Professor Phill Wheat

Profile

Professor Phill Wheat is an economist and applied econometrician whose primary area of interest is the analysis of transport costs and demand and how these are influenced by the competitive, market structure and institutional factors within transport markets. His work is a mixture of applied econometric analysis, development of econometric performance measurement techniques and regulatory economics.

Phill has a track record of undertaking research, academic expert advice and knowledge transfer activities to a range of clients, including local authorities, central government (such as the Department for Transport, Office of Rail and Road and Civil Aviation Authority), the EC and transport firms (including the Rail Delivery Group, Heathrow Airport Limited, SNCF Reseau and IATA). He is cofounder of the NHT CQC Network which provides cost and carbon analysis to over 90 Local Highway Authorities in England. Phill has recently become Co-Director of the Healthy Low-carbon Transport Hub funded by the UK’s Medical Research Council aimed at ensuring a decarbonisation transport pathway that results in maximum health outcomes and avoids unintended health disbenefits, through development of a robust evaluation framework for transport interventions which includes health and health equity quantification.

He was a member of the ORR’s Road Expert Panel and is a member of the DfT’s College of Experts. He has had similar academic advisor roles at the Department for Transport on Aviation econometric demand modelling, and at Office of Rail and Road on the Periodic Review of Network Rail 2009-2013.

Responsibilities

• Interim Head of School

Research interests

Healthy Low-carbon Transport Hub (HLTH) (Medical Research Council funded)

Phill co-leads (with the Universities of Southampton and Birmingham and UCL) a £6m investment by MRC to accelerate the adoption of research to facilitate positive health outcomes from decarbonisation in the transport sector. He is responsible for coordinating analysis of secondary and primary data to inform evaluation.

Transport Infrastructure Efficiency Strategy (TIES) Living Lab (Department for Transport and Innovate UK funded)

Phill led the ex post evaluation project within the TIES Living Lab to understand what drives project cost, construction duration and carbon & environmental performance. This involved analysis of Highways England’s major schemes as well as data from other large transport infrastructure managers.

UK Department for Transport - Chief Scientific Office: Member College of Experts

Appointed to the College with expertise in transport infrastructure performance and modelling.

Peer Reviewer Transport Appraisal and Economic Density Phase 2 (DfT funded)

Peer review of the methodology and empirical findings of the work of Imperial Consultants.

Peer Reviewer New Zealand Structure of Costs and Charges (New Zealand Ministry of Transport)

Peer review of road infrastructure, user and external cost analysis to inform charges across transport modes in New Zealand.

Academic Review of Fare Elasticity and Perception Scenario Recommendations (GBR/DfT funded)

ITS Leeds were commissioned by DfT/GBR to undertake an academic review of an internal policy paper developed by the GBR Transition Team on the subject of passenger fares regulation.

Academic Peer Reviewer Rail demand econometrics to evaluate on-track competition (Office for Rail and Road funded) Reviewer of ORR’s own analysis of the demand impact of on-track competition. Phill’s involvement is focused on assurance of the econometric approach and implementation.

Generalised Journey Time Research (Passenger Demand Forecasting Council funded – joint with SYSTRA)

Phill led and undertook the econometric analysis of the RUDD ticket sales database to quantify the impact of GJT on passenger rail demand. The study was successful in deriving robust elasticities and scales for the PDFH-based headway and interchange penalties based on analysis of ticket sales data.

Disruption Study (Passenger Demand Forecasting Council funded – joint with SYSTRA)

Phill lead the econometric analysis of a bespoke periodic Lennon ticket sales database to quantify the impact of both planned and unplanned disruptions on passenger rail demand. He was responsible for quality assurance of the analysis alongside advertising on detailed decision making processes.

Advice on Statistical Confidence of Appraisal Non-Work Values of Time (Department for Transport)

Phill was project manager for this statistical exercise to calculate confidence intervals for appraisal values of non-work values of travel time savings.

Air Transport Passenger Demand Forecasting Model Re-estimation (Department for Transport)

Academic Advisor to the DfT relating to econometric re-estimation of the National Air Passenger Demand Model (NAPDM).

Rail Industry Dataset for Econometric Analysis (RIDEA) programme (Passenger Demand Forecasting Council funded)

Principal Investigator for two consecutive projects aimed to develop a new high frequency passenger demand dataset using ticket sales data for the rail industry focused on enabling robust econometric modelling of the determinants of travel demand.

CQC Efficiency Network (English Local Authority funded)

Phill is co-founder of the CQC Efficiency Network (subscription service) – a collaborative network of highways departments of Local Authorities in Britain to enable the identification of best practice in highway maintenance. Coverage of cost and carbon. https://nhtnetwork.org/nht_product/cqc-efficiency/

Scientific Committee Member Maintenance and Renewal Cost Analysis in French Railway Infrastructure (for SNCF Reseau)

Member of the project steering committee advising on the research directions for project aimed at quantifying marginal wear and tear on the French railway network.

Panel Member Road Expert Panel (Office of Rail and Road)

One of Eight Panel Members providing advice and challenge to ORR in their function to monitor Highways England. Phill’s role is specialising in areas of economic performance benchmarking.

Academic Advisor Estimating Network Rail Efficiency Adjustments (Office of Rail and Road funded)

Provided a review of ORR’s econometric internal benchmarking analysis and suggested future developments.

Working Group Member Private Investment in Transport Infrastructure: Dealing with Uncertainty in Contracts (International Transport Forum/OECD Working Group)

Contribution focused on the role of economic regulation as an alternative to PPPs.

Rail Industry Dataset for Econometric Analysis (RIDEA) programme (Passenger Demand Forecasting Council funded)

Principal Investigator for two consecutive projects aimed to develop a new high frequency passenger demand dataset using ticket sales data for the rail industry focused on enabling robust econometric modelling of the determinants of travel demand.

Advice on the relative costs of open access operators relative to franchise operators (Competition and Markets Authority)

Phill was principal investigator for this comparison of the costs of open access operators relative to franchised passenger operators using an econometric model developed over past research projects.

Primary investigator (PI)

• CQC Efficiency Network - Customer, Quality, Cost

Qualifications

• PhD, “Econometric cost analysis in vertically separated railways”, University of Leeds
• MA, Transport Economics, University of Leeds
• BSc (Honours), Economics and Econometrics, University of Nottingham

Research groups and institutes

• Economics and Appraisal