Abstract
To reduce congestion and air pollution, 20% driving restriction, a license plate-based traffic control measure, has been implemented in Beijing since October 2008. While the long-term impacts of this policy remain controversial, it is important to understand how and why the policy effects of driving restrictions change over time. In this paper, the short- and long-run effects of the 20% driving restrictions in Beijing and the key factors shaping the effects are analyzed using daily PM10 pollution data. The results showed that in the short run, 20% driving restriction could effectively reduce ambient PM10 levels. However, this positive effect rapidly faded away within a year due to long-term behavioral responses of residents. A modified 20% restriction, designed to replace the original 20% restriction system since April 2009, which is less stringent and provides more possibility for intertemporal driving substitution, has shown some positive influence on air quality over the long run comparing with that under the original policy design. Temporarily, the more stringent the driving restriction was, the better effects it would have on air quality. In the long-run, however, the policy was likely to cause a vicious circle, and more stringent policy might induce stronger negative incentives which would result in even worse policy effects. Lessons learned from study of the effects of driving restrictions in Beijing will help other major cities in China and abroad to use driving restrictions more prudently and effectively in the future. Decision-makers should carefully consider the pros and cons of a transport policy and conduct the ex-ante and ex-post evaluations on it.
Highlights
Air pollution and traffic congestion remain serious problems in major cities worldwide
Practical implementations of driving restrictions do exist in EU cities, most of them are temporarily employed during mega events and peak pollution episodes, such as driving bans issued in London during the 2012 Summer Olympics, and odd-even scheme imposed in Paris during the air pollution episodes in March 2014 and March 2015
We found that in the short run, the 20% driving restriction can effectively reduce ambient PM10 levels, but due to the increase in traffic volume associated with the behavioral responses, congestion relief and air quality improvement from this policy will be shorter in duration
Summary
Air pollution and traffic congestion remain serious problems in major cities worldwide. In order to reduce congestion and air pollution during the 2008 Olympics, along with a number of radical and temporary measures, such as plant closure, a stringent driving restriction based on odd-even license plate was implemented in Beijing during the mega sports event. Evidence of reduction of congestion and mobile source pollution was confirmed during this period [9,10,11,12,13] The benefits of such restriction seemed so attractive that Beijing soon decided to resume with a similar, but less restrictive, 20% driving restriction as the major post-Olympics environmental and transportation management measure [14], which bans every vehicle, except police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, buses, taxis, school buses and vehicles with special permits, from driving one weekday per week based on the last digit of its license plate. The adjusted driving restriction could provide more convenience more possibility for intertemporal driving substitution compared with the original design
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