What is the potential of hybrid cordon pricing policy for reducing and shifting car usage in cities?

Abstract

As cities need to urgently transition out of unsustainable mobility systems, following the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework, changes in travel behavior have a top priority. Although behavior change in is a complex phenomenon, previous research informs us about the importance of urban road-usage policy measures. One such policy measure is often referred to as congestion pricing (CP). Some cities have successfully implemented CP, showing its effectiveness potential in behavior change, but wide-spread implementation lags due to challenges in societal, organizational, and political acceptance and implementability. Emerging literature on mobility credits (MC), mostly based on experiments, has brought forward the questions of acceptance, showing different possibilities for credit allocation, accumulation and exchange. In addition to behavior change, cities in transition economies might also consider monetary policies as potential solutions to financing issues. This research aims to analyze benefits and challenges of implementing a hybrid scheme that is a combination of CP and MC, developed with an expectation for policy coherence and complementarity. To determine the effects of the proposed hybrid scheme, a comparative analysis of user attitudes on congestion charging was conducted. The research was conducted using an online questionnaire, and the target group consisted of the residents of Belgrade (Serbia). Since these strategies are not implemented in Belgrade, the stated choice approach was used. The survey contained questions about the socio-demographic characteristics of the users, trip characteristics, users’ acceptability of CP and the hybrid scheme, as well as the questions on transport mode usage for commuting trips and for trips with other purposes. Based on statistical and policy analysis, it was determined that the hybrid scheme represents a suitable compromise solution which would reduce passenger car trips in the city center and while increase public acceptance for such normative policies.