This paper is based on work within GRACE (a European Commission project) and extends research by ITS Leeds on behalf of the UK Department of Transport. GRACE aims to facilitate implementation of pricing and taxation schemes reflecting the full costs of infrastructure use. This paper is based upon a GRACE Work Package which is examining the optimal degree of complexity in transport charges and focuses on motorists' ability to comprehend andrespond to such charges. A questionnaire was designed to gain an insight into how people would deal with complex congestion pricing regimes and theimpacts that such schemes would have on their driving behaviour. Similar questionnaires were used in each of two areas (Newcastle-upon-Tyne in UK and Cologne in Germany). The questionnaire comprised two phases; a face-to-face screening phase - following which eligible respondents were asked to study documentation describing a (hypothetical) road charging scheme in their city, and a CATI (computer assisted telephone interview) phase which probed their comprehension of, and response to, that scheme. The first phase interview established the characteristics of the respondents, their regular journeys and the alternative modes they could use, their sensitivity to costs, and their willingness to take part in a further telephone interview. The data obtained from phase one was used to allocate appropriate congestion charging schemes to those respondents. Three variant schemes had been prepared for each city; they varied in terms of the complexity of the charges levied (varying by time periods, road type etc.) and the areas theycovered. The surveys were conducted in autumn 2006 and resulted in 400 fully completed returns (with the UK-Germany split being approximately 50-50). Although all the key questions were essentially the same in both versions of the questionnaire, some differences were inevitable due to differences in language and culture and due to the fact that the hypothesised charging schemes in Cologne inevitably differed from those in Newcastle. Great care must thus be taken to allow for differences in the questionnaire context when interpreting the questionnaire results. Initial analysis of the data provides some interesting insight into peoples perception of and response to costs and charges. One particularly interesting finding, which was particularly marked in the UK, is that a substantial minority (UK 30%, Germany 18%) said that they rarely put much effort into working out the best deal for their utility services. Another, which was again most marked in the UK, is that respondents claimed much higher levels of ability to estimate the (hypothesised) congestion charge for their most regular journey than they had claimed to estimate the current costs of that journey. Respondents gave various reasons for their difficulty in estimating the congestioncharge. The main reasons cited were: the complexity of the calculation (Germany 33%, UK 17%), uncertainty about the precise length of the route (UK31%, Germany 12%), the difficulty knowing what time they would be travelling (Germany 20%, UK 12%), and uncertainty about precisely where the charges would apply (UK 12%, Germany 14%). A substantial minority (UK 44%, Germany 22%) said that they would not start to think seriously about changing their travel arrangements unless the monthly charge exceeded a given cost and only a small minority (UK 10%, Germany 9%) thought that they could reduce the charge payable by switching to an alternative route. It is suggested that the pricing signals contained in complex, or highly differentiated, congestion charges are unlikely to affect the behaviour of many motorists. This is partly because they fail to perceive or understand the price signal, partly because they think they have no option but to pay up and partly because they would not bother to think seriously about it. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.
Abstract