CONGESTION PRICING Trondheim toll ring developing sectors

CONGESTION PRICING:

Trondheim toll ring developing

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration is planning to rework the Trondheim toll 'ring' system. Since Sept 91 this north Atlantic coast city of about 250,000 people has had a toll 'ring' or cordon around its central business area so that all vehicles entering the area in business hours have to pay a toll. The planned rework of the Tronhdeim toll ring will divide the central area into four sectors with tolls levied for moving between these sectors in the central area in rush hours. Five extra toll plazas will be built. At the same time the existing 850 MHz Micro Design e-toll system will likely be replaced with a 5.8GHz system conforming to the new European CEN278 standard.

Tore Hoven, senior traffic engineer in the Trondheim region and the man in charge of the project is presently in the Washington area working at the Federal Highway Administration Office of Highway Policy and we interviewed him there. Hoven told us the 'ring' system is now well accepted in Norway but needs refinement.

The ring tolls in Trondheim are levied at 12 plazas that control all entryways into the central area which measures about 4km by 6km and contains about 40,000 of the population, many of the main businesses and institutions, and the harbor. Only one of the toll plazas is manned, and 90% of users have electronic transponders (marketed as 'Q-FREE' tags) which debit motorists at highway speed. Occasional users pay via an automatic coin machine or by magstripe card swipe at barriered lanes. E-tag users in the Q-FREE system pay K4 to K8 (60c to $1.20) depending on their time of entry and whether they have prepaid, or pay later. E-tag users are only charged for one entry per hour and are charged for a maximum of 75 entries/month, so that people who live close by the ring or whose business requires them to make very frequent crossings do not have huge toll bills. Entries 6am to10am are tolled at a rate K2 (30c) or 25% to 50% higher than entries10am to 5pm. Outside the hours 5am to 6pm and weekends there are no tolls. Coin or credit card payment is K10 ($1.50). All numbers so far are tolls for light vehicles. Vehicles over 3.5t pay double.

Business OK: Contrary to the fears of some businesses inside the ring, the imposition of tolls has not hurt the economy there. Indeed the area has seen major restoration and improvement of previously boarded-up properties, though Hoven says similar economic revival has happened elsewhere in the country in places without ring tolling, so he doesn't claim it is all the result of the better traffic conditions. He prefers to claim the ring toll has "done no economic harm and has been of some economic help, though the extent of the economic help is difficult gauge precisely because other factors intervene."

Trondheim is perhaps the world's first application of area congestion pricing since the toll structure provides disincentives to car use in the area in business hours and especially during the morning peak. There are also toll rings in operation in Oslo and Bergen (the 1st and 2nd cities) and in Singapore, but none of these are yet structured to price peak hour use at a premium. The ring tolls of Trondheim produced a 10% reduction in central area traffic during toll hours and an 8% increase outside toll hours, for an overall decrease of 4%, according to figures supplied by Hoven for 1990 to 1993. There was some increase in transit use. Hoven emphasizes however that the first stage of the toll ring was designed principally as a revenue-raising mechanism, to fund a large program of transport improvements, and only secondarily as a road or area pricing scheme, so it is not structured fully to fight congestion. K2b ($300m) is being spent on new roads in Trondheim, most notably a triangle-plan system of 4-lane urban expressways on all sides of the central area. There are long sections underground to gain political acceptance, together with a number of short 'missing link' connectors to ease movement. Upgraded bus services began and the first of the three planned expressways opened around the time of the ring toll, so it is difficult to distinguish cause-and-effect in changing traffic numbers.

Hoven says that he was chosen to set up the toll ring because of his familiarity with the electronics, but he says the job was about 90% politics and 10% engineering. "The electronic tags worked perfectly. We have really had no problems with the system even at the beginning. Most of the work was gaining public support." They established a special newspaper to 'sell' the system, produced a slapstick video, among many PR efforts. The city and county government supported the system from the beginning but before it opened local public opinion was still quite hostile — 72% opposed according to a survey. Two months after the start of the ring toll opposition was 48% and today the opponents are 36%.

The law under which toll rings can be imposed in Norway requires that the revenues be used exclusively for transport improvements and Hoven says local political support depends mainly on the better services the system buys, especially the new roads (Message to the American congestion-pricers — you have to offer increased highway capacity along with the congestion tolling!) Trondheim's ring presently produces about $25m profit a year that is used to fund new roads and bus service.

New system : The proposed extension of the system is designed to toll more travel within the central area. At present a third of the motorists within the city avoid any entries through the ring during toll hours and therefore don't pay tolls. The plan is to institute toll points within the ring to charge for inside-central area road use. In the next generation system there will be a capability to increase and decrease e-toll rates progressively in small frequent steps in place of the "on the dot" imposition of the toll at 5am and its removal at 6pm, eliminating the dash to make it in before 5am, and the wait-around just before 6pm.

Hoven says it has been easier to gain acceptance of city tolls in Norway because of the huge number of tolled bridges and tunnels in the country — made necessary by the rugged topography of fjords and mountains and the tradition of funding them through municipal corporations that borrow against future toll revenues. He says that there's huge international interest in Norwegian ring tolling and a constant stream of visitors and inquires to handle. (Contact Tore Hoven GMU 703 993 1577 or FHWA 202 366 9238)