April 29, 2005

The Land Use Thing

(Note: due to access expiry of the online article referred to here, the link destination had to be changed)

An online article on PAYD was brought to my attention. The city of Vancouver, Canada, wants the Insurance Company of British Columbia (ICBC) to offer insurance on a per-kilometre basis. The city council has unanimously carried a motion to that effect. If I understand correctly, some Canadian states have divided the motor insurance business into a public (liability) and private (all other risks) part. I assume British Columbia is one of those states, and that ICBC is the public liability insurer. The idea is to base the scheme on odometer readings.

I browsed some of the (very many) reactions that appear as links under the article. They vary from ' I think it' s a great idea' to 'Awful, what will they think of next'. Many are fun to read, and they reminded me of some issues concerning public acceptance of TDM measures.

One argument that was repeatedly used particularly struck me. It is about land use.

As property prices in the big city centres skyrocket, people who have (low- to mid-income) jobs in those cities are forced to move to houses they can pay, further off the centre. They can do this, because the transport by car gets them to work. So financial pressure made them commuters with lots of miles driven per year.

Then, when a per-kilometre charge is introduced, your insurance fee goes up, leaving you feeling charged for your poverty by your government. This I can understand.

Nevertheless, there are ways to circumvent or mitigate this problem. There is the possibility of distinguishing between urban and rural per-mile rates. Based on damage claim counts, this would most probably be entirely justified actuarially. When using odometer readings, rates would have to be based on zip-codes of insureds.

Still, these rate-distinctions are unlikely to compensate rural high-mileage drivers fully. That would also be undesirable from an environmental point of view. So (odometer-based) PAYD acceptance by this part of the public is likely to be lower than with others.

A thing to be reckoned with when planning (governmental or insurance company) policy...

Christof

April 07, 2005

Solutions: CV and TDM measures

As I wrote my previous two contributions, I was reminded of a text I read in the Victoria Transport Policy Institute´s online TDM encyclopedia, about two possible solution strategies concerning traffic-related emissions.

It is clear that autonomous growth of mobility demand, combined with a need to combat congestion and stricter limits on air pollution levels makes for tough policy choices for authorities.

In environmental science, it has long been said that in order to reduce environmental impacts of activities, technical as well as behavioural developments need to take place.

In the TDM encyclopedia, the technical measures are called Clean Vehicle, or CV measures, and the measures targeting behaviour are called TDM, or Transport Demand Management measures.

Typically, CV measures lead to a limited number of benefits and entail a limited number of costs, and, crucially, few actors that are bearing these costs.

On the other hand, TDM measures typically lead to multiple benefits, and carry multiple costs that would affect multiple actors.

This makes TDM measures more likely to run into all sorts of institutional and political barriers.

In the issue addressed in the previous two contributions, this is neatly illustrated: It is politically easier to implement a technical solution (German cities also take this course of action, see "See you in court!") than to introduce a set of TDM measures that would induce people, or rather voters, to change their behaviour (for instance, to introduce or promote PAYD, to change speed limits, etc.).

This inclination towards technical solutions carries two risks: Firstly, the effect of these changes may be prone to so-called kick-back, or volume effects: for instance, the Dutch vehicle fleet has become more fuel-efficient in the past decade, but also more weighty (bigger cars and engines): net environmental gain is very small.
Secondly, since technical solutions typically address but one problem issue, other issues may not only remain unaffected, but even be made more severe by this type of measure. For instance, when combating traffic jams with road building, environmental problems are likely to worsen.

That is why, in my opinion, TDM strategies are also needed.

Christof

See you in court! (2)

(most of the information linked to in this contribution is in Dutch)

The same EU-regulations on air quality that enable citizens to sue their local authorities (see: "See you in court!") now impede the Dutch national government in its attempts to address Dutch traffic congestion problems.

What is going on? The Raad van State, a Dutch government advisory body with certain legal competences, was asked whether the interpretation of European air quality standards used by the Dutch government, or junior minister Van Geel in this case, was in accordance with the aforementioned regulations. The answer was: no. Van Geel had hoped he could either get permission to meet EU targets later or interpret the standards more loosely. That would give the government enough leeway to build and extend highways with which to combat traffic congestion problems.

Greens protested immediately, saying: don´t bend the rules, just clean up your act: subsidize the fitting of soot filters to diesel cars and reduce maximum speed around cities to 80 kph.

The soot filters are also advocated by the ANWB, the motorists´ association.

The Dutch newspaper Trouw criticized Van Geel for not anticipating this decision. It affects existing government policy considerably. In particular, several pieces of highway that were to help fight congestion problems cannot be built because the areas around the projected road sites would suffer too much from air pollution, even though many of them are, for Dutch proportions, sparsely populated.

Again, environmental issues associated with mobility attract considerable attention.

Incidentally, the Dutch situation looks particularly severe, in terms of population density, pollutant levels, associated life expectancy reduction and severity of congestion problems.

In my next contribution I will try to say something about two classes of proposed solutions.

Christof

April 05, 2005

See you in court!

As government regulation on air pollution standards develops, affected citizens begin to find their way to courts, at which they file complaints as soon as actual pollutant concentrations exceed existing limits.

Currently, the EU sets limits on certain pollutant concentrations, and, more specifically, on the number of days per year that these limits may be exceeded. These rules are used by residents of polluted areas to take their local authorities to court. In this way, they are trying to force the introduction of measures such as partial or comprehensive traffic prohibition in those areas (see also the contribution "surging media attention: Vicenza").

In Germany, some are already successful, as you can read here.

In the Netherlands, residents of what they call "the dirtiest street of the country" are filing a test case suit against the municipality of The Hague (helped by milieudefensie, Friends of the Earth Netherlands), unless it takes effective action immediately. This they said today. Information about this case (in Dutch) can be read here.

All in all, it seems air pollution is moving up the agenda of both citizens and politicians, both locally and at a European level. In that sense, politically, this issue is quite unique.

That should help the cause of those advocating traffic emission reduction strategies, including PAYD.

Christof