Mobility management can provide multiple benefits including congestion reduction, road and parking facility cost savings, consumer savings, improved consumer choice, road safety, environmental quality, community liveability, efficient land use, and equity. Mobility management can provide significant savings to consumers and society by reducing and deferring roadway capacity expansion costs. As a result, total benefits are often much greater than solutions that only address one or two problems. Mobility management can greatly expand the range of solutions for addressing transport problems, and allows solutions to be tailored to a particular situation. It can often be implemented quickly, and target a particular location, time period or user group. To understand why such large benefits are possible it is useful to consider some basic market principles. Efficient markets have certain requirements, including consumer choice, competition, cost-based pricing, and economic neutrality in public policies. Most markets generally reflect these principles: consumers pay directly for housing, food and clothing. But transportation markets tend to violate these principles: consumers often have few viable options, many costs are external or fixed, and government policies often favour one mode over others. Mobility management strategies can help correct these market distortions, creating a more efficient and equitable transportation system. (Author/publisher)
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