D I Dr . Ber nhard Schneider, A -3943 N eukott inghör manns 58
T + 4 3 2 8 5 3 / 7 2 3 5 8 , M o b i l e p h o n e + 4 3 . 6 7 6 7 6 . 1 4 0 0 0 , pl@nschmie.de, www.makeplans.at
Consulting Engineer for Urban Planning, Project evaluation
Background:
Expected need to balance growing demand and quality expectations against increasingly
overburdened transport infrastructure, making use of new opportunities in the field of
telematics.
There is an urgent need to progress along the priority hierarchy of avoiding, shifting
(between modi, in time) and controlling traffic more efficiently.
Challenge
Facing this multiple challenge, city planners in cooperation with applied research units and
entrepreneurial development departments in Europe have identified various strategies.
They have to be applied in a mix that corresponds to the specific nature of the given
problems of an agglomeration, but also to the available budget and to public acceptance
– one might say, they need to be “orchestrated”.
Efficient multi-modal urban traffic solutions require activity at many levels. The following
lists mentions some example of such strategies recently developed in urban
agglomerations which have taken the lead:

Developing city quarters into fully functional de-centralized units which offer
citizens all they need so they won’t have to leave the quarter too often building on
rich hutong tradition (“cities of short distances”, “villages within the city”)

Do what it takes in order to make a bus- or city-train-ride more cheap, quick AND
comfortable than a ride on a motorbike

Customization of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) to specific traffic conditions
of the urban agglomeration; real-time online monitoring of traffic situation evaluating
floating vehicle data and/or floating phone data, developing of an overarching ITS
architecture at national level

Application of mobility- (in particular: road) pricing instruments.

Traffic control systems (head-up information at the main highways, monitor
information at metro/bus-stops); including air pollution-responsive traffic control.

Dynamic public and private traffic management solutions in case of
accidents/incidents

Settlement planning following public transport infrastructure (and not the other way
round) – public transport access as a prerequisite for the zoning of new residential
settlements as practiced e.g. in the suburbs of Berlin)

Continuous safety improvement regulations, including standardized accident
reporting, and evaluation of safety impact of measures set.
Good Practice
Building on this analysis, four areas of good practice were identified which were deemed
suitable for mutual learning with China:
- A transport association for urban agglomerations,
- a mobility-pricing solution,
- a pedestrianization of an old town center, and
- a zero-tariff system for urban transportation.
Transport Associations for Urban Agglomerations
By tradition, each larger European city has a transport company, a transport service
network and a tariff system of its own. Most of them are municipality-owned, but in some
countries several years ago such companies have been largely privatized; for example the
French Veolia group’s last year’s turnover made up 100 M€ from the operation of formerly
public urban and suburban bus-lines alone.
For passengers, locally operate transport means to change trains/busses at city limits, to
buy one more ticket1 and in many case also to pay more.
In this situation, from the 1980`s on, most urban regions operate joint associations with the
aim: passengers should not feel it when they cross an administrative border.
Also schedule information and online-ticket-sale are frequently being pooled in these
services.
Example: Transport Association Rhein-Ruhr, Germany
This associationi is an example of an initiative which did more than just harmonizing ticket
sale and prices:
1
Distance-dependent pricing according to 5 price categories
Pre-paid ticket offers
Offers for special target groups, e.g. handicapped persons
Price reductions for travels to the adjacent area covered by other transport
associations
departure monitor configured for PC desktop and cell phone background
Ticket reservation
Mobility warrancy
Marketing activities such as trial offers to convince car-users
Customer information
Operation of a customer info center with online info-desk
Tendering; not only own soft measures, but also even infrastructure investment is
The principle is „one trip – one ticket“
-
being carried out via the association.
Joint bike rental infrastructure with region-wide bike return
Joint staff training
Such regional organizations are able to offer and maintain higher quality information
and marketing support services than the various members (transport companies) could,
and this is due to improved ease of use and to economies of scale.
- Single members of the association would be able to develop and promote offers only
for their small territory, which would cause inconvenience to passengers passing the
border to another transport micro-area, and would lead to high “information update
costs” among passengers.
- Only the larger transport area brings economies of scale needed to invest into novel
customer-friendly solutions.
- Pooling of resources: Such pooling may relate to the vehicle park, to human
resources, and to preparation and maintenance costs of logistics and telematics
solutions.
In China, there are examples of efficiently working transport associations available for
instance for the city and suburbs of Foshan (approx. 800.000 inhabitants)ii. This city
claims to have implemented the first Chinese model of integrated public transport pricing.
Light-rail systems for mass passenger transport
Light rail has a long-standing tradition in China, but in many cities the solution was
abandoned when cheap buses became available. In Beijing, trams were in operation
already in 1899, and also Tianjin and Fushun were equipped with tramways very early. In
Changchun, the existing tramway has been introduced 70 years ago, and also Dalian still
maintains its old tramway system.
Shenyang city operates a modern rail-tram; in Shanghai and in close-by Zhangjiang as
well as in Tianjin there are rubber-tired trams. Rubber tires were chosen because of hilly
city surfaces. Wuhan, Shenzhen, Zhuhai have electricity-driven light-rail systems under
construction. Reportedly also in Beijing and Nanjing, railcars shall be introduced. Apart for
road crossings, rails will be laid on parts of roads which are closed for car traffic, electronic
systems will influence traffic lights to speed up rail-traffic, and modern telematics solutions
will be used for logistical planning and passenger information.
There are also high-quality tramcar manufacturers in China.
With prices kept at moderate 1-2 Yuan per ride, tram acceptance is high wherever there
are tram systems. Trams should be much more frequently built as a measure to combat
both road congestion and smog.
It is paradox that in Tianjin, tramways are not planned for the crammed city center but for
the outskirts, and that this is explained by the authorities saying that the city roads are too
much crammediii to build a light-rail system into them. This statement neglects the finding
of all cities which have introduced tramways in their centers – they contribute much, much
more to car frequency reduction and cause little additional use of space.
Mobility Pricing.
Definition
Mobility pricing is a solution to collect a price for the use of each transport
infrastructure, which grants the right to use the infrastructure for a certain mileage and
not for a certain period. Commuters pay by trip when using their car just as they need a
ticket when riding a bus or going by tram. It is not at all an idea of this century: In the 16th
century in Austria and Germany the formerly used system of charging toll only from those
entering a road was accomplished by a second payment for those leaving the road, and
this payment in some cases depended of the distance travellediv.
Some experts such as the German transport consultant Transcare based at Wiesbaden,
use the term “intelligent toll” as a synonym for mobility pricing solutions in order to express
that such a pricing system is not only more sophisticated, but that apart of its function of
revenue generation it also implements a certain traffic control effect.
Mobility pricing solutions can relate to entire nations (as the solution for trucks in Austria,
the solution for the state of Oregon, etc.), to entire cities (San Diego), to the access to
cities (Oslo, Stockholm, London…) or to certain routes only. Most mobility pricing solutions
are satellite-based city-toll administration systems which allow behavior steering effects by
flexible pricing. To give an example, there may be a moderate fee per km charged for each
use of a citizen`s private car or motorcycle, which might considerably rise for routes and
day-times in which a traffic-jam might show up. Moreover, it is no problem for such
solutions to differentiate prices according to the emissions of the vehicle and to the social
status of the driver (e.g. alleviation of elderly persons or for commercial transportation).
Basically, mobility pricing should relate to both individual and public transport, to
passenger and to freight transport, to road-, rail- waterway- and airborne travel. But often,
especially in North America, the term is used in relation to passenger car travel alone.
According to the regional constellation, there may be good reasons to introduce mobility
pricing for one sector only. Whilst price collection from individual car users will build on
data transmitted by transponders or mobile phones, for public transportation mostly
ticket-based solutions are being discussed. Their most advanced form is BIBO (“be-in/beout”), i.e. the charging of a fare that reflects the distance actually travelled in a userfriendly way. Passengers need not use any devices, but just pass gates equipped with
touchless smart-card readers.
Acceptance
For the time being, only a small percentage of early adopters among the European
metropolitan transport authorities have introduced mobility pricing solutions.
But a high percentage of them has started thinking about introducing such solutions,
although most of them do not discuss the issue in public.
It seems to be a rule that political bodies never come up with such promises in the time
before elections, because the topic is hardly ever seen as helpful for winning elections,
and in pre-election campaigning they even often defy that such measures are being
thought of.
In countries with a less mature or with a recently damaged democratic climate and with
politicians and media acting very much through simplified populist campaigns, mobility
pricing is very often strictly rejected in public opinion. Although heavily complaining about
traffic congestion, less-well informed citizens have a tendency to prefer solutions such as
additional or broader highways as long as they do not live where they shall be built. Only in
periods of high particulate matter pollution, there are majorities for mobility pricing. In less
trustworthy political settings, citizens distrust any changes in taxation, as from
experience they cannot believe that they will replace taxes. They think that when new
taxes get introduced, the old ones will nevertheless remain, and thus oppose any change
in taxation.
Acceptance depends also on the question, whether revenues will be used for a repayment
of highway erection costs, or on the financing of external costs and of alternative to fossilfueled passenger car mobility. The first solution will attract sympathy from liberally minded
groups in favor of reduced public spending, the latter will attract ecologically aware citizens.
Big data
Mobility pricing comes along with the collection and permanent evaluation of huge
amounts of vehicle- and passenger-related geo-data, yet mature technological
solutions are available which have proven capable to reliably process this steady
information flow. There is no basic technical problem in handling the data amount (the
system just needs to regularly charge a car-holder with geo-data and current traffic load of
streets).
If deemed useful, also the number of passengers per vehicle could be taken into account
in pricing, but this would require a higher data capturing effort.
Prices are normally charged by a smart card, and real-time cost development could be
displayed on the navigation screen of passenger vehicles.
The main problem related to data is not so much their technical handling but rather the
compliance of data collection and use with national legislation on protection of individual
data and the growing unwillingness of citizens to have themselves observed. Data might
be misused.
Good paractice
Successfully implemented solutions are available in
- Oslo, Norway (1990),
- Stockholm (2003) “trängelskatt” after a referendum
- London 2003, Extra charges for peak load travel are being chargéd at Stockholm, but
not in London.
- state-wide in Oregon (USA) 2007,
- Austria (state-wide for truck traffic – 2010) were well accepted as they managed to
protect personal data.
- California: transponder-linked high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes in L.A. and San Diego
- San Francisco 3$ per entry to the old center,
- Rome, Italy
- Hongkong.
- Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney (Australia)
- Singapore has introduced road pricing in 1998, and later on also an integrated mobility
pricing for rail and road.
- Netherlands: general pre-paid system with social differentiation. “Spitsmijden”v
Other city regions such as Aucklandvi (NZ) have simulated impacts of a road pricing
solution.
Pros and Cons:
+ system might replace taxes and other toll systems, e.g. for trucks.
+ synergies with introduction of a recommendation management solution such as a
system informing whenever a driver can save time by switching to public transport.
+ Toll-collect technology: already time-tested in trucks. Currently system operation costs
make up 13,5 % of net revenue. This share might even sink.
+ The solution although cost-neutral for public authorities and households, can allow to
avoid jams and to create better awareness on eco-behavior.
- Cost transparency and “true cost” systems are not necessarily superior and fairer.
- Potential danger of privacy misuse - multiple (e.g. commercial, political, military) use of
passenger data cannot be excluded
- Demand steering effect over-estimation
- A smarter city is not necessarily more livable and loveable
-
Phenomenon of introducing data-based policies first for a good purpose, with this
purpose later on removed, whilst tax revenue creation and data collection remain.
A deeper look at the “Cons”
About Cost Transparency
Advocates of mobility pricing often refer to the argument that mobility pricing allows to
improve cost transparency. In the German-speaking countries, the respective term is
“system of true costs”. Of course, markets are built on the principle that when I buy some
apples I should not have to be for the tomatoes the guy next beside to me is buying. But in
each market economy that has not yet abandoned the objective of social balance, there
are many good reasons why some goods should be cheaper or more expensive than their
cost structure reflects. In some cases such a deviation of pricing from costs will reflect
externalities such as costs of environmental measures, but in many cases there might be
other reasons, for instance that the transactions are that there is a reason to keep a good
accessible to poorer citizens by decretion of lower political prices, as we find it happen in
the health care sector. And just think about the rule in many economies to subject goods
and services to different VAT tariffs according to the nature of the product. VAT brings
about that all prices are to some extent political prices, and then most economies do have
special taxes on real estate, labor and fossil fuel.
So as a principle, one may be cautious when talking about “true cost”-pricing.
When economists suggest cost transparency, in most cases they do not just want the
consumer to KNOW the true price of a good, but they want him to PAY it.
Examples of cost transparency without charging full costs are not frequently found, but
there are some. For instance, in Austria health service is in many cases for free or just
subject to a small contribution. Yet, once a year health insurance companies which pay the
rest send the consumer a breakdown of actually accounted costs, and thus want to give
the consumer an impression of real costs.
This might be an interesting suggestion for a mobility-priced transport sector as well and
would deserve further consideration because of its possible impact on cost awareness, but
this is not the point of the current discourse.
Current discourse wants to take the passenger transport sector as it is, and to distribute its
costs equally among the voyagers. For this purpose, it suggests to quantify “real” costs of
public and individual passenger transport as precisely as possible, which means to have
cost tables which show costs per kilometer for highways, roads, streets, small and big
passenger cars, split up into costs of rush-hours and more “quiet times”. By charging much
higher costs for a kilometer in an urban traffic jam, city population would pay more than
now, whilst villagers would pay less. Müller-Jentzsch, although an advocate of true cost
charging, does not go that far to suggest higher prices per kilometer for travels in
mountainous areas characterized by high freeway construction and maintenance costs.
One may of course pose the question, whether there is any good reason for postulating
prices that mirror costs as a dogma. This is not a dogma in a socialist economy, where
certain prices may be kept low because of political priorities, and neither is it a dogma in a
market economy where prices first and foremost mirror willingness to pay. Just have a look
at your cosmetics shelf or into your medicine cabinet, and you will find this to be true.
Thus, the better concept should be to develop a price structure which offers the best
steering effect. This might not only include the differentiation of prices according to
regional GDP, in order to support marginal rural countries (this is likely to happen in the
EU), but might also comprise alleviations for depopulating regions.
Motivation to buy cars with
low fuel consumption
Influencing day-time
distribution of vehicles (jam
mitigation)
Perceived (out-of-pocket-)
cost
Avoiding of “tanking
tourism” (drivers fill tanks
beyond borders in low-fueltax-states)
Socially equitable
Data misuse excluded
Political stability (see
chapter below)
Taxation of fossil fuel

Mobility pricing
possible
no

rather
no
problem in border regions
to states with other policy

rather

high
possible
no
Low, might be easily turned
into the contrary
Example to illustrate “true costs” (Austria)
True costs of road transport are often presented as costs of road maintenance alone. This
does not reflect the full scope of costs. According to HERRY, there are the following direct
costs (and indirect ones mentioned further below):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
road maintenance
road construction
Building and maintenance of parking lots
Street and road cleaning
Street lighting
Roadside ditches, verges
Deficit of road police and accident cleaning (fire brigades,…)
Subsidies for car and road construction industries
The direct costs of raod transport in Austria according to HERRYvii made up 4.812.000.000
€ (= approx. 700 € p.a. per capita in 2014 prices) + 9,222.000.000 € (=approx. 800 € per
citizen at 2014 prices) for external costs caused by environmental pollution and costs of
car accidents.
Without taking into account external costs and accident costs, HERRY assumes a total
cost financing ratio of 94%, but when they get included into total prices, this ratio
decreases to 32%.
With public transport covering approx. 35% of its direct costs by revenues, external and
accident costs would have to be taken into account here as well in order to achieve
comparable results. These externalities are much lower for public transport than for
individual road transport, and for this reason - but also because to some extent public
buses use roads accounted among individual transport costs – the share of self-financing
of individual transport in Austria exceeds self-financing of public transport on road, rail and
waterways.
Nevertheless, this fact should not serve as an argument for the further strengthening of
individual transport, because the results would differ a lot, if the public sector would stop
investing into road construction and if he would chargé higher road tolls. In such a
scenario, net public budget expenses (cost minus revenues) would be much lesser than
now.
In this scenario, and additional positive effect will arise from the fact that a permanent
reduction of individual transport would also make possible to use former parking and street
area for other purposes.
If charging just direct costs without costs of air pollution, noise, land consumption and road
accidents, a daily commuter heading to Vancouver each day for work, would have to pay
12 Canadian Dollars per day.
On demand elasticity
Mobility pricing intends to shift traffic in time and space and between transport modes in
order to avoid costly and annoying congestion.
Participation in traffic jams already now is not free of cost. Most of all it costs time and
nerves. Thus, most drivers who have a proper behavior option, avoid jams, and those who
feel there is no such option get stuck in regular congestion. But given that congestion
taxes are high enough, the Californian example shows that a certain jam reduction may
be expected.
Time elasticity seems rather restricted and is a long-term concept. It needs the breaking
up of strict working hour schemes. Not all workplaces and schools can be that flexible, but
some certainly could. As an alternative to mobility pricing, there could be a bonus-malus
system in wage taxation for workers in urban areas, giving incentives for flexible working
hours.
Spatial elasticity (choice of an alternative route to avoid congestion): with more and more
cars being equipped with start-stop-systems, this reaction will be undesirable from the
environmental viewpoint. Alternative routes will be longer and thus cause more pollution.
Alternative routes are often found in streets not prepared for heavy traffic, and thus show
increased accident rates. They will stimulate urban planners to change traffic regulations,
keeping such jam-refugees out by systems of one-way streets etc.
Elasticity in respect to transport mode is what is most desirable for urban development.
Such a shift can be reached only by concerted action comprising well-located P+R parking
solutions with e-vehicle docking stations, cheap prepaid annual tickets, attractive public
transport (in time, not crammed, quick, supported by info-displays, secure and clean), and
by offering opportunities to work at home and to shift from real-time to virtual meetings,
which requires broadband data transfer “to the last mile” in residential areas. To acquire
this rush-hour-typical target group, it is important to offer independent bus- and tram-lanes,
because passengers will not change from passenger car congestion into bus congestion.
If these latter measures will not be implemented right when introducing a mobility pricing
solution, there is a danger that congestion taxes will end up with a moderate
environmental effect (however, yielding very high tax revenues in this case), and it might
be quite unpopular.
To the more, the modal split effect of mobility pricing will be gravely hampered by the fact
that rush-hour surcharges will not relate to passenger car traffic alone, but will also be
extended to public transport, where operators also wish to distribute the transport load
more equally across day-time.
As a conclusion, Müller-Jentzsch’s and others’ expectation that cost-reflecting pricing will
show great beneficiary effects, might be an overestimation, and a system of high-capacity
trams and buses with cheap of even free-ride on public urban and suburban transport
financed by sharply increased taxation of fossil fuel might be a superior solution.
Mobility pricing as an element of smart cities
A smart city does not necessarily have to have a mobility pricing solution, but it is more
likely to develop one because its technological and mental preconditions have already
been preinstalled.
In recent expert literature, there are also critical remarks on smart cities. Two of them shall
be presented below to give an impression about this discourse:
The first is taken from the work of the sociologist Richard SENNETviii. He has been
analyzing the question why people do not like smart cities better than others, and why the
cities which are most positively perceived, are far from being smart, He compares cities
such as Songdo in South Korea and the smart city Masdar in the United Emirates with
cities such as Rio de Janeiro.
Lack of control enhances individual liberty, and a lack of structures creates market
opportunities for micro-businesses. It seems that not only individual behavior patterns can
adopt to new types of cities quite slowly, but that the smart city of the future as a concept is
still somewhat incomplete. It is advanced in the way it makes structured use of novel
opportunity created by quick computers able to rapidly process enormous amounts of
data, but we must learn to pose smarter questions to devices designed to give certain
smart answers.
I tis also a lesson from slum upgrading in Mumbai that residents, while certainly happy
about their being docked to functioning infrastructure, rejected the readily planned, uniform
functional solutions and tried to save as much functional element of the slum into the new
city structures.
Preparing for large sports events, Rio has lately been taking big efforts to be smarter.
Application ranges from flood prevention to traffic jam prognoses, efficient police work and
smart public transport solutions. These measures have been accepted rather broadly as
they had a coordinating character, not forming the image of the city but coordinating its
functions.
“The prospect of the orderly city has not be a lure for voluntary migration, neither in the
past to European cities, nor today to the sprawling cities of South America and Asia. If they
have a choice, people want a more open, indeterminate city in which to make their way:
that is how they can come to take ownership over their own lives.”ix
(quoation from a blog post http://urbanchoreography.net/2013/06/10/richard-sennet-the-stupefyingsmart-city/)
As a conclusion, one may postulate that chosen solutions
- should show not only good ease of use,
- but should also appear in a way which in each situation makes clear that the human is
the master and the technology is the slave,
- should in no way over-regulate society
- should not contribute to the trend of uniform cities.
On the phenomenon of degradation of sustainability goals to mere profit generation
Phase
1. Discussion,
preparation
2. pilot
implementation
3. Roll-out (lncl.
legislation)
4. Fix policy
element
Objective
Achieve true-cost
charging solutions
willingness2pay
Social justice,
fairness
Eco-effects
Macroeconomic
benefits (pollution,
less time wasted in
jam, cheap
administration)
What happens
Acceptance
raising
Measures
Studies, conviction
of intellectuals
Business planning Lower prices for
for solution
socially weak
providers
(elderly, jobless,
youth…)
Measures against
data robbery
Incentives for lowemission vehicles,
for more
persons/vehicle,…
Cross-funding of PT
Public discourse
point of no return
Deconstruction in
Waiting for the
„suitable“ timeright moment 
window (budget
commercialization
crisis, switch to
of …
populism in
polls…)
Flat rate price
No more crossfunding of PT
Zero tariff as an effort of shifting passenger traffic to Public Transport
Systems (Example: City of Tallinn, Estonia)
History
in 2003, a first 40% price cut was executed, and a complicated perquisite system was
introduced. As a consequence, use of public transport rose considerably. Thus, efforts to
further improve the system in the recent past, have been enacted on an already rather
high service level. After a referendum at city-level in 2013, „zero tariff“ for locals was
implemented, Non-residents of Tallinn pay 1,60 € per ride. When deciding to offer free ride,
it was clear to the transport managers, that this could not be enacted immediately, but hat
to come along with ambitious accompanying measures. Additional busses and suburban
trains were bought in order to cope with expected additional passengers, new suburban
lines were introduced, and bus-lanes were built.
Objectives
According to research carried out by the University of Stockholm, the citizens of Tallinn
have decided to have free public transport for several reasons:
- air quality improvement → health
- Energy savings → payment balance
- reduced cost for administration & controlling
- Socially equitable for poor citizens
- Better labor market inclusion of unemployed
- make Tallinn more competitive as a place to live & work
After 1 year (research of the University of Stockholm), achieved interim results were
measured and evaluated:
There was a passenger plus, although a moderate one. The total of passengers
transported rose by 3%. Researchers found out that 1,2% of the growth was due to the
zero-tariff, and that the remaining 1,8%were caused by the improved service offer. A rise in
passenger transport figures could be witnessed especially in districts inhabited by elderly
and poorer citizens.
The total travel distance rose more moderately than the number of passengers
transported. An increase of 2,5% of person-kilometers was measured.
Car-traffic was also counted at strategic locations of the city. In the period of the tariff
reform it showed no significant change. The plus in public passenger transportation this
happened on the account of additional mobility induced. A shift from former pedestrians
and cyclists to public transport could be witnessed, or rather a change in behavior. Had
citizens who had to carry out short trips in times of pay-tickets more often decided to just
walk, they now increasingly jumped a bus.
It is a lesson of the evaluation of passenger behavior before and after zero tariff
introduction, that car use is more strongly determined by expected jam and parking
situations rather than by price deliberations. But this conclusion will most probably be
influenced by the fact that even before the reform tickets were already cheap, and also by
the fact that road congestions are a lesser problem in Tallinn (with only half a million of
inhabitants) than in the larger European cities.
The total cost of the tariff reform, not taking into account investment into improved
transport quality, amounts to 12 M€ p.a. = 25 € per capita p.a.
Effect on city population
Many commuters registered in the period of the tariff reform as Tallinn residents in order to
have free-ride rights. Therefore, additional growth (exceeding the typical growth per
annum witnessed in other years of the decade) made up approx. 7.000 citizens. These
were mainly persons with weekend residence out of town, working or studying and
dwelling during the week in Tallinn. The registration of these persons as Tallinn residents
brought the municipality additional tax revenues for her budget.
Passenger statistics have improved in the course of the introduction of the zero-tariff
model because of a positioning and passenger counting systems in all vehicles.
All-door entry made bus-stops shorter and thus gradually speeded up travelling.
Lessons for other cities
- effect is high where fares are high and incomes are low and perquisites are missing
- chronical passenger decrease can be stopped
- use of PT for short trips instead of walking
When interpreting the impact of the tariff reform, one has to take into account that in 2003,
a 40% price cut took place, and that ever since a complicated perquisite system was
introduced, until after the referendum in 2013 „zero tariff“ for locals came, whilst nonresidents pay 1,60 € per ride, and that the new solution had to come together with
improved service quality (higher density of trains and busses).
Main legal aspects affected by above-mentioned issues
In the European Union, only basic issues of highly transnational character are regulated at
Union level. Also for historical reasons, most of transport-relevant legislation is national.
Austria is a country heavily affected by freight transit. When a province decided to ban
heavy trucks from its transit freeways, this was when limits of national sovereignty first
became visible to many citizens. EU-regulated matters are the location and improvement
of trans-European traffic corridors (rail and road), some airport-related issues, maximum
exhaustion of motor vehicles, percentage of biofuels in motor vehicle fuel, (still) the
maximum weight of trucks, trans-nationally execution of services, free market access to
entrepreneurship including the operation of transport services, etc.
To explain the structure of transport-related legislation, Austria was selected for the
following reasons:
- In this EU member state, both time-related mobility pricing (for passenger cars) as well
as a distance-related system for trucks above 3,5 t are being practiced,
- Public transport has a meaningful tradition
- Austria is a federal state which splits up legislation between federal laws and laws
relating to just one province.
Austrian Federal law directly regulates transport issues in the following laws:
- railroad law from 1957, including rules for expropriation on eminent domain
- bus-line act from 2006,
- ship transport act updated in 2013 with traffic regulation guidelines for lakes and
waterways,
- road traffic act from 1960, many times updated. Comprises rules for transparent
display of fuel prices at filling stations, but does not regulate the prices themselves.
- freight transportation act,
- act on not-schedule-based commercial passenger transport (GelVG) 1995,
- Act on toll for the use of federal roads (including regulations on mileage-dependent
pricing for highway use)
- Act on bus-line services from 1996,
- motor vehicle act with its executive by-law from 1967, including regulations on driver
training and licensing, completed by a law on driving licenses
- Act on the financing of federal roads from 1996
- Act on the entitling of ASFINAG (state-owned highway construction and operation
company),
- Act on transportation of animals, etc.
A passenger transportation act (as there is e.g. in Switzerland) is missing. Such an act
would lay down basic rules for public transport pricing at local, regional and national level,
and in times of growing interlinking of regional transport solutions and e-ticketing could
certainly be seen as useful.
Many other laws are not solely focused on transport issues, but are of high relevance to
the issues discussed in this paper:
-
law on protection of data privacy
VAT act,
Fossil fuel taxation act from 1960, regularly updated.
Air pollution act
By-law on emission trade
by-law regulating biofuel admixture
natural gas market act
electricity market act
telecommunication act
act on strategic environmental impact assessment
aviation act
Provincial laws accomplish the legal landscape of the transport sector; the most relevant
matters regulated by provincial laws are:
- Provincial road laws (relating to minor roads)
- Construction regulations,
- law on mandatory erection of garages for residential and other objects, etc.
- of course, also the Austrian constitution plays a role here, for instance because of its
principle of gaining equal rights to every citizen.
Literature
i
ii
http://www.vrr.de/blaetterkatalog/VRR_Gremienhandbuch/blaetterkatalog/index.html
http://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news.php?NewsID=23922
iii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Tianjin
iv
Stolz, O. (1953), Geschichte des Zollwesens, Verkehrs und Handels in Tirol und Vorarlberg von den
Anfängen bis ins XX. Jahrhundert (Schlern–Schriften 108), Innsbruck
v Van Nunen, J.A.E.E., Huibregts, P., Rieveld, P. (2011), Transitions Towards Sustainable Mobility: New
Solutions and Approaches for Sustainable Transport Systems, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York
vi
Ministry of Transport (2008), Auckland Road Pricing Study, Auckland
vii
HERRY Consult (2002), Österreichische Wegekostenrechnung Straße 2000, im Auftrag des BMVIT 2001,
Wien
viii
A flexible city of strangers, in Le Monde Diplomatique, London
ix
Blog post http://urbanchoreography.net/2013/06/10/richard-sennet-the-stupefying-smart-city/
SENNET, R. (2001), Richard Sennett, the flexible human
SENNET, R. (2013), The stupefying smart city, in: proceedings of Urban Age Electric City Conference