Urban car use causes problems such as congestion and environmental pollution. Pricing policy is an efficient and effective tool to reduce congestion, but there is insufficient support for taxes, and forms of remuneration are expensive.
Against this background, research project U-SMILE (Urban Smart Measures and Incentives for quality of Life Enhancement*) designed and evaluated experiments with budget-neutral blends of tax and remuneration, including tradeable peak credits. Eonomists, psychologists, traffic engineers, en policy analysts joined forces: The U-SMILE consortium was a collaboration between researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, two departments of TU Delft, University of Groningen, and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, in consultation with a number of urban partners.
The results of this research projects are presented in a special issue of Tijdschrijft Vervoerswetenschap (in Dutch) and can be found here.
This is a translated re-post from VerDuS
October 2021
*U-SMILE is a a SURF (Smart Urban Regions of the Future) project, which is part of van VerDuS (Connecting Sustainable Cities).