Tradable driving rights in urban areas: their potential for tackling congestion and traffic-related pollution

Congestion pricing as a transport demand management measure is difficult to implement because most of motorists expect a deterioration of their welfare. Tradable driving rights (TDR), that is allocating quotas of driving rights for free to urban inhabitants, could be a more acceptable alternative. This mechanism provides also a supplementary incentive to save whether trips or distance travelled by car, because of the possibility of selling unused rights. A complete system of TDR is designed in detail, aiming whether at reducing trips or vehicles-kilometres, in order to control congestion, or the same target modulated on the basis of the pollutant emission categories of vehicles in order to control atmospheric pollution. An assessment is carried out on the Lyon urban area, which points at some welfare distributive issues between motorists and the community, when compared with conventional congestion pricing.