Using the revenues from congestion pricing

The economic theory behind congestion pricing relies on using the revenues to help compensate highway users. But can practical methods of using revenues come close to achieving this compensation, and still have salient appeal to important political groups? This paper investigates the possibilities for designing a package of revenue uses that can achieve these twin goals. The suggested approach returns two-thirds of the revenues to travelers through travel allowances and tax reductions, and uses the rest to improve transportation throughout the area, including affected business centers. By replacing regressive sales and fuel taxes, this approach offsets the tendency of the prices alone to have a regressive distributional impact. By lowering taxes, funding new highways, improving transit, and upgrading business centers, the package provides inducements for support from several key interest groups. The potential amounts of money involved are discussed using nationwide data, and in more detail using a case study of ubiquitous facility pricing throughout the Los Angeles region. Illustrative calculations of the effects on various individuals confirm that such a package can create net benefits for a wide spectrum of people and interest groups.     

Estimating commuter mode choice: A discrete choice analysis of the impact of road pricing and parking charges

Automobile use leads to external costs associated with emissions, congestion, noise and other impacts. One option for minimizing these costs is to introduce road pricing and parking charges to reduce demand for single occupant vehicle (SOV) use, while providing improvements to alternatives to encourage mode switching. However, the impact of these policies on urban mode choice is uncertain, and results reported from regions where charging has been introduced may not be transferable. In particular, revealed preference data associated with cost recovery tolls on single facilities may not provide a clear picture of driver response to tolls for demand management. To estimate commuter mode choice behaviour in response to such policies, 548 commuters from a Greater Vancouver suburb who presently drive alone to work completed an individually customized discrete choice experiment (DCE) in which they chose between driving alone, carpooling or taking a hypothetical express bus service when choices varied in terms of time and cost attributes. Attribute coefficients identified with the DCE were used in a predictive model to estimate commuter response to various policy oriented combinations of charges and incentives. Model results suggest that increases in drive alone costs will bring about greater reductions in SOV demand than increases in SOV travel time or improvements in the times and costs of alternatives beyond a base level of service. The methods described here provide an effective and efficient way for policy makers to develop an initial assessment of driver reactions to the introduction of pricing policies in their particular regions.     

城市轨道交通地下车站环境空气影响问题及对策探讨

LIU Moyun(Fuzhou Roil Transit Design Institute Co.,Ltd.,Fuzhou Fujian 350000,China)     

The role of attitude structures,direct experience and reframing for the success of congestion pricing

Congestion pricing was introduced in Stockholm in 2006, first as a trial followed by a referendum, and permanently from 2007. Public attitudes to the charges became more negative during the period from the decision to the start of the system. Once the trial started, public attitudes became dramatically more positive over the following years, going from 2/3 against the charges to more than 2/3 in favor of the charges. Self-reported changes in behavior and attitudes considerably underestimate actual changes: about 3/4 of the decrease in car trips and more than half of the change in attitudes seem to have gone unnoticed by respondents, ex post. Self-interest and belief in the charges’ effectiveness strongly affect attitudes at any given point in time, but can only explain a minor part of the change in attitudes. I suggest that the debate and the shift in attitudes can be understood as a public and political reframing of the congestion charges over time.     

甘肃高速公路施工期噪声污染分析及控制

为进一步了解甘肃某高速公路施工期噪声对周围敏感物的影响,于2018年春夏秋冬昼夜对此高速公路施工期进行了环境噪声监测,对高速公路施工期噪声污染进行了分析并提出合理的控制措施。     

Achieving political acceptability for new transport infrastructure in congested urban regions

This paper analyzes the efficiency and political acceptability of road pricing and infrastructure policies targeted at relieving urban congestion. It combines a stylized transport model of an urban road network with a model of the political process that incorporates interactions between voters, citizen interest groups and politicians to explore the possibilities to reach political acceptability for efficient transport policies. In a numerical illustration, the paper compares a set of pricing and investment policies in terms of efficiency and acceptability. The illustration shows how conflicting interests can lead to non-efficient policies being chosen.     

Abatement cost functions for incentive-based policies in the automobile market

This paper compares the outcomes of policies that target vehicle holdings with those that target vehicle usage using data from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey. Results show that a higher price of gasoline shifts vehicle holdings towards more fuel efficient vehicles and reduces the annual demand for miles, whereas imposing a fee on vehicles or a feebate program only shifts vehicle holdings towards more fuel efficient vehicles and has little to no impact on the demand for miles. While it is relatively expensive to reduce CO₂ emission through incentive-based policies, achieving any abatement level is more expensive through imposing fees on vehicles than gasoline taxes. In addition, the maximum amount of abatement attainable by a feebate program is relatively small and the same amount could be achieved by imposing a $0.73 gasoline tax per gallon.     

深圳市道路交通噪声污染现状及防治对策

文章在分析深圳市道路交通噪声污染现状的基础上,讨论了其污染成因,并提出控制与削减城市交通噪声污染的对策和建议,为有效改善城市道路交通噪声污染提供科学依据。     

How much do people value the environment?

The selection and evaluation of road schemes through the Leitch framework is based on a combination of cost-benefit analysis and environmental impact assessment. Both techniques involve the definition and valuation of a number of costs and benefits. These costs and benefits are defined and valued in isolation to each other so that we know virtually nothing about the relative valuation that people assign to different types of costs and benefits which might affect them directly or indirectly. This paper outlines the development of a method which allows people to conceptualise the costs and benefits of a road scheme in their own terms and then to rank schemes in relation to those costs and benefits. This method is based upon an interview process involving the use of repertory grid technique. The information from the repertory grid technique is used as a sound basis for determining trade-offs between attributes and for attempting to obtain monetary valuations of different project attributes. A number of exploratory interviews are reported which outline some of the difficulties with a number of the survey features including the choice of case-study, interviewer and information biases and sample and non-response biases. Various ways of dealing with these difficulties are discussed.     

The relationship between property values and railroad proximity: a study based on hedonic prices and real estate brokers' appraisals

We study the relationship between the price of residential property value and proximity to railroads in Oslo, by two different methods, namely a) through a hedonic price study where the statistical relationship between property prices and railroad proximity is estimated, and b) through a multi-attribute utility investigation of real estate agents' evaluation of such a relationship. We find in both cases that there are strong effects of proximity to railroad lines on property prices, at distances less than 100 meters from the lines. In the statistical study log-linear relationships fit the data best, and our estimates indicate that a doubling of the distance from the railroad line, within a 100 meter bound, increases the property price by about 10%. With real estate agents only a linear relationship is probed. This yields an increase in the price of an average relevant housing unit by about 182,000 NOK, due to a increase in the distance to a railroad track from 20 to 100 meters. The equivalent figure from the statistical study is in the range 120–150,000 NOK. The two figures are thus of the same magnitude.     

Is road pricing effective in abating pollution? Evidence from Milan

We estimate the effect of a road pricing policy introduced in Milan in 2008 on concentrations of benzene, carbon monoxide, particulates, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide. We found a sizeable effect of the Ecopass on air quality in terms of reduction in the concentration of carbon monoxide and particulates a few days after its introduction, although this effect disappeared after only one week. We interpret these results as indicative of an inefficient policy design: motorbikes were not charged and the treated area is too limited to generate positive outcomes for the whole city. Further evidence from a natural experiment given by a temporary suspension of the charge in 2012 confirms our hypothesis on the incentives for motorbike usage.     

改进的模糊层次分析法在公路环境影响评价中的应用

针对每个比选方案从不同的环境角度分析,会各有优势和劣势特点,提出了改进的模糊层次分析法在公路环评应用,较好的解决了在作比选方案同等深度的环境比选时,怎样从环境角度综合评价各比选方案的优劣。     

长输管道河流穿越方法及其环境影响

近年来,国内管道的河流穿越技术得到了快速发展,而穿越方式的合理选择是管道敷设设计中的难点问题,也是工程设计的重要关注点。文中通过对各种河流穿越技术进行对比分析,总结不同穿越方法的优缺点,适用范围、适用条件及其可能产生的环境影响,结合工程实例介绍具体穿越方案的选择,为长输管道河流穿越方案的合理选择提供借鉴。     

Determinants of airports’ environmental effects

Aviation is a fast growing sector with increasing environmental concerns linked to aircraft emissions at airports and noise nuisance. This paper investigates the factors affecting the annual environmental effects produced by a national aviation system. The environmental effects are computed using certification data for each aircraft-engine combination. Moreover, we also take into account for the amount of environmental effects that is internalized at the airport, mainly through noise regulation. We study a dataset covering information on Italian airports during the period 1999–2008. We show that a 1% increase in airport’s yearly movements yields a 1.05% increase in environmental effects, a 1% in aircraft size (measured in MTOW) gives rise to a 1.8% increase and a 1% increase in aircraft age generates a 0.69% increase in environmental effects. Similar results but with smaller magnitudes are observed if airport internalization is considered. Our policy implications are that the tariff internalizing the total amount of externality is about euro 180 per flight, while the tariff limiting only pollution is about euro 60 and the one reducing noise is about euro 110. Moreover, our airport examples show that managers should prefer to address additional capacity by increasing frequency rather than aircraft size, since the former strategy is more environmental friendly.