1. Discuss the relationship between improved transportation, land values, benefi
ID: 2423543 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Discuss the relationship between improved transportation, land values, benefits, and possible associated environmental costs. Provide examples of potential positive, as well as negative impacts.
2. Transportation policies directing and promoting transportation safety reliability, and national security have been in place on the federal level since 1887. Research two federal agencies and discuss specific regulations and public policy enforced today. From a point of view of providers and transportation users, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of increasing regulations relating to transportation safety and security. Substantiate your discussion with specific examples and provide links to your sources.
3. Discuss value-of-service pricing and cost-of-service pricing. Expand your answer with a discussion of how the two concepts are related and provide relevant examples to substantiate your answer. Be sure to provide references.
Explanation / Answer
1)
Transportation projects can have various impacts on a a community’s economic development objectives, such as productivity, employment, business activity, property values, investment and tax revenues (in this case "community" can range in scale from individual households to cities, regions, nations or even the entire world).
In general, transport projects that improve overall accessibility (i.e., they improve businesses ability to provide goods and services, and people's ability to access education, employment and services) and reduce transportation costs (including travel time, vehicle operating costs, road and parking facility costs, accident and pollution damages) tend to increase economic productivity and development. Care is needed to avoid double counting impacts that are already counted in travel time and vehicle cost savings, emission or safety benefits. Many economic impacts are economic transfers (one person, group or area benefits at another's expense) while others are true resource changes (overall economic productivity increases or declines). In many situations, the distribution of impacts is important; for example, from the perspective of the people who gain from an economic transfer, it is a true benefit, but not from society's overall perspective.
It is important to consider the full range of economic impacts, both positive and negative, that a transport project may cause. For example, an urban highway expansion may improve motorists' access and reduce their costs per vehicle-mile, but by creating a barrier to pedestrian travel and stimulating more dispersed land use development patterns, reduces access by other modes, and increases the total amount of travel required to reach destinations. Similarly, improving access to a particular area can expose businesses to more competition (for example, if previously captive local customers can more easily access regional shopping centers), reducing business activity there.
Example:
2)
The railroads in the United were the first major industry to be economically regulated by the federal government. The driving factor in this decision was the railroads tendency to be mono- polistic in nature. Because of the high level of fixed investment in track and equipment, the railroads faced little, if any, competition during the developmental period of the United States in the late 1880s. Because of this, many shippers complained that rail prices were excessiveand service was poor. This was especially true for small and captive shippers. As a result, the United States federal government regulated the railroad industry with the passage of the Act to Regulate Commerce of 1887.
3)
As a phrase (cost of service), it means what it appears to mean: the cost of providing a service. In the energy industry and other fields. It can also be used as an adjective (cost-of-service or simply COS) to denote rate structures, analysis and expenses among other things.
Cost-of-service pricing is the setting of a price for a service based on the costs incurred in providing it. COS pricing can be applied to an individual customer based on the costs of serving that customer (usually this is done only with large-scale customers or customers who are costly or troublesome to serve), or as an average cost of service for a group of similar customers.
Cost-of-service pricing is a common method for setting prices for some types of publicly-funded services. It is sometimes applied to rate structures for privately-held utilities in deregulated markets to insure that the provision of an essential service in a difficult or expensive market isn't limited to a select few who can afford it.
In the energy industry, cost-of-service and value-of-service rates can be mixed for the same service. For example, an energy customer may pay cost-of-service rates for the actual energy they consume, but they may pay value-of-service rates for ancillary services such as backup and maintenance of the distribution system required to serve them.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.