Commuting

Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular or often repeated travel between locations, even when not work-related. The modes of travel, time taken and distance traveled in commuting varies widely across the globe. Most people in least-developed countries continue to walk to work. The cheapest method of commuting after walking is usually by bicycle, so this is common in low-income countries but is also increasingly practised by people in wealthier countries for environmental and health reasons. In middle-income countries, motorcycle commuting is very common. The next technology adopted as countries develop is more dependent on location: in more populous, older cities, especially in Eurasia mass transit (rail, bus, etc.) predominates, while in smaller, younger cities, and large parts o

Congestion and departure time choice equilibrium in urban road networks

Raphael Ali Francis Lamotte

When drivers are regularly faced with congestion, they try to optimize their departure time. If the demand and the road network evolve slowly enough, the entire system may approach an equilibrium, i.e. a state such that no one can be better off by unilaterally changing departure time. The transportation community has devoted a significant effort to identify such equilibria. The ultimate goal is to be able to predict the consequences of large infrastructure projects and to design smart policies to alleviate congestion. Yet, several issues still limit the applicability of the existing literature. This thesis identifies three complementary challenges and attempts to address them. We first investigate whether, from a theoretical viewpoint, real world unidirectional flows are likely to be in a near-equilibrium state. Our analytical findings reveal the influence of schedule preferences on stability, and explain why morning commutes are more likely to be unstable than evening ones. Fortunately, user heterogeneity or socially optimal pricing can soften the effects of instability. Residual oscillations result in a congestion cost decomposition that differs from the one observed at equilibrium, but the overall average congestion cost at equilibrium is remarkably accurate. We then characterize departure time choice equilibria in isotropic regions, representing multi-directional road networks. In this context, users can slow down others who started their trips earlier and trip length is an important determinant of departure time choice. We show that with a widely used type of schedule preferences, users with long trips tend to avoid the peak period. Although the First-In, First-Out (FIFO) property does not hold in general with heterogeneous trip lengths, such a pattern emerges among families of early and late users having the same preferences. Simulations suggest that the social cost and its decomposition greatly differ from those observed in unidirectional settings. We finally propose an alternative way of reducing congestion, based on an optional booking service with dedicated right-of-way. Such a service would be advantageously implemented with shared and/or autonomous vehicles, due to similar requirements and complementarity. We recognize that participation to such a program would entail an alternative-specific inconvenience and evaluate the consequences on welfare depending on the way it is administrated and on the capacity split. Overall, this thesis advances the state of knowledge regarding the prevailing traffic conditions and suggests ways to improve them. The adopted approach is largely analytical to provide insight and generality. Complementary simulations add realism and push back the limits of tractability.

EPFL2018

"Immigration, Innovation, and Knowledge Diffusion"

Gabriele Cristelli

This dissertation studies the relationship between immigration and innovation. It adopts an empirical perspective and focuses on Switzerland, combining the use of patent data and immigration administrative records. The first essay is based on a novel database on immigrant inventors and explores their role in Swiss R&D activities, their productivity, and inventive career before and after immigration. It shows that highly productive inventors are over-represented among immigrants and that foreign inventors tend to enter Switzerland early in their careers and with little prior inventive experience. The second essay studies the innovation effects of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), which lifted immigration restrictions for EU citizens to Switzerland after its introduction in 2002. It exploits a natural experiment generated by regional differences in the exposure to the AFMP and influx of foreign workers. It finds that the AFMP introduction increased regional patenting in Switzerland and did not depress the inventive output of its neighbouring countries. In addition, Swiss inventors did not reduce their inventive activity due to newly arrived foreigners. Further results show that the AFMP had a positive effect on incumbent inventors' productivity, increasing the number of foreign collaborators and the variety of technical knowledge available.The third essay also focuses on the AFMP and studies the effects of the Swiss and the German labor markets' integration on technical knowledge diffusion. Using patent citation data and textual similarity measures, it demonstrates that the abolition of immigration restrictions for commuters residing in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and working in Switzerland increased the diffusion of German inventions patented in commuters' residential locations into Switzerland.

EPFL2021

Congestion and departure time choice equilibrium in urban road networks

Raphael Ali Francis Lamotte

EPFL2018

Congestion and departure time choice equilibrium in urban road networks

"Immigration, Innovation, and Knowledge Diffusion"

Congestion During the Morning Commute: On the Impacts of Scheduling Preferences.

Congestion and departure time choice equilibrium in urban road networks

Congestion During the Morning Commute: On the Impacts of Scheduling Preferences.

"Immigration, Innovation, and Knowledge Diffusion"