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What Makes Congestion Pricing a Successful Landing in Indian Cities? Identification of Motivators, Insights, and Inferences for Policy Formulation

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Abstract

Congestion pricing (CP) is considered an effective travel demand management tool to mitigate traffic congestion, after its successful implementation across many cities like Singapore, Tehran, Stockholm, and London. Many cities have not implemented it, and the local governing bodies struggle to introduce CP without creating a negative opinion and public resistance. Therefore, the lack of public acceptability can be responsible for the non-implementation of CP in cities worldwide. Thus, investigating the commuters’ perception towards various benefits influencing commuters’ perception towards CP would be central for successfully implementing CP. The key motivators (benefits) can be promoted at pre-implementation to increase public acceptability. A user perception survey was carried out in Hyderabad—a metropolis in India. We analyzed the perceived importance data from 435 commuters to obtain their prioritization list from their perspective towards the major motivators. The results indicate that travel time reduction was perceived as the most important motivator of CP, followed by road safety improvement, congestion reduction and environmental improvement. The study has suggested policy guidelines to increase the scheme’s reach among car commuters. Policy like Eco Taxation will give governments property rights to the environment, and then they can charge polluters who use the environment as a storehouse. The study has suggested Reliable and Efficient public transport and provision of Separate Cycling and Walking Tracks will increase mass transit ridership and promote active transportation, which will help to reduce private car trips. The study findings can provide a head start to the policymakers for CP implementation.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge and appreciate the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, for awarding Project Grant: P1075 “Congestion Pricing: Planning for optimal strategies and commuters behavioural implications under different pricing schemes” to BITS Pilani in collaboration with Cardiff University and Newcastle University, UK through the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC). We are grateful to UK – India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) for availing us the Additional Grant for this project and carry forward this research collaboration. The authors are thankful to the respondents for their participation and cooperation during the survey.

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  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500078, India

    Prasanta K. Sahu, Naveed Farooz Marazi & Ishant Sharma

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500078, India

    Bandhan Bandhu Majumdar

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  1. Prasanta K. Sahu
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Contributions

Prasant K. Sahu: Conceptualization and Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Project administration, Funding Acquisition. Naveed Farooz Marazi: Data collection, Analysis and interpretation of results, Writing – original draft. Bandhan Bandhu Majumdar: Methodology, Writing – review & editing and Funding Acquisition. Ishant Sharma: Data collection, Analysis and interpretation of results, Writing – original draft.

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Correspondence to Prasanta K. Sahu.

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Sahu, P.K., Marazi, N.F., Majumdar, B.B. et al. What Makes Congestion Pricing a Successful Landing in Indian Cities? Identification of Motivators, Insights, and Inferences for Policy Formulation. Transp. in Dev. Econ. 10, 21 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40890-024-00211-3

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