Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year on developing new urban transport infrastructure (Hannon et al., 2020). At the same time, we know that the transportation network is a crucial determinant of the spatial organization of economic activity within a city. For this reason, it is important to understand the effects of investing in the transport infrastructure of a city on the spatial distribution of the residents of the city, as well as the welfare implications of these investments. In this dissertation, I will explore these questions in the context of a large transport infrastructure investment in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I will then use this setting to study the political implications of these investments in transport infrastructure on the incumbent party that is in office when the investments are made. In the first chapter I study how improvements in the urban transport infrastructure affect the spatial sorting of residents with different levels of income and education within a city. In particular, I study the effects of the construction of a bus rapid transit system (BRT) on the spatial reorganization of residents within the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. To do so, I leverage an individual level panel data set of more than two million residents with which I can describe intra-city migration patterns at a very fine spatial scale. With these data, I employ an instrumental variables identification strategy to study how the increases in commuter market access produced by the new transportation network led to changes in the spatial sorting of residents in the city. In this chapter, I find evidence that the construction of the BRT increased the spatial segregation between high and low-skilled residents within the city. In the second chapter of the dissertation, I quantify the welfare effects of improving the urban transit infrastructure of a city once we take into account the patterns of spatial sorting found in Chapter 1. To do so, I develop a dynamic quantitative spatial equilibrium model of a city with heterogeneous workers. I use this quantitative framework to quantify the welfare effects of the BRT system built in Buenos Aires. This framework, allows me to measure the average welfare gains for residents that were living near the BRT lines before these were built. I find that welfare gains were very similar between high- and low-skilled workers living in the same locations before the BRT system was built, but that gains were very different within skill levels across locations. Residents living near a BRT line in neighborhoods with the lowest share of high-skilled residents saw welfare gains close to 1% on average, while residents living near a BRT line in neighborhoods with the highest high-skilled share saw welfare gains around 0.5% on average. Finally, in the third chapter I study the political consequences of public investment in transport infrastructure for the incumbent party that is in office when the investment is made. In particular, I use the same BRT construction in the city of Buenos Aires to study its effects on the incumbent party’s vote share in subsequent elections after the BRT lines were built. I use a staggered difference-in-difference estimation approach in order to capture the treatment effects relative to the time that each BRT line was either built or announced. I find that the incumbent party decreased its vote share in the districts closer to an opening BRT line in the election prior to the opening, but increased its vote share in the first election following the opening of a BRT line. However, when defining the treatment timing based on the year in which each line was announced, the effects of the BRT line on the incumbent party’s vote share appear to be negative and decreasing with the number of year from the announcement.

This dissertation contends that the decision of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and the Toronto Transit Commission to introduce a grid of frequent, all-day bus service on arterial roads in newly built, low-density suburban neighbourhoods is responsible for Toronto’s unique ability to attract suburbanites to transit. Toronto’s approach is in stark contrast with the that followed in most North American urban regions, where auto-oriented suburban built form is considered to make transit unviable, and therefore transit service outside the urban core is typically very limited. The Ontario government’s establishment of metropolitan government in the Toronto region in 1953, at a time when transit remained a popular mode of transportation, encouraged and empowered suburban politicians to pressure the TTC to expand service to their constituencies. In response, the TTC developed a plan for suburban bus service that succeeded, in terms of ridership and financial performance, far beyond its expectations. This success, in turn, encouraged further service improvements and government support for transit, producing a virtuous spiral of service increases, ridership gains, and government funding increases, which stood in sharp contrast with the vicious spiral of ridership declines, service cuts, and fare hikes that plagued transit systems in most North American cities. This dissertation is the product of archival research in Canada and the United States, as well as a series of interviews with policymakers, planners, and activists who were engaged during the period. The Toronto model offers valuable lessons for transportation planning across North America. It demonstrates that it is possible to achieve high transit mode share, even in areas that are not designed as explicitly transit-oriented communities. This means that it is possible to shift trips away from the automobile without needing to entirely rebuild the suburban neighbourhoods where most North Americans reside, an unachievable goal on the timeline required to avert catastrophic climate change. It also demonstrates that the benefits of large capital investments in rapid transit and rail projects will only be maximized when paired with operating funding to ensure that the new infrastructure is embedded in a broader network of frequent local transit service.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-12-19T12:53:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 raphaelpaulobragapoubel.pdf: 1692665 bytes, checksum: e8fb69a9681a9af78d618fd006ce0ebd (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-12-19T13:07:51Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 raphaelpaulobragapoubel.pdf: 1692665 bytes, checksum: e8fb69a9681a9af78d618fd006ce0ebd (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-19T13:07:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 raphaelpaulobragapoubel.pdf: 1692665 bytes, checksum: e8fb69a9681a9af78d618fd006ce0ebd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-27 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este trabalho apresenta um modelo baseado em métodos heurísticos construtivos para solução do planejamento dinâmico de linhas de transmissão. O acoplamento temporal entre as decisões é representado através de uma modificação nas equações do modelo de fluxo de carga CC onde as perdas nas linhas são incluídas. O problema resultante desta formulação é um problema de otimização inteira com variáveis acopladas no período de planejamento representadas por um parâmetro de expansão. O algoritmo proposto resolve o problema de forma contínua e acoplada para decidir sobre o planejamento de cada ano de forma a evitar a explosão combinatória da programação inteira. Para tanto são utilizadas, para as decisões de expansão, as informações dos coeficientes de Lagrange e do parâmetro de expansão. Testes com o sistema da região Sul e Sudeste do Brasil apontam para uma metodologia eficaz e promissora. / This work presents a model to solve the dynamic planning of transmission lines based on heuristics technique. The temporal coupling among decisions is represented by a modification on the equations of the DC load flow model, in which losses in transmission lines are included. This formulation generates an integer optimization problem with coupled variables in the planning period, represented by an expansion parameter. The proposed algorithm solves the problem in a continuous and coupled way, in order to decide the planning of each year, as well as to avoid combinatorial explosion of the integer technique. Information obtained from the Lagrange multiplier and the expansion parameter are used to take decisions. Tests with Brazilian southern and southeastern systems indicate an effective and promising methodology.