Purchase, circulation and fuel taxation

During the last decade, the UK and many other developed nations have reformed existing forms of road transport taxation to address a number of transport policy goals. This has involved modifying the design of purchase, circulation and fuel taxation to promote: • More fuel efficient vehicles • Alternative fuel vehicles • Cleaner fuels (lower emissions and/or low carbon) • Modal shift and traffic volume • Congestion reduction This chapter particularly explores the use of environmental taxation to promote Transport Demand Management (TDM) and identifies key principles of the design of such environmental taxes. It notes the importance of positioning a tax measure in relation to user decisions, its targeting and the threshold levels needed to provide a useful policy impact. Taxation measures considered include: • Initial vehicle purchase • ‘Circulation’ Tax on the ownership of vehicles • Tax on the use of vehicles It is concluded that purchase, circulation and fuel taxation can promote a variety of transport and environmental policy goals. It is important to distinguish between taxation measures to influence vehicle characteristics (technology, the type of fuel used and fuel economy) as opposed to the level vehicle use (TDM). Well designed purchase and circulation taxes can stimulate cleaner car technologies and fuels, but they are not an appropriate TDM measure. Road fuel duties are an effective general TDM measure but cannot be targeted on particular areas, times or for particular urban transport policy purposes. Road user charges can be targeted on such factors, and consequently, led by the established example of Singapore, followed by Norway and London, they are attracting much attention. The road transport taxation landscape is possibly set to change with many countries now seeing road user charges as potentially replacing the entire regime of transport taxation on purchase, ownership and fuel. But, rather than replacing fuel duties, evidence is mounting that to manage transport demand, road user charges need to be in addition to and not replace fuel and vehicle taxation. This may be a politically inconvenient truth, and the real challenge will be managing the transition towards an effective new transport taxation regime

Transport energy and emissions: urban public transport

This chapter explores how to measure energy and emissions from urban transport. It then provides information to make a comparison between energy use and CO2 emissions for urban travel by car, train, tram and bus. A substantial difference is noted between the figures for peak and off-peak travel, associated with patterns of vehicle loadings. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how energy efficiency can be improved and the need to shift from a vehicle to a systems level to fully evaluate policy options

Exploring strategic approaches towards a sustainable transport system

This paper undertakes a ‘backcasting’ analysis exploring strategic approaches for overalsystems sustainability in personal transport. Starting from a robust definition of sustainability for the personal transport sector, the research examines the impact of combinations of transport technologies and changes in travel behaviour in reducing CO2 emissions towards a sustainable level. In doing this a simple equation model is used. This is purposely simple to provide a tool developing understanding by anyone exploring transport’s sustainability challenges. It is concluded that technical measures in isolation are likely to be ineffective and politically problematic. Equally, even substantial modal shift from car to public transport cannot on its own attain the sustainability target. A combined strategy of both technical improvements and demand management addressing trip length, trip generation and modal share can deliver the necessary improvement, although the implementation of such a package remains politically challenging

Exploring rail futures using scenarios: experience and potential

In 1995 the author of this paper undertook a scenario exercise for British Rail to identify priorities for rail science and technology developments under the new privatised regime. Four marketbased 2010 scenarios were developed for UK rail transport: 1) cost driven; 2) quality driven, 3)technology driven and 4) environmentally driven. These helped to identify areas of strategic R&D that were needed to improve rail’s competitiveness. It is now over a decade since this scenario exercise took place. This paper, updating an earlier review (Potter and Roy, 2000), revisits the 1995 scenarios and compares them to what actual market strategies emerged within the privatised railway industry. It explores whether the four scenarios did succeed in capturing the range of market responses that emerged from rail privatisation and what lessons this contains for the use of scenarios transport research

The challenge of sustainable suburbia

This paper explores issues raised with the expansion of Milton Keynes and the dilemmas in seeking to plan for sustainable travel behaviour. The 1970 design of Milton Keynes was for a car-oriented low density land use pattern served by a one-kilometre grid of dual carriageway roads. Today, bus services in Milton Keynes are the poorest for any town of its size and the low density design makes most trips too long to walk and cycle. Hence Milton Keynes has a level of car use more characteristic of a rural shire than an aspiring city. Furthermore traffic is even starting to overwhelm the grid roads in a casebook SACTRA manner. Today the Plan for Milton Keynes would be viewed as environmentally irresponsible, economically extravagant and socially divisive, so proposals for the town’s expansion involve medium-density developments in new areas served not by 70 mph grid roads but 20-30mph ‘city streets’ with bus priority measures and maximising facilities within walking and cycling distance. These proposals have sparked a big local debate. A widespread view is that this will throw away what has made Milton Keynes good and economically successful, and many advocate retaining the ethos of a ‘city built for the car’. A counter expansion plan, backed by an e-petition, proposes a continuation of low density development and grid roads. This raises questions that have a generic application in the transport debate. Is there only one way for places like Milton Keynes to move towards transport sustainability? There seems to be a single model for transport sustainability based around high density living and traditional forms of public transport, but for the majority of suburban and semi-urban Britain perhaps more emphasis is needed on institutional initiatives rather than highly compact urban forms

Transport integration - an impossible dream?

Transport Integration and an Integrated Transport Policy have been widely espoused for many years, yet remain an ambiguous and ill-defined concept. After featuring strongly in the 1998 Transport Policy White Paper, recently transport integration has received less emphasis. However it appears it is set for a return under the new Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis.This paper explores the meaning of Integrated Transport. It concludes that there is no point in attempting to identify a single definition, but that there are overlapping layers of meaning, with higher levels incorporating lower, or narrower, understandings of the term Integrated Transport. This exploration of meanings of integration is a development of initial work (Potter and Skinner 2000) and is important as the alternative meanings lead to different transport policy responses. These meanings include: - Locational Integration: being able to easily change between transport modes (using Interchanges) - this is about services connecting in space - Timetabling Integration: Services at an interchange connect in time. - Ticketing Integration: Not needing to purchase a new ticket for each leg of a journey - Information Integration: Not needing to enquire at different places for each stage of a trip - or that different independent sources are easily connected - Service Design Integration: That the legal, administrative and governance structures permit/encouraging integration - Travel Generation Integration: Integrating the planning of transport with the generators of travel (particularly integration with land use planning) Furthermore, there are inherent tensions which make transport integration difficult to achieve. Only limited progress has been achieved in the UK since the 1998 White Paper, and even in Germany, with their strong transport policy structures, integration has failed (Schöller-Schwedes, 2009). This exploration of meanings will also explore the tensions involved as there is a danger of the UK chasing again a flawed concept

Managing engineering design in complex supply chains

The trend towards organising design, development and manufacture via supply chains, rather than predominantly in-house, poses major challenges for design management. Procurement methods based on adversarial competitive tendering are generally unsuited to complex engineering products requiring strong design and development coordination. Literature on ‘supplier partnerships’ has largely overlooked the implications for managing design and development. This paper reports the results of a major project that focuses upon this issue, concentrating on practical case studies – from British Rail, Netherlands Railways, Rolls Royce and British Coal – that involve the management of ‘devolved’ engineering design by large business organisations. A spectrum of approaches from in-house to fully devolved design is described. It is concluded that there does not appear to be a single best approach for managing devolved design, but that appropriate approaches for an organisation depend on its location in the supply chain and its ability to manage organisational change

A review of ten years of CO₂-based company car taxation: impact and potential

Company cars represent the majority of UK new car sales and thus have a dominant effect on the fuel use characteristics of the entire car stock. In April 2002 a major reform of the company car taxation system was introduced with the car’s CO2 emissions being a key part of determining the cash equivalent of the benefit on which tax is due. HMRC studies have indicated that this tax reform has produced a substantial and ongoing improvement in company car fuel efficiency. This was largely through the tax system favouring diesel cars and led to the substantial rise in diesel cars sold in the UK. However, as the transport policy agenda has moved towards the promotion of hybrid and low carbon vehicles, it is notable that these have had little uptake in the company car sector, despite adjustments in the tax structure providing them with substantial incentives. This paper presents an analysis of the way in which this tax structure makes it difficult for low carbon cars to compete against diesel vehicles. Battery electric cars also suffer the disadvantage of not being well suited to the high mileages characteristic of company cars. However the tax structure looks set to particularly favour new generation hybrids and plug-in hybrids. Indeed, the company car tax structure could well tip the balance to making plug-in hybrids the dominant clean vehicle technology. However, the 2012 change to the tax bands failed to take into account the effect on the uptake of low carbon vehicles and could undermine an already fragile uptake of new low carbon technology vehicles

Factoring sustainability into the Higher Education product-service system

This paper summarises the findings of the first phase of a major study of the environmental impacts of an important service system - higher education (HE). The study assessed three methods of providing HE: conventional campus-based courses and distance/open learning courses using print-based and electronic delivery, with the following key findings. (1) On average, the distance taught Open University (OU) courses involved 90% less energy and CO2 emissions (per unit of study) than the campus based courses, mainly due to reductions in student travel and housing energy consumption, plus scale economies in campus site utilisation. (2) The OU e-learning course had over 20% higher environmental impacts than the print-based OU course, due to higher use of computing, paper consumption for printing web-based material, and extra home heating during Internet access. Programmes to reduce the environmental impacts of HE should be broadened beyond 'greening' the campus and the curriculum to include the impacts of student travel and housing. The study challenges claims that 'de-materialisation' and using ICT to provide services such as HE necessarily reduces environmental impacts. Service system environmental impacts depend mainly on its requirements for transport and a dedicated infrastructure of buildings and equipment. ICT will only benefit the environment if they reduce the service's requirements for these elements