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Congestion pricing and positive incentives: conceptual analysis and empirical findings from Israel

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Abstract

Although congestion pricing has been considered as a key tool of transport demand management (TDM), it is rarely implemented, mainly due to its low public acceptance and resulting political costs. Recently a new approach was suggested: reward desirable behavior rather than punish undesirable behavior. Specifically, positive financial incentives have been suggested to encourage road users to change their departure time, mode of transportation, or route to minimize congestion. This paper makes three contributions to the literature on congestion pricing. First, we offer a comprehensive conceptual examination, reflecting discussions among practitioners in Israel, regarding the positive incentives approach, including various aspects that are related to both positive incentives and congestion tolls, highlighting the differences between the two policies. Second, we use a governmentally-managed pilot with positive incentives that was recently implemented in Israel and which reported important behavioral responses to positive incentives. Third, we use the Israeli experience to examine media discourse regarding congestion pricing policies in general, as well as positive incentive initiatives. We find that the positive incentives pilot demonstrated promising behavioral responses. Moreover, analysis of newspaper articles shows that while the main view of positive incentives is positive, mainly because participation is voluntary, the main attitude toward congestion tolls is negative due to concerns about equity.

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Notes

  1. Exceptions are Singapore 1975; Bergen (Norway) 1986; Oslo 1990; Trondheim, Kristiansand (Norway) 1992; Stavanger (Norway) 2001; Durham (U.K.) 2002; Namsos (Norway) 2003; London 2003; Tønsberg (Norway) 2004; Stockholm 2005; Gothenburg 2013; Valetta (Malta) 2007, and Milan 2008 (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2011). Note that in the case of the Norwegian cities, the motivation was to finance infrastructure and not to affect demand. However, some of these cities are considering the addition of congestion tolls logic to the system to affect travel demand (Ieromonachou et al. 2006).

  2. Avoiding individual reference, however, reduces the likelihood of heavy users’ participation.

  3. Of the 600 participants, 169 did not complete the pilot period since they either changed their work/home location, or changed their car ownership status/used another car in the household.

  4. The search was conducted via the search engine “IFAAT,” an Israeli company covering the Israeli media.

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Acknowledgements

During the preparation of this paper the authors had several discussions with Nitzan Yozer, initiator and proponent of the Going Green project, and the manager of Going Green 1&2 experiments. In addition, Shuki Cohen and Asaf Hazout from MATAT—Transportation Planning Center Ltd., provided useful information about the “Going Green” project, based on their involvement in the design of the pilot as well as in the analysis of its results. We wish to thank all three of them, as well as many other colleagues with whom we had the opportunity to discuss the ideas presented in this paper in the last couple of years, especially at the TRB 2019 annual meeting. Any errors or misrepresentations in the final version of the paper remain the sole responsibility of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federman School of Public Policy and Geography Department, The Hebrew University, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel

    Galit Cohen-Blankshtain

  2. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Hillel Bar-Gera

  3. Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, 32000, Haifa, Israel

    Yoram Shiftan

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  1. Galit Cohen-Blankshtain
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  2. Hillel Bar-Gera
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  3. Yoram Shiftan
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception, design, and data analysis. All authors participated in writing the first draft, as well as approving the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Galit Cohen-Blankshtain.

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Appendix

Appendix

Pilot’s questionnaires.

Questionnaire at the entrance to the pilot

Personal details name, e-mail, phone, identification number, gender, home address, work address.

Travel information # of weekly trips to work by car; Time of departure to work; Time of departure from work; Level of flexibility to change time of travel to/from work; Level of public transport to workplace.

Cars in household License number; Car model; production year; engine type; engine size; # cars in household; Ownerships of the car.

Plans to change residential/work/study location.

Questionnaire at the end of the pilot

Four type of questionnaires according to level of the changes in travel costs were distributed: (1) no significant change; (2) increase in travel costs; (3) decrease in travel cost due to less car trips; (4) decrease in travel cost due to changing time of departure.

Questionnaire 1 + 2: no significant change/ increase in travel costs

Personal details.

Do you commute to the same place every day?

Why you joined the pilot?

Questions about the first phase (before the incentives)

Time of departure to work.

Time of departure from work.

How many days in a week you traveled directly to your workplace?

Did you work from home? If so, how many days in a week?

Questions about the second phase (during the incentives period)

Time of departure to work.

Time of departure from work.

How many days in a week you traveled directly to your workplace?

Did you work from home? If so, how many days in a week?

Did you follow after the changes in travel costs? If so, what was the frequency?

Why didn’t you change your time of the day travels?

If the costs of travels will increase and the compensation will be increase as well, will you change your travel behaviour?

Do you support such positive incentives plans?

Questionnaire 3: decrease in travel cost due to less car trips

Personal details.

Do you commute to the same place every day?

Why you joined the pilot?

Questions about the first phase (before the incentives)

Time of departure to work.

Time of departure from work.

How many days in a week you traveled directly to your workplace?

Did you work from home? If so, how many days in a week?

Questions about the second phase (during the incentives period)

Time of departure to work.

Time of departure from work.

How many days in a week you traveled directly to your workplace?

Did you work from home? If so, how many days in a week?

If you decreased the number of car trips to work, what was the main transport mode you used?

Did you follow after the changes in travel costs? If so, what was the frequency?

What type of changes you did to reduce the number of trips to work?

Did these change increased or decreased your wellbeing?

Do you support such positive incentives plans?

Questionnaire 4: decrease in travel cost due to changing time of the departure

Personal details.

Do you commute to the same place every day?

Why you joined the pilot?

Questions about the first phase (before the incentives)

Time of departure to work.

Time of departure from work.

How many days in a week you traveled directly to your workplace?

Did you work from home? If so, how many days in a week?

Questions about the second phase (during the incentives period)

Time of departure to work.

Time of departure from work.

How many days in a week you traveled directly to your workplace?

Did you work from home? If so, how many days in a week?

What changes you had to do to change your departure times from peak to of peak hours? (can choose more than one answer).

Did you change your departure time to decrease costs, or as result of other constrains?

Did these change increased or decreased your wellbeing?

As a result of changes in departure time, did you experience less congestion or less travel time?

Do you support such positive incentives plans?

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Cohen-Blankshtain, G., Bar-Gera, H. & Shiftan, Y. Congestion pricing and positive incentives: conceptual analysis and empirical findings from Israel. Transportation 50, 607–633 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-021-10255-8

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