An International Comparison of the Effectiveness of Demand-side and Supply-side Policies to Alleviate Urban Traffic Congestion
[Thesis]
De Sarkar, Sayan
Anas, Alex
State University of New York at Buffalo
2019
210
Ph.D.
State University of New York at Buffalo
2019
In this dissertation, we use empirical models to study the effect of congestion policies that can help alleviate the problem of traffic congestion, and also analyze the welfare implications of such policies on the regional economy. In the second chapter, we study the effect of congestion pricing policies (Pigouvian congestion toll and fuel tax) in the top 50 metropolitan areas of the conterminous U.S. In the third and fourth chapters, we study the effect of transportation policies in Beirut, Lebanon and Casablanca, Morocco. We analyzed a wide range of policies that includes demand-side and supply-side expansions instruments. In the demand side, we look at the impact of congestion toll, fuel tax and bus fare. In the supply side, we consider the expansion of road and bus supply. In addition to understanding the impact of these policies individually, we also look at the various combinations of demand-side and supply-side policies. Analyzing different policy combinations in an empirical setting is one of the contribution of the work done in this dissertation. Another important contribution of this dissertation is to understand the variation in the congestion externality, and also the variation in the impact of the optimal congestion policies in different regional economies.