Pollution Free Cities: tolls

Showing posts with label tolls. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

How Well is Congestion Pricing Accepted?

How Does Congestion Pricing Affect Household Behavior? (Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Mat. 4, 2015)

Also discussed here: Effects of Full-Facility Variable Tolling on Traveler Behavior: Evidence from a Panel Study of the SR-520 Corridor in Seattle (115 page pdf, Report for Federal Highway Administration, Mar. 2014)

And here: Effects of an HOV-2 to HOT-3 Conversion on Traveler Behavior: Evidence from a Panel Study of the I-85 Corridor in Atlanta (187 pg pdf, Report for Federal Highway Administration, Apr.11. 2014)

Today we review before and after reports from two large American cities (Seattle, Atlanta) following introduction of congestion pricing on a bridge (Seattle) and on a HOV lane (Atlanta). Results indicate a decline of trips by 15-18%, a greater use of tolled segments by drivers with high incomes, a greater acceptance (40%) for tolling after introduction compared to before (25%) and a large drop in concern about the impact of tolling on low income users (from 74% to 57%). The key to successful implementation appears to be clear prior communication to the public on the need for congestion pricing.

Key Quotes:

“The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in turn tapped Volpe to conduct before-and-after household travel surveys in two of those cities, Atlanta and Seattle, to capture a dynamic picture of how congestion pricing shapes household travel choices.”

“Questions:

How do households respond when congestion pricing is applied on their roadways? Do they pay the toll?
Do they seek alternative routes or travel modes to bypass the higher prices?
does congestion pricing affect the number of miles that households drive?
Are lower-income households disproportionately affected by tolling? Do lower-income households pay a disproportionate share of tolling?”

“In Seattle:

Recorded trip segments fell 43 percent on the 520 bridge.
Travel reductions tended to fall into discretionary categories, such as shopping and dining.
Nearly 25 percent of regular 520 bridge travelers switched to.. a parallel, free roadway four miles south .. primarily motivated by avoiding the toll.
Respondents reduced their overall vehicle-miles traveled by 15 percent”

“In Atlanta:

Trips on the I-85 corridor fell 18 percent,
More than 80 percent of drivers using the express lane were solo travelers; 9 percent were drivers with three or more people.
More than 40 percent of express lane users reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their trips on I-85 after tolling had commenced, compared to about 25% prior to tolling.
was a significant decrease in the belief that highway tolls are unfair to people with limited incomes, from 74 percent to 57 percent.”

“pricing has a significant impact on route choice and affects the timing of trips, that attitudes on pricing change with direct experience, and that pricing has differential impacts on corridor users.”

“the more that agencies provide the public with ongoing, clear communication that explains the need for congestion pricing, the more their congestion pricing programs will be well-received.”

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

HOV to HOT lanes - a first step to More Effective Congestion Pricing?

Gaining Public Support for Freeway Congestion Pricing(25 page pdf, Robert Poole, Reason Foundation, April 2012)

Also discussed here: Gaining Public Support for Congestion Pricing on Highways - Delivering value and offering multiple options for drivers and truckers(Robert Poole, Reason Foundation, Apr. 9, 2012)

Today we review a report which proposes a more effective approach to relieving highway traffic congestion and to generate more revenue for highway improvements than the unpopular flat tolls. The recent conversion of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high occupancy toll lanes (HOT) in the USA and some Canadian provinces (notably as proposed for 400 series highways in the Greater Toronto Area in the 2013 Ontario budget) could herald a more sophisticated 3-stream system that would both improve traffic flow of traffic and recover more revenue as warranted from vehicles that cause the most damage to highways (trucks). Most important is the step by step approach to gain popular favour to congestion pricing in general.

Key Quotes:

“Federal efforts dating back to the 1970s to induce one or more urban areas to price its freeways have all been unsuccessful.. this evolutionary, bottom-up model of freeway pricing should be seriously considered”

“with over 91% of households owning motor vehicles,8 in most states the motorist population is practically synonymous with the voting population…. many (though not all) tolling and pricing proposals garner popular opposition because they don’t add value to the roadway”

“Charging the same price to all users during rush hour ignores the huge variability in people’s value of time (and their value of the reliability of trip times).. A uniform price applied to all rush-hour travelers will overcharge many and undercharge others”

“The current trends toward converting HOV lanes to HOT lanes and adding new priced express lanes are the potential first steps away from the conventional model of pricing. The second step should develop complete networks of priced lanes, aimed deliberately at those trips with the highest value on any particular day.”

“if congestion is still a problem on the remaining GP lanes, the benefits of pricing on the (by now) larger system of premium lanes will be obvious to a larger fraction of the population…. support for implementing modest peak pricing on the remaining GP lanes, flattening the peaks and shifting some trips to alternate modes.”

“a three-tiered system of lanes and pricing, as follows:

Premium lanes, offering guaranteed trip times by means of demand-based pricing;
Regular lanes, using modest peak-period tolls to spread the peak load to shoulder periods;
Truck-only lanes, designed and priced for heavy trucks.”

Monday, September 24, 2012

The Status of Road Tolls in Europe

Tolling of cars in the European Union (Road pricing, Aug. 30, 2012)

Also discussed here: Truck tolls/HGV road user charging in the European Union (Road Pricing, Aug. 29, 2012)

Today we summarize a post from the blog “Road Pricing” that describes the present state of tolls in the 27 countries that make up the European Union (excluding Norway and Switzerland) which are divided into two categories: cars and trucks and into two approaches: charging by time (vignette) or distance (VMT). At present there are 13 countries with tolling systems for cars and 7 for trucks with 1 more planning for cars
and 4 more for trucks.
.

Key Quotes:

“The clear trends are to either have extensive conventional (manual) tolled highway networks, or to charge for access to their networks either by time or distance”

For Cars

“Toll with physical barriers (distance-based charge) - 6 Member States have extensive toll road systems, using manual tolls (universally with electronic options). These being Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Poland”

“Vignette (time-based charge) - 7 Member States have vignette systems, whereby access is bought in advance for periods ranging from 4 days to one year. These countries are Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria”

“Vignette under preparation - Belgium is the only EU Member State currently considering introducing a vignette for private cars”

“Electronic Network wide toll (distance based charge) - Curiously, Portugal gets this classification because it does have a growing number of fully electronic free flow toll roads”

For trucks:

“Vignettes (a charge based on pre-paying for access to the network for a period ranging from one day to one year). At present Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Lithuania have national vignette systems”

“Countries developing vignette systems. At present, the UK and Latvia are both developing vignette systems”

“Electronic network wide tolling (with distance charging) In the US this might be called "VMT". This covers both GPS based and DSRC based distance tolling. It includes the well known examples in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic”

“Countries developing electronic network wide tolling. Denmark, Belgium, France and Hungary”

“Manual tolls. This seems to only include countries with significant amounts of tolling, as it includes Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Greece only”

Monday, June 25, 2012

Herbert Mohring on Congestion and Road Pricing

How To Reduce My Commuting Time (and yours) (Herbert Mohring, University of Minnesota Personalities, June 6, 2012)

Also discussed here: Essays in Transportation Economics and Policy: A Handbook in Honor of John R. Meyer (508 pages, Amazon paperback, published 1999)

Today the focus is on Professor Herbert Mohring, a pioneer in the field of urban transportation economics, who passed away on June 4, 2012 .

Key Quotes:

“Professor Herbert Mohring of the University of Minnesota did much of the pioneering work in figuring out how large tolls should be. His best estimate was that an optimal toll on Interstate 35W would be of the rate of 20 cents per mile or about $2.00 to $3.00 for travel from the southern suburbs to Minneapolis”

“Congestion on roadways is an inevitable consequence of the way we charge travelers”

“Each traveler takes into account the time required to travel for himself or herself but rationally ignores the equal time cost imposed on others. The solution is to confront people with the true costs of travel in congested time periods”

“It is important the tolls be higher for peak times travel than for non-peak time travel in order to induce people to change their travel times to do so. It might even make sense to, in the toll revenues, to subsidize non-peak time travel!”

Friday, June 22, 2012

The Politics of Road Tolls in Canada

A White Paper On Reforming Canada’s Transportation Policies for the 21st Century (21 page pdf, Brian Flemming, SRR series, Vol. 5,Issue 18, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, June 2010)

Also discussed here: Experts urge feds to charge road tolls, user fees to pay for infrastructure (Jordan Press, Postmedia News Jun. 6, 2012)

Today we look at a white paper aimed at creating discussion about the need for a new way to fund road infrastructure in Canada- something that has been partially paid for by gas taxes and short term stimulus funding. It points out that as fuel prices rise and electric car use increases that gas taxes are a declining source of revenue while road infrastructure will only continue to build, leaving a charge for road use as the best option. A focus by cities on this and some sort of agreement on how to proceed is needed.

BRISTOL, UNITED KINGDOM - MARCH 07: Lorries an...

Key Quotes:

“There is no question that convincing the Canadian public to accept a road tax, or any kind of infrastructure pricing, will be a phenomenally difficult political economic exercise, no matter how sensible that policy might appear to be in the minds of experts or transportation policy wonks”

“The need to charge user fees is being driven by the retreat of the federal government from stimulus spending as Ottawa attempts to get its fiscal house in order and cut the federal deficit over the coming three years"

"This means something far beyond mere traditional tolling of roads and bridges. It means creating a system whereby those who use infrastructure will electronically have to pay small and sophisticated fees or this use."

“If governments are not keen to introduce policies to prevent further climate change, the least they should do is to help economies and citizens adapt to climate change, particularly in the transport sector“

“Perhaps the mayors of Canada’s five or 10 largest cities should convene a meeting with only one issue on their agenda: who will pay for their infrastructure in the next decade and how can this best be done?”

“In 2005, 74% of Canadian adults reported going everywhere by car, up from 68% in 1992. In 2012, 82% of Canadians commuted to work by car, 12% took public transit, and 6% walked or cycled. Trips between cities are also mainly by car.”

“Fuel taxes are effective at targeting greenhouse gas emissions, but they are crude instruments for targeting congestion and other externalities that vary strongly with location, time of day and population density. Road pricing in some form is a much more flexible instrument.”

Transportation secretary: Tolls are road to Florida's transportation future (jacksonville.com)
Congress should embrace public-private transportation projects (mysanantonio.com)

Friday, December 16, 2011

Tolls, Congestion and HOT Lanes in Canadian Cities

Image via WikipediaCongestive Traffic Failure: The Case for High-Occupancy and Express Toll Lanes in Canadian Cities (9 page pdf, Benjamin Dachis, C.D. Howe Institute, Aug. 31, 2011)

Also discussed here: Think Tank proposes HOT lanes for Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal (Road Pricing, Nov. 2, 2011)

The difficulty on introducing tolls as urban cities become more and more clogged with traffic is addressed in the report reviewed today which suggests high-occupancy toll ( HOT) lanes for Canada’s five largest cities. HOT lanes could generate more than $1 B/ year in much needed net revenue in these cities where congestion costs more than $5 Billion or $410 per capita pm average.

Key Quotes:

“Canada’s urban highways are choked with congestion because road access is free and scarce road space is occupied by drivers who wait, albeit grumpily, in traffic”

“governments have chosen to build carpool lanes on urban highways, despite evidence that these lanes have limited effectiveness in curbing congestion”

“Governments should instead convert existing and planned carpool lanes to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, giving drivers a choice of whether to use them or free lanes.. improve travel time reliability, increasehighway capacity and potentially reduce congestion on un-tolled lanes”

“congestion in Vancouver cost C$927 million per annum ..which comes to C$466 per capita”

“allowing vehicles to use the network by paying a toll akin to C$0.23 per km at peak times and half that at the off peak - to match the Toronto 407 toll road rates.. would generate C$81 million per annum in revenue.”

“taxes on fuel and ownership only cover 53% of road infrastructure costs”

“The political dilemma of pricing what were previously free lanes has hitherto stymied road toll proposals. By preserving a non-toll option, HOT and express lanes provide the solution. They can achieve the benefits of road pricing, while still being politically palatable, since drivers have the choice to drive for free in adjacent lanes”

Slugging: Bringing Casual Carpooling to the North Bay (thegreatermarin.wordpress.com)
HOT lanes' first rush hour Monday (ajc.com)
State's HOT lane request denied by feds (ajc.com)
100,000th Peach Pass issued for controversial HOT lanes (ajc.com)
Atlanta traffic: HOT lanes mostly empty on first commute (ajc.com)
Gov. Deal lowers HOT lane fees for I-85 in Gwinnett (ajc.com)
Most wouldn't use high-occupancy lanes (autonetinsurance.co.uk)
Canadians willing to pay road tolls, poll suggests (cbc.ca)

Monday, April 11, 2011

Some Truths about Congestion and the Case for Congestion Pricing

Congestion is Welfare Reducing (Andrew Smith, Seattle Transit Blog, Feb. 22, 2011)

The article reviewed today in simple terms makes the case for road tolls as likely the only sustainable way to reduce congestion – which in the U.S. cost 4.8 billion hours in time wasted in the year 2010. It all comes down to more efficient use of roads and the traffic that uses them.

Key Quotes:

“Too many drivers trying to access a roadway at the same time – in economic speak, excess demand for a good in fixed supply – causes congestion”

“When there’s no traffic, adding new drivers to a roadway does not reduce travel times.. once a highway becomes congested, adding more cars to the road does not increase the number of cars the road carries”

“The demand for highway transportation represents the value that consumers place on traveling at a particular time, in particular manner and to their particular places”

“The lower the cost of driving, the more people drive. This means drivers taking longer trips or more trips as costs decrease.”

“When roads are free, the only cost to drive is time. Once a roadway approaches congestion, each additional driver impacts all other drivers, slowing them down and costing them time”

“Congestion pricing solves this problem. You put tolls in place and time is exchanged for money. People who value their trip less than the toll price won’t make the trip”

“Congestion pricing would also be good for transit. Bus service is priced in hours, not distance, so reducing the amount of time buses spend in traffic would reduce the cost of operating the same level of service”

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Congestion Pricing in Sydney, Australia

Image via Wikipedia

Should motorists pay for the congestion they cause? (Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 19, 2011)

Also discussed here: Sydney Morning Herald On Congestion Pricing (Jarrett Walker, Human Transit, Feb. 19, 2011)

Today’s review article is a summary of a debate about congestion pricing conducted by one of Sydney Australia’s newspapers. It has a number of arguments and statistics that are useful and applicable in other cities considering ways of reducing congestion.

Key Quotes:

“Road congestion is the inevitable result of too many people wanting to reach jobs and services that are too far away”

“In car-dependent cities such as Sydney, more than 12 per cent of the community's collective wealth is spent on transport, compared with 5 to 8 per cent of community wealth in cities with strong public transport”

“Congestion pricing systems free up enough road space so that motorists and freight can move reliably through the city. They do this by setting a price for driving through a congested area. The price varies with actual demand”

“if a congestion tax is designed to change our behaviour, then it will be effective only once we give motorists a viable alternative.”

“There is a presumption that we all have rights to enter the traffic and delay all other motorists, yet not contribute to the true cost associated with delay and lost time - the curse of congestion. It is estimated that more than $9 billion a year is wasted in lost travel time or avoidable congestion costs, increasing to about $20 billion by 2020.”

“"free" roads are not really free - the choice is between paying with time and frustration, or with money.”

“Congestion pricing, if and when it happens in Sydney, needs to start by replacing other fees associated with driving, especially those that affect rural areas where there's no alternative to driving and never will be”

Alternatives To Congestion Pricing (eschatonblog.com)
Should motorists pay for the congestion they cause? (theage.com.au)
If Congestion Pricing is So Great, Why Don't Businesses Do It? (theatlantic.com)
Congestion pricing proposed for 2 Bay area bridges (sfgate.com)
Congestion Pricing Rises From The Dead (newyork.cbslocal.com)
Congestion is Welfare Reducing (seattletransitblog.com)
Congestion and Road Pricing in Canada (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Paying for Roads and Pricing Transportation

: Image via Wikipedia

Do Roads Pay for Themselves? Setting the Record Straight on Transportation Funding (45 page pdf, U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Jan. 2011)

Also discussed here: do roads pay for themselves? (Human Transit, Jan. 6, 2011)

Although the report reviewed today examines how roads are paid for in the USA (and how that is not just sales tax on gas), many of its conclusions apply elsewhere in these times of “shovel-ready” projects which often are aimed at road paving or building. Several recommendations concern road pricing and congestion charges as a more effective economic tool.

Key Quotes:

“Gasoline taxes aren’t “user fees:

Fees” are not connected to “use”

State gas taxes are often not entirely

Federal gas taxes have typically not been devoted exclusively to highways

Many states use gas tax revenue for a variety of purposes”

“most of the money that is spent on local roads and streets—which account for the majority of public road lane-miles and about 13 percent of vehicle travel—comes not from “user fees” but from other taxes, often local property taxes”

“Unlike gasoline taxes, tolls are true user fees—users pay them, non-users don’t, and users generally pay in proportion to the amount of the service they consume”

“How Best to Price Transportation:

*Economic principles suggest that in a competitive market, the price of a good or service will align with its “marginal cost”—that is the cost of producing one additional unit of the good or service. Transit service provides a good example..”

*prices should reflect the total costs imposed by additional users—including costs on the rest of society.. A weekday afternoon bus rider may impose little in the way of external costs, but a weekday afternoon driver will, in the form of air pollution, oil consumption, and a range of other impacts.

*In the case of automobile travel, an optimal pricing system might include congestion pricing, fees for emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants, an end to free or subsidized parking, and the shifting of some costs (such as auto insurance) from lump-sum charges to charges that vary based on the number of miles driven

Actually, Highway Builders, Roads Don't Pay For Themselves (dc.streetsblog.org)

Can a Distance Based Tax Replace the Gas Tax? (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)

Congestion and Road Pricing in Canada (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)

Report: Gas tax, car charges only cover half the cost of road maintenance (nj.com)

What do Cars Cost Society? (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)

Congestion Pricing: To Skip Traffic, Atlanta Says Pay Up (time.com)

Belfer Center report calls for policymakers to begin taking steps to change policies for funding US transportation infrastructure (greencarcongress.com)

Monday, January 17, 2011

Congestion and Road Pricing in Canada

Stuck in traffic -Our rush hours rank with the world’s worst (Macleans, Jan. 11, 2011)

Also discussed here: The Canadian Case for Congestion Pricing (Pollution Free Cities, Aug. 19, 2010)

And here: Congestion Pricing Discussion Paper (17 page doc, City of Ottawa Environmental Advisory Committee, May 13, 2010)

Today’s review article looks at the state of the congestion in Canada’s larger cities and a solution- congestion pricing- which has been successfully adopted in cities such as London, Stockholm and Singapore. Improvements in technology (GPS, satellites) have led to more cost-effective tolling applications, to the point where some countries (UK, Netherlands) have considered tolling country wide.

Key Quotes:

“Statistics Canada reports the average time spent commuting to and from work nationwide increased from 54 minutes in 1992 to 63 minutes in 2005.. As bad as the commute is for drivers, it’s much worse for public transit users: 106 minutes, versus 63 minutes by car …commute distances have increased 10 per cent in a decade”

“Not only are there more cars and trucks on the road..but we’re using them for more things: driving the kids to sports, where once they would have walked. Total daily trips in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area rose by 56 per cent between 1986 and 2006.”

“Countless empirical studies have shown: add more road space, and traffic simply expands to fill it”

“Raise the price of using the roads, and people will reduce their demand for it ..with less congestion, other costs fall. Not only are travel times reduced, but so are all those other ills of congestion, from accidents to pollution.”

“Stockholm. Beginning in January 2006 .. charged a fee, varying according to traffic volumes: from $1.50 in off-peak hours, to twice that much at peak. As in London, traffic flow into the city centre was reduced by more than 20 per cent. Transit use soared; there were fewer accidents; vehicle emissions declined”

“Singapore.. took things a step further in 1998. Not only are tolls collected at entry points, but also along major arterial roads. Every vehicle on these roads must carry a card on its dashboard, much like a prepaid phone card”

“any revenues from tolls can and should be used to lower taxes: perhaps even the gas tax. To be persuasive, the offset would have to be guaranteed, immediate, and 100 per cent”

“the very act of tolling roads would, by itself, make public transit more competitive, since the per-person cost of the toll would be much less for buses than for cars (and none at all for subways and surface rail).”

“transit vehicles speed up when tolls are imposed, because there are fewer cars on the road. This attracts more travellers to transit. In response, transit operators improve service by adding routes and increasing frequency. Due to economies of scale in transit operations, the cost per passenger falls, perhaps allowing the operator to lower fares. Ridership increases further, and so on.”