Air transport and high-speed rail competition: environmental implications and mitigation strategies

Tiziana D'Alfonso (), Changmin Jiang () and Valentina Bracaglia ()
Additional contact information
Tiziana D'Alfonso: Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering Antonio Ruberti (DIAG), University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
Changmin Jiang: Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 181 Freedman Crescent, Winnipeg, Canada
Valentina Bracaglia: Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering Antonio Ruberti (DIAG), University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy

No 2015-15, DIAG Technical Reports from Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

Abstract: We develop a duopoly model to analyse the environmental impact of high-speed rail (HSR) introduction in a market for travel served by air transport. We take into account simultaneously the effects on the environment of induced demand, schedule frequency and HSR speed and we show that competition between the two modes may be detrimental to the environment depending on the magnitude of the pollution level of HSR relative to air transport. We conduct a simulation study based on the London–Paris market and we find that the introduction of HSR increases local air pollution (LAP) but decreases greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Moreover, we perform a sensitivity analysis of our results towards the level of HSR and air transport emissions. We find that modal competition is more likely to be detrimental to the environment when such ratio is relatively high. Furthermore, when mixed public/private-owned HSR takes into account the surplus of consumers and the surplus that the other (air) transport operator brings about, we find that modal competition is more likely to be detrimental to the environment than in the case of a fully private HSR. Finally, we provide an interpretive discussion of the results with respect to the different mitigation strategies available to the two transport modes and EU policy measures for the environment – which might jointly affect the ratio between HSR and air transport emissions.

Keywords: High-speed rail; Airlines; Competition; Environment; Mitigation Policies; London-Paris market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-com, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-reg and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~bibdis/RePEc/aeg/report/2015-15.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aeg:report:2015-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DIAG Technical Reports from Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Antonietta Angelica Zucconi ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).