Abstract
In 2007, after years of unresolved debate, the Swedish parliament approved a congestion charge for Stockholm applied to cars crossing the city’s inner boundary. Since its introduction, congestion charging has led to an even more lasting reduction of car trips to the city center, in part because the policy generates revenues for financing new subway extensions and uses these same resources as the basis for negotiating new transit oriented housing in subway extension areas. As such, congestion charging is arguably as much a sustainable housing solution as it is a narrowly defined transit policy for reducing automobile congestion or pollution. This article investigates how and why Stockholm, despite considerable political conflict, technical complexity and negative public opinion, was able to turn a long-standing and controversial debate over moderating automobile traffic via tolls into widespread support for a national congestion tax, which itself laid the groundwork for a more expansive sustainability agenda. It further suggests that only when congestion charging was strategically reframed and widely recognized as addressing the concerns of multiple and competing constituencies, did efforts for its adoption translate into larger sustainability gains.
Highlights
In June 2007, Stockholm introduced a congestion charge for vehicles crossing the city’s inner boundary to reduce traffic flows into central city areas and fund badly needed new capital investments
In addition to expanding our understanding of congestion charging as having urban sustainability implications beyond mobility because of its impact on land-use, we examine the ways in which a negotiated reframing of the benefits of congestion charging by stakeholders both outside and inside bureaucratic institutions and across various political parties has played a critical role in effectively recasting the housing-transport nexus
The introduction of congestion charging both revealed some of the same financial dilemmas and political tensions that marked early debate over the expansion of the subway system, even as it connected the fate of congestion charging to yet another politically contentious transportation conflict emerging in later decades: what to do about growing automobile expansion
Summary
In June 2007, Stockholm introduced a congestion charge for vehicles crossing the city’s inner boundary to reduce traffic flows into central city areas and fund badly needed new capital investments. In addition to expanding our understanding of congestion charging as having urban sustainability implications beyond mobility because of its impact on land-use, we examine the ways in which a negotiated reframing of the benefits of congestion charging by stakeholders both outside and inside bureaucratic institutions and across various political parties has played a critical role in effectively recasting the housing-transport nexus All this leads us to suggest that the analysis and evaluation of congestion charging must be understood not merely in terms of its mobility impacts and in the context of larger, more politically and strategically coordinated infrastructural imperatives necessary for producing sustainable cities.. It was the shared responsibility across governance scales that set into motion an alternative framing of the value of congestion charging, and that led to its more expanded and transformative impacts with respect to urban sustainability
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