Car road charging: impact assessment on German and Austrian households

The authors apply a computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling framework to carry out a two-country comparison for Austria and Germany assessing the impact of road charging (RC). The pricing policy measure is introduced for the private motorized transport mode and applies to the overall road network. To derive and compare distributional effects of passenger car RC, the mode-specific travel demand of private households is integrated into the CGE model. Furthermore, the modeling framework accounts for different household categories with respect to disposable net income and the corresponding travel demand profiles introduced in terms of behavioral mobility parameters as well as household travel expenditures. Comparing the country-specific results, we find country-specific differences in the impact of RC on household categories, as well as similarities. The differences that we find indicate the importance of particular parameters for the evaluation of infrastructure pricing policy reforms. We can relate differences to prevalent country-specific differences in sociodemographic characteristics, land use structure, territorial population distribution, as well as macroeconomic indicators. To add substance to the two-country impact assessment, a sensitivity analysis is carried out, introducing different RC revenue use schemes. We find differences in distributional effects under equity concerns to be closely related to the revenue use pattern as well as to country- and household-specific travel demand profiles.