Dutch pricing policy, intended to tackle congestion in personal transport, is out of pace with the European policy that aims to achieve a transparent framework of charges for goods transport that does not distort the competitive position. Three perspectives shed light on the importance of the right pairing of measure and objective: (1) Variabilisation: a redistribution of the current costs, consisting of taxes and excise duties, paid by road users; (2) Internalisation: a distribution across road users of those costs currently met from general national funds, such as the costs for infrastructure, traffic safety, environment and congestion; and (3) value-pricing: extra services, such as greater comfort, a higher cruising speed and more predictable journey times, etcetera, the road user will obtain if he is willing to pay for it. Developments in the Dutch car fleet over the last 25 years show that price policy in taxations have effected the composition of the car fleet, but not the size of it. Also decentralised authorities can profit from pricing measures. Policy in such cases is usually a question of targeting a particular group consisting of those who are willing to pay for a particular facility. Experience with pricing measures in metropolitan areas form the basis of such European knowledge networks such as IMPRINT (IMplementing Pricing Reform IN Transport) EUROPE, CUPID (Co-ordinating Urban Pricing Integrated Demonstrations), and the PROGRESS (Pricing ROad use for Greater Responsibility, Efficiency and Sustainability in citieS) project. Further study is required into the effects of a pricing policy, the implementation path, and the basis for a right tariff. (Author/publisher)
Abstract