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Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing
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Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2019) | Viewed by 16512

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Johan Holmgren

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Molde University College - Specialized University in Logistics, Molde University College, Britvegen 2, NO-6410 Molde, Norway
Interests: transport demand; mode choice; transport pricing; car ownership; efficiency in public sector operations; effects of investing in infrastructure

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Transport services are essential for a well-functioning society, and are an integral part of the economic life and well-being of people. People use transport services to get to and from work and recreational activities. For firms, transport services are used to transport the material used in production as well as to distribute the production to the customers. At the same time, a substantial proportion of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world originate in the transport sector, and transportation activities cause a lot of local emissions and disturbances. In addition, lack of access to the transport system may work as a barrier to participation in the labour market as well as in social and democratic activities. When designing a sustainable transport system (or evaluating an existing system from a sustainability perspective) environmental and social impacts, as well other economic effects, have to be taken into consideration.

Pricing (including taxation) is a powerful policy instrument that, if used correctly, can steer society in a sustainable direction. Prices and taxes can be set so that economic agents take environmental costs into account when making decisions. The level and structure of prices could also be set with distributional aspects in mind in order to ensure social inclusion. At the same time, the use of environmental fees (e.g. fuel taxes) are often met with protests, as it is claimed that they will hurt business and have undesirable distributional consequences.

This Special Issue focus on sustainability issues in transport pricing (including taxation of transport activities). It is especially interesting to see contributions addressing the potential conflict between different aspects of sustainability (e.g. environmental vs. social impacts) but all contributions addressing pricing and sustainability are welcome. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Optimal pricing of different transport modes 
  • Environmental effects of different pricing schemes
  • Distributional effects and effects on the social inclusion of different pricing schemes
  • Effects on the competitiveness of different sectors of different pricing schemes
  • Goal conflicts due to the pricing and taxation of transport services
  • Comparative analyses of different taxation/pricing regimes and their effects

Prof. Dr. Johan Holmgren
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Optimal pricing
  • Road pricing
  • Externality charges
  • Social inclusion
  • Distribution
  • Transport pricing
  • Transport policy

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 1060 KiB  
Article
On the Pricing of Urban Rail Transit with Track Sharing Freight Service
by Chaoda Xie, Xifu Wang and Daisuke Fukuda
Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 2758; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072758 - 1 Apr 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2345
Abstract
Transporting parcels on urban passenger rail transit is gaining growing interest as a response to the increasing demand and cost of urban parcel delivery. To analyze the welfare effects of different fare regimes when allowing parcel services on an urban rail transit, this [...] Read more.
Transporting parcels on urban passenger rail transit is gaining growing interest as a response to the increasing demand and cost of urban parcel delivery. To analyze the welfare effects of different fare regimes when allowing parcel services on an urban rail transit, this paper models the optimal service problem where the transit operator chooses the number of trains and the departure intervals. By introducing a reduced form train timetable problem, the passenger train crowding model is extended to incorporate the effect of freight train scheduling. We show that the freight users are better off in the time-varying optimal fare regime, while passengers are worse off, and that the time-varying optimal fare regime calls for more trains than the optimal uniform fare regime. However, the reduction in passenger trains due to the introduction of freight service can eliminate the welfare gain from passenger time-varying fare. If the price elasticity of freight demand is relatively high, implementing road toll can generate welfare loss when rail transit is privately operated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing)
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22 pages, 2823 KiB  
Article
Emissions and External Environmental Costs from the Perspective of Differing Travel Purposes
by Thomas Hagedorn and Gernot Sieg
Sustainability 2019, 11(24), 7233; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11247233 - 17 Dec 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3676
Abstract
Comparisons of emissions and external environmental costs between transport modes usually focus on a distance-based approach. Emissions, and consequently the external costs of transport modes, are measured either per kilometer or passenger kilometer. For travel purposes such as holiday or leisure, however, this [...] Read more.
Comparisons of emissions and external environmental costs between transport modes usually focus on a distance-based approach. Emissions, and consequently the external costs of transport modes, are measured either per kilometer or passenger kilometer. For travel purposes such as holiday or leisure, however, this approach is not appropriate, as destinations are determined endogenously and thus distances vary across transport modes. In this study, we present a novel methodology to correctly and accurately measure leisure emissions and external costs. The new metric is called “full-price emissions”. Full-price emissions calculate the ratio of a transport mode’s emissions or external costs and its full price. The results show that the relative climate damage imposed by aircraft, calculated according to full-price emissions, is approximately four times larger than distance-based approaches reveal. We further observe that, in contrast to distance-based emission comparisons, environmental costs of petrol cars are lower than that of diesel cars. Additionally, full-price emissions display unintended substitution effects of environmental policies that can contribute to climate damage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing)
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17 pages, 3382 KiB  
Article
The Corporate Performance Measurement and Its Importance for the Pricing in a Transport Enterprise
by Mária Ďurišová, Emese Tokarčíková, Florina Oana Virlanuta and Zuzana Chodasová
Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 6164; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216164 - 4 Nov 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3033
Abstract
Due to the specificity of transport services that are being performed with an unambiguous impact on the environment and society, all activities of transport enterprises oriented towards the achievement of the sustainability goals are more visible than in the case of other enterprises. [...] Read more.
Due to the specificity of transport services that are being performed with an unambiguous impact on the environment and society, all activities of transport enterprises oriented towards the achievement of the sustainability goals are more visible than in the case of other enterprises. Consequently, the growing need for sustainability increases not only the costs of individual transport services but also the total costs of a transport enterprise. Indisputably, the costs affect the pricing, which leads to the final market prices. On the one hand, they can increase the prices, but on the other hand, they decrease the enterprise’s competitiveness and its success in the market at the same time. Even though the cost-based pricing is essential, it is not sufficient under these circumstances. Based on the objectives stated above, the primary aim of this paper is to emphasize that the creation of prices in a transport enterprise must consider the global aspects of the enterprise’s performance as a prerequisite for its competitiveness. The results include proposing several variants of corporate performance measurement that are relevant and supported by a literature review of the current knowledge on the topic, an analysis of internal documents from a particular freight-transport enterprise, and structured interviews with the managers. Subsequently, the model proposed can be used by managers of transport enterprises in their decision-making process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing)
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18 pages, 1564 KiB  
Article
Time-Dependent Pricing for High-Speed Railway in China Based on Revenue Management
by Jin Qin, Yijia Zeng, Xia Yang, Yuxin He, Xuanke Wu and Wenxuan Qu
Sustainability 2019, 11(16), 4272; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11164272 - 7 Aug 2019
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 2897
Abstract
High-speed railway (HSR) is recognized as a green transportation mode with lower energy consumption and less pollution emission than other transportation. At present, China has the largest HSR network globally, but the maximum revenue of railway transportation corporations has not been realized. In [...] Read more.
High-speed railway (HSR) is recognized as a green transportation mode with lower energy consumption and less pollution emission than other transportation. At present, China has the largest HSR network globally, but the maximum revenue of railway transportation corporations has not been realized. In order to make HSR achieve a favorable position within the fierce competition in the market, increase corporate revenue, and achieve the sustainable development of HSR and railway corporations, we introduce the concept of revenue management in HSR operations and propose an innovative model to optimize the price and seat allocation for HSR simultaneously. In the study, we formulate the optimization problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model, which appropriately captures passengers’ choice behavior. To reduce the computational complexity, we further transform the proposed MINLP model into an equivalent model. Finally, the effectiveness of both the proposed model and solution algorithm are tested and validated by numerical experiments. The research results show that the model can flexibly adjust the price and seat allocation of the corresponding ticketing period according to the passenger demand, and increase the total expected revenue by 5.92% without increasing the capacity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing)
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17 pages, 1720 KiB  
Article
Differential Pricing Strategies of High Speed Railway Based on Prospect Theory: An Empirical Study from China
by Jin Qin, Wenxuan Qu, Xuanke Wu and Yijia Zeng
Sustainability 2019, 11(14), 3804; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143804 - 11 Jul 2019
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 4023
Abstract
Based on the single pricing method of the high-speed railway (HSR) in China, a pricing strategy without flexibility leads to the problem of extreme fluctuations in passenger flow and difficulty in increasing revenue. In order to achieve sustainable development of the HSR from [...] Read more.
Based on the single pricing method of the high-speed railway (HSR) in China, a pricing strategy without flexibility leads to the problem of extreme fluctuations in passenger flow and difficulty in increasing revenue. In order to achieve sustainable development of the HSR from the perspective of pricing, in this study, we divided the passenger market according to the different factors affecting passengers’ choice behavior, maximized ticket sales revenue with expected travel cost as the reference point, and used prospect theory to construct a differentiated pricing model under elastic demand. A simulated annealing algorithm was used to solve this model under two passenger flow intensities. Taking the Beijing–Shanghai corridor as an example for analysis, the results show that differential pricing can be implemented on the basis of passenger decision-making, and price reductions at off-peak periods will attract passenger flow which will increase ticket sales revenue by 10.41%. During the peak period, prices can be increased to maintain passenger flow, and ticket sales revenue will increase by 7.98%. We also found that increasing passenger expectations have a greater impact on ticket sales. This study provides theoretical and methodological support for the sustainable development of the HSR. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Transport Pricing)
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