Economics and Finance

Advances in the sharing economy – such as transportation network companies (e.g., Lyft, Uber) and home sharing (e.g., Airbnb) – have coincided with the increasing need for evacuation resources. While peer-to-peer sharing under normal circumstances often suffers from trust barriers, disaster literature indicates that trust and compassion often increase following disasters, improving recovery through additional resources and support. We hypothesize that trust and compassion could trigger willingness to share transportation and sheltering resources during an evacuation.

Inflation and increased fuel economy have reduced the buying power of the revenues collected from state and federal motor fuel taxes. Because fuel taxes are almost always collected on a per-gallon basis, in most states they must be raised by specific acts of the legislature and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the political support necessary to raise them. A number of states have experimented with fuel taxes that adjust automatically by being indexed to the price of gasoline, to the consumer price index, or to some indicator of highway construction and maintenance costs. This...

Evacuations are a primary transportation strategy to protect populations from natural and humanmade disasters. Recent evacuations, particularly from hurricanes and wildfires, have exposed three critical evacuation challenges: 1) persistent evacuation non-compliance to mandatory evacuation orders; 2) poor transportation response, leading to heavy congestion, slow evacuation clearance times, and high evacuee risk; and 3) minimal attention in ensuring all populations, especially those most vulnerable, have transportation and shelter. With ongoing climate change and increasing land development...

Transit properties in the USA have historically experienced loss of market share and low levels of farebox recovery. They resorted to service expansion to maximize subsidies. Experience suggests that: (a) fare increases have not had the desired effect; (b) fare reductions can boost ridership but can also reduce revenue and increase subsidies. The challenge lies with the adoption of such strategies as deep discount group pass programs that can produce more marginal revenue than cost. Deep discount transit pass programs provide groups of people with unlimited-ride transit passes in exchange...