Potential economic impacts of technological and organizational innovations in intermodal access to major passenger terminals.

This report deals with the potential economic impacts of innovations such as smart ticketing and instantaneous access to rail and modal connection information schedules. First the qualitative role of technical and organisational innovations is explored within the framework of intermodality. Secondly, a simple, quantitative, parametric model is described. The model is then used to analyse the impact of technical and organisational innovations on rail travel demand, accessibility and passenger welfare under the assumption of bounded rationality. Provided that the model captures the major processes in play, the results will show the potential effects of policy choices and technological innovations both on their own and in a combined form, thus enabling discussion of their relative merits and synergies. An analysis of quantitative results shows that the effect is positive, highly non-linear, and prone to cumulative effects due to far-reaching impacts related, for instance, to the economics of climate change. For the covering abstract see ITRD E146823