Report: Urban Transport Pricing in Europe

• Funding mechanisms
• Additional value and links to the commercial sector
• Partnership and organisational arrangements
• Impacts on freight
• Public and political acceptance
• Marketing strategies
• Meeting the concerns of business

Some of this additional research is being undertaken within other more technical projects. However, it is at the city level that most can be learnt from the introduction of a scheme. Therefore, as a political forum, EURoPrice provides a valuable mechanism for discussion, exchange of best practice and guidance from a city perspective for policy makers. The network provides an important link between policy and research.

Transport policies at European and national level are promoting the reduction of congestion and improvement to the environment by realising the cost of motoring. However, all the policies and measures focus on the role of city authorities to implement local urban schemes. The role of cities in developing and promoting road user charging policy is vital to their wide scale introduction. At the city level strong political support is needed for the policy and its development into a scheme. For a scheme to be successful, community and business support is required. EURoPrice has a key role to play in developing the positive arguments for schemes and promoting the technical and operational issues faced by cities.

As a political network, major issues including social equity, business and economic concerns are being addressed. This is being done by working together in a small forum with wider dissemination of results to interested parties and key stakeholders, including policy makers at the local, national and international level.

The key objectives of the EURoPrice network have been defined as follows:

• To undertake a series of joint fora addressing the key issues involved in implementing road pricing schemes - the obstacles and necessary success criteria.
• To develop a common position on road pricing in European Cities.
• To inform and support the national and European policy debate on road pricing.
• To take a co-ordinated approach to demonstration and research efforts in road pricing.
• To disseminate the experienced gained to other cities in Europe who are considering road pricing in order to speed up the process of wider implementation.

The EURoPrice network works also with other networks and projects to disseminate information and experiences. This will contribute to the development of European policy on transport pricing and other associated activities.

IMPRINT-EUROPE - IMplementing Pricing Reform IN Transport is a thematic network which sets out to promote the implementation of fair and efficient transport pricing. IMPRINT-EUROPE aims to:

• bring together policy-makers, operators, researchers and other stakeholders in order to promote the implementation of fair and efficient transport prices.
• organise five high profile, international seminars where the needs of policy-makers and the findings of research will be synthesised and debated.
• produce high quality reports summarising research and putting forward recommendations on how to implement the required pricing reforms.

The implementation of fair and efficient prices will encourage changes in transport behaviour in order to exploit the least-cost form of transport, technological innovation in vehicle and engine production and improvements in operational and managerial efficiency including better inter-modal solutions. Therefore, by providing a forum for debating the key issues in implementing pricing reforms and by facilitating the dissemination and exploitation of research findings, the project will directly support the development of sustainable, economically efficient and safe transport systems.