The charging regime has been tested using the SCENES Regional Economic and Transport Model, for the year 2020. The model compares a base scenario against an alternative scenario that includes the charging. Within this case study, use was made of the results of the RECORDIT project measuring road freight traffic externalities to determine levels of social marginal cost pricing at the geographical scale of NUTS2 regions. Population density was used as the main proxy for regionalizing charging levels, as this scale correlates very strongly with the levels of external costs produced by transport under various circumstances. Additional corrections were made for mountainous areas, where external costs cannot be represented by the population scale alone. The resulting levels of charging concerned the main input for the SCENES model runs. It is found that the pattern of response of freight traffic to charges is complex and that peripheral countries in Europe (Greece, Sweden, Finland and Portugal) are disproportionately affected because of long haulage distances. The paper explains the assumptions behind the model runs, presents the results of the model runs, provides an interpretation of the outcomes and gives recommendations for other policy research in the area of transport pricing. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
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