Society must reconcile the economic issues that relate to transport demand with the interests of other categories of actors: producers and the actors which experience the environmental and social impacts. It is also necessary to influence demand by ensuring that it is affected not only by production costs but also by environmental and social impacts: pricing is the preferred policy instrument for expressing these costs and ensuring they are borne by users. The policy implemented by the community must target equity: equity as regards covering production costs, equity as regards compensation for impacts (particularly environmental damage), and equity between users for access to transport. Road pricing provides financial resources which can be used for economic and social development and also in order to compensate for impacts. A range of transport pricing instruments exists, including taxes, tolls, and prices which are tolls that are modulated with respect to demand and the conditions of production. Recent technological developments make it possible to price use in an extremely precise manner. These policies are not restricted to pricing, they include a set of measures which provide compensations to most of the actors involved, which renders them equitable and possible to implement. A transport policy has long-term effects, and developing and implementing measures constitutes a planning process. In this context, it is possible and desirable for the community to consider several options and evaluate them beforehand when developingmeasures so as to be able to foresee their impacts and evaluate their effectiveness with regard to the objectives. This is particularly true as regards the representation of the interactions between transport modes and the formation of travel demand in relation to the location of activities andthe system of settlements. In order to consider equity effectively, specific analysis must be performed for certain categories of actors. This relates to the issues that affect them, the impacts they generate or experience, their benefits and their costs, and their requirements for compensation. Economic analysis should also be used to target prospective thinking to certain social issues which are assuming greater importance: firstly, the ageing of the population, with its consequences on the occupation of settlements, the housing market and travel needs, and secondly, energy consumption and prices, in relation to the burning of fossil fuels and its impact on the climate. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Samenvatting