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Much recent work on transport and the economy has focused on 'Wider Economic Impacts' (WEIs) of infrastructure investment, the impacts other than time savings benefiting those actually using the transport network. Differential effects of transportation infrastructure by mode such as urban rail and road are relatively well known. However, impacts of other mode such as walking are scarce. This paper estimates wider economic impacts related to productivity from full rail, road and walking transport networks in Hong Kong in 2016. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that makes use of complex network science indicators with spatial cognition-weighted accessibility combining full urban rail network, road network, and pedestrian network in capturing wider economic impacts. We use an instrumental variable approach to identify the causal effect of transport network centralities on productivity measured by gross value added. Our identification strategy largely relies on the exogenous variations from historical planned and existing transport networks. A first specification confirms the significance of urban rail and road. Specification with pedestrian network shows that pedestrian and rail networks can statistically significantly increase productivity in Hong Kong while roads play a less significant but still meaningful role. Our findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests such as using night-time light intensity and residential wage as alternative measures for productivity. The research suggests a key planning policy implication: place-based policies in a dense city require improvement in pedestrian and rail network structure that impacts local and global transport accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ageing population has become a global problem in which enhanced understanding on their activity-travel patterns is needed. In this paper, an analysis of retired and dual-earner couples is conducted to investigate how retirement would change their activity time use and patterns. In particular, intra-household interactions are considered, to explore the interdependencies among household members' choices, social-demographics and travel behaviours. Household survey data from Hong Kong are employed. Results show that retirement would substantially increase joint participations and durations in various out-of-home activities. In addition, the importance of walkability is emphasised for retired couples in a mixed-land-use and transit-dependent city, and a potential social exclusion issue is identified for the low-income retired population. Scenarios analyses including changes of built environment and lifestyles (e.g., telecommuting, online shopping and food delivery) are conducted, to investigate how couples would reallocate the saved travel time. In summary, this paper highlights the importance of considering the group decision mechanism in a household for activity generation and travel demand forecasting. It sheds light on policies to improve quality-of-life for couples before and after the retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maritime industry has adopted the concept of clustering to promote the growth of related maritime sectors. Based on the theoretical development of maritime cluster evolution in the current research literature, components and functions of maritime clusters are observed to have changed over time. However, very few empirical studies have been conducted on maritime cluster evolution that reflect the diverse components and their interactions within a cluster. Particularly, there is insufficient literature that systematically studies the relationship between ports and other maritime sectors, though the port is deemed to play an important role among sectors in maritime cluster development. This paper aims to fill these research gaps by analysing two cases – London and Hong Kong. London is considered as an international maritime service centre, while Hong Kong is en route to be an international maritime service centre, with the latter cluster possesses a supportive port while the former does not. Grounded on the symbiosis theory, this paper examines the evolution of maritime clusters empirically through investigating the interactions between a port and other sectors within a maritime cluster with the Lotka-Volterra model. Empirical results show that advanced maritime services, namely marine insurance and shipbroking, benefit from port development in London. However, these maritime services sectors are in pure competition with the port sector in Hong Kong. The research provides reference for policy makers on the dynamic development path of maritime clusters in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transit-induced gentrification is a popular topic of research and a pressing concern worldwide. However, little attention is paid to the connection between rail transit development and the movement of low-income residents. To investigate this important issue, this paper studies the development of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) in Hong Kong between 2001 and 2006, which added three new rail transit lines covering a total length of 65 km. By using census statistics at the district council constituency area (DCCA) level in a difference-in-differences approach, we find that MTR development in Hong Kong between 2002 and 2004 increased the number of advanced degree holders (Bachelor's degree and above) by 10% in the New Territories and 7.81% in the new towns and reduced the number of low-income households by 5.85% in the New Territories and 7.53% in the new towns. To confirm that these socioeconomic changes were driven by internal migration, we further use household-level data from the 5% population censuses in 2001 and 2006 in a multinomial logistic regression. The results indicate that MTR development between 2002 and 2004 was likely to induce high-educated people to move into and low-income households to move out of MTR-served areas. The results show that the New Territories and the new towns in Hong Kong underwent gentrification between 2001 and 2006. We therefore suggest that the Hong Kong government negotiate with MTR Corporation to allocate resources to develop properties for low-income families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong drivers face daily congestion, especially at the Cross Harbor Tunnel (CHT) whose tolls are substantially lower than those of the drivers’ other two tunnel options: the Eastern Harbor Crossing (EHC) and the Western Harbor Crossing (WHC). In 2013, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government issued a consultation paper, seeking public comments on three toll-change proposals that would raise the CHT’s tolls and lower the EHC’s tolls. The WHC’s tolls would remain unchanged due to its congested connecting roads. Using monthly crossing data available from the HKSAR’s Transport Department for 2000–2012, this paper uses a Generalized Leontief demand system to document that the usage patterns of the three tunnels is price-responsive. Hence, we conclude that the proposed toll changes are likely to be effective in transportation demand management, by shifting a portion of the CHT’s usage to the EHC and WHC, thereby relieving the CHT’s congestion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An international benchmarking of ferry operation and pier infrastructure is proposed. • Passenger-related and operator-related factors are examined. • Improving passengers' travel and multimodal transfer experience is fundamental. • Government investment in pier infrastructure and waterfront amenities is recommended. With rapid road infrastructure development in the past century, the role of water passenger transport has diminished drastically worldwide. A lot of ferry services in coastal cities have become financially unviable. However, water transport has huge potentials in promoting transport sustainability and resilience. This paper proposes a holistic framework that examines five core elements in a ferry business model, including (i) population demand, (ii) connectivity to public transit and activity nodes, (iii) individual preferences, (iv) management and operational strategies and (v) pier infrastructure. An international benchmarking framework of ferry operation and pier management across several cities with large-scale ferry development (Brisbane, Hong Kong, London, New York, San Francisco and Venice) is proposed and tested in Hong Kong. There are several general lessons. First, providing denser and more diversified opportunities (employment, commercial, recreation and open space) near the piers with good connectivity is essential. Direct access to these activities by water transport and well-developed intermodal transfer are conducive to ferry patronage. Second, improving the travel experience of passengers, including pre-boarding and on-board experience, is fundamental. Overall, integrating ferry services, pier infrastructure and promenade development in a policy package is critical to the long-term viability of ferry transport, although several critical challenges need to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing ridership in the urban rail systems in major cities is outpacing their designed capacity. Promotion based demand management can facilitate better utilization of the available capacity of the existing system when the investment and opportunity to expand the system are limited. While several studies address short-term behavioral responses to such promotions using before and after analysis, how behavioral changes are sustained in the long run is also very important as well as differences in response among different user groups. Using an extensive smart card dataset over two years from Hong Kong's urban heavy railway system, this paper explores the longitudinal behavior of passengers in response to a promotion aiming at changing passengers' travel period from peak to the pre-peak. The approach uses customer segmentation to understand the heterogeneous response of different groups. Users who have high flexibility in schedule and familiarity with the system and travel long distances tend to be more likely to change their travel periods to take advantage of the discount. The longitudinal promotion analysis reveals that 35–40% of passengers who initially adopted the promotion will eventually revert to their previous travel time periods. The results suggest that the promotion designs should be adjusted/renewed over time to sustain the initial response given the attrition of early adopters. Based on the behavioral analysis, an 'optimal' promotion design approach is applied to examine the effectiveness of promotion strategies given different behavioral responses over time, heterogeneous group behavior, and constraints on the investment budgets and performance requirements. The promotion design using group-specific response can better target price-sensitive users, hence improves its effectiveness over time, while the design based on the average response shows a significant performance decrease. However, the optimal design schemes using different behavioral responses are relatively consistent in terms of the selected stations for promotion, though some differences exist in the discount levels and time periods for the areas where there can be more early morning travelers. From a design perspective, there is not much difference in the promotion effectiveness regardless of the behavioral response assumed for the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Estimated the causal economic impact of an off-peak fare discount in Hong Kong. • Applied the difference-in-difference method to control for confounding bias. • Found the aggregate effect to be small but statistically significant and heterogeneous. • Responsiveness was governed by travel costs and crowding. • Produced novel causal estimates of trip rescheduling elasticities. This paper quantifies the causal impact of differential pricing on the trip-scheduling of regular commuters using the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) in Hong Kong. It does so by applying a difference-in-difference (DID) method to large scale smart card data before and after the introduction of the Early Bird Discount (EBD) pricing intervention. We find statistically significant but small effects of the EBD in the form of earlier departure times. Leveraging the granularity of the data, we also allow for the treatment effect to vary over observed travel characteristics. Our empirical results suggest that fares and crowding are the key determinants of commuter responsiveness to the EBD policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Passenger's non-compliance behavior is defined and observed. • Critical time indicators are defined to measure the alighting and boarding efficiency. • A simulation model is proposed to simulate passengers' alighting and boarding process at metro platform. • Effects of Passenger's non-compliance behaviors under different passenger volume conditions are analyzed. • Different alighting and boarding rules could be applied to increase alighting and boarding efficiency. Passengers' alighting and boarding process in metro stations has attracted increasing research attention since it has significant influence on the platform passenger distribution as well as the train dwell time. In this study, a field survey was firstly performed in a densely populated metro station at downtown area in Hong Kong to observe passengers' alighting and boarding characteristics and collect sample data. One commonly existing phenomenon is found that boarding passengers start to get aboard even when there are alighting passengers still inside the metro carriage. This is defined as passengers' non-compliance behaviors in this paper. In addition, time indicators are defined to measure the alighting and boarding efficiency. Then a microscopic pedestrian simulation model based on the Social Force Model is proposed to simulate the passengers' alighting and boarding patterns at metro platform. The verification result shows the good applicability of the proposed model to simulate the actual situation. Finally, several simulation tests are conducted to explore the impacts that passengers' non-compliance behaviors have on the alighting and boarding efficiency in different passenger volume conditions. The simulation result shows that higher level of passengers' non-compliance behaviors leads to longer passenger's alighting duration and boarding duration, but the influence on the overall transaction time is related to different passenger volume conditions. Thus, metro station facility could apply different alighting and boarding rules in different passenger volume conditions to increase alighting and boarding efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Delivering transportation projects to their budget is a challenge for governments. • Real data on changing cost estimates and project's final account is now available. • The legitimacy of the Planning Fallacy is questioned. • A call for governments to reconsider their approaches to estimating/risk is made. Abstract Delivering transportation projects to their budgeted cost remains a challenge for many governments worldwide. An issue that has hindered progress being made to address this problem has been the availability of empirical data that reflects the changing nature of cost estimates and their difference from a project's final account. Using a homogenous dataset provided by a public sector authority in Hong Kong, we analyse the differences between the approved budget, pre-tender estimates, contract sum and final accounts for approximately HK$115 billion (≈US$14 billion) worth of transportation projects. We demonstrate that 47% (i.e. ≈ 5 out 10) of the projects deviate from their approved budget. In particular, when we consider the difference between the approved budget and the final contract sum, we reveal there are cases of both over and under estimating. We, therefore, question the Planning Fallacy as an appropriate explanation for describing 'how large infrastructure projects work'. The fallacy of the Planning Fallacy account revealed in this paper leads us to call upon those agencies that have actively embraced this theory to reconsider their approaches to cost estimating and risk analysis used to deliver their transportation infrastructure to ensure taxpayers are provided with better value for money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A procedure for the simultaneous estimation of an origin–destination (OD) matrix and link choice proportions from OD survey data and traffic counts for congested network is proposed in this paper. Recognizing that link choice proportions in a network change with traffic conditions, and that the dispersion parameter of the route choice model should be updated for a current data set, this procedure performs statistical estimation and traffic assignment alternately until convergence in order to obtain the best estimators for both the OD matrix and link choice proportions, which are consistent with the survey data and traffic counts.Results from a numerical study using a hypothetical network have shown that a model allowing θ to be estimated simultaneously with an OD matrix from the observed data performs better than the model with a fixed predetermined θ. The application of the proposed model to the Tuen Mun Corridor network in Hong Kong is also presented in this paper. A reasonable estimate of the dispersion parameter θ for this network is obtained. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper looks at the Occupy Central Movement (OCM) in Hong Kong from an innovative and understudied angle of transport resilience. With the OCM as a shock event, subsequent responses may be conceptualised as having three different phases. Phases One and Two refer to chaos at an adverse event’s initial outbreak, and the subsequent state of flux. Phase Three may or may not exist; it sets in when people in the society accept these adaptations as longer-term arrangements. Fragmented data and information about the severe disruptions and ensuing changes of the transport system during and after this shock event have been carefully assembled and systematically analysed in relation to the actions and adaptations made by the Government, the industry and the general public. With increasing urbanisation, all stakeholders, including city governments, the industry and the general public, need to be more prepared for large-scale disruptions caused not just by natural hazards but also human beings. Government actions alone are not sufficient. Speedy and concerted responses of the industry are indispensable in achieving transport resilience. Effective dissemination of information through different channels is critical. Moreover, there needs to be concrete steps towards establishing Key Resilience Performance Indicators for cities, covering both the hardware and software components of a transport system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into transport and subjective wellbeing impacts at older ages is at an early stage. It is still unclear whether the transport intervention (e.g., new transport infrastructure) can effectively promote older people's subjective wellbeing, and if so, through what pathways. This paper provided causal inference on the effects of public transport infrastructure on evaluative, hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing among older adults using a natural experiment of a new metro line in Hong Kong. A longitudinal survey of 449 cohort participants was collected before and after the new metro operation. Treatment groups lived within a 400 m walking buffer of the new metro stations, while control groups were located around comparable stations on existing metro lines. These metro lines were planned at the same time using similar principles, but the intervention line was built later due to difficulties in financial models. Our Difference-in-Difference (DID) modelling results suggested that it might be difficult to delineate a direct pathway from public transport infrastructure provision to subjective wellbeing improvement among older people. The causal linkage was more plausible for the new metro could contribute to the subjective wellbeing only if older people can adapt to it; for those who wanted to maintain or increase bus use after the metro intervention, we found a negative association with better subjective wellbeing. Our natural experiment study provides practice-based evidence for transport planning and healthy ageing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of nonlinear fare structures in taxi markets using an extended taxi model with an explicit consideration of perceived profitability. The expected profit, defined as the profit per unit time (inclusive of both occupied and vacant taxi times), that a taxi driver expects to receive from picking up a customer in a particular zone or location, has great impact on the taxi driver’s choice of location in the search for customers. The fare structure directly governs the profitability of taxi rides of different distances originating from different locations. With these explicit considerations, the extended model is intended to look into the market effects of adopting a nonlinear fare structure with declining incremental charges. The proposed nonlinear fare structure could help restore a level-playing field for taxi operators whose businesses have been affected by some taxi drivers who resort to practices such as offering fare discounts or accepting requests for discounted fares from passengers for long-haul trips. Analysis of sensitivity of social welfare and profit gain as well as taxi/customer wait/search times is conducted with respect to the parameters in the nonlinear fare structure for the Hong Kong taxi market, and Pareto-improving nonlinear fare amendments are identified that neither disadvantage any customer nor reduce the taxi operators’ profits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A significant portion of the 200,000 people working in Hong Kong’s central business district (CBD) relies on buses as their primary means of transport. During peak hours, nearly a thousand double-decker buses pour into a tiny area of 150ha. This causes traffic congestion and air pollution. Moreover, given that the flow is uni-directional (into the CBD in the morning and out of the CBD in the afternoon), the occupancy of buses in the CBD is actually low. In this paper, we propose to reduce traffic congestion and to increase bus occupancy by merging bus routes. We describe the peculiar situation of the CBD in Hong Kong and explain the necessary conditions for the possible success of merging routes. Our analysis shows that merging will lead to an overall benefit for all parties, including government, bus operators, and passengers. The actual merging decisions, which routes to merge and at what frequencies buses should run, are determined by a mathematical model. The model also shows quantitatively the benefits of merging routes and the impacts of other factors. The procedure that we follow and the model that we adopt can be applied to other CBD. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the relationships between walking speed and pedestrian flow under various bi-directional flow conditions at indoor walkways in Hong Kong. The effects of bi-directional pedestrian flows are investigated empirically with particular emphasis on their effects on walking time for different directions of flow at pedestrian walkways in Hong Kong. Flow measurements were conducted at selected indoor walkways in urban areas. A generalized walking time function that takes bi-directional flow distributions (or flow ratios) into account is proposed for these pedestrian facilities and calibrated for various flow conditions ranging from free-flow to congested-flow (at-capacity) situations. The bi-directional flow effects on free-flow walking speed, effective capacity and at-capacity walking speed are validated with observed data. It was found that the bi-directional flow ratios have significant impacts on both the at-capacity walking speeds and the maximum flow rates of the selected walkways but not on the free-flow walking speeds. The findings and study methodology provide better insight into the effects of bi-directional pedestrian flow characteristics and will assist engineers/planners in improving the design and operation of pedestrian facilities not only in Hong Kong, but also in other countries as well. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]