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New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2018) | Viewed by 70087

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Prof. Yacan Wang

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School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
Interests: transportation economics; sustainable transport system; transport behavior response
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Prof. Dr. Andrea Cirà

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Department of Economics, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
Interests: transport economics and sustainability; model choice in transport economics and tourism; tourism research; bioeconomics
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Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Ioppolo

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Department of Economics, University of Messina, Piazza Pugliatti 1, Messina, Italy
Interests: environmental management; industrial ecology; environmental governance; local development
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Lack of coordinated governance among stakeholders leads to insufficient and inefficient supply of transportation facilities and services for regions and megacities around the world. The continuous urban expansion with consequent creation of megacities and city belts involves the need to have more efficient governance structures to maintain technologically, financially and environmentally sustainable transportation systems. Therefore, the new governance model and strategy for regional and urban transports to improve sustainable transport systems becomes increasingly important in China, as well as in developed countries.

From an academic point of view, only few papers are dedicated to the analysis of transport governance system in China and the main part of these works is focused exclusively on analysis of governance problems concerning ports activity while intercity and megacity transportation systems like high speed railway or rail transit are seldom addressed.

Moreover, the rapid regional economic integration and urban expansion process lead to an urban sprawl on the periphery with the well-known problems that these phenomena produce. Many studies are focused on the analysis of urban sprawl in its physical aspect and a low degree of local mixed land use in its functional aspect. However, there is not an organized work to investigate and describe the best practices and comparative analysis of different patterns of governance to mitigate or prevent the problems related to the cities grow and inefficient model of transport governance.

With this Special Issue, we aim to collect the most important contributes focused to analyze the policy implications of effective governance for sustainable transportation development.

Topics:

Stakeholders analysis in transportation governance
Transportation governance structures and characteristics at the national, regional and megacity levels
Governance innovations for cleaner technology in transport sector
Governance innovations for sustainable financial performance in transport sector
Governance innovations for smart transport
Governance innovations for sharing transport and sustainable urban travel
New policy issues to support a sustainable governance in transport sector
Case studies for governance of high speed railway, highway, commuting rail transit system and other transportation modes

Prof. Dr. Yacan Wang
Prof. Dr. Andrea Cirà
Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Ioppolo
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Governance models and strategy
Sustainable transport system
Government regulation model and policy instrument
Travels’ response to transport governance innovation

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Published Papers (13 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 3219 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Microscopic Simulation of Cruising for Parking of Trucks as a Measure to Manage Freight Loading Zone

by Clélia Lopez, Chuan-Lin Zhao, Stéphane Magniol, Nicolas Chiabaut and Ludovic Leclercq

Sustainability 2019, 11(5), 1276; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051276 - 28 Feb 2019

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 6181

Abstract

This paper investigated economic truck parking behavior to implement comprehensive Freight Loading Zone (FLZ) policies. We assumed that the delivery trucks can only park on FLZ. The proposed contribution is to quantify the cruising for parking time of trucks. We used a microscopic traffic simulation based on a Manhattan network and the real network of Lyon (France). This paper explored the relationship between the searching time, the parking probabilities and the region’s parking density. Based on research results, an application to last mile cost function is proposed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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16 pages, 975 KiB

Open AccessArticle

How Does Urban Rail Transit Influence Residential Property Values? Evidence from An Emerging Chinese Megacity

by Dongfang Zhang and Jingjuan Jiao

Sustainability 2019, 11(2), 534; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020534 - 20 Jan 2019

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5956

Abstract

Urban rail transit (URT) plays crucial economic, social, and environmental roles and may generate positive externalities that can influence the residential property values (RPVs) in real estate markets. Little attention has been given to exploring the impacts with respect to both the spatial and temporal perspectives. This paper explores the impacts of URT on the RPVs of 480 gated communities with respect to the spatial and temporal dimensions using the hedonic price model and a panel data set from Zhengzhou for 2012–2016. The results show the following: (1) URT does have a significant positive impact on the RPVs in all the selected years from 2012 to 2016, and the influencing strength was a “U-shape” with the increased travel time to the nearest URT stations in most of the selected years. Specially, there is quite some interaction between the temporal and spatial dimensions. (2) The influencing strength of URT during its early stages of planning and construction was higher than that during the operation periods, which is quite different from previous research that uses these first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai in China. (3) Regarding the operating period, the influencing strength reached its peak point after two years of the URT line operating. The results of this paper could provide some new ideas for policy-makers, real estate developers, and even the consumers in real estate markets. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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17 pages, 3855 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysis of the Wider Economic Impact of a Transport Infrastructure Project Using an Integrated Land Use Transport Model

by Wanle Wang, Ming Zhong and John Douglas Hunt

Sustainability 2019, 11(2), 364; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020364 - 12 Jan 2019

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4435

Abstract

Major cities in developing countries are undergoing massive transportation infrastructure construction, which has significant impacts on the land use and economic activities in these cities. Standard Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) is applied to quantify the user benefits of transport projects, but does not provide an answer as to who will obtain the benefits and who will lose out and excludes the calculation of Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) which can sometimes be large and hardly negligible. This paper introduces thoughts and experiences obtained through the design and development of an integrated land use transport model for the assessment of the WEI of a transport infrastructure project. The development and application of such an integrated model for WEI analysis should help decision-makers understand not only the “direct or immediate” impact of transport infrastructure on mobility, but also those “indirect or long-term” impacts on the distribution patterns of economic activities, corresponding land use, and resulting urban structure. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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16 pages, 1926 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cordon- or Link-Based Pricing: Environment-Oriented Toll Design Models Development and Application

by Xijie Li, Ying Lv, Wei Sun and Li Zhou

Sustainability 2019, 11(1), 258; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010258 - 7 Jan 2019

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4019

Abstract

This study focuses on an environment-friendly toll design problem, where an acceptable road network performance is promised. First, a Traffic Performance Index (TPI)-based evaluation method is developed to help identify the optimal congestion level and the management target of a transportation system. Second, environment-oriented cordon- and link-based road toll design models are respectively proposed through the use of bi-level programming. Both upper-level submodel objectives are to minimize gross revenue (the total collected toll minus the emissions treatment cost) under different pricing strategies. Both lower-level submodels quantify the user equilibrium (UE) condition under elastic demand. Moreover, the TPI-related constraints for the management requirements of the network performance are incorporated into the bi-level programming modeling framework, which can lead to 0–1 mixed integer bi-level nonlinear programming for toll design problems. Accordingly, a genetic algorithm-based heuristic searching method is proposed for the two pricing models. The proposed cordon- and link-based pricing models were then applied to a real-world road network in Beijing, China. The effects of the toll schemes generated from the two models were compared in terms of emissions reduction and congestion mitigation. In this study, it was indicated that a higher total collected toll may lead to more emissions and related treatment costs. Tradeoffs existed between the toll scheme, emissions reduction, and congestion mitigation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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21 pages, 917 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Impact of Perceived Uncertainty on Public Acceptability of Congestion Charging: An Empirical Study in China

by Yacan Wang, Yu Wang, Luyao Xie and Huiyu Zhou

Sustainability 2019, 11(1), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010129 - 27 Dec 2018

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4020

Abstract

Severe traffic congestion is now a common problem in major cities worldwide, causing huge economic, environmental, and social losses to overall welfare. Governments are now considering congestion charging as an effective way to manage congestion. However, since congestion charging has not yet been implemented widely, the public remains uncertain about it. Few scholars have explored public uncertainty about congestion charging. This paper examined how the public perceived uncertainty toward fairness and efficiency affects willingness to accept congestion charging. Through an experimental study of stated preference, this paper analyzes the influence of observable variables and unobserved latent variables on public acceptability and compares the results with a traditional discrete choice model. The results indicated that the public’s perceived uncertainty about congestion charging will have significant negative effect on acceptability and that the perception of fairness has an even larger effect. As for uncertainty about the effectiveness of congestion charging on alleviating congestion, the implementation efficiency of the government is the most significant. For uncertainty about fairness, whether charge collection and revenue allocation are reasonable is the most significant. These findings provide an empirical basis for reducing public uncertainty and increasing public acceptance of congestion charging. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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23 pages, 1407 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Study on Shared Bike Use Behavior under Bounded Rational Theory and Credit Supervision Mechanism

by Yao Yao, Linwei Liu, Zibin Guo, Ziheng Liu and Huiyu Zhou

Sustainability 2019, 11(1), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010127 - 27 Dec 2018

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 5808

Abstract

As a new travel model, the bike-sharing system (BSS) solves the ‘last kilometer’ problem and has developed rapidly for its convenience. However, many accompanying problems have emerged. In China, parking violation problems—such as severe traffic congestion—are caused by dock-less shared bikes. Furthermore, a large number of shared bikes have to be scrapped early for vandalism. As a special form of public good, bike-sharing also faces the dilemma of negative externalities. Seeking a solution, Mobike has conducted a credit supervision mechanism, which transfers the users’ different behavior to credits for user behavior regulation, but with unsatisfactory results. The goal of the paper is to test the validity of credit supervision mechanism from user’s perspective to regulate the abuse of sharing bike by simulating the use scenario of BSS in real life in a lab experiment based on induced value theory. The behavioral and pre- and post-experiment survey data were thoroughly analyzed. The results show that, within a negative context, the credit supervision system has a more significant effect on inducing proper user behavior, which improves after adding a real-time feedback mechanism. Finally, we provide effective suggestions to policy makers and shared bike companies for inducing positive user behavior. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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16 pages, 2143 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Structure and Periodicity of the Chinese Air Passenger Network

by Hongqi Li, Haotian Wang, Ming Bai and Bin Duan

Sustainability 2019, 11(1), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010054 - 21 Dec 2018

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2647

Abstract

China’s air transportation system is evolving with its own unique mechanism. In particular, the structural features of the Chinese air passenger network (CAPN) are of interest. This paper aims to analyze the CAPN from holistic and microcosmic perspectives. Considering that the topological structure and the capacity (i.e., available passenger-seats) flow are important to the air network’s performance, the CAPN structure features from non-weighted and weighted perspectives are analyzed. Subnets extracted by time-scale constraints of one day or every two-hours are used to find the temporal features. This paper provides some valuable conclusions about the structural characteristics and temporal features of the CAPN. The results indicate that the CAPN has a small-world and scale-free structure. The cumulative degree distribution of the CAPN follows a two-regime power-law distribution. The CAPN tends to be disassortative. Some important airports, including national air-hubs and local air-hubs, remarkably affect the CAPN. About 90% of large capacities exist between airports with large degrees. The properties of CAPN subnets extracted by taking two hours as the time-scale interval shed light on the air network performance and the changing rule more accurately and microcosmically. The method of the spectral destiny estimation is used to find the implicit periodicity mathematically. For most indicators, a one-day cycle, two-day cycle, and/or three-day cycle can be found. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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21 pages, 2825 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Economic Impact of the High-Speed Railway on Housing Prices in China

by Yuxiang Wang, Xueli Liu and Feng Wang

Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4799; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124799 - 16 Dec 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 7701

Abstract

This study investigated whether and to what extent does the High-Speed Railway (HSR) affect city-level housing prices. With the data of HSR operation and housing prices from 285 cities from 2009 to 2017, the paper aimed to estimate the quantitative relationship between HSR and city-level housing prices and exploited city and regional dummy variables to assess the disparities between regions, followed by the economic effects between typical city pairs. Our findings were as follows: (1) The introduction of HSR leads to a 13.9% increase in city-level housing prices, and the figures for national central cities and regional central cities were 31.7% and 19.6%, respectively; (2) regional imbalance was mitigated with the development of the HSR, and some central cities in underdeveloped regions were stimulated with regard to housing price growth; (3) siphon effects and diffusion effects were observed in megacity–small city pairs, while synergistic effects often lay in megacity–megacity pairs, and such effects all tended to be more significant with increases in the number of HSR lines and a drop in the travel time. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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21 pages, 2146 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Equilibrium Model of Housing Choice for Heterogeneous Households under Public Rental Housing Policy

by Shumin Zhou, Huijun Sun, Tianchao Guan and Tongfei Li

Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4505; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124505 - 29 Nov 2018

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3203

Abstract

The rapid development of urban rail transit system leads to the rising land rent and housing rent along the rail transit line. In order to respond to housing demand for low-income households, the public rental housing policy came into being. Public rental housing, with the advantage of lower rent than commercial housing, has become the primary choice for low-income households. However, the preset location of public rental housing is usually in the suburbs, separating the workplace and residence, which increases in travel cost. Consequently, it is particularly necessary to study the effect of public rental housing on the utilities of heterogeneous households from the perspective of transportation, and an equilibrium model of housing choice for heterogeneous households under public rental housing policy has been suggested in this paper. The result shows that the change in average operating speed of the rail may lead to the difference in urban residential formation and the increased speed of the rail may not be able to eliminate the location disadvantage of public rental housing. Furthermore, we find that ultra-limit public rental housing with the remote location is detrimental for low-income households. The model explicitly considers the interaction among the government, property developers, and heterogeneous households in the housing market, and can be utilized as an instruction for the future sustainable development of public rental housing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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17 pages, 4410 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploring Traffic Congestion on Urban Expressways Considering Drivers’ Unreasonable Behavior at Merge/Diverge Sections in China

by Kejun Long, Qin Lin, Jian Gu, Wei Wu and Lee D. Han

Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4359; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124359 - 22 Nov 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3852

Abstract

The mechanisms of traffic congestion generation are more than complicated, due to complex geometric road designs and complicated driving behavior at urban expressways in China. We employ a cell transmission model (CTM) to simulate the traffic flow spatiotemporal evolution process along the expressway, and reveal the characteristics of traffic congestion occurrence and propagation. Here, we apply the variable-length-cell CTM to adapt the complicated road geometry and configuration, and propose the merge section CTM considering drivers’ mandatory lane-changing and other unreasonable behavior at the on-ramp merge section, and propose the diverge section CTM considering queue length end extending the expressway mainline to generate a dynamic bottleneck at the diverge section. In the new improved CTM model, we introduce merge ratio and diverge ratio to describe the effect of driver behavior at the merge and diverge section. We conduct simulations on the real urban expressway in China, with results showing that the merge section and diverge section are the original location of expressway traffic congestion generation, and on/off-ramp traffic flow has a great effect on the expressway mainline operation. When on-ramp traffic volume increases by 40%, the merge section delay increases by 35%, and when off-ramp capacity increases by 100 veh/hr, the diverge section delay decreases about by 10%, which proves the strong interaction between expressway and adjacent road networks. Our results provide the underlying insights of traffic congestion mechanism in urban expressway in China, which can be used to better understand and manage this issue. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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14 pages, 2817 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Multi-Modal Route Choice Model with Ridesharing and Public Transit

by Meng Li, Guowei Hua and Haijun Huang

Sustainability 2018, 10(11), 4275; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114275 - 19 Nov 2018

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4210

Abstract

With the extensive use of smart-phone applications and online payment systems, more travelers choose to participate in ridesharing activities. In this paper, a multi-modal route choice model is proposed by incorporating ridesharing and public transit in a single-origin-destination (OD)-pair network. Due to the presence of ridesharing, travelers not only choose routes (including main road and side road), but also decide travel modes (including solo driver, ridesharing driver, ridesharing passenger, and transit passenger) to minimize travelers’ generalized travel cost (not their actual travel cost due to the existence of car capacity constraints). The proposed model is expressed as an equivalent complementarity problem. Finally, the impacts of key factors on ridesharing behavior in numerical examples are discussed. The equilibrium results show that passengers’ rewards and toll charge of solo drivers on main road significantly affect the travelers’ route and mode choice behavior, and an increase of passengers’ rewards (toll) motivates (forces) more travelers to take environmentally friendly travel modes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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16 pages, 2065 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Critical Factors to Achieve Dockless Bike-Sharing Sustainability in China: A Stakeholder-Oriented Network Perspective

by Jian-gang Shi, Hongyun Si, Guangdong Wu, Yangyue Su and Jing Lan

Sustainability 2018, 10(6), 2090; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10062090 - 20 Jun 2018

Cited by 109 | Viewed by 10469

Abstract

In China, dockless bike-sharing programs (DBSPs) play a significant role in promoting the goals of sustainable urban travel and carbon emissions reduction. However, the sustainability of DBSPs is increasingly being challenged as various issues associated with different stakeholders emerge. While numerous studies have focused on the barriers to traditional bike-sharing programs, the sustainability performance of new-generation DBSPs is largely overlooked. It is accordingly imperative to understand the primary challenges that impede the sustainability of DBSPs and to consider what stimulative measures can be taken. In this study, we investigate the factors that are critical to DBSPs’ sustainability from a network perspective. Stakeholder-associated factors and their interrelations were identified via literature analysis and interviews, and the social network analysis (SNA) method was employed to recognize the critical factors and links in DBSPs. As a result, 10 critical factors and 10 major interactions were identified and further classified into six challenges. Sharing transport schemes, legislative perfection, public private partnership (PPP), and product lifecycle management (PLM) were proposed to govern these challenges. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge of bike-sharing programs via a network approach that integrates the key influencing factors with those factors’ associated stakeholders. Furthermore, these findings provide the government and operators with implications for mitigating the tough challenges and facilitating the sustainability of DBSPs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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4027 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Governance for the Opened Electric Vehicle Charging and Upgraded Facilities Market

by Tian Wu, Bohan Zeng, Yali He, Xin Tian and Xunmin Ou

Sustainability 2017, 9(11), 2126; https://doi.org/10.3390/su9112126 - 18 Nov 2017

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5277

Abstract

Since the China State Grid opened the market for infrastructure construction of electric charging stations and allowed Tesla, Potevio, BAIC BJEV and other enterprises to provide their own charging stations and other infrastructure construction, the development of electric vehicles has been greatly affected. How to maintain a sustainable governance in the opened electric vehicle charging and upgraded facilities market is an important policy issues. This paper presents a monopolistic competition model for the differentiated products market and addresses several issues related to Cournot equilibrium to illustrate why the expected free market actually operates in a monopolistic competition market structure. The analytic solution of the model shows that whether the extent of firm entry is insufficient, excessive or optimum is determined by consumers’ time preference, level of production differentiation and features of cost structure, including fixed cost and marginal cost. The sensitivity analysis has been performed among the above factors and tracked some other factors which would determine the effect of the new policy issues. The main policy suggestion is that the government should optimize entry regulations and lay down the criterion of charging interface standards for charging stations to avoid the electric vehicle charging and upgraded facilities marketization process of a one-size-fits-all solution and form a monopolistic competition market. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Governance Model and Strategy to Improve a Sustainable Transport System)

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