Potential influence of city pricing (downtown toll) for private transport in Germany on travel behaviour

Abstract

Road pricing has been discussed since quite a long time as a political measure to shift transport costs directly to the infrastructure users thus also meeting the need for providing efficient transport infrastructures in the future. Other general objectives related to road pricing concern traffic management, in particular the backing of an efficient handling of traffic. Ecological effects are more or less considered as welcome side effects. Road pricing exists in the form of either highway tolling or inner urban congestion charging. While Germany has restricted road pricing to a highway toll for heavy vehicles, there are no experiences concerning urban congestion charging. First reports coming from European cities like London, Oslo or Trondheim where congestion charging was introduced in the last years, seem to confirm a considerable change in the behaviour of road users – irrespectively of effects perceived by the individual road user. The experiences made in various European cities indicate that road pricing is able to decrease at least partially the problems of congestion, noise and other environmental annoyances thus increasing the quality of life in the concerned areas. This, so far, endorses the expectations that road pricing could be an effective tool for traffic management and the improvement of traffic in cities. Despite these positive ‘signs’, the discussion about road pricing and congestion charging, however, remains controversial and sometimes becomes even emotional. At the time, the question if road pricing might be accepted by a considerable part of the road users is mostly ‘automatically’ denied. Yet, particularly for the context of big cities, we assume that being affected from negative traffic effects could people lead to accept more easily pricing measures for road transport. Therefore the contribution will explore both direct and indirect (or ‘rebound’) effects of road pricing and congestion charging and investigate their potential effects on travel behaviour. In its overview on observed reactions to road pricing it relies on recent studies made for the German Ministry of Transport by the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The examination of current attitudes of individuals towards road pricing will be based on a nationwide survey with a special focus on the city of Berlin. The study regards only car users. Particular attention will be given to the question if the subjective are affected by traffic problems like congestion, air pollution and traffic noise raises the willingness to accept road pricing or congestion charging. Another focus lies on the question what people expect to be their reactions to road pricing and congestion charging.