Lee Munnich passes on news that famed transportation economist, Herb Mohring, passed away on June 4. His biography in wikipedia is below:
Herbert Mohring: "Herbert Mohring was a transportation economist who taught at the University of Minnesota from 1961-1994. He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959.
He is widely known for his identification of what was dubbed the Mohring effect of increasing returns in public transportation (see: Mohring (1972) for details).
Mohring and Harwitz (1962) also showed that the revenues from the first-best congestion tax exactly cover the construction costs of highways when highways possess constant returns to scale.
Important Works
Mohring, Herbert, Optimization and Scale Economies in Urban Bus Transportation, American Economic Review 62, no. 4 (September 1972): 591-604.
Mohring, Herbert, The Peak Load Problem with Increasing Returns and Pricing Constraints, American Economic Review 60, no. 4 (September 1970): 693-705.
Mohring, H. and Harwitz, M., Highway Benefits: An Analytical Framework, Ch 2, pp 57–90. (1962)"
Much of his widely cited scholarly work can be accessed here.
A review of a paper extending Mohring's work: Cost recovery from congestion tolls with random capacity and demand and risk aversion by Robin Lindsey was given at the session in honor of Herb Mohring International Transport Economics Conference. June 16, 2009.
A policy presentation by Herb's friend David Lewis presented at the same session: America's Traffic Congestion Problem: Toward a Framework for Nationwide Reform.
Update 6/15/2012: Obituary published in Star Tribune.