Transport Link Scanner

It has repeatedly been noted that there is a clear logic behind the geographical expansion of transport networks. That implies that one can model how those transport networks expand geographically; and how the final network would change if the network is constructed with different objectives.

In the last years I have developed the so-called Transport Link Scanner model, which is a GeoDMS based tool that allows the exploration of the effects of economic context and policy preferences on transport network expansion. The model combines a conditional logit model, some heuristics and techniques from the literature on corridor location problems and transport modelling methods to simulate the most likely network after the introduction of a new transport innovation.

The most recent version of Transport Link Scanner can be downloaded through this page. The scripts are downloadable here. The data is available here. Instructions to get you started are available here.

How problematic is congestion? Travel times throughout the day

Congestion due to traffic has received a lot of political attention in the last decades. Costs are often mentioned as a reason why congestion should not be acceptable; while economists often uphold that, to some degree, congestion is a sign of economic success rather than a sign that a system is unsuccessful. In fact there is very little evidence that congestion on roads really hinders a city’s economic growth and that congestion only becomes a problem if traffic is severe throughout the day. If congestion is only a peak-time problem, spreading activities over the day becomes a feasible strategy to reduce travel delays.

Together with Paul Koster (VU University Amsterdam) I have edited data and made the video I share here. It shows real average working day travel times to Schiphol airport, the Netherlands for every quarter hour of the day. For Paul’s research and this video, the Dutch ministry of transportation kindly shared data on measured travel times for all of the motorways in the Netherlands.

The video shows that congestion is, from a time-of-day point of view, actually a very limited problem: before 7:00, between 9:00 and 16:00 and after 19:00 one can use the Dutch motorways presumably without any hindrance.

The effect of railroad network expansion on travel times in the Netherlands

The construction of overland transport infrastructure has had a major social and economic impacts by reducing travel costs and travel times. One of the key questions I am interested in is how travel time improvements have changed the level of accessibility and interaction opportunity within territories. I have made this movie to demonstrate the extent in which historical railroad construction in the Netherlands has affected travel times to the country’s capital, Amsterdam. Greater travel time improvements are demonstrated by lighter hues. The actual year is shown in the upper left corner.

To me, the movie and underlying data show two important things: first, that railroad construction has substantially altered travel times; second, that the largest improvements in travel times were realized in the first stages of railroad network development. The latest stages, when numerous local lines were added to the network, have much less effect on travel time savings.