions by providing certain incentives. Therefore, it is important to study the effects of the payment mechanism on the performance of the transport system. In this study, we examine payment schemes that are linear in the frequency of transport services and number of passengers transported; moreover we compare the impact on operators' decisions by incorporating a contract design analysis in the microeconomic modelling. These effects are analysed in terms of operational variables and social welfare, including benefits for reducing externalities. To conduct this analysis, we formulate a microeconomic model and perform numerical simulations. The results show that the payment made per frequency plays an important role in the operator's decision making, that is, the regulator can use this payment as an incentive to modify the service decisions and achieve maximum social welfare. The model also indicates that the per-passenger payment system is an incentive to transport passengers, but after reaching a certain value its increase does not influence the operation of the service. These results may contribute to the discussion on how to design contracts to provide certain incentives.
Research in Transportation Economics, Sep 1, 2018
The public transport system of Santiago de Chile presents several deficiencies in terms of access... more The public transport system of Santiago de Chile presents several deficiencies in terms of accessibility, especially for people with reduced mobility. However, there is no official guideline or prioritization on how to value these improvements on accessibility, making them a costly expense. This paper values accessibility elements in the urban bus system of public transport in Santiago, Chile, through a stated preference experiment. The attributes included in this experiment are: audiovisual information at bus stops, elevation of stops, buses' access ramps, and time of travel. Based on the data collected from the survey, discrete choice models were estimated to obtain the preferences and valuations of individuals for the elements, with a focus on people with reduced mobility. The results show that individuals with reduced mobility value at least twice the accessibility elements than people without reduced mobility.
Bristol University Press eBooks, Aug 11, 2017
Transportation Research Board 96th Annual MeetingTransportation Research Board, 2017
European Journal of Engineering Education, Jun 1, 2010
In 2006 UCL implemented new scenario-centred degree programmes in Civil and Environmental Enginee... more In 2006 UCL implemented new scenario-centred degree programmes in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The new curriculum can be characterised as a hybrid of problem-based, project-based and traditional approaches to learning. Four times a year ...
In 2007, a new public transportation system was implemented in Santiago de Chile called Transanti... more In 2007, a new public transportation system was implemented in Santiago de Chile called Transantiago. One of the most important novelties of this new system was the new contract structure between operators and the government. This consists of concessions assigned in competitive biddings (Gómez-Lobo, Briones, 2013). Another relevant novelty was that drivers of the operating bus companies should have a fixed salary, leaving aside the payment per passenger transported (Puga, 2017; Tiznado et al, 2014). It should be noted that drivers perform a significant task in the operation of the system (Tiznado et al., 2014, De la Vega, 2018). Drivers make decisions in situ on how to operate a bus, they have direct contact with the users and they must know how to face the different unexpected situations of the transit of the city (De la Vega, 2018). Therefore, their workload has elements of multitasking at every moment of the day (Holmstrom and Milgrom, 1991).
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
Innovation is starting to play an important role in the provision of urban public bus transport. ... more Innovation is starting to play an important role in the provision of urban public bus transport. This paper analyses the implications of different contractual interactions, on both technological (i.e., vehicles and infrastructure) and service operation innovation, in private and public procurement of urban bus services in Santiago, Chile. Our findings indicate that the contractual framework firmly determines the degree of innovation present in the industry. In particular, limited regulation incentivises strong service operation innovation, while showing negative vehicle innovation. On the other hand, gross cost and fixed payment contracts lead to negative service operation innovation by operators, motivated mainly by cost reduction efforts.
One important issue in procurement of public services is how to design a contract that incentiviz... more One important issue in procurement of public services is how to design a contract that incentivizes private firms to reduce costs and produce efficiently. In theory, fixed price contracts dominate cost-plus contracts. However, the economic efficiency gains in the fixed price contract can harm the users if the firms can reduce cost at the expenses of the delivered quality. The aim of this paper is to model and test empirically that cost-reduction effort is replaced by quality reduction when there is no monitoring and demand is almost inelastic to quality. The implementation of the transportation plan of Santiago de Chile (Transantiago) shows that unmonitored fixed price contract creates incentives to reduce costs by lowering the quality delivered. This paper measures the relative level of efficiency of the firms operating in Transantiago and the level effort to reduce costs when the intensity of monitoring changes. To do so, we specify a cost function that depends on the effort to re...
In this paper, we estimate the cost function of bus operators of Transantiago and the budget bala... more In this paper, we estimate the cost function of bus operators of Transantiago and the budget balance fare to contribute technically to the discussion on the level of subsidies needed for transit system of Santiago. We estimate the cost function and an aggregate demand model. Our results show that there are economies of density and the budget-balance fare (type Ramsey price) is higher than the actual bus fare, suggesting that subsidies are justified. Nevertheless, we estimate that for the current (December 2011) fare the subsidy should be 40% lower than the one determined by the Government. On the other hand, we estimate that for such level of subsidy the optimal fare should be only 50% of the current fare.
Research in Transportation Economics, 2014
Although many authors have studied regulatory schemes for bus operators of public transport provi... more Although many authors have studied regulatory schemes for bus operators of public transport provision, little attention has been given to incentive schemes for bus drivers in terms of economic incentives and labour conditions. Therefore, there is a need to analyse incentive schemes for bus drivers since the level of service of the bus system is dependent on their behaviour. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the current conditions for bus drivers in Santiago, Chile, find the main drives that influence their behaviour and compare labour conditions between different operators. We focus our study on the case of Transantiago using interviews with 100 drivers working for several bus operators. The results of our survey show that drivers in our sample prefer incentives linked to their operational performance rather than consumer satisfaction; drivers also mention that users of buses treat them poorly and are an important source of working stress; and drivers' working conditions differ dramatically between operators. Preliminary actions are proposed regarding drivers' salary in order to improve operator performance and several measures are proposed to authorities so as to even out conditions between operators, enhance passenger driver relationship and ensure that shifts and rest times are honoured.
Research in Transportation Economics
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Papers by Patricia Galilea