Nicolas Wagner

The economics of motorway concessions in France

I lead a large work on French motorway concessions. The resulting report presents their economic model, measured their profitability and presented recommandation on how they should be regulated.

The Decarbonsing Transport initiative

The Decarbonising Transport initiative promotes carbon-neutral mobility to help stop climate change. It provides decision makers with tools to select CO2 mitigation measures that deliver on their climate commitments. At the OECD I was involved in several projects within the decarbonising Transport initiative. For example :

• The investing in growth, investing in climate report
• A project on how to decarbonise the personal vehicle fleet
• An input paper for the World bank report Beyond the Gap : How Countries Can Afford the Infrastructure They Need while Protecting the Planet

Accessibility measurements (2017-2018)

Spatial accessibility relates to how, and how well, people access to jobs and services. There is currently a renewed interest among transport planners about urban accessibility. I have built the ITF urban accessibility platform, a set of databases and computational scripts that allow producing accessibility measurements for all cities of the world.

National low carbon strategy (2014 - 2016)

I have been a key member of the national low carbon strategy (NLCS) of 2015.

Among other things, I worked actively on the transport scenario and conducted a lond term demand forecastThe results are currently still used as a reference for transport policies appraisal by the ministry in charge of transport.

I also conducted an appraisal of macroeconomic effects of the NLCS using a CGE model. Download the report on the macroeconomic effects of the NLCS

Socio-economic assessments or transport policies (2013 - 2016)

During my years at the central administration of the ministry in charge of transport, I conducted several socio-economic assessments. In particular:

• On "Trains d'équilibre du territoire" (available on request)
• On policies supporting cycling
• On long distance coaches

I was also part of the scientific committee of the national guideline for socio-economic appraisal of transport investements.

Residential economy (2010-2013)

Based on the theoretical framework developed by Laurent Davezies, this study deals with the consequence of an increase in transport cost on residential economy in South East France. We produced 4 publications:

• Mobility patterns in South East France
• Access to services in South East France
• Territorial vulnerability in South East France
• Zoom on a specific area

Additionally, I authored a methodological report that was used to replicate the study in four other parts of France.

Assessing transport policies in the Vallée du Rhône (2011 - 2012)

In 2006, a national debate on widening the heavily congested highways of the Vallée du Rhône took place. It resulted in the creation of an observatory of the transport activities. I was charge to define the observatory and to produce its first assessment report, covering the 2006 to 2012 period. In this context, I lead a team of four engineers and a designer.

Download summary report

Local authority assistance for sustainable mobility plans (2010 - 2013)

I have conducted several expertises for local authorities. It usually consisted in small studies on specific topics within a larger project. For instance, I offered technical assistance for:

• the development of the multi-modal transport model of the Geneva's urban area (as part of a french-swiss cooperation).
• the sustainable mobility plan of the Gresivaudan (a small urban area near Grenoble).

I also had a minor participation in a small methodological summary on urban mobility plans appraisal : "L'évaluation des PDU : des convergences d'approches pour une réalité complexe"

Large scale transport surveys (2010 - 2013)

While I was working at CETE de de Lyon (now CEREMA), I was head of project for many survey. In particular I conducted a large sruvey (> 10 000 households) for the region Rhône-Alpes. I was also responsible for the main statistical aspects (survey plan and re-weighting of the results using marginal calibration techniques).

Development of a traffic microsimulator for Renault (2005 - 2006)

For over 25 years, Renault has been developing driving simulators for new vehicle development or research activities. I spent one year at in Renault Driving simulator and virtual reality department, developing the traffic simulation module of SCANeR© II, the in-house driving simulator tool. I investigated state-of-the-art modeling techniques, in particular Bayesian networks approaches, and implemented them in the software.