Road
How Governments Can Bring Low-Emission Trucks to Our Roads – and Fast
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
13 December 2023
- Now or never. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, governments cannot let technological uncertainty be a barrier to action.
- Assess the likelihood. Governments need to carefully assess the likelihoods with which different technologies will deliver effective climate action. They must promote the most likely technologies, even with uncertainty.
- Bet on batteries. Battery-electric vehicles currently have the highest likelihood of successfully decarbonising road transport.
New but Used: The Electric Vehicle Transition and the Global Second-hand Car Trade
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
4 December 2023
- Improve the traceability of internationally traded used cars.
- Avoid hampering exports of used electric vehicles to emerging economies.
- Ensure used cars for export meet clear roadworthiness criteria, including their emissions performance.
- Develop sustainable transport strategies in emerging economies to avoid their over-dependence on cars.
Transit-Oriented Development and Accessibility: Case studies from Southeast Asian cities
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
8 October 2023
- Ensure sufficient availability of public transport and infrastructure for active modes.
- Integrate transport planning with land use planning for co-ordinated implementation of measures.
- Embrace disruptive mobility trends in ways that ensure improved accessibility.
- Collect more and better-quality data on urban mobility to underpin transit-oriented development.
- Learn from international experiences with transit-oriented development and apply them locally.
Shifting the Focus: Smaller Electric Vehicles for Sustainable Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
26 September 2023
- Shift the focus of policies that promote electric vehicles to end the dependency on large, under-used vehicles.
- Help make smaller electric vehicles an attractive choice for citizens.
- Ensure the transition to smaller electric vehicles goes in hand with adequate safety provisions.
- Fast-track the electrification of shared mobility services in complement with public transport.
- Ensure the availability of enough charging points to make electric mobility attractive.
Decarbonisation and the Pricing of Road Transport
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
20 June 2023
- Reform fuel taxes
- Supplement fuel taxes with distance-based charges
- Consider opt-in arrangements for the introduction of new distance-based charges
- Introduce congestion charges where required
- Consider earmarking congestion charging revenues for improving public transport and active mobility
- Set the level of road-user charges to meet sustainable transport objectives
- Make introducing differentiated distance-based charges a policy priority
- Reform incentives for the uptake of electric vehicles to better align with policy goals
Preparing Infrastructure for Automated Vehicles
Research Report, Policy Insights,
3 May 2023
- Policy makers need new skills and partners to optimise the function and benefits of automated vehicles on their roads
- Automated vehicles will use existing roads in the near term, and are supported by good maintenance to a defined standard
- Developing “invisible infrastructures” offers greater opportunities for near-term benefits than upgrades to physical infrastructure
- A blueprint for co-operation can help traffic managers maximise the benefit of introducing automated vehicles as part of a wider transport network
- Standardised testing procedures across jurisdictions can accelerate the spread of automated vehicles
- Traffic laws and behavioural norms must be ready for automated vehicles
- There needs to be clear and coherent responsibility for ensuring automated vehicles work within a Safe System
- Developers and policy makers should co-operate on a research programme focused on key issues related to automated vehicles
Policies to Extend the Life of Road Assets
Research Report, Policy Insights,
20 December 2018
- Introduce a proactive approach for the maintenance of road assets.
- Build a proactive, data-driven approach to the maintenance of road assets.
- Strive for continuous professionalisation in road asset management.
- Move from managing the assets to cross-asset management.
- Adopt regulatory frameworks that treat the use of road assets as an economic input.
- Implement infrastructure pricing for trucks to improve cost recovery.
- Better understand the reasons for non-compliance with truck weight limits.
- Focus on positive incentives for efficiency in regulatory and compliance frameworks.
- Develop use cases and business models for the digital infrastructure of truck traffic management.
- Create incentives for the logistics sector to implement truck traffic management.
- Improve awareness of the mutual impact that policies have on the environmental performance of road freight transport and extending the lifespan of road assets.
- Focus on creating a comprehensive regulatory environment rather than on individual measures.
Assessing the Net Overall Distributive Effect of a Congestion Charge
Discussion Paper,
11 October 2018
The Social Impacts of Road Pricing
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
10 October 2018
- Make demand management and congestion reduction the primary objective of road pricing.
- Differentiate road pricing by location and time.
- Combine road pricing and public transport planning to improve efficiency.
- Examine the combined effects of scheme design and mitigation to understand distributional impacts.
- Consider the use of discounts and exemptions carefully.
- Develop road pricing as part of an intervention package to achieve better utilisation of urban space.
- Reconcile economic, practical and political aspects in the design of road pricing schemes.
- Differentiate charges and consider adopting a rules-based pricing approach.
Private Investment in Transport Infrastructure: Dealing with Uncertainty in Contracts
Research Report, Policy Insights,
21 June 2018
- Pursue private investment in infrastructure on the merits of improved efficiency.
- Invest more into upfront preparation of projects to reduce inefficient risk pricing by suppliers.
- Undertake a comprehensive analysis of how to assist suppliers.
- The pursuit of certainty in delivery should be balanced against cost.
- Stimulate innovation through early contractor involvement or alliancing, not public-private partnerships.
- Avoid transferring demand risk to public-private partnerships if service levels do not strongly impact demand.
- Bundle and cross-fund public-private partnerships to reduce demand risk.
- Adopt the regulatory asset base model where competition is absent or demand not strongly endogenous.
- Introduce a transparent public accounting standard to maximise the value for money of private investment.
- Foster competitive markets to achieve cost-effective infrastructure.
- Pursue data collection on how contract design affects project outcomes.
- Support the development of an evidence-supported procurement tool.
Cooperative Mobility Systems and Automated Driving
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
2 May 2018
- Shared mobility is still a relatively new field but is progressing rapidly. With business models and preferred technologies still in flux, policy makers need to prepare considered responses to these developments without delay.
- Service concepts and technology currently and on the brink of being explored need to consider a range of design domain restrictions, dependencies on infrastructure, operating principles and user interfaces.
- Specific service concepts should be matched to specific operational environments, on a detailed local level as well as across continents and cultures.
- Government action will affect how automated vehicles will impact society. Existing approaches will not be appropriate for long. Their understanding and input will help to balance the debate on whether AVs can indeed alleviate a series of stubborn problems.
Lightening Up: How Less Heavy Vehicles Can Help Cut CO2 Emissions
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
3 November 2017
- Consider the potential of vehicle mass reduction when designing climate policies.
- Do not rely on vehicle mass reductions alone to achieve the European Union’s target of a 60% transport CO2 reduction.
- Nudge consumers into buying lighter vehicles by emphasising their benefit.
Mesurer les avantages socio-économiques des transports
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
1 October 2017
- Les directives relatives à l’ACA peuvent être élargies pour prendre en compte la fiabilité et certains effets plus larges.
- Des travaux de recherche supplémentaires sont nécessaires sur les avantages en matière de fiabilité afin d’améliorer la confiance dans les résultats.
- Les effets économiques plus larges devraient être étudiés dans les cas où l’on s’attend à ce qu’ils soient importants.
- Des travaux de recherche supplémentaires sont nécessaires sur les effets plus larges à saisir et les outils permettant de le faire.
- L’ACA peut jouer un rôle important dans la prise de décision, mais ne doit pas occuper une place prépondérante.
Jousting with Dragons: A Resilience Engineering approach to managing SMS in the transport sector
Discussion Paper,
6 August 2017
Automation of the Driving Task: Some possible consequences and governance challenges
Discussion Paper,
19 July 2017
Human Factors, User Requirements, and User Acceptance of Ride-Sharing in Automated Vehicles
Discussion Paper,
19 July 2017