Overview
In recent years, the development of traffic has led to an attainment of the maximum capacity of transport infrastructure in Switzerland. Therefore there is discussion of extending the road network as well as railway infrastructure. On the other hand, technological development also allows the use of performance oriented and differentiated pricing systems in the area of transportation. Successful domestic and foreign examples (i.e. the Swiss Heavy Vehicles Fee, the Congestion Charging Scheme in London) have encouraged this discussion.
The objective of the project is to provide an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of using revenues from road pricing. Comparison with use of revenues from other forms of mobility pricing (parking fees, public transport fees) and with the other means of transport financing (fuel taxes, vehicle taxes).
Funding
Results
In conclusion, the zone charging scheme and in the long-term the area charging scheme are seen to be the most promising models. They best achieve the claims to a modern transport financing system and handle the further future challenges in the area of transport (i.e. in managing scarce capacities and reduction in environmental impact) in the most effective way.
Compared to the present system, the Mobility Pricing scenarios perform the better the more they can reduce the weaknesses of the current state by simultaneously not interfering with the strengths of the current system. Regarding the currently occurring problems, the advantages of Mobility Pricing systems seem to be too minor to justify their introduction.
The future situation might change with increasing problems in handling traffic and financing, and simultaneously decreasing costs. However, forecasting when a threshold value will be reached is difficult from today’s perspective. But, for a regionally concentrated system (for example a zone charging scheme which is locally contributing to an increased quality of traffic and which causes only rather low implementation costs) the situation is different than in the national context. This points to the possibility that the introduction of a zone charging scheme may be appropriate earlier than a complex and costly KM-charge as in the area charging scheme.