Acceptability of Urban Transport Pricing

Several studies all over the world have considered transport pricing measures as promising attempts to solve urgent traffic problems in urban areas. An important precondition for the successful implementation of pricing measures is public and political acceptability. However, empirical findings show that the acceptability of such measures is rather low. The general objectives of this report are to assess acceptability of various urban transport pricing measures and policy packages, to analyse the reasons for the lacking acceptability and how this may be improved where appropriate. The relevant policy packages were derived from AFFORD Deliverable 1 (Milne, Niskanen and Verhoef, 2000). A public acceptability questionnaire survey was carried out in Athens, Como, Dresden and Oslo. The political acceptability survey was carried out as a phone interview with politicians in Como and Dresden.