Congestion pricing for Latin America: Prospects and constraints

In an effort to reduce the adverse impacts of the car and promote sustainable transport in Latin America, some governments have either implemented travel demand management policies or have considered ways of directly reducing the number of vehicles in congested areas. While demand management measures have been promoted in a small number of countries, including vehicular restrictions as well as the promotion of public transport modes, there are currently no congestion pricing programmes in operation in Latin America. This paper begins with an overview of travel demand management, including its principal aims as well as its primary objectives within the Latin American context. It discusses past efforts to promote traffic restraint and perspectives for developing congestion pricing schemes in both São Paulo and Santiago. Finally, it examines the potential role of congestion pricing as a demand management tool. While it is one of the most effective demand management measures in the industrialised world, a number of barriers currently prevent it from being widely adopted in Latin America.     

Part I: Externalities and economic policies in road transport

Road transport imposes negative externalities on society. These externalities include environmental and road damage, accidents, congestion, and oil dependence. The cost of these externalities to society is in general not reflected in the current market prices in the road transport sector.An efficient mobility model for the future must take into account the true costs of transport and its regulatory framework will need to create incentives for people to make sustainable transport choices. This paper discusses the use of economic instruments to correct road transport externalities, but gives relatively more weight to the problem of carbon emissions from road transport, as this is particularly challenging, given its global and long-term nature.Economics offers two types of instruments for addressing the problem of transport externalities: command-and-control and incentive-based policies.Command-and-control policies are government regulations which force consumers and producers to change their behaviour. They are the most widely used policy instruments. Examples include vehicle emission and fuel standards in the US as well as driving or parking restrictions in Singapore. The implementation cost of these instruments to the government is small. Although from an economic perspective these policies often fail to achieve an efficient market outcome, the presence of political constraints often make them the preferred option, in terms of feasibility and effectiveness.Economic theory shows how policies, which affect consumption and production incentives, can be used to achieve the optimal outcome in the presence of externalities. Incentive-based policies function within a new or an altered market. We first examine incentive-based policies, which cap the aggregate amount of the externality, such as carbon emissions, by allocating permits or rights to the emitters. The emitters are then free to trade their permits amongst them. The permit allocation mechanism is important-although market efficiency would be satisfied by an auction, political influences usually favour a proportional allocation based on historic emissions. We discuss EU ETS as an example of a cap-and-trade system, however, no such policy for CO₂ emissions in road transport has been implemented anywhere in the world to date.Fiscal instruments are, like command-and-control, widely used in road transport, because they are relatively cheap and simple to implement. They include the use of taxes and charges in order to bridge the gap between private and the social costs and, in principle, can lead to an efficient market solution. Registration, ownership, fuel, emissions, usage taxes, and parking and congestion charges have been implemented in many countries around the world. On the other side of the spectrum, subsidies can be given to those scrapping old cars and buying fuel-efficient vehicles. Some cities, such as London, have implemented congestion charges and many states in the United States have introduced high occupancy lanes. Other interesting possibilities include pay-as-you-drive insurance and other usage charges. However, the size and scope of taxes and subsidies are determined by governments, and because of their imperfect knowledge of the market the outcome is still likely to be inefficient.Governments have many effective economic instruments to create a sustainable road transport model. These instruments can be used separately or together, but their implementation will be necessary in the nearest future.     

Economic impact of non-motorized transportation in Indian cities

Lack of a clear understanding regarding the economic impacts of non-motorized modes is a major reason why they are excluded from the transportation development agenda of cities in India. Keeping this aspect in mind the present study has been divided in to two parts. The first part tries to understand the non-motorized traffic evolution in India. It focuses on the declination of non-motorized modes, necessity to revamp it, the favorable conditions to promote them in India and the relative problems associated with it. It is found here that there is a necessity for defining the role of non-motorized modes in India for the viable implementation of infrastructure and policies related with it.     

Analysis of thirty years evolution of urban growth,transport demand and supply,energy consumption,greenhouse and pollutants emissions in Greater Cairo

The objective of the paper is to analyze evolution of urbanization, transport demand and supply in Greater Cairo (GC) over the last three decades of the 20th century. This is in addition to investigating the impact of city growth on energy consumption and emissions from transport. It utilizes results of 1971, 1978, 1987, 1998 and 2001 travel demand surveys, undertaken during the corresponding GC transport studies; each was published a year or two later. No further transport studies have been carried out in GC over the past decade and in view of the current political situation, it is not envisaged that similar studies will be undertaken in the near future. The analysis includes the evolution of daily trips, trip purpose share, modal share and number of cars. More recent trends for 2006/2007 vehicle registration by type and size are given. The evolution of transport supply covers projects until early 2012. In parallel estimates of the evolution of energy consumption and cost, emissions of greenhouse gases (CO₂) and pollutants (CO, HC and NO_x) are given for 1971/2001. The adopted estimation methodology is summarized. Comparative analysis of relevant evolution indexes and trends of growth between 1971 and 2001, taking the former as base year, is given. Land use and transport policies and projects that in some cases helped, directly or indirectly, to reduce traffic congestion, or at least prevented an increase, are addressed, commenting on their outcomes. Thus, transferable experience are useful to sister cities benefiting from successes and avoiding drawbacks. The evolution of the impact of GC metro on energy consumption and cost, and GHG emissions is given for 1987/2001, assuming the scenario “metro did not exist”. More recent impact analysis is given for 2007/2008, as the data allowed estimating traffic volumes that would have been added to the congested metro corridors under the above scenario; and the related fuel consumption and cost and GHGs. The paper ends with conclusions on GC evolution, learned lessons and suggests repeating similar work in other mega cities of the developing countries. Further research is emphasized, e.g., modeling the relationship between land use, transport, energy and emissions; modeling emission factors by vehicle type; and studying fuel-subsidy-reduction scenarios and their socio-economic effects.     

Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport

Without questioning the fact that to achieve efficiency emitters should pay for the true costs of their actions (a core principle of economic policies such as pollution taxes), we find sufficient evidence in the literature to demonstrate that many other policy instruments can be used in combination with taxes and permits to ensure that the transport needs of the present generation can be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet any needs of their own.The policies and policy aspects considered in this paper broadly fall into three categories: physical policies, soft policies, and knowledge policies. All three aim to bring about changes in consumers’ and firms’ behaviour, but in different ways. The first category includes policies with a physical infrastructure element: public transport, land use, walking and cycling, road construction, and freight transport. We also consider the particular challenges for mobility in developing countries, and how these may be addressed. Soft policies, on the other hand, are non-tangible aiming to bring about behavioural change by informing actors about the consequences of their transport choices, and potentially persuading them to change their behaviour. These measures include car sharing and car pooling, teleworking and teleshopping, eco-driving, as well as general information and advertising campaigns. Finally, knowledge policies emphasise the important role of investment in research and development for a sustainable model of mobility for the future.The main findings can be summarised as follows.

Physical policies

An increase in the use of public transport, combined with a decrease in the use of private cars, can reduce traffic congestion and, more importantly, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, as public transport generally causes lower CO₂ emissions per passenger kilometre than private cars. Public transport fares are subsidised in most places, which can be justified by economies of scale and by the fact that public transport can reduce total road transport externalities. London, Singapore, Portland and Curitiba are all examples of good practice at government level, having achieved reliable, frequent and integrated public transport.Policies to increase public transport use must be part of an integrated policy. Integrated policy refers to integration across different modes of transport, different government objectives (such as the economy, health and the environment), considering the needs of different social groups, and coordinating action between the relevant government institutions. There is evidence that a lack of coordination can jeopardise the achievement of policy objectives.A sustainable model for transport policy also requires integration with land-use policies. These may be somewhat limited within the bounds of existing cities, but as cities grow and new cities are built, urban planners must put more emphasis on land use for sustainable transport in order to reduce congestion and CO₂ emissions. Sustainable land-use policy can direct urban development towards a form that allows public transport as well as walking and cycling to be at the core of urban mobility.Walking and cycling, which improve general health and produce no tailpipe emissions, constitute an excellent alternative to motorised transport on short-distance trips within towns and cities. The policies which can incentivise walking and cycling include crime reduction to make streets safer, well-maintained and clean pavements, attractive street furniture, safe crossings with shorter waiting times, dedicated cycle paths, showers in offices, and lower speed limits, to name but a few.Road construction and expansion used to be seen as one of the most promising ways to reduce traffic congestion. However, in the mid-1990s, the issue was reassessed and it was found that building and expanding roads, increased, rather than decreased, congestion, and ultimately induced higher levels of travel demand. The reason for this is that the extra capacity reduces the general cost of travelling and the less expensive the travel, the more it will be demanded. Regarding freight modal shift, road transport is much more polluting than rail per tonne-km of goods transported and therefore a shift towards greater use of rail in freight transport is desirable. Inadequate infrastructure is the main obstacle preventing this modal shift taking place.Developing countries face great mobility challenges: rural areas are often extremely poorly connected to transport infrastructure, such that, in contrast to the situation in developed countries, the benefits of road construction can strongly outweigh the total costs (including environmental ones). The main challenge, however, is to develop a solution to the problems arising from the combination of urbanisation and motorisation. Integration of transport and land-use policy will be key to rising to this challenge.

Soft policies

Car sharing and car clubs can also potentially reduce CO₂ emissions, although the aggregate reduction in congestion and emissions has not been measured with an adequate degree of precision in the literature. Teleworking and teleshopping can potentially reduce congestion and also CO₂ emissions. However, the evidence for this reduction is rather mixed, as it is unclear whether these measures lead to overall reductions in road transport.Eco-driving campaigns aim to inform and educate drivers in order to induce them to drive in a fuel-efficient and thus environmentally friendly way. There seems to be some consensus in the literature that eco-driving could lead to reductions in CO₂ emissions of around 10 per cent.Information and education policies have often been advocated as instruments which may affect behavioural change. We find in this paper that these types of measures are necessary, but not sufficient for behavioural change. Advertising and marketing may go a long way in changing peoples’ behaviour. In California, for example, Kahn (2007) finds the “Prius” effect: the Toyota Prius is preferred by consumers relative to other similarly green vehicles, probably due to extensive marketing and celebrity endorsements. Family life changes are also found to trigger changes in behaviour ( [Goodwin, 1989] and [106]). People whose lives are being changed by some important development (birth of a child, retirement, etc) tend to respond more to changes in the relative attractiveness of different transport modes. Advertising campaigns promoting a modal shift towards public transport, for instance, may thus be more successful if targeted at people in the process of important life transitions.

Knowledge policies

Research and Development is crucial for developing sustainable and low-carbon transport for the future, and it is essential that governments provide incentives to undertake R&D, so that new low-carbon technologies in the transport sector can be demonstrated and applied at a large scale.Finally, we consider the issue of policy combination and integration. There is evidence that the combination and integration of policies can lead to positive side-effects and synergies. Policy integration is crucial in order to rise to the challenges we face in moving towards a sustainable mobility model. We conclude that classical economic policies may be successfully combined with a number of policy measures discussed in this paper in order to achieve sustainability in transport.     

Escorting economies: Networked journeys,household strategies and resistance

This paper is an exploration of strategies used by households to ensure safe journeys for household members. It has been long been argued that women's travel demand is suppressed. There is no doubt that this is an important issue simply on the grounds that women make up one half of the population but it is also timely and pertinent for policy makers and practitioners as legislation at national and international level asserts and legitimates rights to access, safety and security as demonstrated in the European Union's assertion in the 2007 Green Paper that “Every EU citizen should be able to live and move in urban areas with safety and security”. An understanding of social networks, reciprocity and exchange within and between households is integral to our understanding of travel demand. This paper, through an exploration of micro-social practices, identifies competencies and strategies, such as skills of transaction negotiation, scheduling among household members and across households, escorting, social synchronisation and cost sharing in women's travel, which add to our theoretical understanding of household coping strategies and practices to overcome exclusion. This paper brings together contemporary and historical evidence on the strategies and competencies used by women and in households to ensure safe travel for household members. There is a paucity of data on networked practices and resources which impacts on the efficacy of social policy and societal aspirations for sustainability and inclusion.     

Implementation of sustainable urban transport in Latin America

Transportation provides vital support to the economic and social development of Latin America cities, but current growth patterns and trends are not sustainable. While non-motorized and public transport modes have the largest shares in passenger transport, there is a strong increase in ownership and use of cars and motorcycles. In Latin America in 2010 there were 2.5 new motor vehicle registrations for every new child being born.     

Rural transport – Valuing the mobility of older people

This paper describes a series of focus groups that were undertaken in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to examine the challenges faced by older people in rural Ireland when trying to make trips. The paper outlines transport policy in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and describes the activity patterns of older trip makers and the modes they use. It also discusses some of the contrasts between challenges faced by older men and older women. Both older men and older women experience a shrinking in activity spaces and activity participation when older. Older women are less likely to drive and to own a car and so are seriously impacted by loss of a spouse in terms of their unmet travel needs. However, older men also experience difficulties: the alternatives that are available (such as community transport schemes) provide trips and services that are more attractive to women. In addition, the car dependent lifestyles of men throughout their adult lives seems to make them less prepared for life without a car than older women.     

Recent developments in Flexible Transport Services

This paper focuses on recent experiences in the evolution of Flexible Transport Services (FTS). It describes how previous manifestations of FTS provided dedicated solutions for special groups, often in parallel to the conventional public transport network, but highlights that in numerous countries across Europe there is now a discernable trend towards open access FTS providing services for the whole community and often feeding the conventional public transport network to provide wider access and opportunities. This is as a result of policies intended to mainstream services for people with disabilities and moves to tackle social exclusion amongst other groups while at the same time reducing the very high costs per trip associated with STS.To meet these policies, and the higher expectations and different travel behaviours of citizens to-day, it is suggested that FTS will need to radically reposition itself in terms of scale, so that there is mass coverage and ability to function as a full transport mode. This will require breakthroughs in concepts; business models; organisational and operational models; and in supporting technologies. A proposed solution to this is the Flexible Agency for Collective Mobility Services (FAMS) which provides an organisational structure and business model for FTS that incorporates the required supporting technologies.     

Land use/transport models and economic assessment

This paper discusses the economic assessment of policies using land use/transport models. It argues that conventional forms of assessment focussing only on transport changes can underestimate the economic benefits of a policy. The paper argues that the benefits need to be measured by the changes of prices at the end of a trip and not just by the changes in travel costs. Models that do not estimate the changes of prices at the end of a trip cannot properly assess the impact of a policy.The model used in this paper is based on the MEPLAN software and estimates the location of households and employment and the interaction between them. It also estimates the cost of living for households and the production costs for employment. With these costs, it is possible to calculate the wider economic benefits beyond transport.The paper illustrates the assessment of policies for the Cambridge sub-region involving investment in public transport, orbital highway and congestion charging policies. The results forecast by the model are assessed in terms of the conventional cost-benefit using traveller’s surplus as benefits and compared with a wider assessment measure of compensation variation. It demonstrates that the last measure encompasses the wider benefits associated with transport policies which are not taken into account in conventional cost-benefit analysis.     

A simulation of the simple Mohring model to predict patronage and value of resources consumed for enhanced bus services

Choosing between the competing approaches to providing enhanced bus services requires the ability to predict the effects on patronage and overall benefits to society in terms of Value of Resources Consumed (VRC) of any proposed change. One common approach uses the Mohring model of 1972 and its successors to optimise one or more aspects of the supply of transit services given various level of demand. This paper simulates the operation of a simple circular bus route using the equations of a basic Mohring type model and a Decision Support System (DSS) to endogenise demand under the assumption that there is a fixed demand for travel but commuters can choose between the bus and private vehicle. The selected approach recognises that demand for a particular mode of travel is predicated on the speed of the vehicle in service which is itself determined by the demand for that vehicle (in this model or boarding and alighting time) rather than being determined exogenously. This creates an iterative feedback mechanism whereby changes to the attributes of the bus and car alter mode choice and the speed in service of the bus which, in turn, alters mode choice. The simulation is used to predict changes to patronage and VRC under scenarios regarding changes to the transport network (in terms of fares and running costs, frequency and spacing of bus stops) using parameters from both a Multinomial Logit (MNL) and a Mixed Multinomial Logit (MMNL). The results demonstrate that there are large differences in the size and, in some cases, direction of predicted changes to patronage, VRC and revenue, depending on whether the parameters of the MNL or MMNL model are used.     

Development of ocean carriers' behaviour model focusing on their 'cost and tariff' based on the spatial general equilibrium

Spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) theory has been applied to an international trade model to evaluate tariff and fiscal policies of a country. Those models can not be applied for the evaluation of transport policies such as port development and tax/subsidy policy against transportation sectors, since they do not deal with ocean freight and ocean carriers explicitly in the model. Ocean freight often varies with the changes of competitive conditions and/or demand/ supply balances in the short run, while it should reflect the actual expenditure of the carriers in the long run. The model proposed here considers the profit maximization behaviour of ocean carriers, and deals with ocean freight explicitly. The model is applied to four major economic regions; Japan, USA, EU and Asia. A multi-level function composed of the Cobb-Douglas function is adopted to produce reliable parameters of the production function for many industries.     

Development of ocean carriers' behaviour model focusing on their 'cost and tariff' based on the spatial general equilibrium

Spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) theory has been applied to an international trade model to evaluate tariff and fiscal policies of a country. Those models can not be applied for the evaluation of transport policies such as port development and tax/subsidy policy against transportation sectors, since they do not deal with ocean freight and ocean carriers explicitly in the model. Ocean freight often varies with the changes of competitive conditions and/or demand/ supply balances in the short run, while it should reflect the actual expenditure of the carriers in the long run. The model proposed here considers the profit maximization behaviour of ocean carriers, and deals with ocean freight explicitly. The model is applied to four major economic regions; Japan, USA, EU and Asia. A multi-level function composed of the Cobb-Douglas function is adopted to produce reliable parameters of the production function for many industries.     

Urban transport lending by the World Bank: The last decade

Over the preceding decade, the World Bank committed about US$7.5bn in loans for urban transport projects in its client countries, involving total project costs of nearly US$13bn. Projects are designed by the client city/national governments and the World Bank in an interactive, give-and-take process. As is common in development finance, urban transport projects entail an investment program and a set of policy and institutional initiatives. A majority of Bank-funded operations in this period focused on public transport modes. A clear and overarching strategic thrust is evident, favoring private delivery of services with a strong public role through city-specific regulatory agencies. Depending on the context, projects involved efforts to introduce private operators and competition into an all-public set-up, or tighten up weakly regulated, “informal” public transport markets. A notable feature of many projects in the latter context is the use of investments in bus rapid transit infrastructure to reach multiple goals: improve transport services, maintain affordability for low-income passengers, attract new passengers, reduce negative environmental impacts, and leverage complementary reforms of policies and institutions. The Bank’s program in China, unique in its local context of a dynamic urban society moving away from a near-universal reliance on bicycles, initially did not focus on public transport but on urban roads and traffic management. Towards the end of the last decade, the motorization process and the outlook of decision makers entering a more mature stage, projects in China started to converge towards what the rest of the Bank’s program was doing – searching for a more sustainable path to urban transport development.     

A model system for the ex-ante assessment of city logistics measures

This paper proposes a model system developed in order to support ex-ante assessment of city logistics measures. The model system allows us to simulate the choices of each decision-maker involved in the urban freight transport and logistics and to investigate how the policies and the following measures can influence her/his choices.The model system is an open architecture and consists of two levels: commodity and vehicle. The commodity level allows us to analyse the attraction and acquisition movements taking into account the effects due to city logistics policy implementation affecting the end-consumer and retailer/wholesaler/producer (restocker) choices. The freight sold in each urban shop (or in general urban business) is estimated starting from consumption demand and, then, the restocker’s choices for restocking are analysed in depth. The vehicle level focuses on the restocking process and the links between retailer and wholesaler/producer operating in the study area. This level allows us to investigate the impacts of implementing city logistics measures on journey time, timing and path used for restocking the urban retail businesses.     

Sustainable urbanization using high speed rail (HSR) in Karnataka,India

Considering the present trends of urbanization and motorization in India, there is an urgent need for integration, revitalization and renewal of the smaller towns and cities to make urban areas in India more sustainable. Unless our regional space is reorganized to upgrade development of towns and cities and integrate them with each other and the larger cities, the urbanization process in India will become unsustainable. It is argued that High Speed Rail (HSR) can play a role in achieving this more balanced and sustainable development of towns and cities, opening up opportunities for growth across a wider, inter-connected, region, with the benefit of taking the pressure of the larger cities to absorb additional burgeoning populations. This paper will make the case that in the current Indian context, current patterns of mega-city growth are unsustainable, and that HSR can play an important role in providing opportunities for medium and smaller size cities through their interconnections. It begins by highlighting the role that railways have played in India and other countries, noting that merely economic analysis of their costs and benefits generally underestimated their contributions to development. It then provides an introduction to HSR and its potential impact in general, before applying this to the example of the State of Karnataka in South India.     

The place of transport in facilitating social inclusion via the mediating influence of social capital

Social policy makers rarely associate the ability to be mobile with having a role in the facilitation of social inclusion. This paper provides an initial exploration of the association between a person’s travel patterns and their risk of social exclusion. Information is drawn from a major Australian Research Council transport study which interviewed 535 people from Metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. It includes an analysis of the extent of the person’s bonding and bridging social networks, their connectedness to the community, self-assessed level of well-being and their beliefs about whether or not they are able to control outcomes in their life. It was found that those who had the greatest risk of social exclusion, travelled less often and less distance, owned fewer cars and used public transport less, than those who were more socially included. However, those who were more at risk of social exclusion did not identify their lower trips as due to either a lack of transport, or problems with the public transport system. The ability to have good bridging networks appears to be related to increased trip-making and promotion of social inclusion but not necessarily self-assessed well-being which is satisfied by bonding networks.     

城市土地利用与交通一体化发展机制研究

在总结际城市土地利用与交通发展历程的经验教训基础上,分析了土地利用与交通的互为反馈、互相促进的关系,并在借鉴国际上土地利用与交通一体化理念和国内实践案例经验基础上,就如何建立相关城市发展引导机制进行了探讨。     

Short-term prediction of vehicle waiting queue at ferry terminal based on machine learning method

Ferry service plays an important role in several cities with waterfront areas. Transportation authorities often need to forecast volumes of vehicular traffic in queues waiting to board ships at ferry terminals to ensure sufficient capacity and establish schedules that meet demand. Several previous studies have developed models for long-term vehicle queue length prediction at ferry terminals using terminal operation data. Few studies, however, have been undertaken for short-term vehicular queue length prediction. In this study, machine learning methods including the artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) are applied to predict vehicle waiting queue lengths at ferry terminals. Through time series analysis, the existence of a periodic queue-length pattern is established. Hence, methodologies used in this study take into account periodic features of vehicle queue data at terminals for prediction. To further consider the cyclical characteristics of vehicle queue data at ferry terminals, a prediction approach is proposed to decompose vehicle waiting queue length into two components: a periodic part and a dynamic part. A trigonometric regression function is introduced to capture the periodic component, and the dynamic part is modeled by SVM and ANN models. Moreover, an assembly technique for combining SVM and ANN models is proposed to aggregate multiple prediction models and in turn achieve better results than could be attained from a lone predictive method. The prediction results suggest that for multi-step ahead vehicle queue length prediction at ferry terminals, the ensemble model outperforms the separate prediction models and the hybrid models, especially as prediction step size increases. This research has important practical significance to both traffic service management interests and the travelers in cities along waterfront areas.     

The perception and image of shipping

The image of the shipping industry plays a vital role in developing maritime transport as a major future, sustainable transport alternative. In particular, it is crucial to understand the image the shipping industry has among young people and the anatomy of the concept in order to be able to effectively promote careers in shipping, to cultivate shipping as an attractive labour market and to develop attractive educational programmes. The focus of this paper is the image of the shipping industry. This study reports on the findings of a large-scale survey of the image of shipping- and image-related concepts among upper secondary school pupils in Sweden, Norway and Greece. We define and analyse empirically by means of multivariate statistical analysis the anatomy of the image concept. We identify various image dimensions, estimate how young people rate the shipping industry along these dimensions and estimate their relative importance to young people who are planning their future careers. The results from this study can be used as a base for describing and explaining the images that young people have of the shipping industry. Such knowledge is fundamental for deriving and developing constructive strategies to promote careers in shipping, to adapt shipping to the expectations of young people and to develop creative and relevant educational programmes. Finally, understanding the image of shipping among young people is important not only for the shipping industry, but for other stakeholders as well, such as ship-owners associations, trade associations, labour unions, transport authorities and administrations and policy makers at the national and supra-national level.