Keywords: urban economics, transport planning, congestion pricing, parking

Apparently contains a fairly positive view of cycling, from a group of economists.

Keywords: congestion pricing, transport planning, urban economics, bicycle planning, parking

Keywords: parking, congestion pricing

Keywords: congestion pricing, urban politics

Keywords: congestion pricing, parking

This paper uses a formal model to examine the welfare gains from a marginal increase in the price of on-street parking. The benefits of such a policy are shown to depend on the improvement in search externalities in the on-street parking market itself, plus effects on other distorted urban transport markets, including congested freeway and backroad use, mass-transit and off-street parking. The paper makes two further contributions. The model is sufficiently general that several well-known results from the parking literature emerge as special cases. The model is used to review the existing literature and highlights findings in separate parts of literature. Finally, a numerical simulation model is used to investigate the order of magnitude of an optimal urban parking fee. In particular, these results confirm the importance of taking into accounts effects on other distorted transport markets when deciding upon the level of the price for on-street parking. The model confirms that while parking pricing reform may lead to substantial improvements in parking search times, there is little overall impact on road congestion levels.

Keywords: urban economics, congestion pricing, parking

Consider the choices available to a shopper driving to a city and trying to park downtown. One option, typical to many cities, is to follow the signposts to an off-street parking facility, which is often privately operated. Another option is to search for an on-street spot. If this proves unsuccessful, it is always possible to return to the off-street facility. We formalise such a setting and examine optimal on-street parking policy in the presence of an off-street market. Not surprisingly, the amount of socially-wasteful searching behaviour is shown to depend on the prices of both the off- and on-street market. If the off-street market is run competitively, optimal on-street policy reduces to a simple and attractive rule: set the on-street price equal to the resource cost of off-street parking supply. Other pricing rules result in either excessive searching behaviour or excessive off-street investment costs. Time restrictions - a common alternative to on-street fees - are also shown to be inefficient. In practice, however, off-street markets are unlikely to be competitive. We examine the case of a single off-street supplier playing as a Stackelberg follower to the government regulated on-street market. Based on a numerical example (calibrated to London), optimal on-street policy is shown to either involve setting a relatively high on-street price, such that the monopolist is induced to undercut and gain the entire parking demand, or setting a relatively low price, while the monopolist maximises profit on the residual demand curve. Which strategy is optimal is shown to be parameter dependent.

Keywords: urban economics, congestion pricing, parking

Consider a shopper or tourist driving downtown and trying to park. Two strategies are usually available: either park at a private off-street facility or search for a cheaper on-street spot. We formalise such a setting and use the model to study optimal government regulation of the on-street parking market. It is shown that the optimal on-street fee equals the marginal cost of off-street supply at the optimal quantity. If the off-street market is supplied under constant returns to scale, this provides a particular simple operational rule: the price on street should match that off street. We also extend the model to consider maximum length of stay restrictions and non-competitive private supply. A numerical model, calibrated to central London, investigates the magnitude of an optimal fee.

Keywords: urban economics, congestion pricing, parking

Keywords: parking, congestion pricing

detailed annotation

Keywords: transport planning, congestion pricing, transportation demand management, transit, land use transport link, urban form, induced travel, zoning

detailed annotation

Keywords: transport planning, congestion pricing, transportation demand management, transit, land use transport link, urban form, induced travel, zoning

Some interesting notes flowing from the London congestion charging scheme. New York has studied the idea, and is in fact already partway there, since they have tolls on many of the bridges entering Manhattan.

Keywords: congestion pricing

Keywords: transport planning, congestion pricing

Keywords: transport planning, congestion pricing

Keywords: congestion pricing

Some interesting analysis of the politics in this issue. Goodwin notes that the use of revenue from congestion charging is an essential part of any scheme, in which “the beneficiaries were as visible and influential as the motorists who paid it” even if the only goal is to reduce congestion, not to raise revenue. In London's case, the revenue was funneled to public transport improvements. He also notes the implications for modelling: the traffic reduction was at the upper end of the range estimated by models, and the revenues from the scheme were hence lower than expected. “This is not particular to road pricing: it is part of a general reappraisal of establish transport modelling techniques, which have a built-in tendency to underestimate the range and complexity of the behaviour response to policy, which in turn causes an overestimation of the benefits of infrastructure expansion, and an underestimation of the benefits of demand management.” In a footnote, he adds that “some of the earlier modelling work had actually forecast a bigger effect, closer to what happened, but this had been progressively revised downwards by the modelling teams in order to produce robust, defensible, conservative assessments.”

Keywords: congestion pricing, urban politics, transport modelling

Keywords: congestion pricing, transport planning

Keywords: congestion pricing, parking

Keywords: congestion pricing, equity, accessibility

Keywords: congestion pricing, equity, accessibility

Keywords: congestion pricing, urban politics

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban economics, transport planning, urban planning, congestion pricing, transportation demand management, transit, land use transport link, zoning

Keywords: congestion pricing, parking, urban economics

This paper shows that road pricing can be regressive, progressive or neutral, and refutes the generalised idea that road pricing is always regressive. The potential distributional impacts of a road pricing scheme are assessed in three English towns. It is found that impacts are town specific and depend on where people live, where people work and what mode of transport they use to go to work. Initial impacts may be progressive even before any compensation scheme for losers is taken into account. When the situation before the scheme is implemented is such that majority of drivers entering the area where the scheme would operate come from households with incomes above the average, it can be expected that, once the scheme is implemented, these drivers coming from rich households will continue to cross the cordon and will be prepared to pay the charge. In such a case the overall effect will be that on average, rich people will pay the toll and poor people will not.

Keywords: congestion pricing, equity

Keywords: congestion pricing, urban politics

A review of many pre-London congestion pricing experiments

Keywords: congestion pricing

Keywords: transport planning, canada, congestion pricing, energy, climate mitigation

Keywords: congestion pricing, sociology

This article contains an economic analysis of regulatory parking policies as a substitute to road pricing. The scope for such policies is discussed, after which a simple diagrammatic analysis is presented, focusing on the differences between the use of parking fees and physical restrictions on parking space supply. The former is found to be superior for three reasons: an information argument, a temporal efficiency argument and an intertemporal efficiency argument. Finally, a spatial parking model is developed, showing that it may be possible to overcome the difficulty of regulatory parking policies not differentiating according to distance driven by specifying the appropriate spatial pattern of parking fees, making individuals respond to (spatial) parking fee differentials.

Keywords: parking, congestion pricing, urban economics