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Striking a balance between societal benefits and costs of transportation lies at the heart of transport planning and transport systems analysis. Increased transport and urbanization enable the many benefits of modern socieities through specialization of labour, production and lifestyles – but these trends simultaneously increase the drawbacks of transportation, such as carbon emissions, congestion, noise and air quality problems. Technical developments and improved infrastrastructure can help reduce these drawbacks, but they do not solve the fundamental problem that those reaping the benefits of transport – travellers, firms, customers – do not perceive the full social costs of transportation. To balance transport costs and benefits, efficient pricing is necessary. Despite a wealth of theoretical arguments, technical developments and substantial practical experience, efficient transport pricing is still rare. Focusing on the example of urban congestion pricing, this paper summarizes why transport pricing is needed, lessons learnt from practical experience, and what the main obstacles are. The two most important obstacles seem to be political power struggles between different levels of governments, and that even if total social gains vastly exceed total social losses, the losses tend to be more salient; losers tend to be easy to identify, while winners tend to be more dispersed and perhaps only exist in the future. ; Co-published by Tsinghua University Press and Elsevier.

Railway markets in Europe have been reorganized to allow competition between different operators. Thus, European railways have been vertically separated, separating infrastructure management from provisions of train services. This allows several train operators to compete for passengers and freight services. Different ways have emerged for vertical separation, capacity allocation and track access charges. This paper reviews, compares and discusses important deregulation aspects, using examples from a number of European countries to show different possible solutions. The study describes how competition has been introduced and regulated, with a particular focus on describing the different ways capacity is allocated and how conflicting requests by different train operators are resolved. It also reviews the related issue of how access charges are constructed and applied. Although guided by the same European legislation, we conclude that the studied railways have different deregulation outcomes, e.g., market organization, capacity allocation. Besides, few countries have so far managed to create efficient and transparent processes for allocating capacity between competing train operators. Although allowed by the legislation, market-based allocation is absent or never used. In order to foster more competition which can yield substantial social benefits, the survey indicates that most European railways still need to develop and experiment with more efficient and transparent capacity allocation procedures. ; Funding: This research is part of the project Socio-economically efficient allocation of railway capacity, SamEff (Samhallsekonomiskt effektiv tilldelning av kapacitet pa jarnvagar) which is funded by a grant from the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket). The authors are grateful to Jan-Eric Nilsson and Yves Crozet for reference recommendations as well as Russell Pittman, Steven Harrod, Roger Pyddoke and several anonymous reviewers for the valuable discussions and comments.

European railways have been reorganized to allow for market competition. Thus, train services have been vertically separated from infrastructure management which allows several operators to compete. Different ways have emerged for vertical separation, capacity allocation and track access charges. This paper reviews important deregulation aspects from a number of European countries. The study compares how competition has been introduced and regulated with focus on describing capacity allocation and track access charges. Although guided by the same European legislation, we conclude that the studied railways have different deregulation outcomes, e.g. market organization, capacity allocation. Besides, few countries have so far managed to have efficient and transparent capacity allocation. Although allowed by the legislation, market-based allocation is absent or never used. To foster more competition which can yield substantial social benefits, the survey indicates that most European railways still need to develop and experiment with more efficient and transparent capacity allocation procedures. © 2021 Vti Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Congestion charges were introduced in Stockholm in 2006, first as a trial followed by a referendum, then permanently from 2007. This paper discusses what conclusions can be drawn from the first five years of operation, until mid-2011. We show that the traffic reduction caused by the charges has increased slightly over time, once external factors are controlled for. Alternative-fuel vehicles were exempt from the charges through 2008, and we show that this substantially increased the sales of such vehicles. We discuss public and political acceptability, synthesizing recent research and Swedish experience. We conclude that objective and subjective effects on the traffic system, as well as general environmental and political attitudes, formed the basis of the strong public support, while institutional reforms and resolution of power issues were necessary to gain political support. Finally, we briefly discuss implications for the transport planning process in general.

Introduction Abundant literature now exists on the acceptability of the new pricing measure represented by urban tolls. However, this literature contains few examples providing a "political" analysis of their introduction. Here, our aim is to study how the political behavior of individuals, identified on the basis of general attitudes regarding the principles of regulation and pricing, influences, or does not influence, attitudes with respect to urban tolls. Method We study the ex-ante determinants of a vote on urban tolls. We use the results of a survey performed in France in the framework of the European Project ExpAcc (Explanatory Factors of Road User Charging Acceptability). We process the data using a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) then perform ordered logit estimation. Result Regarding the specific question to the referendum, we show that it would be rejected by electors. We also show that there is a significant link between general attitudes to regulation by legislation, tax or pricing policies in transport on the one hand, and the vote in the referendum on tolls on the other. We confirm that individual self-interest matters a lot in political behaviour but that other types of motives also matter strongly Conclusion As a consequence, a real-life political analysis cannot be limited to classical "economic" variables, even if they matter too obviously. Lastly, our results should be placed in relation with those concerning the more global issue of the acceptability of a new pricing measure through, for example, that of the compensation to be implemented. ; QC 20160715 This project received funding from Predit 3 in the framework of Era-net SURPRICE.