Transport Subsidies, System Choice, and Urban Sprawl

By Jan K. Brueckner. Social Science Research Network, 2005

132 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper analyzes the effect of transport subsidies on the spatial expansion of cities, asking whether subsidies are a source of undesirable urban sprawl. While the cost-reducing effect of transport subsidies is offset by a higher general tax burden (which reduces the demand for space), the analysis shows that subsidies nevertheless lead to spatial expansion of cities. If the transport system exhibits constant returns to scale, the subsidies are inefficient, making the urban expansion they entail undesirable. The paper also studies transport ‘system choice.’ The city is portrayed as selecting its transport system from along a continuum of money-cost/time-cost choices.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b5f0c5fab4396e684aad2260e4ffa529ad692e20

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In Economics and Econometrics

Citations in the corpus

Economic Growth and the Expansion of Urban Land in China (2010, methodology): “Lessons from previous studies in the US (Brueckner and Fansler, 1983; Brueckner, 2005; McGrath, 2005) and our observations of China’s growth (as discussed in the previous section) lead us to consider measures of economic growth, demographic change, public investment and variables that represent shif”
Optimal urban transport pricing in the presence of congestion, economies of density and costly public funds (2008, background): “19 Brueckner (2003) reports that fares cover approximately 50% of operating costs in European cities, against 38% for the U.”
A review of public transport economics (2021, background): “Brueckner and Selod (2006) and Brueckner (2005) investigate transport system choice from a continuum of monetary price and travel time combinations in an urban economy, and majority voting.”
The trade-off between money and travel time: A test of the theory of reference-dependent preferences (2008, background): “element in understanding the economics of urban sprawl ( Brueckner 2005 ).”
Compactness versus Sprawl (2015, background): “If motorists had to cover the full social costs of automobile use—including vehicle emissions, free parking, uncompensated accident costs, and other external costs—they would likely opt for residential, work, shopping, and other locations that require a fraction of their current travel (Delucchi 199”