A balanced transport package for heavily-frequented venues

René Teeuwen, Tom Rye and Marcus Enoch explain how an approach to mobility management at heavily-frequented sites, intended to be applicable across North West Europe, is being developed by the trans-national OPTIMUM2 project

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

Using the personal taxation regime to encourage modal shift : an international review

Correctly pricing transport behavior to take account of the ‘external’ costs such as congestion, emissions and congestion imposed on society by excessive car use has long been a tenet of effective Transportation Demand Management. But while policy makers have striven to increase public transport subsidies, raise petrol taxes, and introduce road user charging schemes to change the price of car travel, the wider influences of the personal tax regime has had relatively little attention. This paper is a review of reforms to the personal tax regime to favor more environmentally benign forms of travel and, in particular, to encourage employers to take part in TDM-type programs. The results reported are based on work undertaken for the UK Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, and the Inland Revenue. In addition to reporting the British situation, it also outlines how this same process has been approached in the United States, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway, and at how successful they have been thus far with respect to TDM objectives. It then draws conclusions as to which direction policy makers could aim for the future

The tax treatment of employer commuting support: an international review

Correctly pricing transport behaviour to take account of the ‘external’ costs such as congestion, and emissions imposed on society by excessive car use has long been a tenet of effective Transportation Demand Management. But while policy makers have striven to increase public transport subsidies, raise petrol taxes, and introduce road user charging schemes to properly price the real costs of car travel, in most cases correcting the wider influences of the personal tax regime has begun only relatively recently. This paper is based on work undertaken for the Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions, and the Inland Revenue of the United Kingdom Government, which is currently working on addressing this very issue. In addition to reporting the British situation, it also uses a series of case studies to outline how this same process has been approached in the United States, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway, and at how successful they have been thus far with respect to TDM objectives. It then draws conclusions as to which direction policy makers should be aiming for in the future

Lessons from travel planning and road user charging for policy-making: through imperfection to implementation

In 1978 Gunn published a seminal paper which explained why implementation of policy is so difficult. The paper set out 10 conditions, which should be satisfied if perfect implementation is to be achieved. Whilst it is clear that perfect implementation is not possible in the real world, and Gunn has subsequently been criticised for his ‘top-down’ approach to decision-making, these conditions do, nonetheless act as an effective framework through which to evaluate good practice in the implementation of urban transport policy instruments. Two urban transport policy instruments, which form an increasingly important element of the Government’s strategy in the UK for reducing the demand for private transport as set out in a New Deal for Transport (DETR, 1998), are travel plans and road user charging. Travel plans are a relatively recent policy instrument in the UK and seek to reduce trips to work by car by providing, through individual employers, a targeted, integrated package of incentives and disincentives to influence commuters’ choice of mode of travel to and from the workplace. Road user charging, whereby motorists are charged for the road space they use in urban areas, seeks to reduce the congestion problem via the price mechanism, and has a longer history in the UK. To date the implementation of travel plans in the UK has been more widespread than that of road user charging. It is fair to say, however, that the widespread implementation of both urban transport policy instruments is a complex and sensitive area for decision-makers. The aim of this paper is firstly, to analyse travel plans and road user charging in the UK with respect to the conditions for perfect implementation put forward by Gunn and secondly, to highlight the elements of good practice, pertinent to the implementation of road user charging, in the process of the implementation of travel plans. Overall, the paper uses Gunn’s theoretical framework as a basis for recommendations for better decision-making that will aid the wider implementation of both travel plans and road user charging internationally

Editorial: Parking

Editorial: Parkin

Travel plans : using good practice to inform future policy

In Europe, Travel Plans have been known by many other different names including: ‘Site-based Mobility Management’, ‘Green Transport Plans’, ‘Green Travel Plans’, ‘Green Commuting’, ‘Company Mobility Plans’, and ‘Employer Transport Plans’, while in the USA they are covered by the term TDM (Transportation Demand Management) (Ieromonachou, 2004). UK Government guidance A Travel Plan Resource Pack for Employers (Energy Efficiency Best Practice Programme, 2001) defines a Travel Plan as being: ‘a general term for a package of measures tailored to meet the needs of individual sites and aimed at promoting greener, cleaner travel choices and reducing reliance on the car. It involves the development of a set of mechanisms, initiatives and targets that together can enable an organisation to reduce the impact of travel and transport on the environment, whilst also bringing a number of other benefits to the organisation as an employer and to staff.’ A second definition is that: ‘A formal travel plan is simply a package of measures that aims to reduce an organisation’s over dependence on the car’. Howland (2003) The idea behind travel plans actually started in the USA – particularly on the West Coast - as a quick and easy response to the fuel crises during the 1970s, but was fairly slow to permeate across the Atlantic. Indeed, in the UK the first Travel Plans only first began to appear during the early 1990s, with the first official policy record being made in the 1998 Transport White Paper – A new deal for transport: Better for everyone (DETR, 1998). In brief, the attractions of travel plans to Governments and local authorities are that they are reasonably quick to introduce, relatively cheap and importantly are usually politically acceptable. In short, they are an ‘easy win’. This is in marked contrast to most other transport improvement schemes which often require high levels of investment over a long period of time and can carry a high political risk – especially in the short term as conditions frequently deteriorate while improvements are being carried out ..

Lessons from Edinburgh's 'No'

Lessons from Edinburgh's 'No

UK airport employee car parking: the role of a charge?

Airports employ significant numbers of workers who favour using the private car for the journey to work because of the location of many facilities and the times they need to travel. At the same time official policies for congestion and environmental reasons seek to limit car use. This can pose parking problems for the airports. This note looks at some of the particular issues confronting UK airport management when trying to conform to official policies while at the same time meeting the needs of their workers and the role charging may play in the solution

The potential for further changes to the personal taxation regime to encourage modal shift. Final report for Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, London, June

This project was commissioned by the DETR to fulfil a commitment made in the 1998 white paper on integrated transport, A New Deal for Transport: Better for Everyone. This was to carry out research on the influence of the existing tax system with a view to seeing whether changes could be effective in promoting the use of more environmentally friendly forms of transport. The report includes a review of the UK tax treatment of commuting benefits, which is compared to those of other countries with a different tax regime. Key points include: • A general tax concession for all commuting trips creates negative transport and environmental impacts; it tends to stimulate car commuting and trip lengthening and is costly to the state concerned. A capped commuting concession would reduce these problems. • In countries with a similar tax treatment of commuting as exists in the UK, targeted tax concessions upon employer-provided Travel Plan benefits have featured. This add private sector resources to the tax concession and enhances the modal shift effect. The most effective Travel Plan measures involve direct financial incentives and disincentives. In general the car use reduction effects of different Travel Plans is: • Zero for information-only Travel Plans • 5% for schemes consisting mainly of carpooling; • 8 - 10% for those incorporating financial incentives to use alternative modes, and • 15%+ for those that included financial disincentives to car use. In the UK, many of the most effective measures are affected by the personal tax system. A survey of employers developing Travel Plans was conducted, which concluded that: • Although information and guidance may appear an appropriate response where there is a lack of understanding of the tax liability of Travel Plan measures, the use of such an approach would be ineffective without being spearheaded by actual tax reform. • The issue of tax clashes with a company’s ‘tax-efficient’ culture is of most significance when organisations are trying to develop their Travel Plans from their initial, fairly ineffective stages, to be more effective by the use of financial incentives and disincentives. • There is evidence that tax does reduce the effectiveness of Travel Plan measures and that some modest and targeted reform measures could both eliminate most of the negative tax impacts and ease the development of Travel Plans within a company’s dominant culture ..