Road pricing — an outsider's view of American experiences

Abstract

Substantial changes in urban transport policy have taken place over the past decade. The concern with expanding infrastructure and the preoccupation with providing sufficient road capacity to meet the increasing demand of unrestricted car use, which characterized transport policy in the 1950s and 1960s, has gradually given way to the idea that there is a need to restrain motor traffic if urban society is to function efficiently. A variety of restrictive physical traffic management, land use planning and economic policies have, in consequence, been pursued. One option which has attracted considerable attention in the academic literature, but which has been received more cooly by policy‐makers, is the possibility of optimizing urban traffic congestion through the imposition of road pricing. The introduction and relative success of the area licensing scheme in Singapore has added fuel to the arguments of the advocates of such a policy. This review is not directly concerned with either the experiment with road pricing in Singapore nor the theoretical debates which have taken place concerning the potential merits and defects of such policies but rather looks at the applied work in the United States which has looked into the practical implications of road pricing for its cities. Further, it seeks to explore, again drawing on American experiences, just why there has been so much opposition to the employment of economic pricing principles in the urban road transport market. The author presents the results of an SSRC sponsored study into the practical problems of introducing road pricing to cities in the United States.     

Singapore motorisation restraint and its implications on travel behaviour and urban sustainability

The example of Singapore shows that rapid urban and economic growth does not have to bring traffic congestion and pollution. Singapore has chosen to restrain car traffic demand due to its limited land supply. Transport policy based on balanced development of road and transit infrastructure and restraint of traffic has been consistently implemented for the past 30 years. Combined with land use planning, it resulted in a modern transport system, which is free from major congestion and provides users with different travel alternatives. As the economic growth caused a substantial increase in demand for cars, several pricing policies were introduced with the aim of restraining car ownership and usage. Growth of the vehicle population is now controlled and potentially congested roads are subject to road pricing. These measures help to keep the roads free from major congestion, maintain car share of work trips below 25% and keep the transport energy usage low. Although Singapore conditions are in many aspects unique, its travel demand experience can provide useful lessons for other rapidly growing cities in Asia.

Urban transport in Germany: providing feasible alternatives to the car

With the second highest level of car ownership in the world, and the third highest population density in Europe, Germany has adopted a range of policies to balance the many private benefits of car use with its serious social and environmental problems. In order to ‘tame’ the car, most German cities have implemented a twofold strategy of expanding and improving pedestrian, bicycling and public transport alternatives simultaneously with restricting car use and making it more expensive. That has increased political acceptability since the car‐restrictive measures are not perceived as mere punishment of car drivers. The results of this coordinated urban transport strategy have been impressive. Germany, as a whole, has managed to increase public transport use and to stabilize the car share of modal split. Some cities, of course, have been more successful than others, and this paper examines three of the most successful cities: Münster, Freiburg and Munich. In each of the cities, the percentage of travel by bicycling, walking and public transport has been raised over the past 20 years, while the car's share of modal split has fallen. This article documents the range of policies used to restrict car use, both in Germany as a whole, and in the three case‐study cities in particular. The key to success is found to be mutually reinforcing transport and land‐use policies. It is the combination of a whole set of coordinated policies that explains the dramatic success in changing travel behavior.     

Accelerating the transformation to a low carbon passenger transport system: The role of car purchase taxes,feebates, road taxes and scrappage incentives in the UK

The transition to a low carbon transport world requires a host of demand and supply policies to be developed and deployed. Pricing and taxation of vehicle ownership plays a major role, as it affects purchasing behavior, overall ownership and use of vehicles. There is a lack in robust assessments of the life cycle energy and environmental effects of a number of key car pricing and taxation instruments, including graded purchase taxes, vehicle excise duties and vehicle scrappage incentives. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring which type of vehicle taxation accelerates fuel, technology and purchasing behavioral transitions the fastest with (i) most tailpipe and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions savings, (ii) potential revenue neutrality for the Treasury and (iii) no adverse effects on car ownership and use.The UK Transport Carbon Model was developed further and used to assess long term scenarios of low carbon fiscal policies and their effects on transport demand, vehicle stock evolution, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. The modeling results suggest that policy choice, design and timing can play crucial roles in meeting multiple policy goals. Both CO₂ grading and tightening of CO₂ limits over time are crucial in achieving the transition to low carbon mobility. Of the policy scenarios investigated here the more ambitious and complex car purchase tax and feebate policies are most effective in accelerating low carbon technology uptake, reducing life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and, if designed carefully, can avoid overburdening consumers with ever more taxation whilst ensuring revenue neutrality. Highly graduated road taxes (or VED) can also be successful in reducing emissions; but while they can provide handy revenue streams to governments that could be recycled in accompanying low carbon measures they are likely to face opposition by the driving population and car lobby groups. Scrappage schemes are found to save little carbon and may even increase emissions on a life cycle basis.The main policy implication of this work is that in order to reduce both direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions from transport governments should focus on designing incentive schemes with strong up-front price signals that reward ‘low carbon’ and penalize ‘high carbon’. Policy instruments should also be subject to early scrutiny of the longer term impacts on government revenue and pay attention to the need for flanking policies to boost these revenues and maintain the marginal cost of driving.     

Future use of stage bus services

The reasons underlying the decline of stage bus services in the U.K. over the past 30 years seem to be well understood, and the probable future trends have been projected using a quantitative forecasting model. The model considers U.K. bus services at a very aggregate level, but it breaks the demand into specific user groups: work trips, children's travel, travel by the elderly, and all other travel, and separately for households with and without a private car. Forecasts depend very sensitively on the level of economic growth assumed, since this governs the two major factors which determine public transport use — car ownership and the cost of operating the services. If the economy could recover its historic growth rates, a further substantial decline in bus use seems inevitable under most realistic assumptions. However, with the present economic outlook, a lower growth rate seems likely to persist for some time, and in this case public transport use will become much more stable in the 1990's; a tendency which would be helped if there were large increases in fuel prices. Many of the Metropolitan Counties have adopted policies of strongly restraining future rises in fares, in some cases to the extent of freezing fares in monetary terms. The effects of such policies on both patronage and subsidies are considered here, and although much of the current political attention is focussed on controlling fares, the question of balance between fares and service levels is also discussed. Lastly, it must be admitted that these predictions are based on knowledge which is largely restricted to the short-term effects of transport policies. The nature of our uncertainty about longer-term effects, and the possible size of them, is considered in terms of sensitivity-testing of the prediction model.     

Urban passenger transport in the United States and Europe: a comparative analysis of public policies

This is the second part of a two‐part series that examines recent developments in urban passenger transport in the United States and Europe, focusing on the roles and impacts of the public sector as these have varied by country and over time. The first part of the series described public policies for roadway systems and private car use, whereas this second part concentrates on public transport. After a review of demand and supply trends, the article evaluates government policies in terms of public vs private ownership and operation, public regulation, financing responsibility by government level, types and amounts of subsidy, and impacts of ownership, regulation, and financing arrangements on costs and productivity. This second part concludes with an overall comparison between Europe and the United States, and considers how Europeans and Americans might learn from each other's successes and mistakes in order to improve transport policies.     

Land Transport Policy and Public Transport in Singapore

Singapore has a sophisticated and efficient system of land transport to serve a growing demand for transportation. Constrained by limited space, a comprehensive set of land transport policies has been in place to balance the growth in transport demand and the effectiveness and efficiency of the land transport system. A multi-pronged approach has been used to achieve the objective of a world-class transportation system. These include integration of urban and transport planning, expansion of the road network and improvement of the transport infrastructure, harnessing the latest technology in network and traffic management, managing vehicle ownership and usage, and improvement and regulations of public transport (Ministry of Transport (MOT) (2003) Policy and Regulations, Land Transport, Available: www.mot.gov.sg, Date of Access: 15 September 2003). Singapore was the first country in the world to introduce various new techniques, notably the Area License Scheme (ALS) in 1975 and the Vehicle Quota System (VQS) in 1990. An Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system replaced the ALS in 1998 to take the role of congestion management, the experience of which has also drawn particular attention from many large cities in the world. In 2003, the world’s first and only fully automatic heavy rail Mass Rapid Transit system was opened to the public, marking a new chapter in Singapore’s innovative approach to solving its land transport problem. This paper reviews the land transport policy implemented in Singapore and pays special emphasis to its public transportation systems.     

Car ownership and attitudes towards transport modes for shopping purposes in Singapore

The heightening of issues, such as sustainable development and environmental pollution have resulted in many governments pursuing transport policies which aim to promote the use of public transport modes, including walking, as well as discourage the use of the car for various activities, such as shopping, work, recreation, etc. However, little has been done on understanding shoppers' perceptions of transport modes for shopping purposes. Particularly, not much research has been done on examining the attitudes of car owners and non-car owners towards transport modes for shopping purposes. Using Singapore as a study area, this study has attempted to analyse car owners and non-car owners' perceptions of the different types of transport modes (i.e., car, taxi, bus, mass rapid transit and walk) in their shopping trips. The research found that each transport mode has its own unique set of attributes. In addition, car owners and non-car owners portray different attitudes towards the public transport modes and the car. This calls for different strategies for these two groups of shoppers in encouraging them to use the public transport modes and restrain the use of the car.     

Bicycle in Shanghai: Movement patterns,cyclist attitudes and the impact of traffic separation

Transportation demand continues to grow at an even faster rate than the economies of Chinese cities, placing increasing pressure on a limited road network. In certain cities of the more highly developed coastal plains, the bicycle assumed a dominant role in urban transport in the 1980s, a position maintained in the 1990s. In Shanghai, the bicycle continues to play a dominant role, although policies favour a switch to public transport. In the present paper, cyclist attitudes toward public transport policies were probed with a pilot questionnaire at two important central destinations. An important example of current policies with regard to bicycles involves the creation of separate networks for motorized and non-motorized modes. A pilot scheme for eventual application over a very large area was recently introduced in the central area. We report on the traffic volumes by mode and street before and after its implementation in 1999. Both bicycle and car volumes diminished in the central area, although the decrease was greater for bicycles. On the other hand, interviewed cyclists expressed resistance to various incentives to use public transport. The question raised here is whether the planned increase in public transport share of total intracity travel can be achieved without disincentives to use the bicycle.     

Optimization of tunnel tolls in land use and transport planning

The task of transport planning is to determine cost-effective methods of providing and improving mobility, which can include minimizing traffic congestion. A cost-effective solution to transport problems should consist of a land use pattern, a transport system an a set of road pricing policies that together bring demand and supply into balance in an efficient and equitable way. The conventional approach aimed to produce comprehensive, long-term plans for land use and transport in considerable detail, but tended to ignore the role of road pricing policy, thus ending up with solutions that might not be efficient or economical. This feature of sub-optimal road pricing policy is accentuated by the overall growth in car use, which has generated problems with the efficient use of road space. This paper presents a computer analysis system (or model) which will enable the analysis of coordinated tunnel toll pricing policies by optimising an “objective function” while satisfying the associated and other constraints. The possibility of integrating the optimal road pricing policies in the land use and transport planning are discussed. A case study based on Hong Kong data demonstrates the efficiency of optimizing tolls on two of the three harbour crossing tunnels in Hong Kong.     

Attitudes of Hong Kong residents to cars and public transport: Some policy implications

Hong Kong currently has low levels of car ownership and use due to a combination of good public transport, high population densities and high private transport costs. However, levels are rising, contributing to congestion and environmental problems. A major response by the government is to seek to increase rail's share of public transport journeys from its current level of 33% to 45% by 2016. After reviewing the transport situation in Hong Kong, the paper discusses the appropriateness of these targets as well as questioning whether they are achievable. The results of a questionnaire survey of 595 residents of Hong Kong, designed to elicit people's attitudes to cars and public transport, are analysed. It is concluded that unless the government does more to curb car ownership and use, rail targets will have little chance of being achieved.     

Assessment of an eastern European city's public transport system

The paper examines the present quality of public transport services in Budapest and compares that to the impact of growing car ownership. A review is made of the city's transport plans and future investment proposals and these are assessed in light of public transport's present and likely future competitive position compared to private cars. The paper concludes that much of the proposed investment in a metro system will not maintain public transport's competitive position in the face of rising car ownership and that other measures and investments might be more effective.     

Could you also have made this trip by another mode? An investigation of perceived travel possibilities of car and train travellers on the main travel corridors to the city of Amsterdam,The Netherlands

We investigated perceived travel possibilities (or subjective choice-sets, consideration-sets) of car and train travellers on the main corridors to the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and associations with traveller and trip characteristics. We conducted secondary analysis on a survey sample consisting of 7950 train and 19,232 car travellers. Forty-five percent of train travellers had a car in their objective choice-set, 27% of them would however never use it for this trip. Trip destination city centre, trip purpose, paying for the trip, public transport commitment, traffic congestion and parking problems were associated with consideration of car as alternative. Forty-two percent of car travellers had public transport in their subjective choice-set. The ratio between perceived public transport and objective car travel time stood out as determinant of consideration-sets, next to destination city centre, trip purpose, travel time and private versus company car ownership. On average, car travellers’ perceptions of public transport travel time exceeded objective values by 46%. We estimated that if perceptions would be more accurate, two out of three car travellers that currently do not see public transport as an alternative would include it in their choice-set, and use it from time to time. This effect has strong theoretical and policy implications.     

Transformation of transport policy in Great Britain

The British Government recently issued a white paper on its future transport strategy. Its central precept is unambiguous: current trends in traffic are unsustainable, from the point of view of the environment, business efficiency, health, and the unfeasibility of providing growth in road capacity that would keep pace with predicted growth in traffic. Much of the policy logic in the white paper stems from the explicit abandonment of `predict-and-provide' as a desirable — or possible — strategy. This leads to a recognition of the importance of a co-ordinated approach to public transport, walking and cycling, together with policies aimed at reducing less necessary travel where possible; ensuring that the costs of congestion and environmental pollution are, as far as practical, met by those who cause them (in which the revenue from new pricing systems would be kept under local control and used for transport improvements); an emphasis on better maintenance and management of the road system rather than increasing its capacity; consideration of the effects on transport of other policies in land-use, health, education etc; development of institutional structures or contractual arrangements able to bring these changes about; and conditions in which people's everyday behaviour and attitudes may be in harmony with policy, finance and environmental constraints. These themes did not arise out of the blue following the general election in 1997. They evolved over many years, especially in nearly ten years of intense discussion connected with the previous two governments' recognition that the 1989 road programme (`Roads to Prosperity'), in spite of its size and expense, would still not be nearly sufficient to keep pace with traffic growth, as well as being environmentally damaging. The process of discussion and argument has not ceased with publication of the white paper. A very interesting feature of the current debate is that its central argument is widely (though not unanimously) accepted in the media, with great emphasis on the problems of implementation. The author argues that the policy shift is genuine and firmly grounded in research, though with a number of real problems in implementation, research and methodology that will have to be addressed.     

National policy towards cars: the federal republic of Germany

Although much of the early technical development of the automobile occurred in Germany, the spread of car ownership within Germany was relatively slow up to 1933. Besides the general economic situation, this was due to the high costs of purchasing and running a car. With deliberate promotion of automobility by the national‐socialists after 1933, the pace of motorization proceeded more rapidly until the outbreak of World War II. Immediately after the war, motorization was slow to regain momentum but by the middle fifties, after the initial phase of post‐war reconstruction, the rapid build‐up of cars began again and has continued ever since. By 1986, the West German car fleet exceeded 27 million and 80% of motorized passenger kilometres were made by car.

This rapid post‐war growth was made possible by a liberal transport policy which reacted to growing car use by adaptation and provision of the necessary infrastructure. The adverse effects of vehicular traffic on the environment and on the urban quality of life moved policy at the end of the sixties towards stronger support for urban public transport and regulations for noise and exhaust emissions of automobiles. Also, the high toll of death and injuries from road accidents made improvement of road safety another important policy objective. So far, however, measures taken have fallen short of requiring changes in driver behaviour. Although there is widespread awareness of the environmental and accident costs of automobility, there is a reluctance to legislate (or for people voluntarily) to modify driving behaviour for social objectives.

This paper presents, briefly, the main instruments that have been applied in West Germany to achieve car‐related transport policy objectives, including the latest modifications in the tax system intended to foster the use of low‐emission vehicles. Possible future directions of policy towards the car, depending inter alia on changes in government, are also explored.     

Maximum car ownership under constraints of road capacity and parking space

This paper presents a model for determining the maximum number of cars by zones in view of the capacity of the road network and the number of parking spaces available. In other words, the proposed model is to examine whether existing road network and parking supply is capable of accommodating future zonal car ownership growth (or the reserve capacity in each zone); i.e. the potential maximum zonal car ownership growth that generates the road traffic within the network capacity and parking space constraints. In the proposed model, the vehicular trip production and attraction are dependent on the car ownership, available parking spaces and the accessibility measures by traffic zones. The model is formulated as a bi-level programming problem. The lower-level problem is an equilibrium trip distribution/assignment problem, while the upper-level problem is to maximize the sum of zonal car ownership by considering travellers’ route and destination choice behaviour and satisfying the network capacity and parking space constraints. A sensitivity analysis based heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the proposed bi-level car ownership problem and is illustrated with a numerical example.     

Making Cycling Irresistible: Lessons from The Netherlands,Denmark and Germany

Abstract

This article shows how the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have made bicycling a safe, convenient and practical way to get around their cities. The analysis relies on national aggregate data as well as case studies of large and small cities in each country. The key to achieving high levels of cycling appears to be the provision of separate cycling facilities along heavily travelled roads and at intersections, combined with traffic calming of most residential neighbourhoods. Extensive cycling rights of way in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are complemented by ample bike parking, full integration with public transport, comprehensive traffic education and training of both cyclists and motorists, and a wide range of promotional events intended to generate enthusiasm and wide public support for cycling. In addition to their many pro‐bike policies and programmes, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany make driving expensive as well as inconvenient in central cities through a host of taxes and restrictions on car ownership, use and parking. Moreover, strict land‐use policies foster compact, mixed‐use developments that generate shorter and thus more bikeable trips. It is the coordinated implementation of this multi‐faceted, mutually reinforcing set of policies that best explains the success of these three countries in promoting cycling. For comparison, the article portrays the marginal status of cycling in the UK and the USA, where only about 1% of trips are by bike.     

Environmental effects of a kilometre charge in road transport: an investigation for the Netherlands

This study discusses the potential environmental effects of a kilometre charge for car traffic in the Netherlands. This kilometre charge would replace the existing taxes on new cars and on car ownership. It would lead to a substantial increase in the variable costs of car use. It may lead to a doubling of these costs while at the same time the average costs of car use would not increase because the fixed taxes are strongly reduced. Four alternatives for the kilometre charge are formulated. These are estimated to lead to substantial reductions of energy and certain emissions.     

Reducing car dependence in the heart of Europe: lessons from Germany,Austria, and Switzerland

Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, and Zurich – the largest cities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – have significantly reduced the car share of trips over the past 25 years in spite of high motorisation rates. The key to their success has been a coordinated package of mutually reinforcing transport and land-use policies that have made car use slower, less convenient, and more costly, while increasing the safety, convenience, and feasibility of walking, cycling, and public transport. The mix of policies implemented in each city has been somewhat different. The German cities have done far more to promote cycling, while Zurich and Vienna offer more public transport service per capita at lower fares. All five of the cities have implemented roughly the same policies to promote walking, foster compact mixed-use development, and discourage car use. Of the car-restrictive policies, parking management has been by far the most important. The five case study cities demonstrate that it is possible to reduce car dependence even in affluent societies with high levels of car ownership and high expectations for quality of travel.     

Car ownership and public transport use: Revisiting the interaction

At the beginning of the 1980s, it seemed that a consensus was emerging among researchers that public transport service levels, fares or quality had a small but possibly important effect on car ownership, and that this should be taken into account for those purposes where car ownership forecasts are used for developing policy on public transport or roads. Somehow, the findings faded away, and had little effect on policy thinking or on analytical techniques. The results of six surveys carried out in South Yorkshire over the period 1972 to 1991, during which there were extreme changes in public transport policy, tend to support a prima facie case for reopening the question. At the household level, car ownership rates are shown to be more volatile than is often assumed, especially in multiple car households. This volatility provides a context within which the quality of public transport provision appears to influence both the level of car ownership and the relationship between changes in the level of car ownership and changes in public transport use.