Economics of Infrastructure Investment: Public Transportation
Organized by Edward L. Glaeser and James M. Poterba
Supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation
April 28, 2023
NBER, 2nd floor conference room, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, and Zoom

Friday, April 28

8:45 am

Coffee and Pastries

9:10 am

Welcome
Edward L. Glaeser, Harvard University and NBER
James M. Poterba, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

9:15 am

Is Public Bus Transit a Competitor or a Subordinate to Public Rail Transit?

Austin J. Drukker, Federal Trade Commission
Clifford Winston, The Brookings Institution

10:00 am

Who Benefits from Faster Public Transit?

Prottoy A. Akbar, Aalto University

10:45 am

Break

11:00 am

Accounting for Public Transit Construction Costs (slides)
Alon Levy, New York University

11:45 am

Are There Too Many Minibuses in Cape Town? Privatized Provision of Public Transit (slides)

Lucas J. Conwell, University College London

12:30 pm

Lunch

1:15 pm

Eliminating Fares to Expand Opportunities: Experimental Evidence on the Impacts of Free Public Transportation on Economic Disparities

Rebecca J. Brough, University of California, Davis
Matthew Freedman, University of California, Irvine
David C. Phillips, University of Notre Dame

2:00 pm

Autonomous Vehicles: Substitute for or Complement to Public Transit Systems (slides)

Yantao Huang, Argonne National Laboratory
Kara Kockelman, University of Texas at Austin
Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy, Argonne National Laboratory
Venu Garikapati, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

2:45 pm

Break

3:00 pm

An Economic Analysis of U.S Public Transit Carbon Emissions Dynamics

Robert Huang, Stanford University
Matthew E. Kahn, University of Southern California and NBER

3:45 pm

Closing Discussion

4:00 pm

Adjourn