Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This is a very simple solution that would have neither acceptability, nor collecting
problems. The main problem is that it has to be fulfilled that the city councils spend these
funds only for public transit. It should be legislated in order to achieve this matter.
Office and Retail Fee
If retail and business centers are well communicated through different means of
transport, the landlord as well as the tenant are benefited by the opportunities they
have. Therefore, they should be asked to contribute to the infrastructure.
For that sake it is proposed to establish a fee where the companies or stores
settled within a perimeter of 1,000 m from the transport station contribute to the
transport infrastructure's operational costs or exchanging it by their employees'
monthly transport ticket (100% or 50% of it). It would have a very good social
acceptability because the fee would not be paid directly by the society and the
companies located close to stations would receive a better amount of clients, they
would contribute to improve the environmental quality of the cities, they would also
diminish their employees' transportation costs, promoting the use of sustainable
transport and improving their corporate image. Likewise, the benefits captured by
this measure would be transferred directly to the transport authority and thereby
they would be directly reinvested only in transport infrastructure.
In Madrid some private and public companies already offer this incentive, for
example the
Transport Administration in Madrid
, most of the public administrations
in Madrid city and in the region of Madrid as well, that provide to their employees
the annual transport ticket. Some national ministries and public organisms like the
Universidad Complutense
give this incentive.
Finally, very few private companies provide this incentive, around five or ten and
most of them are small companies.
Private Transport Fee
A similar measure has been proposed in London, Sydney and Perth, but through
taxes to parking lots in business centers. These types of initiatives are very questioned
although they may raise an important amount of money as well as may diminish the
use of private transport.
It is proposed that if people that live in an area benefited by public transport still prefer
to use private transport (at least that their condition turns it to be indispensable), they should
be penalized through a private vehicle fee registered in that property. The objective is
to reduce the number of cars per family, improving each home's mobility.
It seems to be a very complicated measure to establish because it has to be
defined a border between the zones that are benefited by public transport from the
ones that are not. It seems to be a measure with low social acceptability. Nevertheless,
it would diminish each family's number of vehicles as well as promoting either
