Road Pricing Schemes Research Articles

Assessing the potential acceptability of road pricing in Santiago

Studying road pricing acceptability has become increasingly relevant. Even though the policy has been effective in reducing the growing levels of congestion in several cities by curbing the indiscriminate use of the car, it still faces an initial rejection among the population in general. We discuss this issue based on a comprehensive review and set out to define what could be an acceptable road pricing scheme for Santiago de Chile. For this purpose, we estimated a hybrid discrete choice model that allowed us to segment the population according to their attitudes toward the measure. The preferred road pricing scheme in Santiago would charge only for entrance to the smallest of three cordons, around the historic centre of the city, during either the morning (or morning and evening) rush hours, provided that revenues were used to enhance public transport in the city. Since this is different from the best technical solution, which would imply charging in the largest cordon area, we suggest testing the preferred scheme in a pilot trial, following international recommendations and successful previous cases.

Road pricing adaptation to era of autonomous and shared autonomous vehicles: Perspective of Brazil, Jordan, and Azerbaijan

The advent of autonomous vehicles as a major player in the automotive market in the near future is highly expected because of its benefits in terms of safety features, comfort level, utilization of travel time, energy consumption, traffic throughput and accessibility. However, due to these benefits, number of trips and traveled miles on roads will expectedly increase. Therefore, formulating a traffic regulator policy like road pricing will be essential. Despite its benefits related to reducing congestion and revenue generating, general acceptance of road pricing is considered low. This paper analyzes acceptance of road pricing scheme and adoption of autonomous vehicles in Brazil, Jordan and Azerbaijan through an online survey comprised of a stated preference experiment, questions about various background characteristics and public attitudes and behaviours. Multinomial regression model is used to interpret the responses of participants. The results show that people’s acceptance of road pricing and adoption of autonomous vehicles are affected by several individual and environmental factors. The level of road pricing acceptance and autonomous vehicle adoption varies among the investigated countries, but in general, road accidents, pollution, and educational level have the greatest impact on Jordanians, Brazilians and Azerbaijanis, respectively.

Managing Travelers’ Mode Choices in the Era of Shared Mobility Through Traditional Traffic Regulation Policies

The rapid expansion of ride-hailing service has imposed a huge amount of additional traffic on urban transportation systems. To reduce congestion, different regulatory policies have been announced to control the number of ride-hailing vehicles in metropolitan areas around the world. However, these measurements, shooting at ride-hailing vehicles only, deprive non-car owners of their private-car mobility rights (endowed by ride-hailing services), therefore are debatable in themselves. Instead of imposing specialized restrictions on ride-hailing vehicles, we propose to cure the deteriorating traffic conditions with classic traffic regulation policies implemented on all road space users. In this study, based on an aggregate model with two different types of ride-hailing services, i.e., ride-sourcing and ride-sharing, we model travelers' mode choices at user equilibrium under no policy intervention to reveal the negative impacts of ride-hailing on urban transportation efficiency, and compare the different system optimum states with and without ride-hailing to demonstrate the great potential of ride-hailing in mitigating congestion. Based on the model, the impacts of three traffic regulation policies, i.e., road space rationing, congestion pricing and tradable credit schemes, and the existence of traffic regulation policies that can achieve system optimum in the presence of ride-hailing are examined.

A discrete-time second-best dynamic road pricing scheme considering the existence of multiple equilibria

When multiple equilibria exist, the desired traffic equilibrium, may not be reached through a day-to-day dynamic adjustment process. Han et al. [“Discrete-Time Day-to-Day Dynamic Congestion Pricing Scheme Considering Multiple Equilibria.” Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 104: 1–16.] proposed a day-to-day dynamic pricing scheme charged on all links to ensure the desired traffic equilibrium can be achieved even when multiple equilibria exist. However, due to many practical constraints, the second-best pricing scheme has more practical interests. This study first discussed the issues of existing congestion pricing schemes for second-best case. Then, this study developed a second-best dynamic road pricing scheme that is implemented on a dynamic subset of the road links in the network. Our rigorous theoretical proof and numerical tests prove that the dynamic pricing scheme can drive the traffic state evolution towards the desired second-best traffic user equilibrium state from any initial traffic state.

Significance of Road Infrastructure on Economic Sustainability

This study buttressed on the theories explaining the significance of road infrastructure on economic sustainability. Road infrastructure is essential for banishing hunger, alleviating poverty, and improving the quality of human life. Road transport is a means of transport that offers door-to-door transport which is suitable for the delivery of finished goods to consumers. Road infrastructure has the potentials of transforming subsistence farming into a commercial and dynamic farming system which unlock the potentials embedded in rural areas. Understanding the conditions in which more or new road infrastructure does indeed foster economic growth is crucial for efficient management of road infrastructural project. Neoclassical growth theory, endogenous growth theory, growth pole, and growth centre theory were discussed. This paper concludes that public investment should not be constrained by accounting methods that impede a focus on economic returns, and road pricing strategy should be adopted in Nigeria because of its benefits of spreading demand for road transport, minimizing congestion and overcrowding, improving reliability and delivering benefits to the wider economy. Keywords: road, infrastructure, economy, sustainability DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/66-01 Publication date: July 31 st 2020

Public frames in the road pricing debate: A Q-methodology study

A deep understanding of people's support for road pricing may help policymakers to design more practical pricing schemes that are effective in abating congestion but lead to less public opposition. This study adds to the rich body of road pricing acceptability literature by taking a different approach that focuses on the underlying pattern of the arguments, beliefs and attitudes, which largely determine the viewpoint of individuals with respect to road pricing. We apply Q-methodology to find these viewpoints by asking respondents to rank order subjective arguments that are subtracted from the public debate on road pricing and to identify shared viewpoints that are called frames. Analysis revealed four frames: The polluter should pay, Focus on fair alternatives, What's in it for me? and Don't interfere. Only the Polluter should pay frame is positive about road pricing. The other three frames are negative about road pricing, which suggests that there is not just one single block of citizens opposed to road pricing, but that quite different arguments are used in the various frames. We discuss how these frames can be used by policy-makers that intend to implement road pricing, to fine-tune the design, communication and implementation process of road pricing schemes.

Essays on Environmental Policy: Design and Evaluation

In this PhD thesis, I analyze the impacts of the design and implementation of different environmental policy tools from a theoretical and empirical perspective: certificates providing information on the energy performance of buildings; urban road pricing schemes such as congestion charges; quantity-based policy tools to support production with non-polluting technologies.JEL codes: D82, Q48, H23, Q58, R48.

Implications of different road pricing schemes in urban areas: a case study for Budapest

Road pricing is an efficient instrument to regulate use of roads. In Budapest, Hungary, only cordon pricing has been investigated in detail. This paper reports on a study of the implications of applying different road pricing schemes in the city using a macroscopic traffic model. Firstly, the functional relationship between pricing schemes and road transport demand was investigated. Secondly, the implications of applying road pricing schemes on travel demand, travel time, delay time, average speed and carbon dioxide emissions of road users inside and outside of the pricing area, as well as revenues generated by applying the schemes, were studied. The results revealed that a time-based system showed the best performance inside the pricing area. However, it generated heavy congestion on non-priced roads bordering the pricing area, which would increase travel times, delay times and carbon dioxide emissions and would decrease average travel speeds on the entire network. The cordon-based system was the least effective pricing system for most of the studied parameters, while the distance-based system showed good performance both inside and outside the pricing area. Regarding the revenues generated, variable-toll systems (time-based and distance-based systems) showed the potential to generate higher revenues than the fixed-toll system (cordon-based system).

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.

Public acceptability of congestion charging in Beijing, China: How transferrable are Western ideas of public acceptability?

Public acceptability is a major concern for road pricing schemes in Western countries but has not yet been sufficiently studied in the context of Chinese cities, a number of which are considering the introduction of such travel constraint measures. This study explores factors influencing public acceptability of a proposed congestion charge in the City of Beijing. In so doing, the study focuses on understanding the appropriateness of Western frameworks for assessing public acceptability in the Chinese context.Through literature review and focus groups a survey to test different public acceptability constructs was developed (N = 1104). A Structural Equation Model was used to analyze relationships that exist among the different aspects of public acceptability. The results demonstrate that public acceptability is dominantly influenced by the level of trust toward the Government and experts. Various determinants in the Western context, such as access to information and perceived effectiveness were not found to have a significant impact on public acceptability. The results imply that public acceptability of congestion charging in the Chinese context has a stronger resonance with wider social issues such as equity than more specific transport problems such as congestion. As such, attempting to present evidence on the anticipated effectiveness of the policy in alleviating congestion and smog may not make the policy more acceptable to the public. The overall inference of the study is that contextual factors are more important than has been previously considered within public acceptability studies.

Significance of Road Infrastructure on Economic Sustainability

This study buttressed on the theories explaining the significance of road infrastructure on economic sustainability. Road infrastructure is essential for banishing hunger, alleviating poverty, and improving the quality of human life. Road transport is a means of transport that offers door-to-door transport which is suitable for the delivery of finished goods to consumers. Road infrastructure has the potentials of transforming subsistence farming into a commercial and dynamic farming system which unlock the potentials embedded in rural areas. Understanding the conditions in which more or new road infrastructure does indeed foster economic growth is crucial for efficient management of road infrastructural project. Neoclassical growth theory, endogenous growth theory, growth pole, and growth centre theory were discussed. This paper concludes that public investment should not be constrained by accounting methods that impede a focus on economic returns, and road pricing strategy should be adopted in Nigeria because of its benefits of spreading demand for road transport, minimizing congestion and overcrowding, improving reliability and delivering benefits to the wider economy.

Monitoring Urban-Freight Transport Based on GPS Trajectories of Heavy-Goods Vehicles

For designing transport policy measures, it is crucial to base decisions on evidence-based insights regarding transport flows and behavior. This paper introduces practical indicators for urban transport, which can be derived from large collections of GPS trajectories of heavy-goods vehicles. The indicators framework enables cities, municipalities, and regions to gain insights into the urban transport activities in their region. We motivate our indicators based on the objectives and action plans described in the strategic plan for goods traffic of the Brussels-Capital Region in Belgium. We provide a case study on data collected from the on-board units of heavy-goods vehicles, which became mandatory in Belgium as part of its dynamic road-pricing scheme in 2016. This paper contributes to the exciting new capabilities that are obtained through GPS trajectories data and the possibilities this offers for smart cities at the tactical, operational, and strategic level.

Discrete-time dynamic road congestion pricing under stochastic user optimal principle

Road pricing is believed to be an effective instrument for alleviating roadway congestion. Most existing road pricing schemes are developed based on traditional static traffic equilibrium models, in which a fixed toll can be obtained to support the corresponding traffic flow pattern as an equilibrium. However, static models cannot consider the evolution process of traffic flow caused by the day-to-day fluctuations of road users’ route choices. Under practical traffic conditions, the multiple traffic equilibria may exist (e.g., due to the asymmetric travel cost function). Indeed, the fixed road pricing scheme derived from the equilibrium model cannot guarantee that the dynamic traffic system can converge to the desired equilibrium state from any initial traffic state. This study, assuming that travelers follow the stochastic user optimal principle, develops a day-to-day dynamic road pricing scheme that can drive the traffic dynamic system to converge to a given stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) even when the traffic system has multiple SUE states. The characteristic of this dynamic road pricing scheme is verified by rigorous proof and numerical tests in this study.

Design of a heuristic environment-friendly road pricing scheme for traffic emission control under uncertainty

Road transportation is one of the main sources of atmospheric emissions in many countries and areas. Road pricing, is not only effective for urban transportation management, but also helpful in reducing the negative externalities caused by transportation. In this study, an inexact two-phase minimal emission programming (TMEP) model is proposed for design of the environment-friendly toll scheme with an acceptable road network performance. Through introduction of fuzzy stochastic programming, multiple uncertainties involved in vehicle emission evaluation are dealt with; the Traffic Performance Index (TPI) based constraints are incorporated to reflect the decision-maker's requirements for network congestion management. The solution method is proposed for generating the range of fuzzy stochastic objectives. An optimal toll scheme associated with the minimal emission based flow pattern is obtained through searching for a set of the best and the worst optimal solutions. A numerical experiment and a real-world road network in Beijing of China are used to illustrate the application of the developed method. In the case study, the toll scheme is obtained at the desired congestion level. The effects of emission and congestion abatement are analyzed under different policy scenarios. The proposed TMEP method can generate the toll scheme with obvious improvements in total emission reduction and congestion mitigation.

Is Road Pricing a Sustainable Policy? Jakarta Case

Urban road pricing involves direct charging of drivers for the use of the road network, usually during peak periods. The main objectives for the introduction of a road pricing scheme, in a congested city network, include reduction of delays, environmental improvement and revenue increase. These objectives are closely associated with the concepts of sustainable mobility in urban areas with respect to social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental responsibility. There have been intensive discussions about sustainable transportation in Indonesia. In tune with the issue of climate change and the decline in the ability to provide fuel, this paper is intended to look at the perspective of road pricing from the standpoint of traffic flow, travel speed, emissions reduction, and energy consumption as well as pricing scheme. As pricing will be imposed for the Moslem community, it should conform with Islamic tax income which is for the benefits of poor, needy and less privileged people in the society. The conclusion drawn is that the frenzied application of road pricing will be able to improve traffic in Greater Jakarta but the sustainability of pricing should be adjusted with Islamic tax income.

Comparing Road User Charging Acceptability in the City of Tunis and Damascus

Worldwide, multiple studies have been trying to reduce traffic issues without physically changing the road network, this is when the congestion fees strategy has been considered as a favorable solution for the urban traffic issues. A fundamental condition that needs to be checked before the implementation of the road-pricing scheme is the acceptability of both the political and the public parties. The acceptability is so variable and depends on many features and differs from one individual to another, thus, a survey with a set of variant questions might help to understand the expectations and the worries of the citizens and aim to improve them for better effectiveness of the road-pricing project. This report aims, through analyzing the responses of a distributed survey, to evaluate the acceptability of the citizens of Tunis, Tunisia and Damascus, Syria in order to draw a comparison between the two cities. Moreover, it assesses the degree of acceptability and the variable expectations of the implementation of the congestion fees of the two societies.

Surrogate-based optimization for multi-objective toll design problems

Abstract The toll design problem (TDP) provides a quantitative approach to the design of road pricing schemes. Its practical use, however, can be computationally challenging if the formulated TDP requires time-consuming computer models to evaluate candidate designs, especially if such designs must account for multiple objectives. For TDPs to be of practical relevance to the real-world planning of sustainable transportation networks, efficient TDP solution heuristics must be developed. To this end, two surrogate-based solution heuristics for multi-objective TDPs are proposed in this paper. Surrogate-based optimization uses simple approximations to computationally expensive models in order to accelerate the discovery of good solutions. The general search strategy of the proposed heuristics is as follows. In each iteration of the heuristics, a pool of candidate pricing schemes with unique sets of tolling locations and associated tolling levels is generated. From this pool of designs, the heuristics use the surrogate models to screen for solutions that are expected to be nondominated and that meet a specified selection criterion. Then, these promising designs are evaluated by the computationally expensive models, and the outputs obtained from these evaluations are used to update the surrogate models. Both heuristics repeat this general process until a maximum number of iterations are completed, at which point the best TDP solutions are returned. In addition to the solution heuristics, this paper presents a transportation network paradox that highlights how transportation network interventions intended to reduce traffic emissions could have unintended effects on a population’s exposure to pollutants. The paradox also is used to illustrate the practical complexity of accounting for environmental inequality objectives, as well as the relevance of multi-objective analysis approaches to transportation planning. Formulations of multi-objective TDPs that consider both travel and pollutant exposure-related objectives are also presented, including the objectives of reducing human intake of vehicle-generated air pollutants and of minimizing environmental inequality. The Sioux Falls and Chicago Sketch networks were used in tests that examined the relative performance of the heuristics, as well as the characteristics of pricing configurations obtained under different budget constraints. Among other results, the tests show that a pricing configuration could decrease total pollutant intake and environmental inequality, while at the same time producing an increase in pollutant concentrations in a significant number of pollutant receptor points.

The Diesel Debate: Economic Policy Recommendations

Diesel technology and the associated environmental burden of local and global pollutant emissions have long been the focus of environmental policy debates. This article considers various negative external effects resulting from the use of combustion engines. A number of economic policy instruments can help to reduce these effects in the long term, such as the introduction of an urban road pricing scheme that is linked to local pollution levels, a greater focus on CO2 abatement in the sectors included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), or the integration of the transport sector into the EU ETS.

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

Decision-Support Framework for Selecting the Optimal Road Toll Collection System

One of the central decision-making questions in planning road tolling is the selection of the optimal toll collection system (TCS). The question of TCS selection arises in the situation when the existing TCS is to be upgraded or when TCS is selected for a newly constructed road. Considering that there are multiple TCS available nowadays, with their particular advantages and disadvantages, and that there is a range of often conflicting criteria for TCS selection, this decision-making issue belongs to the group of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. The MCDM-based methodology used in this research integrates Strengths-Weakness-Opportunities-Threat (SWOT) analysis and Fuzzy Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (F-PROMETHEE). The expert-based decision-support framework includes a procedure for defining evaluation criteria and their weights, scoring of alternatives, and sensitivity analysis. Presented decision-support framework is tested with fourteen toll systems. Results indicate that the best-ranked TCS is the dedicated short-range communication multilane free flow. Decision-support framework is developed for transferability to different contexts, where local features can be taken into account by choosing specific alternatives, criteria, and criteria values. Finally, this development opens up opportunities for further analysis of criteria values and considerations of user attitudes in road pricing scheme planning.