Road Pricing Policy Research Articles

Urban Transport Policies and Net Zero Emissions in the European Union

This review discusses the role of road transport policies in achieving the European Union's ambitious zero-emission target for the transportation sector by 2050 and provides an overview of the empirical literature that studies the effectiveness of urban transport policies. The analysis is divided into two parts. First, we study policies that are relevant in the transitional phase from internal combustion engine vehicles to battery electric vehicles (BEVs), then we discuss policies that will remain relevant as we switch entirely to BEVs. In the best-case scenario, the transition can be driven by fuel taxes, but in case fuel taxes are not feasible or acceptable, a combination of penalties for buying polluting vehicles and subsidies for scrappage of such vehicles might be the best compromise. In the long run, road space will be increasingly at a premium, and to ensure its efficient use, increasingly sophisticated road-pricing policies will be needed.

Kesiapan Pemerintah DKI Jakarta Dalam Agenda Setting Rancangan Peraturan Pengendalian Lalu Lintas Secara Elektronik

The Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) policy or paid road policy is here as the newest innovation from the Regional Government of DKI Jakarta to solving the problem of Jakarta's traffic jams which are getting out of control every day. After going through a long journey, this ERP policy is contained in the legal basis for the Draft Regional Regulation (Raperda) for Electronic Traffic Control (PL2SE). The Raperda, which has entered the early stages of review by the DPRD, will be reviewed for its readiness in the study of the literature on this research as well as the agenda setting of the policy. The results obtained include the Regional Government of DKI Jakarta which has prepared regulations and a legal basis, determining road sections, and the time of implementation. However, the government still has many things to consider, including the tariffs that will be imposed on this ERP, the technology that will be used, the condition and quality of public transportation services and facilities to the management of the ERP policy that will be carried out. The agenda setting for this policy has a problem flow (policy stream) in Jakarta congestion which is already very difficult to control, where the contributing factors are the community's preference for private vehicles, the road capacity factor, the human (community) awareness factor for traffic order, and also the factor of unfinished infrastructure development.

Minimize population exposure to vehicle-generated emissions by road pricing

Vehicular emissions, as a major source of urban air pollution, are threatening public health. With a goal to regulate population exposure to vehicular emissions, three bilevel road pricing models are established to minimize the exposure to vehicular emissions for on-road travelers, near-road residents, and all populations in the study network. A simulated annealing-based method is applied to solve these models based on a first-best pricing scheme. For ease of implementation, a second-best pricing scheme is then proposed and solved based on a meta-heuristic approach coupled with genetic algorithm with elitism and simulated annealing. The proposed method is tested using the Nguyen-Dupuis network and the Sioux Falls network. It is found that a tradeoff exists between the objectives of minimizing the emission exposure levels of travelers and near-road residents. Another tradeoff is found between the objectives of minimizing total population exposure and total travel time. Results from the numerical example indicate that the optimality results obtained in the first-best pricing scheme may also be approximated by the second-best pricing scheme with fewer tolling locations and less toll collection. The conclusions drawn from the paper could potentially assist policymakers in formulating road pricing policies that prioritize environmental concerns.

The impact of urban road pricing on the use of bike sharing

We empirically analyse the effect of road pricing on the use of bike sharing. We exploit two sudden policy changes in Milan's congestion pricing scheme resulting in a shift from priced to unpriced road use: a temporary suspension of the scheme in 2012, and a durable reduction in its application schedule. We find that the sudden removal of road pricing decreases bike-sharing use by about 5%. The policy impact mainly occurs through the increase of road traffic congestion, which makes cycling less safe and pleasant. The reduction in the schedule leads to an 8% decline in bike-sharing use in the affected time window. Our findings indicate that policies inducing drivers to internalise the external costs of car use also promote the uptake of non-polluting transport modes. This widens the spectrum of benefits that need to be considered in the design and implementation of road pricing policies.

Road pricing acceptability and persuasive communication effectiveness

To facilitate coercive policy implementation encountering public opposition, this study focuses on road pricing policy (1) to examine an integrated framework accommodating the relationships between participation in administration, trust in government, fairness, freedom infringement, public opinion, and policy acceptability; and (2) to analyze the effect of persuasive communication with request and advice methods on policy acceptability. Using data from 175 participants in Taiwan, results find that participation in administration increases procedural fairness, which and distributive fairness via scenario fairness improve acceptability; however, freedom infringement reduces acceptability. Public opinion affects acceptability directly and indirectly through scenario fairness. Moreover, persuasive communication does not change overall acceptability but improves acceptability in the ethical aspect and for males, the middle-aged and elderly, and mixed-mode users. Findings suggest that governments should introduce public participation into coercive policy formulation and apply persuasive communication to policy acceptability improvement.

A Study on User Acceptable Road Pricing Policy for Toll Roads: A Case of Eethakota, India

User’s acceptability and perceptions are the important issues for the successful implementation of road pricing schemes. In a developing country like India, the toll collection is switching from Manual Toll Collection (MTC) to the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) and Open Road Tolling. A better understanding of perceptions and acceptability on different road pricing schemes can help transport planners and decision makers to know the public support for road pricing schemes before and after implementation. A questionnaire based survey has been used to explore perceptions and acceptability of road pricing schemes such as High Occupancy toll (HOT), Dynamic Toll Pricing (DTP), Distance based pricing etc. For the present study, the sample of 550 respondents has been taken with the help of an online platform and face to face interview. The results show that about 41.18 percent of the users are willing to use the distance-based pricing scheme. The study developed multinomial logit model to analyse the acceptability of different pricing schemes. The results show that there are significant differences in user acceptability by the type of charging scheme proposed. HOT was most acceptable by users who perceive less travel time savings for using toll roads. The acceptability of DTP decreases for users who felt tolls are not an appropriate mechanism to fund roads. Number of toll booth passed is a significant parameter affecting acceptability of distance based pricing. In addition; socioeconomic variables also affect each of the pricing schemes. The signs of estimated parameters fit prior knowledge and are statically significant.The outcome of the present study will provide a reference for providing a users’ acceptable pricing scheme in India.

Congestion in highways when tolls and railroads matter: evidence from European cities

Abstract Using data from the 545 largest European cities, we study whether the expansion of their highway capacity provides a solution to the problem of traffic congestion. Our results confirm that in the long run, and in line with the ‘fundamental law of highway congestion’, the expansion in cities of lane kilometres causes an increase in vehicle traffic that does not solve urban congestion. We disentangle the increase in traffic due to the increases in coverage and in capacity. We further introduce road pricing and public transit policies in order to test whether they moderate congestion. Our findings confirm that the induced demand is considerably smaller in cities with road pricing schemes, and that congestion decreases with the expansion of public transportation.

The effects of road pricing on transportation and health equity: a scoping review

ABSTRACT Road pricing is increasingly considered as an option to support transportation infrastructure costs, manage demand, and reduce emissions. However, the extent to which implementation of such approaches may impact transportation and health equity is unclear. In this scoping review, we examine the differential transportation and health effects of road pricing policies across population groups and geographic region. We conducted a systematic database search of Transport Research International Documentation, GEOBASE, Scopus, and Ovid Medline, supplemented by bibliographic review and internet searches. Fifteen studies were included in the review. The studies evaluated area and cordon road pricing systems in Singapore, London, Stockholm, Milan, and Gothenburg, and had a median follow-up period of 12 months. Outcomes evaluated include car commuting, mode shift to public transit, accessibility to destinations, affordability, welfare, social interactions, air pollution, traffic injuries and deaths, acute asthma attacks, and life expectancy. While more studies across diverse urban contexts and policy settings will be needed to strengthen the evidence base, the existing evidence suggests road pricing has mostly net positive effects related to a reduction in car trips, air pollution, asthma attacks, and road traffic collisions, and increases in life expectancy. Frequency and ease of social interactions were found to be negatively impacted, with fewer visits to family and friends. The population groups that generally fared better across transportation and health outcomes were those with higher incomes, men, and people between the ages of 35–55. Across space, there are benefits for both the areas inside and outside the cordon boundary, but to a greater degree for the area inside. Overall, the evidence base is limited by a narrow set of health-related outcomes and a lack of longer-term studies. We did not come across any studies assessing distributional effects of noise pollution, mode shifts to walking or cycling, or other morbidities in the general population that are not listed above. In addition, there are few evaluations that include non-work trips, therefore potentially missing effects for unemployed populations or women who are more likely to make non-work trips. We find that the limited body of evidence on area and cordon pricing policies suggests these policies are beneficial for a number of transportation and health outcomes, particularly for populations inside the cordon area, but that there may be some degree of inequities in the distribution of the benefits and burdens.

A sustainable road pricing oriented bilevel optimization approach under multiple environmental uncertainties

The rapidly-increasing urban transportation contributes to a number of externalities such as congestion and pollution; moreover, environmental uncertainties widely exist and bring challenges to creating traffic emission control strategies. To address these problems, this paper proposes an inexact bilevel programming approach under stochastic and fuzzy uncertainties (BLP-SF) for a toll scheme design with the considerations of the externalities of vehicular emission and road pricing policy. The BLP-SF approach can deal with multiple environmental uncertainties by (1) specifying the uncertainties as probability distributions and/or fuzzy sets, and (2) integrating chance-constrained programming and fuzzy possibility programming into the bilevel programming framework. A road pricing problem is exemplified under various policy scenarios to demonstrate the applicability of the BLP-SF approach. It is shown that the proposed BLP-SF approach can achieve optimal charging schemes with improvements in total emission reduction and congestion alleviation compared with traditional models. This study contributes to urban transportation management associated with congestion and emission.

Congestion in Highways When Tolls and Railroads Matter: Evidence From European Cities

Using data from the 545 largest European cities, we study whether the expansion of their highway capacity provides a solution to the problem of traffic congestion. Our results confirm that in the long run, and in line with the ’fundamental law of highway congestion’, the expansion in cities of lane kilometers causes an increase in vehicle traffic that does not solve urban congestion. We disentangle the increase in traffic due to the increases in coverage and in capacity. We further introduce road pricing and public transit policies in order to test whether they moderate congestion. Our findings confirm that the induced demand is considerably smaller in cities with road pricing schemes, and that congestion decreases with the expansion of public transportation.

Benefits and Costs of Ride-Sharing in Shared Automated Vehicles across Austin, Texas: Opportunities for Congestion Pricing

A self-driving, fully automated, or “autonomous” vehicle (AV) revolution is imminent, with the potential to eliminate driver costs and driver error, while ushering in an era of shared mobility. Dynamic ride-sharing (DRS), which refers to sharing rides with strangers en route, is growing, with top transportation network companies providing such services. This work uses an agent-based simulation tool called MATSim to simulate travel patterns in Austin, Texas in the presence of personal AVs, and shared AVs (SAVs), with DRS and advanced road-pricing policies in place. Fleet size, pricing, and fare level impacts are analyzed in depth to provide insight into how SAVs may best be introduced to a city or region. Results indicate that the cost-effectiveness of traveling with strangers overcomes inconvenience and privacy issues at moderate-to-low fare levels, with high fares being more detrimental than the base case. A moderately sized Austin, Texas fleet (one SAV for every 25 people) serves nearly 30% of all trips made during the day. The average vehicle occupancy of this fleet was around 1.48 [after including the 12.7% of SAV vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) empty/without passengers], with a 4.5% increase in VMT. This same fleet performs better when road-pricing is enforced in the peak periods (4 h a day), moderating VMT by 2%, increasing SAV demand and in turn fleet-manager revenue. SAVs are able to earn around $100 per SAV per day even after paying tolls, but only at low-fare levels.

Exploring Driver’s Response to Variable Road Pricing (VRP) Scheme: An Insight into Policy Implementation in Indonesia

In the last few decades, road pricing scheme have been known to hold a central role in actualizing sustainable and integrated transport systems. Road pricing has been implemented in various forms and price structures in many cities in the world. Although the road pricing and price structures were generally designed based on the rational actor approach, some studies provided evidences that, in reality, drivers have bounded rationality. It can be argued that limited cognitive ability of drivers gave significant effect towards their decision. In developing countries like Indonesia, road pricing seems to be an alternative solution for traffic congestion problems. This research aims to explore the cognitive responses of drivers, particularly on their ways of making decision and learning, to complexity and variability of road pricing, and also to give valuable contribution to the government on making policy towards traffic issues. The initial results indicate that policy makers in Indonesia need to consider how drivers behave in response to road pricing scheme before implementing any road pricing policy. Moreover, multiple factors from the point of view of drivers (travel time, safety, comfort, etc.) should be taken into consideration as integral parts of the road pricing scheme design.
 Keywords: driver behaviour, experiment, road pricing, road pricing policy

An axiomatic characterization of fairness in transport networks: Application to road pricing and spatial equity

This paper considers the important issue of fairness in transportation. Designing fair policies in transportation is critical since transport networks are generally recognized as public goods. Moreover, the effects of road pricing may be significantly different for travellers from different geographical regions. Hence, any revenue collected from road pricing or infrastructure funding policies ought to be appropriately redistributed among the population of different geographical regions. In this work, we focus on spatial equity in the road pricing revenue assignment problem. We examine well-known fairness schemes commonly discussed in the literature: opportunity fairness, proportional fairness (individual value and marginal value), and market fairness. We conduct an axiomatic characterization of these schemes to demonstrate their properties and highlight their policy implications. We then present a practical implementation of the proposed fair pricing revenue assignment mechanisms on Winnipeg's downtown network. The results reveal that market fairness is the most axiomatically restrictive scheme and that this scheme is related to individual value and proportional value proportional fairness under specific conditions. We also demonstrate a paradoxical situation where a market or marginal value proportional fair assignment requires a certain group to pay taxes, because they receive more benefits than other groups. In turn, opportunity fairness is shown to be the least restrictive revenue assignment scheme and to require minimal computational resources.

A simplified transport model for the ex ante evaluation of road pricing on a project basis

The objective of this research is the development of a diversion transport model that adopts a specific technique for forecasting changes in demand when examining road pricing schemes for two generic types of road projects: a new road project and the upgrade of an existing roadway. It is assumed that the key drivers of demand are roadway capacity and generalised cost of travel. The model incorporates most of the transport behaviours and sensitivity desired in a transport model, yet it has a simple structure (sketch-based model) and manageable data requirements. Due to its simple structure, the model is developed for use mainly by public authorities, with limited resources or know-how in transport modelling. The model was applied in order to produce a (defensible) simulation of the ‘immediate’ impacts of road pricing policies (traffic volume, amount of travel, journey time, speed, etc.) on given road projects. Model results were used for the estimation of traffic-related impacts that are usually included in an ex ante evaluation of a road project (reduction of traffic congestion, improvement of safety level, improvement of air quality and reduction of noise annoyance).

Impact of the built environment on the vehicle emission effects of road pricing policies: A simulation case study

In order to develop a road pricing policy that is effective in reducing vehicle emissions, this paper explores the relationship between road pricing, the urban built environment, and vehicle emissions. Existing studies generally tend to choose a city or an entire region as the research object. For this reason, these kinds of studies can neither analyze the differences in the vehicle emission effects of road charging on regions with different built environment attributes, nor distinguish how different built environment attributes affect the vehicle emission effects of road user charging. To fill in the research gap, this paper focuses on the influences of road charging on the vehicle emissions of regions with different built environment characteristics. In order to achieve the above mentioned goal, this paper first applies a method which combines the land use and transport interaction model with a vehicle emission model to simulate the automobile emissions under different road pricing schemes. Then, using multiple regression analysis, this paper establishes the association between the built environment attributes and the vehicle emissions under different road charging levels. Additionally, using factor analysis and cluster analysis, this research further distinguishes the vehicle emission effects of road pricing based on attributes of the built environment. The results confirmed that road pricing affects vehicle emissions in different regions differently. More importantly, not every region will experience decreases in vehicle emissions after the implementation of a road charging policy. The presence of retail amenities, good street design, and public transportation, the more significant the effect of road pricing in reducing vehicle emissions. Furthermore, a healthy jobs-housing balance is also conducive to the decline of regional automobile emissions as well.

Practical Management of Distance Based Toll System for Urban Expressway

According to the extension of Electronic Toll Collection System (ETC), the distance based toll system has been recently introduced to realize the effective traffic management for urban transport networks. However, the particular type of distance based toll should be specified from the empirical study. Even though the step function is applied in the real world, many types of function can be assumed between the distance and the price of toll. The optimization technique with intelligent information processing is proposed as well to specify the parameters in the particular distance based toll function. In the study, urban road network in Keihanshin area is analyzed as an empirical study. The traffic assignment technique is modified to estimate the traffic conditions on the network with describing the individual route charging as well as diversion traffic in case of distance based toll system. The impact of implementation of distance based toll onto the real scale transport network can be evaluated to discuss the social benefit of road users. The advanced technique with intelligent information processing can be proposed to determine the optimal combination of parameters in distance based toll function. In the study, the reduction of total travel time of road users is regarded as the index of the social benefit on urban network. Therefore, the estimation model of total travel time is created by neural network without the estimation process for large scale network. After the optimal combination of parameters is determined, practical road pricing policy on the urban network can be analyzed. Therefore, the toll system of urban expressway is investigated in terms of empirical study. Finally, the optimal function form of distance based toll is recommended in practical implementation.

Built environment and potential job accessibility effects of road pricing: A spatial econometric perspective

This paper analyzes the impacts of the built environment (BE) as it relates to the potential job accessibility (PJA) effects of road pricing. The relationships between the BE elements and PJA under a road charging policy are established using a spatial econometric approach, which uses an integrated land use and transportation model (TRANUS model) and a spatial lag model (SLM). With the intent of further analyzing the differences in the PJA effects of road pricing on traffic analysis zones (TAZs) that contain different combinations of BE elements, a quantitative classification method combining factor and cluster analysis is applied. This will quantitatively categorize TAZs inside and outside the tolled areas. In exploring the relationship between changes in PJA and the road pricing policy, we found the spatial autocorrelation coefficient to be negative. This result suggests that we are unable to increase the PJA of all the regions through road pricing, but rather affect a redistribution of PJA between different regions. Results also indicate that the impacts of road charging on PJA are associated with urban BE elements. Moreover, such effects are the common result of specific characteristics of the BE. The higher the number of jobs, the better the public transportation conditions, and the better the street design (high densities of street and intersections), the less the region will be negatively influenced by a road charging policy, and vice versa. To avoid the negative effects of road pricing on PJA prior to the launch of such a policy, cities should improve public transportation networks and enhance the street design of the road pricing policy areas, especially the toll ring periphery area.

The association between news and attitudes towards a Dutch road pricing proposal

This study investigates the association between news exposure and attitudes/beliefs about a Dutch road pricing proposal (Kilometerheffing) with individual level data. We have combined the data from a public attitude survey (N = 705) with a content analysis of 280 news articles on the pricing proposal published in five leading Dutch newspapers. Our findings show that news exposure and attitudes/beliefs about road pricing policies are associated not only at the aggregate level, as shown by past research, but also at the individual level. The direction of attitudes/beliefs and tone of news change in the same direction (e.g., the higher the amount of negative news exposed, the more negative the attitudes towards Kilometerheffing). Our findings also show that the significance and direction of association (in parallel with or opposite to the tone of news—negative or positive) changes according to the issue featured in the news and the strength of the individual’s values. News exposure is not associated with beliefs about the impact of Kilometerheffing on one’s own financial situation but rather with beliefs about the impact of Kilometerheffing on the environment and congestion. Furthermore, the strength of the biospheric value (which concerns the quality of nature and environment) negatively moderates the relationship between news exposure and beliefs about the impact of Kilometerheffing on environment-congestion.

Road Pricing Effect on the Emission of Traffic Pollutants, a Case Study in Tehran

Road pricing is one of the main purposes of traffic management policies in order to reduce personal car use. Understanding the behaviour of drivers under the impact of the road pricing policy, can assist transportation planners in making better and more efficient decisions. This research aims at investigating the reactions of private car users to road pricing using stated preference (SP) method on the one hand, and on the other hand, studies the road pricing effect on traffic flow and pollutants. To this aim, the acceptance rate of pricing, which is obtained from modeling of survey data, as well as real traffic flow data in Shahid Hemmat Highway in Tehran, Iran, are applied as the simulation software input. Based on the results of this research, at the lowest price (TN11000), the contribution of toll acceptance is equal to 64/91 percent. The fuel consumption rate at this price decreases to 49/91% and the emission rate of CO2, NOx, particle material (PM) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) pollutants decrease to 56.82%, 49.46%, 36.8% and 63.17%, respectively. At the highest price (TN10000), toll acceptability, fuel consumption, CO2, NOx, PM and VOC emission rates decrease to 5.47%, 3.57%, 3.98%, 2.85%, 1.22% and 4.86%, respectively.

Achieving political acceptability for new transport infrastructure in congested urban regions

This paper analyzes the efficiency and political acceptability of road pricing and infrastructure policies targeted at relieving urban congestion. It combines a stylized transport model of an urban road network with a model of the political process that incorporates interactions between voters, citizen interest groups and politicians to explore the possibilities to reach political acceptability for efficient transport policies. In a numerical illustration, the paper compares a set of pricing and investment policies in terms of efficiency and acceptability. The illustration shows how conflicting interests can lead to non-efficient policies being chosen.