Reforming Private and Public Urban Transport Pricing

Abstract

The author is grateful to the participants of the Round Table and in particular Joanne Leung of the ITF team as well as Maria Börjesson, Bruno De Borger, Ruth Evers and Chau Man Fung for helpful comments on an earlier draft and to ITF for their financial support.

Distributional effects of urban transport policies to discourage car use

“…As a result, equity concerns often cannot be adequately addressed by designing policies on the basis of their average incidence within income groups or geographic regions. While vulnerable individuals may be clustered geographically, they can also be "scattered as a consequence of life circumstance" (Preston, Holvad and Hine, 2000 [15]). 7 Despite the above considerations, there are practical reasons for assessing equity by income class, urban zone or region.…”

“…As a result, such measures stand to exacerbate existing disparities in accessibility and associated social exclusion. 15 Hence, the importance of identifying and implementing policies that mitigate adverse distributional effects of efforts to control car use.…”