link, polak. the acceptability of transport pricing measures amongst public and professionals in...

8/10/2019 Link, Polak. the Acceptability of Transport Pricing Measures Amongst Public and Professionals in Europe.

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The Acceptability of Transport Pricing Measures Amongst Public and Professionals inEurope

Heike LinkGerman Institute for Economic ResearchDepartment of Regional and Transportation ResearchKnigin-Luise-Str. 514 195 BerlinGermanyT: +49-30-897-89 312E: [email protected]

John Polak (corresponding author)Centre for Transport StudiesDepartment of Civil and Environmental EngineeringImperial College of Science Technology and MedicineExhibition RoadLondon SW7 2BUUnited KingdomT: +44-20-7594-6089E: [email protected]

Word Count: 5344 + 5 Figures and 3 tables

Submitted for PRESENTATION and PUBLICATION to the 82 nd Annual Meeting of the TransportationResearch Board

TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM Paper revised from original submittal.


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Abstract

Transport pricing has been an actively debated topic in the European Union for a number of years. This debatehas been stimulated both by the European Commission policy by a multitude of national policy initiatives. Acentral theme in this debate is the issue of the public and (linked to this) political acceptability of pricingmeasures (1-5). Indeed concerns regarding acceptability now constitute the most significant single barrier to

implementation, especially in the road transport sector. This paper reports the results of recent researchundertaken on behalf of the European Commission into the acceptability of different transport pricing measuresto professionals and citizens and the factors influencing their acceptability.



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INTRODUCTION

Transport pricing has been an actively debated topic in the European Union for a number of years. This debatehas been stimulated both by the European Commission itself (notably through the publication of the GreenPaper on Fair and Efficient Pricing and the White Paper on Fair Charging for Infrastructure Use) and by amultitude of national policy initiatives such as distance-based charging schemes for heavy goods vehicles (e.g.,in Switzerland and in Germany), urban and interurban road pricing (e.g., in the Netherlands and the UK) andecological tax reforms (e.g. in Germany).

The theoretical aspects of different pricing principles and the economic effects of specific pricingmeasures have been examined extensively in the scientific literature. However, most of the current debate inEurope has revolved around the issue of the public and (linked to this) political acceptability of pricing measures(1-5). Indeed concerns regarding acceptability now constitute the most significant single barrier toimplementation, especially in the road transport sector where recent studies suggest that pricing measures arerejected by a majority of car drivers (6,7).

This paper reports the results of recent research undertaken on behalf of the European Commission intothe acceptability of different transport pricing measures and the factors influencing their acceptability (8). This

research dealt with user charging and taxation measures in the transport sector, covered all modes of transport.The research used both qualitative and quantitative survey techniques. The qualitative surveys took the form of(i) structured interviews with key transport operators and decision makers (key informants) in 9 Europeancountries, (ii) focus groups with the general public, in 3 European countries and (iii) a Delphi survey with keyinformants, in 5 European countries. These qualitative methods were complemented by an extensive quantitativesurvey of public attitudes, undertaken in 6 European countries. The qualitative surveys considered bothestablished pricing instruments such as fuel and vehicle taxation, parking charges, motorway tolling and urbanroad pricing and more novel instruments such as environmental charges, ecological tax reform and a moredifferentiated public transport pricing. The results from the initial set of quantitative surveys were used toinform the design of the subsequent public quantitative attitude surveys. This paper concentrates on the resultsof the surveys of citizens and key informants.

KEY INFORMANT SURVEY

Survey design

The main objective of this part of the research was to identify the factors influencing the acceptabilityof different pricing policy measures to key decision makers. Structured face-to-face interviews were carried outwith 104 key informants, in 9 European countries, comprising representatives from political parties, ministries(transport, economic affairs, finance), land-use planning and environmental authorities and municipalities,infrastructure providers and transport operators (from all transport modes), interest associations (touring clubs,associations of road hauliers, consumer associations, organisations of opponents to transport pricing and ofsupporters such as environmentalists). For the purposes of analysis the key informants were collected into twogroups; policy makers and transport providers and users. Participants were asked to respond on behalf oftheir organization, not with a personal opinion.

Survey results

What factors influence acceptability?

Respondents were asked to rate the importance of a number of factors in influencing the acceptability of apricing measure, using a 5 points scale from not important at all to obligatory (see Figure 1). For both policymakers and providers and users, clarity of purpose and transparency of pricing mechanisms emerged asparticularly important. Overall, the views of the two groups regarding the relative importance of different factorswere rather similar. In addition to the features of pricing measures shown in figure 1 the respondents mentionedfurther preconditions for making pricing schemes acceptable:

Policy makers were concerned that pricing should not be perceived by users as another form of taxation. Both groups emphasised the need for detailed and early information on the pricing measure, and the

importance of publicity campaigns. Both groups also mentioned the necessity for pricing measures to be effective in achieving their stated

objectives and consequently, the need for monitoring.



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Transport operators and users emphasised that in addition to being clear the objective of the pricing mustbe reasonable, though the definition of reasonable varied from group to group.

Both groups believed that the price charged should be related in some way to the real costs of transport,however, contradictory views were expressed on what was meant.

Transport providers and users emphasised that both the overall effects and the distributional impacts(winners and losers) of a policy must be clear.

What are acceptable pricing purposes, pricing structures and revenue spending schemes?

Respondents were asked to rank five alternative pricing purposes in terms of their acceptability and for eachpurpose to indicate the most appropriate pricing principle to apply. The issue of revenue spending was exploredboth by allowing respondents to give free-form answers and by asking them from a set of pre-determinedoptions. The responses to these questions can be summarised as follows:

The most acceptable pricing purpose was infrastructure costs recovery with demand management rankedsecond. The internalisation of external effects was ranked higher by policy makers than by transportproviders and users. Both groups were opposed to pricing measures aimed simply at raising revenue for thegeneral budget (see Figure 2).

The results suggest that key informants understand that different pricing purposes may imply differentpricing principles. For example, more than half of the policy makers and almost two thirds of the transportproviders and users considered marginal cost pricing as appropriate for demand management.

Some interesting results were obtained on the use of revenues. Answers to the free-form questions revealeda substantial difference between the responses of policy makers and transport providers and users. Thefavoured revenue spending of policy makers was to convey the money to the general budget and to reducegeneral taxation (21 %). By contrast, transport providers and users preferred to see revenue spent buildingand maintain transport infrastructure (23 %) and to improve quality and safety (11 %). The high proportionof providers and users argued against cross-subsidisation and in favour of the hypothecation of revenues foruse within the mode charged. Furthermore, it was interesting that none of the policy makers suggested usingrevenues for better information of users or for research and development. These general patterns were alsoapparent in the responses to the pre-determined spending options (see figure 3).

Which pricing measures are acceptable?

The respondents were asked to rank the most acceptable pricing and taxation measures from a pre-defined setranging from road pricing, rail track access charges, fuel and vehicle taxes, parking charges to environmentalcharges and eco-taxes (see Figure 3). Generally, the choices of the respondents showed a clear preference forwell-known instruments. Most popular for policy makers seems to be fuel taxation followed by interurban roadpricing and parking pricing whereas transport providers and users prefer interurban road pricing, followed byvehicle taxation and parking pricing. Analysis by countries revealed considerable differences. Fuel taxation is thefavourite of policy makers in all countries. However, only the transport providers and users in Germany, Austriaand Switzerland would agree with this choice of policy makers while in other European countries fuel taxationcame at the fourth rank only. The transport providers and users in France, Portugal and Italy prefer interurban roadpricing perhaps due to their familiarity with this pricing scheme and surprisingly also environmental charges.The Northern country group (UK, Sweden and the Netherlands) also prefers interurban road pricing.

From these findings we can conclude that well-known and established pricing measures such as fueltaxation, interurban road pricing (giving the tolling experience in some countries) and parking charges arepreferred. Regarding the design of measures it should be mentioned that the respondents rejected all pricingmeasures with a flat-rate charge (fare) structure. With the exception of rail track access charges, two-part chargeswere also rejected. For road pricing (both interurban and urban) the respondents favoured the charging of allvehicles. For almost all pricing measures where a differentiated charge regime with respect to time, geographicalarea, CO 2- and noise emissions and service quality was possible, the respondents preferred differentiated prices,charges and taxes. Moreover, we could not observe any differences in the responses of those affected by the pricingmeasures in question, and the remaining respondents.

CITIZEN SURVEY

The citizen surveys were the main instrument used to explore individuals assessment of the acceptability ofpricing and taxation measures. A variety of pricing measures was analysed with the emphasis on understandinghow the acceptability of a pricing policy measure is influenced by the variation in pricing levels, the use of



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revenues generated, the design and combination of compensatory measures and how these relationships varyacross different countries.

Survey design

The survey design adopted for the citizen surveys was that of a tiered approach, with a common core of

questions to allow comparability across the countries, but with different question sets for different institutionalcontexts and survey techniques. The target population of the citizen surveys was adults aged 1875 and includedboth respondents living in urban and non-urban areas. A stratified design was used in order to ensure that thesample contained sufficient numbers of key social groups such as the elderly and the noncar owning whowould otherwise be poorly represented in a strictly random sample. A total of just over 1300 individuals wereinterviewed in the six countries, with no country contributing less than 100 persons. Three types of informationwere collected in the survey:

Type 1: Basic socio-demographic circumstances and travel behaviour

basic demographic characteristics (gender, age, household structure, car ownership, working status andprofession),

household income (collected in banded form, with the bands presented in national currencies and adjusted

to reflect typical national salary levels), location of home and workplace and commute distance. mobility data (mode used for most recent trip made for each of the following purposes: commuting/

education, business travel, shopping, leisure, holidays, serving children and other; mode and purpose of themost recent long distance trip (> 100km, oneway).

Type 2: Relevant aspects of peoples general attitudes

A common set of attitude scale questions was developed, exploring respondents attitudes and opinionsin relation to four interrelated issues:

General aspects of their own and other peoples mobility, General aspects of the environment, How public authorities do and/or should use transport pricing revenues, Fairness and equity in the collection and use of transport related revenues.

Each individual was asked a total of 19 attitude scale questions; 5 referring to aspects of mobility, 4referring aspects of the environment, 6 referring to the use of transport related revenues and 4 referring toaspects of fairness and equity (see table 1). Responses to each attitude scale question were collected using a 5point semantic agreement scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree). The technology of charging, itsreliability and privacy issues as well as the role of information was not addressed in this part but tested in aseparate part of the survey related to specific pricing packages.

Type 3: Attitudes and responses to specific pricing policy measures

Each survey additionally included a series of questions on opinions about country-specific pricing measures.These measures were chosen to reflect current policy or issues that were central to the current policy debate in

the country in question on the one hand. The measures tested for each country were: UK: Workplace parking charges (with the revenues used to improve alternative modes) and Urban Road

Pricing. Netherlands: Urban and interurban road pricing. France: Urban road pricing and an environmental charging that may affect many sectors, including

transport. Germany: An ecological tax that would affect many sectors including transport and time-differentiated

public transport fares. Austria: Interurban road pricing and differentiated public transport fares to reflect quality and speed. Sweden: An environmental charge that may affect many sectors including transport, workplace parking

charging and Urban Road Pricing.

For each policy measure in each country, respondents were asked to appraise the policy on separateattitude scales (the number and type of scale varied between 6 and 10 according to policy and country) coveringissues such as:



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general support for the policy, the perceived outcomes of the policy for solving transport and environmental problems, the perceived implications of the policy in terms of mobility, behavioural changes and equity, data protection and similar issues.

In addition, respondents in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria were also asked to indicate

in which ways they would prefer to see the revenue raised by the pricing measure to be used.

In order to gain further insight into the compensatory relationship between different pricing andspending options and into the effects of price levels, a stated preference survey with respondents from Franceand Sweden was conducted. In this exercise, respondents were asked to rate, on a 5-point preference scalerelative to current conditions (with 1 indicating much worse than at present and 5 indicating much betterthan at present), various different packages involving combinations of pricing and spending measures. Twopricing measures were considered:

An environmental charge related to atmospheric emissions and added to the price of fuel (affecting (car)fuel prices and air ticket prices). The charge was specified at 3 different levels and for the French sampleillustrated by the example of a 2-way car trip from Paris to Marseilles. In the Swedish sample theenvironmental charge was illustrated by increases in the price of fuel for a car trip from Stockholm toGothenborg. There were three different spending options linked to this charge: (1) Subsidy for thedevelopment of environmentally friendly fuels and engines, (2) Reducing in income tax and social securitycharges, (3) Contribution to the general government budget.

An urban road pricing charge operating on weekdays between the hours of 07:00 and 20:00. The dailycharge was again specified at 3 levels. This charge was linked with the following 3 revenue spendingoptions: (1) Construction and/or improvement of the road network, (2) Improvements in both the roadnetwork and public transport, (3) Reducing in local taxes.

Survey results

General attitude scales

Two types of analysis were performed with the data collected using attitudinal scales. First, a simple descriptiveanalysis of the mean and median scale scores of each question, separately for each country. This simplecomparison of mean and median scores between countries is effective for highlighting gross differences andsimilarities, but it has two important drawbacks:

Since the composition of the samples in different countries is different (and not necessarily representativeof the underlying population as a whole), differences in attitudes cannot be unambiguously attributed tocountry specific sources.

The simple descriptive analysis does not tell us what factors significantly influence attitudes and in whatway.

It was in the light of these drawbacks that we decided to develop a second instrument, a simplestatistical model (the ordered response probit model), which relates each of the 19 attitude scale measurementsto the independent variables describing person-level and household-level and national-level variables. Thisanalysis enabled us to detect systematic multi-variate relation relationship between these factors and theacceptability of different pricing policy measures. Details of the statistical modelling are given elsewhere (8).Figure 4 shows the mean (solid bar) and median (hatched bar) agreement scores for the 19 attitude scalespresented in Table 1. In these figures, the smaller the reported score the stronger is the agreement with thecorresponding attitude statement in Table 1. Considering the results as a whole, the following broad patternsseem to emerge in all countries:

Mobility- Public transport is strongly valued. Roads are seen as basic public service, to which people are entitled.- Congestion is seen as threat to free movement and unlikely to be solved by charging.

Environment- Motor cars and aircraft are seen as particularly damaging to the environment.- There is widespread support (amongst the sample) for higher user charges on lorries and lower charges

on green modes. Revenues

- There is a strong preference for the revenues raised from transport user charges to be spent on transportand strong opposition to use of these revenues outside transport.



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Fairness- There is a strong belief that transport is already too heavily taxed coupled with little support for user

pays principle.There is also strong suspicion of government motives in increasing transport relatedtaxes and user charges.

Table 2 presents the results of the ordered response probit models which were fitted to the semantic

scale responses. The key interest in this analysis was to determine (a) which socioeconomic and mobilityrelated factors appear to significantly influence general attitudes and (b) the nature of this influence, specificallywhether a particular factor (such as for example car ownership) is associated with an increase or decrease insupport for a specific attitude. Table 2 shows the categories of the different explanatory variables examined,with the base category of each variable indicated in italics. For each attitudinal question, those variables andcategories showing a statistically significant effect (at the 5% level) are marked either by a + or a -, with theformer indicating that the respective category leads to an increase in support for the attitude statement, relativeto the base category, and a - indicating that the respective category leads to a decrease in support relative tothe base category.

Attitudes to mobility are significantly affected by country of residence and (to a more limited degree)by car use and employment patterns. Likewise, attitudes towards the environment are also significantly relatedto country and car use. In particular, regular car users are significantly less likely to attribute negativeenvironmental impact to plane and car use. Regarding the use of revenues a more complex pattern ofdependence with (again) significant differences between different countries and also significant effects due toincome and car use was found. Regular car users appear to be particularly reluctant to support the use oftransport revenues outside the transport sector, except to reduce income taxes. The analysis of the equitystatements indicates that, even controlling for national differences, regular car users are significantly moreresistant that others, both to paying more for transport and to seeing such revenues used for redistributivepurposes. As might be expected, those on medium to low incomes support redistributive uses. In summary,these results indicate that:

Attitudes to transport pricing and related issues are significantly influenced by a number of factorsincluding, country of residence, regularity of car use, income and to a lesser extent by, age, employmentand work location.

In particular, strong countryspecific effects are present in all the attitudes scales, reflecting the importance

of local policy contexts and local political debates and suggesting that a single Europe wide policy directionwill be extremely difficult to achieve. The single most important and pervasive influence on attitudes appears to be the regularity of car use. Differences between countries are especially marked in respect of attitudes towards the environment. The influence of income can be seen in respect to peoples attitudes towards the use of revenues. Higher

income groups generally prefer to see the revenue from user charges invested in new or improved transportinfrastructure.

Attitudes towards country-specific pricing measures

The overall results indicate that the pricing measures considered attract only a rather limited degree of popularsupport (see Figure 5). Even for those measures that were ranked to be most acceptable by the key informantsonly low agreement from citizens can be achieved. In general, across all the pricing measures considered, onlybetween 20% and 40% of respondents indicate that they support or strongly support the principle of themeasures involved. The two extreme cases are France, where only less than 10% of respondents support theprinciple of an urban road pricing policy (about 30 %, however, agree or strongly agree with an environmentalcharge) and, at the other extreme, Sweden, where over 55% support the principle of environmental charges andworkplace based parking charges.

The results in France may, to some extent, be accounted for by the nature of the French sample, whichwas deliberately drawn from a population of travellers who had prior experience of existing tolling policies inParis, Nantes and Toulouse. This raises two intriguing possibilities; either that the response of the Frenchsample was a form of protest against these existing policies (rather than a true reflection of the acceptability ofthe policies being considered) or that the response of the French sample was indeed a true reflection of attitudesand acceptance to real pricing measures and that the response of the other national samples (which were madelargely in the absence of direct experience of pricing policies) were distorted by a lack of clear understanding ofthe implications of the measures or by a desire to appear more socially responsible and altruistic than in factthey would prove to be in reality. The highest degree of acceptability was expressed towards interurban roadpricing. 41 % of the Dutch and 56 % of the Austrian respondents indicated that they support or strongly support



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the principle of this measure. This is in line with the findings of the key informant survey were in particular thetransport providers and users ranked this measure first. It seems therefore that for interurban road pricing publicand business acceptability converge. Urban road pricing belongs to the least accepted measures by citizenswhich is in line with the findings of the key informant survey. It is rather difficult to compare the degree ofacceptability for other measures between key informants responses and those from citizens since the measurespresented in the two surveys are different.

Another general trend that is apparent from the attitudes expressed to the specific pricing measures is thatrespondents were generally clearly of the view that pricing measures such as urban and interurban road pricing,workplace parking charging, environmental charges and ecological taxes would significantly increase the costsand/or difficulty of car use. Respondents considered in all countries pricing measures as a restriction of mobility forthose people without valid alternatives (70 % to 85 % of all responses). However, they are much more equivocalconcerning the likely impact of such charges on car use itself, on congestion and on the environment. In particularwith respect to improvement of the environment the respondents do not seem to perceive the pricing measures asbeing effective. Only 20 % to 40 % agree or agree strongly that pricing measures would lead to reduced pollutionand improved environment. It is as though, implicitly, respondents were making the assumption that under thesecircumstances general consumption behaviour would, to some degree, adapt to accommodate higher transport costswhilst preserving broadly similar patterns of mobility and activity participation to those currently enjoyed.

Attitudes regarding spending options and trade-offs between pricing and spending options

Respondents in the UK, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany were asked to indicate their favoured spendingoptions with respect to the various pricing policy measures presented. Respondents were permitted to nominatemore than one. We do not present the results here in detail but we can conclude that in all countries and withrespect to all the presented pricing policies, respondents dominant spending preference appears to be for themoney raised by transport pricing to be spent in the transport sector in general, and in particular on improvingpublic transport. Interestingly, this is true both in countries where existing public transport services are generallyregarded as good (such as the Netherlands) and in those where they are generally regarded as poor (such as theUK). This suggests that the preference for spending within the transport sector may have as much to do withnotions of fairness as with perceived need or effectiveness.

Further insight into the compensatory relationship operating between different pricing and spendingoptions was provided by the stated preference exercise undertaken by respondents in France and Sweden. Table3 shows the mean values of the preference scores for each of the two scenarios presented in each of thecountries. Although we must be cautious regarding interpreting mean values calculated with such scores (sincewe have no guarantee that the scale is linear) there are nevertheless some interesting patterns apparent in thedata. In the case of environmental charging, it is apparent that in both France and Sweden the acceptability ofthe different pricing and spending packages appears to be largely determined by the use made of the revenue,rather than the level of charging itself. Not only the pattern, but also the absolute values of the mean scoresthemselves are very similar in the two countries. This finding may reflect the relatively low level of the chargesin question and/or the relatively moderate degree of variation between the different charging levels offered.

In the case of the packages built around urban road pricing, differences are apparent between theresponses in France and Sweden. In France, the principal influence on the acceptability of the package appearsto be the level of the charge, with packages involving low charges being more acceptable than those with highcharges. The use to which the revenue is put seems to be largely immaterial. In Sweden, by contrast, acceptanceappears to be (as in the case of environmental charging) largely determined by the use made of the revenues,with packages involving spending on the road network being rated more highly than those involving spendingon both road and public transport which in turn are rated above options involving general tax reductions.

CONCLUSIONS

The empirical studies presented in this paper have shown that there is an awareness of transport-relatedproblems, in particular of environmental problems and congestion, on the part of citizens, policy-makers andtransport providers. Furthermore, we have found that policy-makers and transport providers seem to understandthe relations between objectives of pricing, appropriate pricing principles and use of revenues from pricingbetter than one would have assumed. However, (and perhaps not surprisingly) the economic principles ofefficiency that often underlie transport pricing are not well understood by citizens, and it is indeed far from clearthat even if they were, they would be regarded as acceptable. Accordingly increase of taxes and charges are



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liable to be seen as a form of money raising and opposed. .The empirical studies presented in this paperprovided more insight into the factors underlying to this.

First, we found evidence of a widespread belief that transport is already too heavily taxed. In the focusgroups, for example, both car drivers and public transport users stated that car drivers already pay enoughor even too much. This is reinforced by a belief that governments are not necessarily always completelytransparent or forthright in their motivations for increasing transport prices. This is often coupled with afeeling of resignation and fatalism that governments will exploit their position as monopolists. In general,people do not feel that they have a voice in the decision process on transport pricing.

Second, whilst respondents are clear that increases in transport prices will bear heavily on particular groups,such as regular car users, they appear to remain skeptical regarding whether, despite this, the pricingmeasures will in fact render significant congestion or environmental benefits (due to the likelihood ofcompensating behavioural adjustments).

Third, people consider roads and also public transport as basic public services to which people are entitled.An important dimension of this issue is also the existence of reasonable alternatives to the mode/routecharged. Both the focus group discussions and the citizen surveys have shown that people value publictransport strongly but they consider it as too expensive and/or infrequent to effectively replace privatetransport.

A second overall conclusion is that while there seems to be a general agreement that the price shouldreflect the real costs of transport divergent opinions exist on the treatment of environmental friendly modes.For example, some key informants suggested that these modes should pay less while others suggested an equaltreatment of all modes. The focus groups argued that pricing was aimed at reducing emissions and insisted thattherefore all polluters should pay. The citizens expressed a strong agreement for charging lorries higher thancars and for introducing lower charges for green modes, however coupled with less support for charging thosehigher who use roads more than others.

The third overall conclusion is that there are significant differences between different countries interms of attitudes and potential responses to transport pricing measures. These differences operate incombination with the effects of income and car use to give rise to a very wide range of different views regardingdesirable and/or effective pricing interventions. This seems to cast doubt on the viability of a one size fits allapproach to the specification of pricing principles and measures and puts a premium on national and localdecision making.

A fourth overall conclusion is that modifications to well known, traditional pricing instruments wereeasier to accept than entirely new instruments. Variable charges differentiated with respect to time, noise and airpollution, quality of service etc. are preferred.

A fifth conclusion is that there is a strong preference for spending the revenues raised from transportuser charges in the transport sector. However, there are diverging opinions on cross-subsidisation of othermodes of transport. In the citizen surveys a slight preference for using the revenues to improve public transportwas stated which might be interpreted as the desire of citizens to have alternative transport modes with a goodtravel comfort if private car travel is made more expensive. Generally, it seems that the issue of revenue use inother modes than the charged one is highly dependent on the concrete pricing package to be analysed. In termsof acceptability it thus seems sensible to proceed with caution on the issues of cross-subsidisation whenimplementing pricing measures. Whether and to what degree revenues raised with pricing measures will bespent for other modes should rather be decided an a case-to-case basis.

The sixth overall conclusion was that, whilst pricing measures were generally unpopular, theirunpopularity can be reduced by a suitably configured package of spending measures, focusing, as indicatedabove, on measures directly related to improving conditions within the transport sector. Conversely, if therevenues are spent in ways that are defuse and render few immediate or linkable benefits, the unpopularity of thepricing measure is likely to be exacerbated. Our studies have also shown that privacy issues are no majorobstacle for introducing road pricing.



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REFERENCES

1. Jones, P.M. Road pricing: The public viewpoint. in B. Johansson and L-G Mattsson (eds), Road Pricing:Theory, Empirical Assessment and Polic y. Kluwer Academic Publishers, London.

2. Verhoef, E.T., P. Nijkamp and P. Rietveld The social feasibility of road pricing Journal of Transport

Economics and Polic y, 31: 255-276, 1997.3. Ison, S. Local authority and academic attitudes to urban road pricing: A UK perspective Transport Policy

7 pp 269-277. 2000.4. Thorpe, N., Hills, P. and Jaensirisak, S. Public attitudes to TDM measures: a comparative study Transport

Policy , 7 243-257. 2000.5. Verhoef, E.T. and E. Pels Implementation of Pricing Measures for Sustainable Transport: Investigating

Economic Efficiency and Social Acceptability in: W.R. Black and P Nijkamp (eds.), Social Change andSustainable Transport , Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002

6. Bartley, B. Mobility Impacts, Reactions and Opinions. Traffic demand management options in Europe:The MIRO Project. Traffic Engineering and Control 36 , pp 596-603, 1995.

7. Jones, P.M. Urban road pricing: public acceptability and barriers to implementation. In: Button, K.J.,Verhoef, E.T. (Eds .), Road Pricing, Traffic Congestion and the Environment. Issues of Efficiency andSocial Feasibility. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. 263-284.1998.

8. PATS Consortium, Recommendations on Transport Pricing Strategies . Final Report of the PATS project,European Commission, Brussels, 2001. (see also, http://www.tis.pt/proj/pats/pats.html ).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is based on work carried out as part of the PATS project, supported by the European Commission.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the European Transport Conference.



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Figure 1 Factors influencing the acceptability of pricing measures

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Clear pricing purpose

Same pricing principle for all modes

Favourable pricing level for environmental friendly modes

Earmarking of revenues

Compensation measures

Protection of privacy

Transparency of the pricing scheme

Easines of using the charging system

EU-wide harmonised introduction

Stepwise introduction

Others

Policy-makers Transport providers & users

How important are the following issues for making the pricing schemes more acceptable?(Median analysis)

1=not important at all 2=less important 3=important 4=very important 5=obligatory

Source : PATS Consortium



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Figure 2: Most appropriate pricing principle for each pricing/ taxation purpose

1

1

Rank 1)

43% 34% 14% 9%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

30% 43% 23% 4%

Policy-makers

Transport providers & users

Coverage ofinfrastructure costs

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4

30% 26% 19% 26%

24% 20% 27% 29%

Policy-makers


Revenue raising forgeneral budget

2

2

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3

2

3

63% 38%

39% 9% 27% 24%

9% 18% 52% 21%

67% 13% 20%

40% 12% 32% 16%

15% 9% 62% 13%

Policy-makers


Policy-makers


Policy-makers


Demand management

Internalisation of external effects

Other purpose

Average costs including external costs Average costs without external costs Marginal cost coverage Other principle

Which are the most appropriate pricing principles for each of the pricing purposes?

1) Indicates the median of responses on the question What are the most easilyacceptable pricing purposes? Smaller value means better ranking.




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Figure 3: Most acceptable revenue spending schemes per pricing purpose

Policy-makers Transport providers & usersSource : PATS Consortium

16%

28%

52%

4%

12%

26%

2%

26%

21%

5%

5%

5%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

General State budget

Improvement of public transport

Improvement of cycling and walking

Road improvement

Improvement of rail/combined transport

Improvement of maritime transport

Reduction of socialcharges on labour

Health care

5%

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10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

9%

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5%

13%

18%

3%

10%

10%

10% 20% 30% 40%

What is the most appropriate and most easily acceptable revenue spending scheme for pricing measuresaimed at...

1) Covering infrastructure costs 2) Demand management 3) Internalising of external effects



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Figure 4: Mean and median scores for attitude scales

1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

AT

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How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements :

1 = strongly agree 2 = agree 3 = neither agree 4 = disagree 5 = strongly disagree.Mean Median

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1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1 .0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

E1 E2 E3 E4


--

AT

FR

DE

NL

UK

SE

1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

R1 R2 R3 R4 R6R5

F1 F2 F3 F4

1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

AT

FR

DE

NL

UK

SE



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15

Figure 5: Attitudes to country-specific transport pricing measures

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

A

NL

S

F

NL

UK

S

F

D

A

D

S

UK

Share of answers

Do you agree in principle with the idea of the following measures?

strongly agree agree neither disagree strongly disagree

Workplace

Parking ChargeTime-

differentiatedpublic transport

faresEcological tax

reform

Environ-mental

charges

Urban Road

Pricing

InterurbanRoad Pricing

Source: PATS Consortium.



16/18

16

Table 1 Common Attitude Scales (asked of respondents in all countries)

Mobility

M1 Good public transport is important for me.

M2 Charging for road use would ease congestion.

M3 Congestion restricts the freedom of movement.

M4Roads are a basic public service and should be free to all motorists regardless of their ability topay.

M5 Charging for road use is a threat to my freedom of movement.

Environment

E1 Travelling by car is not good for the environment.

E2 Travelling by plane is not good for the environment.

E3Lorries are causing more damage to roads and the environment than cars and therefore shouldpay more.

E4 Less environmentally damaging transport modes should be cheaper to use.

Use of revenues

R1The government should use the money they get from road users to reduce other roadrelatedtaxes.

R2 The government should use the money they get from road users to reduce income taxes.

R3 The government should use the money they get from road users to maintain the roads.

R4 The government should use the money they get from road users to build more roads.

R5 The government should use the money they get from road users to fund better public transport.

R6The government should use the money they get from road users to fund investments in schools,hospitals and other nontransport areas.

Fairness

F1 Those who use roads a lot should pay more for road use than those who travel less.F2 People with lower incomes should not pay as much for transport as people with higher incomes.

F3The government will often increase the amounts that road users have to pay in the form of taxes,tolls and other charges regardless of whether they agree or not.

F4 Road users already pay enough in taxes on fuel and vehicles.

Source: PATS Consortium.



17/18

Table 2 Summary of Ordered Probit Modelling Results for Attitude Scales Concerning Mobility, Environment, Revenues and

Influencefactors 1)

Statements on mobility Statements onenvironment

Statements on revenues

M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 E1 E2 E3 E4 R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6

CountryUKAustriaFranceGermanyThe NetherlandsSweden

+

++

+

+

+

++++

+

+++++

+++++

+

+

+

+++++

+

+

+

++

+

+

+

+

Car use IrregularRegular + + + + + Income

HighMediumLow

++

++

++

++

Age18 31 31 50> 50

+ +

Employment Not workingWorkingWork location

Not CityCity + +1) The base category of each influence factor, indicated in italics, were constrained equal to zero in the analysis. Variables with a stateffect (at 5 % level) are marked either with + or - indicating that the respective variable leads to an increase/decrease of supportstatement, relative to the base category.Source: PATS Consortium.

TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM Paper revised from original s


18/18

Table 3 Mean Values of Preference Score for Environmental Charge and for Urban Road

Pricing

Environmental charge

France Sweden

Use of revenues Price level 1+12 on the

price ofpetrol

Price level 2+15 on the

price ofpetrol

Price level 3+18 on the

price ofpetrol

Price level 15 on theprice ofpetrol



Environmentally friendlytechnology

3.56 3.41 3.30 3.57 3.48 3.39

Reduce incometax & social

security charges

2.81 2.72 2.67 3.04 2.97 2.95

General budget 2.13 2.11 2.11 2.04 1.99 1.95

Urban Road pricing

Price level 12

Price level 24

Price level 36

Price level 12

Price level 24

Price level 36

Improvement ofthe roadnetwork

2.76 2.46 2.20 3.50 3.43 3.35

Improvementsin road networkand publictransport

3.01 2.67 2.34 2.44 2.46 2.50

Reducing inlocal taxes

2.78 2.58 2.28 2.53 2.65 2.66

Source: PATS consortium.

link, polak. the acceptability of transport pricing measures amongst public and professionals in...

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