Acceptability of road pricing and revenue use in the Netherlands

It is generally acknowledged that the implementation of other, more efficient, road pricing measures meet public resistance and that acceptability is nowadays one of the major barriers to successful implementation. Despite the fact that politicians and the public regard transport problems as very urgent and important, people do have concerns about road pricing, resulting in low acceptance levels. This paper presents the empirical results of a questionnaire among Dutch commuters regularly facing congestion asking for their opinion (in terms of acceptance) on road pricing measures and revenue use targets. We find that road pricing is in general not very acceptable and that revenue use is important for the explanation of the level of acceptance. Road pricing is more acceptable when revenues are used to replace existing car taxation or to lower fuel taxes. Moreover, personal characteristics of the respondent have an impact on support levels. Higher educated people, as well as respondents with a higher value of time and with higher perceived effectiveness of the measure, seem to find road pricing measures more acceptable than other people. The same holds for people that receive financial support for their commuting costs and for respondents driving many kilometers in a year. When we ask directly for the acceptability of different types of revenue use (not part of a road pricing measure), again abandoning of existing car (ownership) taxes receives most support whereas the general budget is not acceptable.

Adapting the Dutch 'mobility explorer' program to investigate possible car taxation futures in the UK

This paper reports work being conducted as part of the only transport project in the current ESRC programme on the Environment and Human Behaviour. The concept of generalised road user changes eventually replacing existing Fuel Duties and Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) is in the ascendant, with several studies concentrating upon the eventual adoption of a GPS-based congestion charging system. The Dutch and Swiss have also been exploring such schemes. In particular the Dutch have looked at a more quickly and easily implemented option of distance charging rather than congestion charging that is favoured in the UK. This project seeks to explore a wider range of new taxation options, particularly seeking more pragmatic paths towards early implementation rather than the 10 – 20 year timescale currently envisaged. Indeed, the Dutch studies have suggested that distance charging might yield most of the traffic management and emission reduction benefits of congestion charging, with a modelled reduction in car kilometres travelled of between 18 and 35 per cent compared with a ‘business as usual’ base case. In this project, the Dutch Mobility Explorer program that was used to estimate the effects of a national distance charge, is being adapted using UK data to investigate a series of possible car taxation futures. These range from a low-key introduction of a distance charge to replace VED, through to a distance charging system replacing fuel tax and VED and a GPS congestion charging system. This will permit a comparison of the traffic, congestion and emission reductions between such options and also a cross-country comparison on a comparable basis with the existing Dutch work. The adaptation of the Dutch model to the UK has not been straightforward, and possibly the greatest lessons have been in helping to understand the differences in context in which a seemingly similar transport policy measure is being proposed. The paper concludes with a reflection upon the rapid rise in favour by the UK government for of generalised road user changes to replace Fuel Duties and VED. It is suggested that this is not a way to avoid hard decisions in transport policy that it may at first seem

Value of time, schedule delay and reliability - estimates based on choice behaviour of Dutch commuters facing congestion

This paper presents the results of a large stated choice experiment among Dutch commuters facing congestion. The experiment consisted of a fractional factorial design with 15 different attributes, three alternatives were car specific and the other was always public transport. Various model specifications have been estimated on the collected choice data allowing us to analyse choice behaviour of road users and determine their values of time, schedule delay (both late and early) and reliability (or uncertainty). In this paper we present the estimates of the best-fitting discrete choice models and interpret the results.

Taxation Futures for Sustainable Mobility: final report to the ESRC

The existing transport tax and charging regime has stimulated limited behavioural change and has been politically problematic (as demonstrated by the September 2000 fuel duty protests). This project synthesised a range of research that has explored ways in which road user charging could replace the present regime based on taxing fuels and car ownership. In 2002, when this project was proposed, this was a fringe transport policy issue. Throughout 2003 the subject achieved a sudden prominence, with a government working party being established to explore the possibility of long-term area-wide road user charging. A tax regime change towards a car road user charge for cars has occurred, or is being considered, in societies as contrasting as Oregon State in the USA, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK, reflecting a range of policy considerations. For the UK, these include: the ongoing failure of transport policy measures to achieve adequate cuts in congestion and emissions; the success of the London Congestion Charge; the rise in the cost of transport policy interventions; the reduction in Treasury income of eco-reforms to the current tax regime; and the difficulties of, and equity issues relating to, taxing fuel in a future multi-fuel transport sector. The project developed tax change scenarios in conjunction with the project's user group (including policymakers, NGOs and researchers). Five scenarios were modelled using an adaptation of the Dutch Mobility Explorer program. An 'opt-in' transitional policy mechanism involved replacing VED with a small flat-rate kilometre charge for cars of 0.77 p/km. The model suggested it would have little policy impact, but could be used to familiarise car drivers with the concept of a distance charge. A fiscally neutral scenario involved the replacement of VED and Fuel Duty with a banded kilometre charge for cars of between 2.3 and 8.5 p/km (varied by the environmental performance of the vehicle type). This induced little behaviour change, reducing car driver mobility by only 4%. A further scenario, restored the tax revenues lost from post-2000 tax changes, generating an additional £3 billion or £6b per annum. These reduced car driver mobility by 9% - 14%, and total CO2 emissions were predicted to drop by 6% - 9% by 2015, compared to the base scenario. The type of change involved in the revenue-raising scenarios is significant. There would be only a small increase in the use of public transport, with the predominant response being the better utilisation of cars with higher occupancy and more linking of trips to cut distances driven. The project results suggest that road user charging may deliver more revenue stability than fuel taxation. However, clarity is needed over the policy goals – congestion reduction, emission reduction, revenue stability – for a national road user charge, because the goals are not necessarily complementary. It should also be emphasised that a change of tax regime would not remove the need the hard political decisions in this area

Governmental Competition in Road Charging and Capacity Choice

In this study we have analysed policy interactions between an urban and a regional government which have different objectives (welfare of its own citizens) and two policy instruments (toll and capacity) available. Using a simulation model, we investigated the welfare consequences of the various regimes that result when both governments compete, and take sequential decisions on prices and capacities. We find that competition between governments may not be very beneficial to overall welfare in society compared with one central government. It appears that the tendency of tax exporting is very strong in this setting where commuters have to pay road tolls set by the city government. The main issue is not which exact type of game is played between the two actors, but much more whether there is cooperation (leading to first-best) or competition between governments, where of secondary importance is the question who is leading in the price stage (if there is a lea! der). Sensitivity analysis suggests that the performance for most game situations improves when demand becomes more elastic. When the price of road investment changes, the performance relative to the optimal situation remains more or less equal for all cases

Different Perspectives on the Global Development of Transport

The future of the transport sector is clearly fraught with uncertainties, as the system is influenced by many factors that can develop in various ways. The aim of this paper is to get insight into the future development of the transportation sector seen from a world-wide perspective. This is done by applying a scenario approach and by designing four possible development paths for transport. These future developments are presented here by sketching four global contrast images based on outcomes of earlier research. The outcomes for the transport sector, expressed in transported volumes for both passenger transport and freight transport, are first described qualitatively, based on expected developments of several indicators. Next, based on those descriptions, quantitative numbers of transported volumes are calculated with the year 2020 as the time horizon. It appears that all scenarios foresee a world-wide growth in transport volumes (for both passengers and freight). The achievement of sustainable mobility based on the outcomes presented in this paper may seem difficult and will be confronted with several hurdles. But policy changes and (unexpected) technology developments offer possibilities to realise this objective. Thus policy makers are faced with formidable policy challenges to achieve the Kyoto objectives in the next 20 years. 1