Does Improving Public Transport Decrease Car Ownership? Evidence from the Copenhagen Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractCar ownership is lower in urban areas, which is probably related to the availability of better public transport. Better public transport thus may offer the possibility to relieve the many problems (congestion, health, and parking) associated with the presence of cars in urban areas. To investigate this issue, we develop and estimate a model for the simultaneous choice of a residential area and car ownership. The model is estimated on Danish register data for single-earner and dual-earners households in the greater Copenhagen metropolitan area. We pay special attention to accessibility of the metro network which offers particularly high quality public transport. Simulations based on the estimated model show that for the greater Copenhagen area a planned extension of the metro network decreases car ownership by 2-3%. Our results suggest also a substantial increase in the interest for living in areas close to the metro network, that affects the demographic composition of neighbourhoods.

A tale of two tails: Commuting and the fuel price response in driving

“…Any Denmark-wide changes would be addressed directly with our time controls, so any concern would have to be a region-specific change that is correlated with work distance. The only meaningful change we uncovered was the addition of a line to the Copenhagen metro between 2002 and 2007 (Mulalic, Pilegaard, and Rouwendal, 2015). This would not be captured in our variable for public transport access.…”

“…To address any possible endogeneity concern relating to our variable for public transport access, we also examine a specification where we instrument for public transport access with municipality-level population data from 1916, which is the earliest year complete municipality-level population data are available. 25 This approach follows Durantan and Turner (2011), Mulalic, Pilegaard, and Rouwendal (2015), and other recent papers using historical data that determine the location of rail and road lines, but otherwise should not influence outcomes today.…”

How Personal Accessibility and Frequency of Travel Affect Ownership Decisions on Mobility Resources

“…The authors accounted for the results by referring to the specific conditions of the urban areas under study. According to the study of Mulalic, Pilegaard, and Rouwendal [6] the extension of the metro system in Copenhagen led to a slight decrease in car ownership. At the same time, the city centre experienced a substantial increase in residents.…”

The Billion Dollar Question

“…While studies have shown that public transport supply has an impact on car ownership, it is typically low. All things kept equal, the large public transport investment such as a major extension of the underground network might decrease car ownership by 1% to 3% (Mulalic, Pilegaard, and Rouwendal, 2015). A plausible explanation is that public transport services do not offer the same level of flexibility than personal transportation because of uneven coverage in space and time, so owning a car is still necessary for occasional trips.…”