The European Truck Tolling Policy: Analysing Its Impact on Road Freight Transport and Modal Shift

During the last decades, the European Union authorities have promoted the implementation of a per-km charging system on heavy goods vehicles for the use of certain infrastructures. Following the "user pays" and the "polluter pays" principles, the "Eurovignette system" was firstly introduced in Switzerland in 2001 and subsequently extended to other European nations. Some previous contributions have conducted country-specific analysis on particular impacts observed after the implementation of the tolling policy, but a more global approach should quantify the overall impact of the Eurovignette system across countries. This paper explores the impact of the European truck tolling policy on road freight demand and modal share at a macro level. To that end, the authors develop a panel data methodology to analyze the evolution over time for different European countries. The results show that overall the implementation of the Eurovignette system has not evidenced to influence the evolution of road freight volume except very specific cases, and has not been effective in promoting modal shift to alternative modes.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE25 Standing Committee on Congestion Pricing.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Gomez, Juan
  • Vassallo, José Manuel
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Freight transportation; Impacts; Modal shift; Tolls; Traffic volume; Travel demand; Truck traffic
• Geographic Terms: Europe
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Policy;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697932
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-00517
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM