The distribution of crowding costs in public transport: New evidence from Paris

• We estimate a distribution of crowding costs for Paris subway users.
• Using double-bounded bids to reveal preferences, we control for cross-bid correlation.
• Greater travel time marginal disutilities arise for higher congestion levels.
• The crowding-disutility relationship is found to be linear.
• We use our results to assess the costs and benefits of a subway project in Paris.

Whilst congestion in automobile traffic increases trip durations, this is often not the case in rail-based public transport where congestion rather leads to in-vehicle crowding, often neglected in empirical studies. Using original survey data from Paris, this article assesses the distribution of comfort costs of congestion in public transport. Estimating willingness to pay for less crowded trips at different levels of in-vehicle passenger density we cannot reject a simple linear relationship between crowding costs and density. We apply our results to the cost-benefit analysis of a recent Parisian public transport project.