The Price of Speed: Estimating Intensive-Margin Responses to Fuel Prices on French Toll Motorways

Julián Barbella, Nicolas Coulombel () and Guillaume Monchambert ()
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Julián Barbella: LVMT - Laboratoire Ville, Mobilité, Transport - Université Gustave Eiffel - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Nicolas Coulombel: LVMT - Laboratoire Ville, Mobilité, Transport - Université Gustave Eiffel - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Guillaume Monchambert: LAET - Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transports - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENTPE - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Fuel-price changes may affect not only whether motorists travel but also their driving speeds on trips they continue to make. This study examines the latter adjustment on French toll motorways using approximately 28.5 million six-minute observations from 135 detector sites on 11 corridors. The outcome is travel time per kilometre, constructed from harmonic-mean speeds. A composition-aware panel specification relates this mixed-traffic outcome to separate light-and heavy-vehicle fuel-price channels, conditional on flexible traffic-flow and vehicle-mix controls, weather, calendar conditions, and site-specific diurnal patterns. In the preferred specification, the light-vehicle price × share coefficient is positive (0.0084 min/km per euro/litre); the heavy-vehicle channel is likewise positive (0.0171) but more sensitive to modelling and inference choices. The light-vehicle estimate translates mechanically into approximately 2.5 extra minutes over 600 km for a €0.50-per-litre increase, under fixed operating conditions and a light-vehicle-dominated composition. These estimates describe conditional changes in speeds among motorway users observed by detectors, not individual desired speeds or total travel demand. The analysis highlights both the potential for speed-related fuel-cost adjustment and the importance of traffic-state and selection effects in interpreting aggregate speed data.

Keywords: traffic composition; intensive margin; travel time per kilometre; driving speed; fuel prices; toll motorways; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-17
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05840585v1
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Published in ITEA 2026 Annual Conference, International Transportation Economics Association (ITEA), Jun 2026, Bergame, Italy

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