Integrated access control and road charging scheme

Summary

Access controls and road user charging encourage citizens to alter their mobility behaviour and opt for sustainable options rather than the private car.

Implementing sustainable mobility

With the general objective of confronting the city’s high levels of congestion and pollution, measures were designed aimed at the management of private demand, including innovative pricing scheme based on the mobility credits model, and the introduction of electronic access controls in the existing limited traffic zone (LTZ) in the historic city centre.

As well as encouraging changes in citizens’ mobility habits, such pricing schemes also generate financial resources for the municipality to invest in new mobility interventions.

Specific aims were to:

• enlarge the existing access control scheme to the limited traffic zone in the historical city centre;
• apply the mobility credits pricing scheme in the historical centre for freight distribution;
• expand the existing BLUAREA pricing policy; and
• carry out a study of congestion and pollution charge options for application in the city centre.
   

Progress

The pricing scheme, in this first application to the freight distribution sector, initially involved defining the mobility needs of shops, offices and commercial companies operating in the historical city centre. The idea is to give an initial budget of credits to every economic operator, in accordance with their needs, to be spent on freight distribution using vehicles either owned by the operator or by professional hauliers and couriers. Once the starting budget has been fully used, the economic operators may buy additional credits from the municipality.

Access control equipment such as automatic number plate recognition technology, records each vehicle entering the controlled zone, allowing the implementation of a mixed pricing/enforcement scheme, depending on the users. Residents are entitled to enter after paying a yearly subscription fee; frequent goods vehicles are permitted to enter at specified times, depending on the accumulation of sufficient mobility credits or on payment of access charges; occasional goods vehicles will be allowed to enter at specified times subject to a road charge scheme; and other users are not permitted to enter and are fined for doing so.

Outcomes

• The access control system resulted in a reduction in the number of vehicles accessing the historical centre limited traffic zone.
• A parking pricing scheme was launched.
• A pricing scheme based on mobility credits was applied to freight distribution in the historical centre limited traffic zone.