This thesis contains five papers studying the economic efficiency and political acceptability of road pricing policies and transport investments in distorted economies. Interactions between the transport market and other distorted markets, such as the labor market, can have a large impact on the welfare effect of a road pricing policy or a transport investment. Many road pricing studies therefore try to incorporate effects from other distorted markets in the analysis. Paper I analyzes how the economic efficiency of a road toll in a distorted economy depends on assumptions about the initial tax system. In the road pricing literature, the welfare effect of a road toll is often found to depend on revenue use. Using a simple general equilibrium model paper I shows that the relative efficiency of marginal revenue recycling policies depends more on assumptions regarding inefficiencies in the initial tax system than on the road toll per se. Paper II studies the effect on welfare, equity and labor supply from a road toll in a commuting population with heterogeneous value of time and endogenous labor supply. When explicitly taking into account that commuters have different value of time, the road toll can increase total labor supply even when the revenues are not recycled back to the commuters. The analysis stresses the importance of recognizing traveler heterogeneity when analyzing congestion pricing. Road pricing policies are often characterized by conflicting interests between different stakeholders and different geographical areas. Papers III and IV study the economic efficiency and political acceptability of pricing and investment policies in different institutional and geographical settings. The main contribution of the papers is to explain how political constraints can lead to inefficient tolling strategies. The papers contribute to the existing literature on political acceptability of road pricing by analyzing the conflict and potential trade-off between political acceptability and economic efficiency. A difficulty when assessing the welfare effect of a future transport policy is also that many factors and parameters needed for the analysis are uncertain. Paper V studies the climate benefit of an investment in high speed rail by calculating the magnitude of annual traffic emission reduction required to compensate for the annualized embedded emissions from the construction of the line. The paper finds that to be able to balance the annualized emissions from the construction, traffic volumes of more than 10 million annual one-way trips are usually required, and most of the traffic diverted from other transport modes must come from aviation. / <p>QC 20121010</p>

Immediate treatment is of extreme importance for stroke patients. However, providing fast enough treatment for stroke patients is far from trivial, mainly due to logistical challenges and difficulties in diagnosing the correct stroke type. One way to reduce the time to treatment is to use so-called Mobile Stroke Units (MSUs), which allows to diagnose and provide treatment for stroke patients already at the patient scene. A well-designed stroke transport policy is vital to improve the access to treatment for stroke patients. Simulation and mathematical optimization are useful approaches for assessing and optimizing stroke transport policies, without endangering the health of the patients. The main purpose of this thesis is to contribute to improving the situation for stroke patients and to reducing the social impacts of stroke. The aim is to study how to use simulation and optimization to achieve improved analysis and planning of prehospital stroke care. In particular, we focus on assessing the potential use of MSUs in a geographic area. In this thesis, optimization is used to identify the optimal locations of MSUs, and simulation is used to assess different stroke transport policies, including MSU locations. The results of this thesis aim to support public health authorities when making decisions in the prehospital stroke care domain. In order to fulfill the aim of this thesis, we develop and analyze a number of different simulation and optimization models. First, we propose a macro-level simulation model, an average time to treatment estimation model, used to estimate the expected time to treatment for different parts of a geographic region. Using the proposed model, we generate two different MSU scenarios to explore the potential benefits of employing MSUs in Sweden’s southern healthcare region (SHR).   Second, we present an optimization model to identify the best placement of MSUs while making a trade-off between the efficiency and equity perspectives, providing maximum population coverage and equal service for all patients, respectively. The trade-off function used in the model makes use of the concepts of weighted average time to treatment to model efficiency and the time difference between the expected time to treatment for different geographical areas to model equity. In a scenario study applied in the SHR, we evaluate our optimization model by comparing the current situation with three MSU scenarios, including 1, 2, and 3 MSUs. Third, we present a micro-level discrete event simulation model to assess stroke transport policies, including MSUs, allowing us to model the behaviors of individual entities, such as patients and emergency vehicles, over time. We generate a synthetic set of stroke patients using a Poisson distribution, used as input in a scenario study. Finally, we present a modeling framework with reusable components, which aims to facilitate the construction of discrete event simulation models in the emergency medical services domain. The framework consists of a number of generic activities, which can be used to represent healthcare chains modeled in the form of flowcharts. As the framework includes activities and policies modeled on the general level, the framework can be used to create models only by providing input data and a care chain specification. We evaluate the framework by using it to build a model for simulating EMS activities related to the complex case of acute stroke. / <p>Note: The papers are not included in the fulltext online.</p>

Streets, the usual public spaces of cities, lose their popularities and users every passing day. The reason of this decline is the erroneous transport policies implemented in cities that increase the entrance of automobile into city centers and facilitate faster movement of automobiles at the expense of pedestrians. While pedestrians are marginalized in city centers, automobiles become the primary users of streets. The traffic, noise and air pollution that automobiles cause contribute to the decline of town centers and shopping streets lose their function as meeting places and public spaces. In addition, automobile oriented policies create car-dependent urban forms and cause sprawl towards the peripheries. Because of the newly developing dwelling areas on the peripheries and the increasingly inaccessible city centers, number of out-of-town shopping centers increase day by day to meet the daily needs. While shopping centers develop, there is now a new tendency to design them with streets, squares and bazaars, with a view to resemble and simulate street life in these shopping centers. This situation shows us that, users, who are the reason of existence of social spaces, actually need the atmosphere of streets. In this study, while analyzing all these trends and factors, Tunali Hilmi Street, which is a once pedestrian-friendly street in Ankara, will be analyzed. The study has two main research tasks. First, it analyses Tunali Hilmi Street&rsquo / s potentials as a public space and street, through the development of a framework that incorporates the essential urban design theorems with a special focus on street design. Secondly, it carries out a questionnaire on shopping center users in Ankara, in order to assess their choices, preferences, and perceptions regarding shopping centers and Tunali Hilmi Street. Based on the findings of these two analyses, this thesis aims to propose planning and design strategies to improve Tunali Hilmi Street as a public space and to attract more users to it.

Tout au long de ce travail, nous avons essayé de répondre à notre problématique de choix de stationnement dans le centre ville de Sousse, en vue d'appréhender le comportement des usagers, lorsqu'on passe d'un univers sans contrainte de stationnement à un univers avec contrainte, et comment les usagers pendulaires, plus précisément qui actuellement se rendent jusqu'à leur lieu de travail en voiture, pourraient changer leur comportement. Au cours de l'enquête "préférences déclarées" utilisée dans cette thèse, les personnes interrogées ont été placées dans le cadre général d'un problème de stationnement et auront à se prononcer en faveur d'un type de stationnement, quels facteurs vont influencés plus leurs choix de stationnement et seront-elles prêtes à renoncer à l'automobile en faveur d'un mode de transport pour effectuer le déplacement domicile-travail. La modélisation du choix de stationnement est réalisé au moyen d'un panier d'outils qui permettra d'évaluer le poids des différentes variables dans le comportement des usagers en matière de choix de stationnement. Elle nous permttra d'indiquer également quelle proportion de ces usagers s'ils étaient confontrés à des mesures restrictives de stationnement et face à une nouvelle politique de régulation, adopteraient quel comportement. / This thesis try to analyze user characteristics and factors influencing parking choice, based on a stated preferences method, in the city center of Sousse. During the investigation, "stated preferences", respondents were placed in the general framework of a parking problem, and will vote in favor of a type of parking.Modeling the choice of parking will study the possible impacts on the behavior of users with a new urban transport policy (parking pricing) in the city center of Sousse and the most important factors influencing the demand of parking.

Interactions between the transport market and other distorted markets, such as the labor market, can have a large impact on the overall welfare effect of a road pricing policy or a congestion charge. Many road pricing studies therefore try to incorporate effects from other distorted markets in the analysis. A difficulty when assessing the welfare effect of a future transport policy is also that many factors and parameters needed for the analysis is uncertain. This thesis contains three papers all studying different methodological approaches to analyzing the welfare effects of transport policies. The first two papers analyze the welfare effect of congestion pricing in distorted economies. The main contribution of the first paper is to analyze how the welfare effect of a congestion charge in a distorted economy depends on what assumptions we make regarding the tax system in the initial no-toll situation. A critical assumption in many cost-benefit analyses of congestion charges is that the whole population has a single value of time. The second paper studies the effect of a congestion charge in a population of commuters with a continuously distributed value of time. The main contribution of the paper, compared to previous literature, is that it studies the welfare effect and distributional impact of a congestion charge in a population with endogenous labor supply and heterogeneous value of time where mode-choice self-selection plays an important role. The third paper studies the climate benefit of an investment in high speed rail by calculating the magnitude of annual traffic emission reduction required to compensate for the annualized embedded emissions from the construction of the line. To account for uncertainties in underlying assumptions, a Monte Carlo simulation framework is used in the analysis. The paper finds that to be able to balance the annualized emissions from the construction, traffic volumes of more than 10 million annual one-way trips are usually required, and most of the traffic diverted from other transport modes must come from aviation. / QC 20110812

<p>Car usage is determined by several facts, e.g. living conditions determined by geographical matters. There is a political will to control car usage with different kinds of incentives since car usage generates environmental problems. This essay analyses the differences between car usage in urban areas as opposed to thinly populated areas in Sweden and their significance on governmental incentives. By using statistics differences in car ownership during ten years between thinly populated areas, areas in the countryside and urban areas is studied. Among other things living conditions determined by geographical matters that can explain the differences and problems with fuel taxes and road pricing is being discussed in the analyse.</p>

Car usage is determined by several facts, e.g. living conditions determined by geographical matters. There is a political will to control car usage with different kinds of incentives since car usage generates environmental problems. This essay analyses the differences between car usage in urban areas as opposed to thinly populated areas in Sweden and their significance on governmental incentives. By using statistics differences in car ownership during ten years between thinly populated areas, areas in the countryside and urban areas is studied. Among other things living conditions determined by geographical matters that can explain the differences and problems with fuel taxes and road pricing is being discussed in the analyse.