Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 11

Pricing – demand management through congestion charging - it has long been advocated by transport planners that direct congestion charging ("cordon pricing" or "area pricing") for vehicle use in urban areas is the most efficient demand management policy.  There have been, and continue to be, numerous recent proposals for cities as different as London (targeted implementation 2002) and Mumbai.  However, implementation world-wide is extremely limited and of the few congestion pricing schemes, perhaps only Singapore has, as its primary aim, the restraint of road traffic.  However, schemes like Trondheim, while seeking to raise revenue for transport improvement, do seek at the same time to use the system "traffic regulation tool".

In so far as experience of the limited schemes in the world show, congestion pricing schemes are effective in reducing vehicle demand and are practical to operate.  The case for congestion pricing in developing cities appears very strong in that (i) traffic congestion is increasing and congestion pricing can target congested times and congested areas of a city, (ii) the majority of travellers use road based public transport which should benefit greatly from congestion pricing and thus should be natural supporters and (iii) the revenues should enable essential parallel public transport improvements to be made.

The reasons for lack of implementation are complex but include (i) political, and some public, opposition, (ii) failure of transport planners to present convincing arguments, (iii) legal and institutional constraints associated with direct charging for road use, (iv) lack of legal framework for dealing with offenders (e.g. "owner" versus "driver" liability), (v) institutional weakness to plan, design, implement and manage a scheme on a continuous basis, and (vi) a tendency to regard congestion pricing as a stand-alone scheme and thus a failure to recognise and develop integrated policies for improved, quality public transport as an alternative to car use.

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the developed world partly due to the potential for electronic charging (stored value cards etc) and automatic enforcement and tracing of offenders.  Singapore has shown that such schemes can work effectively and are efficient as charges can be readily geared to traffic conditions to achieve a balance between vehicle use of road space and charges.  However, past experience of the original Singapore Area License Scheme also shows that a “paper based”, manually enforced cordon pricing scheme is feasible; simple technology is not a bar to congestion pricing in developing cities.  Indeed manual schemes may be the only way forward in the short term in many cities as electronic charging must be underpinned by facilities to enforce and trace offenders.  This requires a complete national, up-todate, accessible vehicle registration data base which can be accessed automatically - not always available in developing cities.  Even the Singapore manual scheme required tracing of offenders and this may not be possible in some developing cities.  On-the-spot fines for violators may be the only enforcement policy possible and this has serious implications for feasibility of cordon schemes in that (i) road space is required to deal with offenders, (ii) there is the possibility of corruption and (iii) the numbers of offenders and thus congestion induced at control points may be so great that the benefits of the scheme are eroded.

Restraint through land use and transport development – integrated land use and transport is the long term planning goal of most cities.  As travel demand is related to land use disposition, it should theoretically be possible to reduce overall demand for travel and to plan efficient transport systems through control of land-use development.  Few cities have been successful in administering land use development controls in relation to transport.  As with most effective transport policies, the key lies in the institutional arrangements.  However, if a long term view is taken, cities such as Curitiba and Singapore show that it can be done and the benefits of less travel, shorter journeys, lower cost journeys etc are great.