Improving access and reducing emissions in Europe’s cities

The unsustainable levels of congestion and pollution affecting Europe’s cities are being tackled by a range of measures, including charging road users to drive into town centres during peak hours. In this article Dr. Chris Humphrey gives an update on progress with the CURACAO project, which seeks to share research and good practice on road pricing between European cities.

The issue of road congestion has steadily climbed up the policy agenda of many national governments in recent years. Traffic levels in major European towns and cities continue to rise, causing increasing delays, accidents and noise. The European Commission estimates that a staggering €100 billion, or 1% of the EU’s GDP, is lost to congestion each year.

The waste products generated by excessive traffic in cities also have a serious impact on the health of citizens and the natural environment. Urban traffic contributes to 40% of carbon dioxide emissions and 70% of other pollutants arising from road transport across Europe.

The problem is spreading across the whole of Europe, so that road congestion is now a major problem facing cities in all European countries, including New Member States. Politicians and planners have been forced to acknowledge that we cannot build our way out of this situation – bold action must be taken to actively manage the future demand for the existing road space.

One powerful tool in the toolbox of traffic demand measures is road user charging, or road pricing. As a measure, it represents a decisive policy shift since charges are used to encourage some road users to find alternative ways of making their journey during peak hours, or travel at another time altogether. The funds raised can be reinvested in other areas such as improving public transport. Even a relatively small reduction in the number of peak-hour car trips per week can bring about a dramatic fall in congestion levels, as has been shown in the cases of the London and Stockholm schemes.

However, despite the strong evidence base for what road pricing can achieve, many politicians in European cities have been wary of even considering, let alone introducing road pricing, due to a fear of negative public reaction. This shortfall, between the potential of road pricing and the progress of its actual implementation, has been the focus of a project funded by the European Commission. The project, Coordination of Urban Road User Charging Organisational Issues (CURACAO for short), started in April 2006 and runs until March 2009. The project was previously profiled in Intelligent Transport Issue 4 in 2006.

In this article, we introduce the CURACAO project and present some of the findings from the first two years of work. A lot has changed in the landscape of road pricing during this time. Whereas two years ago the main activities were only taking place in the capital cities of a few countries, it is now possible to talk about road pricing developments within whole countries. In addition, vehicle emissions have become more important, with some road pricing schemes now charging by engine size or type of fuel. Finally, cities in the Netherlands have been experimenting with a form of reverse road charging, carrying out trials that pay commuters not to drive during peak hours.

CURACAO project update

The CURACAO project is a consortium of fifteen member organisations, coordinated by Transport & Travel Research Ltd, a UK transport consultancy1. The consortium includes 10 expert partners, consisting of commercial consultancies, academic institutions and government agencies, and five city representatives with direct experience of road pricing schemes, either as demonstration projects or as full implementations (see Table 1).

Where CURACAO differs from other projects, and what is helping it to succeed, is that it approaches road pricing implementation as an iterative rather than as a linear process. Experience has shown there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, a magic formula that can guarantee the success of a demand management package. Rather, European cities each have their distinctive political, legal and public acceptability issues to overcome, and so what worked for Stockholm may not work for another European city.

Recognising this fundamental diversity, the CURACAO project is focusing its efforts on identifying user needs, from common issues across all cities right down to the needs of individual cities, and then delivering products and events which can satisfy those needs. The objective is to establish a positive cycle of knowledge growth and development about road pricing amongst decision makers and technical experts in European cities.

The initial identification of the needs of decision makers and technical experts in European cities was carried out through a User Needs Assessment questionnaire, undertaken in July 2006. The most important question related to the different barriers which respondents were encountering with road pricing, and the relative weightings that they gave to these barriers. As already noted, while road pricing is a powerful tool for managing mobility demand, cities have on the whole been slow to implement actual schemes. Therefore, respondents were offered a list of possible barriers to implementation, and asked to choose five, ranking them from one to five in order of priority. Figure 1 shows the results.

The lack of a political champion and low public acceptability were the top two barriers, followed by the difficulty of planning and managing such a large project. A further outcome from this question was the identification of a number of barriers which were not given as options in the original questionnaire, identified as ‘Other’ in Figure 1. Four of these unidentified barriers were given the highest priority by respondents, and include legal barriers and uncertainty about economic impacts.

By understanding the barriers that cities face, both known and newly identified, CURACAO is able to target its resources to offer solutions from cities with experience of overcoming such issues, as well as from industry and academic experts. In the next section, the dissemination activities that the CURACAO project is undertaking in this regard are described in more detail.

Progress in overcoming barriers to road pricing

In this section, the four main dissemination activities of the CURACAO project are described – the User Group, the Case Studies, the State-of-the-Art Review and the Policy Recommendations. All deliverables mentioned in the text are available at the project website: www.curacaoproject.eu.

The CURCAO User Group – Moving Forward Together

Cities which expressed an interest in joining a user group when they answered the User Needs Assessment questionnaire were invited to sign a Memorandum of Understanding in order to take part in the CURACAO User Group. In all, 20 cities or regions from nine countries have joined the User Group, which is chaired by a representative from the city of Bristol, one of the CURACAO project partners.

The aim of the User Group is to provide a closed forum in which city representatives can comfortably discuss progress on road pricing planning, and receive support and feedback from experts with technical or practical experience.

The User Group has met three times so far:

• London, March 2007: to learn more about the CURACAO project and the London Congestion Charging scheme and its Western Extension;
• Stockholm, September 2007: to hear about the results of the evaluation of the Stockholm trial and receive a site visit;
• Amsterdam, February 2008: User Group members presented their city’s plans for road pricing to one another and received feedback from CURACAO’s experts.

To coincide with the London and Amsterdam meetings, seminars on road pricing themes were also held, which were open to a wider audience. The next User Group meeting will be held in Berlin in September 2008.

The CURACAO Case Studies – Sharing Good Practice

Local policy makers and researchers need further and more detailed information on the impacts of introducing road pricing. In the CURACAO project, this information is being provided through case studies of leading cities in the field, to assess issues such as the socio-economic and spatial impacts of road pricing schemes. The case studies build on the evaluation work already undertaken in previous European projects, including CUPID, PRoGRESS and REVENUE. The key demonstration sites of Bristol, Edinburgh, Oslo, Rome and Stockholm are included, along with information from The Hague, London, Durham, Milan and Bologna. Each city has a distinct contribution to make in terms of how pricing has been used to achieve particular policy objectives, or how lessons can be learned from the planning process (Edinburgh).

As well as the information about individual cities, a clearer picture is emerging about approaches to road pricing at a national level. In the UK for example, plans for a national scheme which were announced in June 2005 have been put on hold while local solutions are investigated. In the Netherlands, the government has announced plans for a national kilometre-charge scheme to replace vehicle tax, starting in 2012. Further information on road pricing schemes in specific countries can be found in the information boxes in this article.

The information gathered in the case studies will be made available through an online database which will be launched in Autumn 2008. Users of the database will be able to find out more about the schemes of individual cities, or compare a theme such as Pricing Objectives or Acceptability across a number of cities.

The CURACAO State-of-the-Art Review – Ensuring Scientific Excellence

Using its network of experts, CURACAO is able to monitor developments across European, national and local levels. It is also able to maintain an overview of the latest academic research on urban pricing. By capturing this intelligence in a regular summary report, the project team, decision makers and technical experts have access to the state-of-the-art knowledge on road pricing practice.

An initial set of reporting themes has been supplemented by the results of the User Needs Assessment exercise, to produce the following list of chapters for the State-of-the-Art Review:

• The possible objectives of road pricing schemes
• The ways in which road pricing schemes can be designed to meet those objectives
• The technologies available to support such scheme designs
• The business systems affecting the technology choice and operation of the scheme
• Techniques for predicting the effects of road pricing schemes
• Techniques for appraising/evaluating the effects of road pricing schemes
• Specific evidence of impacts on the economy
• The environment
• Equity
• Factors affecting the acceptability of road pricing schemes
• The potential transferability of experience from one city to another.

The first State-of-the-Art Review was produced in Spring 2007 and is available to download from the CURACAO project website. The second version of the State-of-the-Art Review will be published in Summer 2008 and the final version in Spring 2009.

The CURACAO Policy Recommendations – Developing an Action Plan

A response to the EC’s recent Green Paper, ‘Towards a New Culture for Urban Mobility’, was submitted by the CURACAO project consortium to the EC in March 2008. The response addressed questions posed about urban charging, for instance, whether the EC should encourage towns and cities to use urban charging. In summary, the main points made in the CURACAO response were:

• Cities that have pursued or are considering the introduction of road user charging have, as their dominant objectives, to improve the efficiency of the transport system, to improve the urban environment and to generate revenue to pay for infrastructure improvements. The evidence from cities with implemented schemes is that all of these objectives can successfully be achieved by road user charging.
• Acceptability remains the principal concern of cities considering road pricing. Acceptability is mainly based upon personal outcome expectations, which are typically negative and decline further as a scheme proposal becomes more concrete. The roles of complementary policy instruments and the use of road pricing revenue, for instance by planning to invest in public transport and reallocating road space to non-car modes, are critical to increasing acceptability.
• The EC could help to remove barriers to urban charging by publishing guidance based on the work done by the CURACAO project, giving financial support to cities for feasibility studies, and supporting research into the interoperability of road user charging systems and technologies.

Looking ahead

The ability of road pricing schemes to improve traffic flows and reduce harmful emissions within European cities is not in doubt, as the results from cities like London, Rome and Stockholm have shown. During the two years that the CURACAO project has been live, congestion charging has begun to enter the mainstream of political debate, with more cities planning or introducing schemes, and the first national road pricing system announced in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, significant challenges and barriers remain to be overcome, especially outside of capital cities.

The most interesting developments in the next couple of years are likely to take place in provincial cities, as politicians seek to introduce transport improvement measures which include a road pricing component. The issue of public and business acceptability is obviously a key barrier here, but so are issues of scheme affordability (since the economies of scale are smaller) as well as regional competitiveness (commuters and shoppers may be displaced to nearby towns without pricing schemes). The answers to these issues require innovative thinking, but there are already signs from the CURACAO project that local councils, businesses and system suppliers are making good progress in working together to overcome these barriers.

For example, in the UK, the British Retail Consortium is encouraging its members to open a dialogue with local authorities on transport improvements, with road pricing being one option in improving access to town centres. The falling cost and increasing reliability of satellite-based charging systems, where vehicles are tracked through an on-board unit, now offers a real alternative to a fixed infrastructure of cameras and gantries. Finally, the concept of the ‘sub-region’, where transport improvements are planned and delivered across a number of interlinked conurbations, can help to overcome the problem of local competition for workers and shoppers.

Country spotlight: United Kingdom

The major cities of the UK have all considered road pricing as a possible solution to their congestion issues. The city of London introduced a congestion charge in 2003, added the Western Extension in 2007, and will expand the scheme to include carbon emissions through a charge based on engine size in October 2008. In Edinburgh, a plan for transport improvements which included a congestion charging scheme was decisively rejected in a public referendum in 2005. In Cardiff, the Chamber of Commerce reported widespread support for a charging scheme among business leaders and transport professionals in late 2007, but a decision is not likely until after the local elections of May 2008.

Outside of these cities, the Department for Transport has given funds to ten Transport Innovation Fund (or TIF) pilot areas in England, in order to prepare bids for transport improvements which may include a road pricing component. Successful councils will be awarded money to assist with the implementation of their plans.

Plans for a national road pricing scheme, announced by the UK government in June 2005, have effectively been shelved in favour of locally based schemes.

Country spotlight: Italy

In Italy, the city of Rome has been operating Limited Traffic Zones since 2001. Access to particular areas in the city is restricted through an annual pass system. A range of technologies is employed to enforce access to the zones, including electronic gates, smart cards and cameras which read vehicle number plates. The system has helped to reduce car traffic in the LTZ areas by 15-20% and the city is now expanding the number of zones. The cities of Bologna and Milan have also implemented road pricing schemes in the form of Limited Traffic Zones, and where the charge is based primarily on the engine size of the vehicle.

Country spotlight: Sweden

In Stockholm, a trial period of congestion charging ran from January 2006 to June 2006, which was followed by a referendum on the issue in September 2006. The referendum result showed a majority supported the concept of road pricing (or a ‘congestion tax’ in local terms) for Stockholm. Evaluation of the trial showed that traffic levels in the inner city were reduced by 20-25% and the time spent in queues decreased by 30-50%. Emissions were also reduced. A permanent scheme in Stockholm began on 1 August 2007 and is operational between 7:30am – 6:30pm Monday to Friday. The city of Gothenburg is also investigating whether a road pricing scheme could be justified.

Country spotlight: the Netherlands

Amsterdam and Utrecht have both developed plans for road pricing schemes, although the Utrecht plans rely on providing incentives for regular commuters not to drive, rather than levying a charge. A similar approach has been tested in trials by The Hague. The future of city schemes is uncertain in the light of a commitment by the Dutch government to introduce a national road pricing scheme from 2012 for lorries and 2016 for cars.

Reference

1. http://www.curacaoproject.eu