The planned EU Roadmap on Urban Mobility should should emphasize more the importance of congestion charging / city tolling as a powerful mean for coping with today’s traffic problems.
The European Commission (DG Move) has started a public consultation on the roadmap towards an EU urban mobility framework. One of the main objectives of this framework is support the transition towards a climate-neutral economy which calls for a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
While the roadmap puts in place many incentives to drive the transition like the integration of innovative, smart and sustainable mobility services into multimodal urban transport systems, it should emphasize more the importance of congestion charging / city tolling as a powerful mean for coping with today’s traffic problems.
Although congestion charging / city tolling is still be discussed quite controversially it is one of the most effective tools helping to reduce road traffic, to achieve the objective of becoming climate-neutral by 2050 and to improve quality of live for people living in cities.
On top, intelligent forms of congestion charging can be used to manage demand based on variable or even dynamic pricing which has much more impact on road user’s behavior than just information and recommendations regarding traffic situation and route options.
The current version of the urban mobility framework does mention distance-based road charging, with varied rates for the type of vehicle and the time-of-use as an effective tool to incentivize sustainable and economically efficient choices, manage traffic and reduce congestion.
Still there should be more focus on this topic when defining the political roadmap for the EU for the forthcoming years. In the current EU documents this topic (likely because of its political sensitivity) is under represented and should get a much higher priority as congestion charging is one of the most powerful ways to improve the traffic situation in urban environments.
Link to EU website: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/urban/news/2021-04-27-roadmap-eu-urban-mobility-framework_en