Acceptability of measures to reduce car use.

This paper presents a study on the acceptability of measures to reduce car use in order to cope with environmental problems and traffic congestion. Traffic congestion has become a major issue in the last few years in the Netherlands. Congestion is primarily concentrated in the south-western part of the country, the Randstad. The problem of congestion is usually considered predominantly from an economic viewpoint. In 1987 the Traffic Research Centre of the University of Groningen took part in a project that aimed to solve the problems of congestion and the negative effects on the environment caused by cars (such as pollution, noise, etc) from an environmental viewpoint. The starting point was a set of environmental constraints. Upon these a traffic system was designed by the Technical University of Delft which depends heavily on the use of public transport. The economic implications of this system were studied by the Free University of Amsterdam. The study carried out by the Traffic Research Centre dealt with the acceptability of four different sets of policy measures to reduce car use. Furthermore, the effect that combinations of these sets with two different types of public transport systems have on mode choice was studied. The paper gives a brief outline of the entire project and presents the results of the study carried out by Traffic Research Centre.