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The marginal social cost of headway for a scheduled service

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  • Fosgerau, Mogens

Abstract

This brief paper derives the marginal social cost of headway for a scheduled service, i.e. the cost for users of marginal increases to the time interval between departures. In brief we may call it the value of headway in analogy with the value of travel time and the value of reliability. Users have waiting time costs as well as schedule delay costs measured relative to their desired time of arrival at the destination. They may either arrive at the station to choose just the next departure or they may plan for a specific departure in which case they incur also a planning cost. Then planning for a specific departure is costly but becomes more attractive at longer headways. Simple expressions for the user cost result. In particular, the marginal cost of headway is large at short headways and smaller at long headways. The difference in marginal costs is the value of time multiplied by half the headway.

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  • Fosgerau, Mogens, 2009. "The marginal social cost of headway for a scheduled service," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 43(8-9), pages 813-820, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transb:v:43:y:2009:i:8-9:p:813-820
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    8. Lamotte, Raphaël & de Palma, André & Geroliminis, Nikolas, 2017. "On the use of reservation-based autonomous vehicles for demand management," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 205-227.
    9. Jørgensen, Finn & Solvoll, Gisle, 2018. "Determining optimal frequency at ferry crossings," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 200-208.
    10. Piet Rietveld, 2011. "The Economics of Information in Transport," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 24, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Yin-Yen Tseng & Piet Rietveld & Erik Verhoef, 2012. "Unreliable trains and induced rescheduling: implications for cost-benefit analysis," Transportation, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 387-407, March.
    12. Høyem, Harald & Odeck, James, 2020. "Optimal public transit frequency under stochastic demand and fixed vehicle size: Application in the Norwegian car ferry sector," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    13. André de Palma & Mogens Fosgerau, 2011. "Dynamic Traffic Modeling," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. De Borger, Bruno & Fosgerau, Mogens, 2012. "Information provision by regulated public transport companies," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 492-510.
    15. Hjorth, Katrine & Börjesson, Maria & Engelson, Leonid & Fosgerau, Mogens, 2015. "Estimating exponential scheduling preferences," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 81(P1), pages 230-251.
    16. Zhaoqi Zang & Xiangdong Xu & Kai Qu & Ruiya Chen & Anthony Chen, 2022. "Travel time reliability in transportation networks: A review of methodological developments," Papers 2206.12696, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    17. Nicolas Coulombel & Guillaume Monchambert, 2019. "Congestion, diseconomies of scale and subsidies in urban public transportation," Working Papers hal-02373768, HAL.
    18. Coulombel, Nicolas & Monchambert, Guillaume, 2023. "Diseconomies of scale and subsidies in urban public transportation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    19. André de Palma & Mogens Fosgerau, 2010. "Dynamic and Static congestion models: A review," Working Papers hal-00539166, HAL.
    20. Fosgerau, Mogens & Engelson, Leonid, 2011. "The value of travel time variance," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 1-8, January.
    21. Bernal, Margarita & Welch, Eric W. & Sriraj, P.S., 2016. "The effect of slow zones on ridership: An analysis of the Chicago Transit Authority “El” Blue Line," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 11-21.
    22. Díez-Gutiérrez, María & Tørset, Trude, 2019. "Perception of inconvenience costs: Evidence from seven ferry services in Norway," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 58-67.
    23. Høyem, Harald, 2022. "Public transport frequency and risk-taking behavior," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).

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