Abstract
This study presents a methodology in a disaggregated manner to assess the spatial distributional effects of implemented toll road networks. Existing zone-based research focuses only on revealing the existence of regressivity. This approach provides limited information in understanding the spatial distribution of travelers from low-income groups known to have suffered welfare loss due to toll roads. For road pricing to be a win-win strategy for all income groups, the revenue from toll roads should be used to improve the mobility of low-income groups. Therefore, it is desirable to have more detailed location information and regressivity effects for each income group due to toll roads. This study proposes a new method to better represent the spatial distributional effects by utilizing disaggregated and recently available data (e.g., smartphone navigation data), enabling analysts to easily estimate the welfare loss of low-income groups due to toll roads. Applying the proposed method in Chungcheongnam-do, Korea, reveals that installing toll roads would be regressive in terms of income. However, the analysis results provide sufficient information to interpret spatial distributional effects’, current status, and causes. This method improves the existing zone-based analysis, which cannot distinguish who has greater welfare loss among high- and low-income groups in a particular zone. This information would be extremely useful in establishing mitigation policies for low-income groups affected by installing toll roads in the future.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements’ Policy Study 19-10.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149 • Issue 12 • December 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 16, 2022
Accepted: Aug 8, 2023
Published online: Oct 14, 2023
Published in print: Dec 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Mar 14, 2024
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