The effects of road pricing - Feweb - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

psychology discipline, possibly indicating (in)consistencies. Chapter 4 presents the
empirical findings of an extensive survey conducted among Dutch commuters who
regularly experience congestion. The respondents faced a choice experiment in which
they distributed 10 trips over 4 constructed alternatives. The estimated choice models
provide information on the behavioural responses of the commuters in terms of
departure time, route choice and mode choice when confronted with road pricing.
Moreover, we derive estimates for important transport policy concepts such as the value
of time, value of schedule delay (early and late), and the value of uncertainty. This
analysis focuses on the short-term responses of commuting traffic to road pricing.
Chapter 5 presents the results from another survey with a different sample (car owners in
general). It analyses the short-term responses of the respondents, but also includes the
more long-term decision of car ownership. The data have been collected by a second
questionnaire in which the respondents evaluated three different types of kilometre
charges with varying use of revenues 1 .
In Part II, two (out of many) important institutional aspects of transport pricing are
considered. The first concerns pricing by private versus public operators (Chapter 6).
This question is not only relevant for the foreseen privatisation of public transport
systems, but may also soon become relevant for road transport, given the increasing
interest in privately-operated pay-lanes or highways. The second aspect concerns the
question of the level of government at which transport prices would be set (Chapter 7).
Urban, regional, national, and transnational governments may frequently pursue
different goals and would therefore often set different prices. Likewise, the use of
revenues may be strongly dependent on the level of government at which prices are set.
Part III of the main analysis deals with acceptance issues of new road pricing measures.
Economic theory has demonstrated (see Chapter 2) that the current pricing regimes are
often not very efficient, and that there is scope for other types of measures. These more
efficient measures have so far only seldom been implemented in practice. The low level
of implementation is nowadays not so much caused by technical or administrative
problems. Rather, the problem is that it is generally acknowledged that pricing measures
meet public resistance and that acceptability is one of the major barriers to the successful
implementation of new and more efficient pricing measures. Chapter 8 investigates the
barriers to road pricing by means of a literature review. Explicit attention is paid to the
role of revenue use. The spending of the revenues from road pricing may have
considerable consequences not only in terms of public acceptance but also for the
overall efficiency of the scheme. The results of this survey on the empirical and
theoretical work available on this topic are then used as input for the design of both
questionnaires described in Part I. The questionnaires distributed to commuters and
households do not only focus on behavioural responses, but also address the issue of
acceptability and revenue use. Chapter 9 presents the empirical results of the survey that
was carried out. The aim is to identify important explanatory variables for the level of
acceptance for different types of road pricing measures, and to score different types of
revenue use in terms of acceptance.
Finally, Chapter 10 brings all the results together. It provides a synthesis of the
theoretical and empirical findings, puts them into a policy perspective, and indicates
which directions are most promising for further research.
1 The empirical part of this thesis analyses different types of road pricing measures. In most cases we have
specified both the type of price measure and the type of revenue allocation. One of the measures includes
variabilisation. This measure, policy relevant in the Netherlands, refers to the implementation of a
kilometer charge together with the abolition of car taxation independent of car use (car ownership taxation
and car purchase taxation).
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