Low Emission Areas vs. Urban Congestion Taxes

Abstract

In most European cities, urban transport is responsible for the majority of energy consumption, the emission of pollutants into the air, traffic congestion and noise, and in the last century we have faced an increase in urban mobility and a growing tendency to use private, as opposed to public transport, and an increase in the number of vehicles. The strictly private economic rationality of citizens explains this trend and the market will regulate it, albeit with largely avoidable social costs of congestion. Supply policies, that is, more and more extensive routes, are those that have been carried out almost exclusively traditionally, but these have been insufficient and, paradoxically, have even caused effects contrary to those intended, in the light of the state of empirical experiences, not to mention the waste of public resources that may be destined for more socially profitable alternative uses. As a consequence, where there is the greatest room for manoeuvre for urban transport policy is found in demand, that is, in the use of available means of urban transport. In recent decades, a good number of partial demand measures have been tried in European cities, such as subsidies for buses and subways, ecological fuels, car-sharing, smart cards, road-pricing, park-pricing, one day without a car, distribution of departure times at the end of the working day, etc. This paper focuses on Road Pricing, pointing out the experiences of the cities in which it has been put into practice but, mainly, examining its economic foundation and the design that should inspire collaboration in terms of achieving a more efficient and socially equitable urban mobility model. Keywords: Taxes; Automobiles; Highways; Payments; Urban congestion; Polluters.