Public transportYou would think anyone who had to suffer this on their daily commute would try avoiding rush hour. But it is a perennial problem of public transport systems that, as they add passengers, travel patterns become more “peaky”—ever more concentrated around morning and evening office hours.Reducing peak-time congestion would not only save transport costs (smoothed occupancy would mean less half-empty off-peak trains, which cost as much to run as crowded peak ones); it would also save time for transport users, potentially improving productivity at work and economic output.
The government of the city state of Singapore—11m public transport journeys a day, average commute time 35 minutes—is planning to pilot an incentive scheme later this year to do exactly that. Commuters will earn credit for each journey taken (triple credit for off-peak journeys) to earn a chance of cash prizes in weekly lotteries.
The scheme would be the first city-scale application of an idea toyed with in 2008 by Infosys, an Indian software company, to encourage commuters to its main research site in Bangalore to use the company’s off-peak buses. That scheme, the work of Stanford academic Balaji Prabhakar, doubled the number of off-peak commuters, significantly reducing congestion on the Infosys peak-time buses.
Mr Prabhakar says his idea, a system of lotteries, relies on the behavioural-economics insight that the average person is risk-seeking when stakes are small. Offer individuals 20p to leave the house an hour earlier, and most will say no. But a 1-in-50 chance of winning £10 may seem more enticing.
The risk-seeking effect is amplified in small networks: regularly hearing about other winners leads individuals to overestimate their own chances of success. This worked particularly well in Bangalore, where Infosys commuters shared a workplace, and scheme winners were advertised through the company. The scheme in Singapore would aim to create a social network among users to produce a similar effect.
The hope is that the project will eventually be self-funding. Infosys managed just that in Bangalore, where the prize pot of 100,000 rupees a week could have been quadrupled before eating up the savings generated from running 8 fewer buses. Singapore has expanded the capacity of its public transport system signifcantly in recent years at great cost, so the potential for savings is huge.
The general principle that small rewards can generate positive behaviour, and pay for themselves in the long-run, has wide implications. In addition to the Singapore project, Mr Prabhakar is running a pilot to reduce traffic on the Stanford campus with funding from the US Department of Transportation. Rewards-based schemes are more politically appealing than punitive charges. Several cities have tried to implement congestion charges (fixed fees to drive into crowded areas) but most have failed. Such charges are seen as little more than additional taxes, and if there is only one tariff, they hit the poor the hardest. Rather than fuel resentment, incentive schemes could encourage commuters to change behaviour voluntarily, and even gladly.
Public transport
01/01/0001
You would think anyone who had to suffer this on their daily commute would try avoiding rush hour. But it is a perennial problem of public transport systems that, as they add passengers, travel patterns become more “peaky”—ever more concentrated around morning and evening office hours.
Reducing peak-time congestion would not only save transport costs (smoothed occupancy would mean less half-empty off-peak trains, which cost as much to run as crowded peak ones); it would also save time for transport users, potentially improving productivity at work and economic output.
The government of the city state of Singapore—11m public transport journeys a day, average commute time 35 minutes—is planning to pilot an incentive scheme later this year to do exactly that. Commuters will earn credit for each journey taken (triple credit for off-peak journeys) to earn a chance of cash prizes in weekly lotteries.
The scheme would be the first city-scale application of an idea toyed with in 2008 by Infosys, an Indian software company, to encourage commuters to its main research site in Bangalore to use the company’s off-peak buses. That scheme, the work of Stanford academic Balaji Prabhakar, doubled the number of off-peak commuters, significantly reducing congestion on the Infosys peak-time buses.
Mr Prabhakar says his idea, a system of lotteries, relies on the behavioural-economics insight that the average person is risk-seeking when stakes are small. Offer individuals 20p to leave the house an hour earlier, and most will say no. But a 1-in-50 chance of winning £10 may seem more enticing.
The risk-seeking effect is amplified in small networks: regularly hearing about other winners leads individuals to overestimate their own chances of success. This worked particularly well in Bangalore, where Infosys commuters shared a workplace, and scheme winners were advertised through the company. The scheme in Singapore would aim to create a social network among users to produce a similar effect.
The hope is that the project will eventually be self-funding. Infosys managed just that in Bangalore, where the prize pot of 100,000 rupees a week could have been quadrupled before eating up the savings generated from running 8 fewer buses. Singapore has expanded the capacity of its public transport system signifcantly in recent years at great cost, so the potential for savings is huge.
The general principle that small rewards can generate positive behaviour, and pay for themselves in the long-run, has wide implications. In addition to the Singapore project, Mr Prabhakar is running a pilot to reduce traffic on the Stanford campus with funding from the US Department of Transportation. Rewards-based schemes are more politically appealing than punitive charges. Several cities have tried to implement congestion charges (fixed fees to drive into crowded areas) but most have failed. Such charges are seen as little more than additional taxes, and if there is only one tariff, they hit the poor the hardest. Rather than fuel resentment, incentive schemes could encourage commuters to change behaviour voluntarily, and even gladly.
The economics