Institutional and Political Conditions For The Establishment Of Congestion Charging Regimes: A Comparison Of Norwegian And Swedish Experiences

Abstract

In this paper we summarize the knowledge of how toll cordons in Norway have developed the last 20 years. We compare this with the recent development in the Swedish city Stockholm, in order to further elaborate the knowledge of conditions for the establishing of congestion charging regimes in urban areas. The initialization and spreading of toll cordons in Norway is analyzed as a result of the interplay between institutional conditions (legal institutions, procedures and the financial structure urban government is embedded in) and urban political coalitions. Several factors seems crucial for the establishing of toll cordons ; the experience of having a congestion problem; that someone takes leadership in the process; high level of trust among the actors, and the establishing of incentives, i.e, that toll cordons are likely to trigger extraordinary funding from the government or at least that the revenue will not lead to a reduction in such funding. The content of these toll cordons/transport packages has developed over time: • While originally revenue was solely used for road infrastructure, there is a general tendency towards increased investments in public transport. • There is a tendency that these packages have been prolonged, enhanced to new generations, while initially set up for a 15 to 20 years period. However; on important dimension, we can observe continuity rather than change.The revenue is solely used for infrastructure, not operation. • In most packages, there has been an emphasis on large project with strong symbolic power. • Although addressed in the initial phase, such elements as restrictions on car use, parking policy and congestion charging, are not included in the packages when these have passed the political process. In other words: The combination of procedural rules (local consensus) and economic incentives (local competition on scarce state budget) hinders further changes in the transport packages. The economic incentive leads to a decision making situation that induce the actors to focus on “fresh” money for infrastructure purpose. The demand for local agreement leads to a situation where every key actor necessary for such a broad agreement has a veto-position in the decision-making process. This is also an important explanation for the lack of interest and support for road pricing/congestion charging schemes in Norway. Are these hypotheses about important obstacles for congestion charging supported when comparing these cases with the establishing of the congestion charging trial in Sweden? In general that seems to be the case: In the process leading up to the trial in Sweden, they established a situation where local government had few or no cost with the trial and at the same time the use of the revenue was earmarked for the local transport system. Their demand for local agreement was narrowed to an absolute majority, rather than requiring a considerable majority. Hence, the strategy in Stockholm was that of political conflict rather than consensus-building, a strategy that proved successful because the same coalition held majority at both national and city level. In other words: altering these conditions are among the lessons to be learnt for Norwegians or others who want to follow in the foot-steps of Stockholm when it comes to introduction of congestion charging.