The project on which the paper reports is a road-use charging pilot-action, entitled EUROPRICE, funded by the EU DGXVII Energy Programme involving four partners in Ireland, UK, Greece and Hungary. The paper describes the Dublin based part of the project. The objective was to examine the potential for road-use charging in Dublin, in particular those issues relating to traffic demand management and the impact on energy savings. As part of another project an in-vehicle-unit (EVI) was designed and 25 were installed in the cars of the volunteers involved in the EUROPRICE pilot-action. To enable the time differentiated distance and time based charging to be applied, the instrumentation in each vehicle was connected to the odometer of the vehicle. Charging rates were determined using as a guide the results of a TRENEN model (KU DGVII) run of Dublin from which the marginal external costs of travel in Dublin during peak and off-peak periods were an output. The volunteers were provided with a real-money budget for three weeks and were asked to allocate their spending according to their own priorities. The paper reports on the findings of the pilot-action in terms of impact on private travel demand and energy savings. The latter will be computed using the network model of Dublin and will include the reduced energy consumption due to lower congestion (if this is found to be the case). The preliminary findings look interesting (although not all results have yet been analysed) where road-use charging appears to have had an impact on about 15% of the volunteers. In the case of those who have not reduced their car travel the most common reason given is the low level of service offered to them by public transport on the route they take to work.
Abstract