Encouraging the commercial sector to help employees to change their travel behaviour

Encouraging the commercial sector to help employees to change their travel behaviou

Unfare solutions : taxing vices to solve the transport crisis

A key element in all national and local transport policies addressing environmental goals is the development of attractive and popular public transport systems as an alternative to car travel. This often requires major investment, at a time when already stretched traditional public spending levels are also needed to fund improvements to other sectors, and when electorates are reacting against paying higher taxes. One approach has been for Governments to cut costs through privatisation, and/or efficiency savings, and this path has become increasingly trodden on over recent years. Less common are examples of local transport authorities raising money specifically to pay for improvements to public transport through dedicated local charges and/or taxes. As well as raising money for public transport development, such new sources of financing can themselves be urban transport tools (e.g. road tolls and parking charges). The issue of new sources of finance for public transport investment and operations is one that exists whatever form of ownership or regulation model is adopted, and the links between these financing mechanisms and transport policy are increasingly important. The use of such instruments has moved up the transport policy agenda in recent years, but actual experience appears limited. The paper reports the results of a CEC study [1], to which the authors contributed, that identified numerous cases of local earmarked finance from across the world that have been used to fund public transport services. These range from fairly prosaic measures such as taxing property, to taxing oft-frowned upon activities (which may even be labelled vices) such as drinking, gambling, smoking, driving, flying, and shopping. A common framework was also developed to allow policy makers to evaluate each case’s appropriateness for their own needs

Paratransit: the need for a regulatory revolution in the light of institutional inertia

© 2016 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited.Purpose - This chapter adopts a transport systems approach to explore why the adoption of paratransit modes is low and sporadic. Regulatory and institutional barriers are identified as a major reason for this. The chapter then reviews key trends and issues relating to the uptake of, and barriers to, paratransit modes. Based on this analysis a new regulatory structure is proposed. Design/methodology/approach - Case studies and research/practice literature. Findings - Following an exploration of the nature of paratransit system design and traditional definitions of ‘paratransit’, it is concluded that institutional barriers are critical. However, current societal trends and service developments, and in particular initiatives from the technology service industry, are developing significant new paratransit models. The chapter concludes with a proposed redefinition of paratransit to facilitate a regulatory change to help overcome its institutional challenges. Research limitations/implications - A paratransit transformation of public transport services would produce travel behaviours different from models and perspectives built around corridor/timetabled public transport services. Practical implications - Technology firm invaders (e.g. Uber) are viewed as disrupters from normal transport planning to be controlled or excluded. However they may be the key to a transport system transformation. Social implications - Existing public transport modes are ill-suited to modern patterns of travel demand. A system involving paratransit could produce enhanced social mobility and system-level improvements in CO2 emissions. Originality/value - This chapter identifies the key issues raised by the emergence of new paratransit modes and the new actors involved. A new regulatory structure is proposed which reflects this understanding

Marketing and the British bus industry

The development of public transport services is a key element of all local sustainable transport strategies. Achieving modal switch from car users requires marketing systems be changed to identify and target suitable non-users of public transport, rather than just enlarging custom by existing users. However, in the public transport field, marketing is still essentially designed to only address the existing customer base. This is particularly acute among bus operators, who rarely even market effectively to their existing customer base, and have a poor image among car users. This paper draws on the practical experience of some of the relatively few local bus operators and local authorities who have identified and won new markets, including modal shift from car. It looks at the sort of services they have developed, the marketing strategies adopted, and at how the stakeholders worked together. In addition, it provides hard evidence as to the benefits of marketing bus services properly, suggesting that patronage gains of around 5-7% should be possible, even without major investment or legislative change. In conclusion, seven key features of good practice are identified that need to be part of developing bus services to serve sustainable transport policies. These are CUSTOMISATION, CO-OPERATION, CLEAR VISION, CLARITY (TO THE USER), CORE MARKET, CULTURE, and CONTINUITY

Using strategic niche management to evaluate and implement urban transport policy instruments

Strategic Niche Management (SNM) is rooted in organisational innovation diffusion theory and provides a structure to evaluate and manage the introduction of new transport technologies. In brief, SNM involves: • Formation of a ‘technological niche’. • Identification and introduction of appropriate protection measures that support the new technology. • Analysing the technological regime of the ‘experiment’ (demonstration project). -Promotion and examination (by actors/partners) of 'second order' learning processes within the protected experimental space. • Management of experiment to encourage innovation diffusion. An existing transport case study is presented to demonstrate how Strategic Niche Management could be used in the development of new and innovative transport technologies. These were conducted as part of a research project for the CEC DG XII Strategic Niche Management as a Tool for Transition to a Sustainable Transport System. This paper briefly introduces Strategic Niche Management and focuses on the new research by Petros Ieromonachou that is seeking to use SNM to evaluate and manage radical local transport policy package measures. The possibility of producing an implementation guidance tool based on this concept is discussed

Fuel taxes and beyond : UK transport and climate change

The starting point for this report is climate change, and strategies to tackle it. Transport is one of the fastest growing sources of emissions – especially carbon dioxide (CO2) – contributing to climate change. Scientific advice, notably from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, Houghton et al, 1990) and, more recently, from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP 2000), is that, to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, emissions need to be cut to 40 per cent of their 1990 level by 2050. This report assumes that the transport sector will need to contribute a proportionate cut, and explains how this might best be done. Its focus is surface transport, since the issues and implications of aviation emissions are very different and will need to be addressed through different policy levers

Improving bus service provision : a review of current UK planning

The development of bus services is a key element of local sustainable transport strategies. But in many areas of Britain, bus use continues to decline as car use inexorably rises. Those involved in planning and operating bus services thus face a challenge which so far, with a very few exceptions, they have shied away from accepting. So why is this the case, and what can be done to stimulate a renaissance in the bus sector? The purpose of this paper is to review the factors that affect bus use, and at how a geodemographic analysis tool may be used to incorporate these. It also looks at how commercial and social bus services are currently planned and marketed and identifies the inadequacies of these methods. The paper concludes that with the number of skilled bus planners in decline, it is time for the industry to develop more ‘scientific’ methods of planning bus routes and services. The results presented are taken from the first stage of an EPSRC Future of Integrated Transport feasibility study, which aimed to develop a geodemographic analysis-based tool for those involved in planning and operating public transport to help overcome some of the transport problems faced by people living in rural areas

Demand responsive transport : a review of schemes in England and Wales

Local Authority administered Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) schemes are increasingly prevalent in England and Wales, partly as a result of the growth in the availability of Government funding. However insufficient research has been undertaken into the nature of these schemes and their performance making it difficult to predict their future role. In this respect, a survey was undertaken in order to collect data on the background, operation and performance of DRT schemes in England and Wales. It found that DRT schemes are often designed in an attempt to tackle social problems caused by poor accessibility, and that they took time to become established, to achieve their objectives and to reach an acceptable performance in terms of subsidy level. The paper concludes that Local Authority led DRT schemes have a role to play but that lessons learnt from schemes currently in operation must be heeded by those contemplating new scheme development

Economic instruments and traffic restraint

Tax and Transport Policy: In recent years there have been increasingly strong linkages between national fiscal systems and environmental/transport objectives. Within the European Union, European Commission (EC) policy has been outlined in documents such as ‘Towards Fair and Efficient Pricing’ (1), and ‘Fair Payment for Infrastructure Use’ (2). In summary these well-researched documents advocate that transport infrastructure charges should normally reflect the marginal social costs at the point of use. These marginal social costs should include not only marginal wear and tear costs on infrastructure, but also ‘external’ costs imposed on society, the environment and the wider economy through accidents, pollution, emission of climate change gases, congestion etc.. While regulatory and physical design mechanisms are also recognised as having an important role to play, it is tax and charging instruments that the European Commission and national states see as being most effective at encouraging efficient and sustainable transport systems in the longer term. In practice, moving towards such a strategic policy aim has proved problematic. In the first place, transport taxation is an increasingly political sensitive subject, as the autumn 2000 ‘fuel price’ protests in several European countries showed. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that marginal changes in the fiscal framework would provide sufficient encouragement to make a real difference in consumer behaviour. It requires a major restructuring to address the issue of environmental performance. This chapter therefore explores the potential to move towards more radical actions in a way that might succeed in overcoming the shortcomings experienced by more short term strategies. Structure of the Chapter: This chapter first considers the purposes of taxation and the implications of this for the use of fiscal policies in the new transport agenda of managing transport demand. It then considers the fiscal policies that can be used to influence consumer behaviour in acquiring and using different forms of transport, before going on to explain how these policies have – or have not – been used in the recent past in the UK. The chapter then argues that the use of fiscal policies has been quite limited, particularly in comparison to other countries. It therefore advocates and examines the implications of the adoption of a wider range of fiscal policies, as part of a wider package of economic instruments and regulations to achieve transport demand management in an effective manner that also recognises the political sensitivities involved

The role of hypothecation in financing transit: lessons from the UK

Two hypothecated charges to fund local public transport have recently passed onto the statute books in the UK. The first is road user charging, with the London and Durham the first to be implemented and the second is a workplace parking levy. The use of such local hypothecated (or ‘earmarked’) mechanisms is not new. Indeed a variety of such charges, local taxes and levies have been in use for decades to fund public transport and (less frequently) as a tool for transport demand management in the USA, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Scandinavia, India and Singapore. In the general debate around the two new hypothecated charges in the UK, this international experience has been largely neglected. The aim of this paper is to detail a related and equally neglected area namely the local hypothecation of charges to fund public transport improvements within Britain. Under existing legislation it has been possible for some local authorities to dedicate revenue streams from sources such as parking charges and planning gain to develop and improve public transport services. There is also significant experience of dedicated revenue streams in the private sector, for example at airports. The paper details examples of the British experience of hypothecation and will consider their lessons for the new and more radical measures that are now being considered