A research on the applicability of pricing in Istanbul: Eminonu pricing model

Tıkanıklık fiyatlandırmasının İstanbul için uygunluğunun araştırılması: Eminönü fiyatlandırma modeli

Abstract

Congestion is one of the major problems of metro-politan cities. This problem arises when the increase in demand for travelling with private vehicles sur-passes the capacity of the road network. Travel de-mand management strategies are developed to re-strict the excessive demand without making expen-sive infrastructure investments. Demand manage-ment strategies can be classified in two main groups: Fiscal and non-fiscal strategies. Fiscal strategies are implemented to regulate the demand by arranging taxes or tariffs collected for the usage of the transportation infrastructure or facilities. Non-fiscal strategies aim to adjust the demand for private vehicle usage without imposing any financial measures on individuals. Congestion pricing is one of the most powerful fiscal strategies. By definition, congestion pricing is collecting fixed or variable amount of tolls from private vehicle users for the usage of a road or a road network. For variable toll implementations, the amount can be determined ac-cording to units such as distance covered or conges-tion level of the facility. Any driver considering en-tering a congested road will base his/her decision solely on the costs he/she is going to bear. However, entering an already congested road will impose ex-ternal costs on other drivers currently on the road, as well. The last vehicle entering an already con-gested road will increase not only the travel times but also the fuel consumption and emissions of all other vehicles. In the case when natural equilibrium occurs, although abovementioned costs already ex-ist, none of the users are paying the price of creating them. In order to make the users pay the price of the external costs they create, marginal cost pricing is implemented. The price collected by marginal cost pricing implementations is named the optimum price and its value is equal to the external costs that users create. Congestion pricing can be modelled by using two different modelling approaches: Time-independent static models and time-dependent dy-namic models. Time-independent static models de-liberately ignore the hourly changes in the traffic parameters and accept an unchanged relationship between parameters of traffic throughout the analy-sis. On the contrary, time-dependent dynamic mod-els include the time dimension to the analysis and model the implementation with regard to departure time, as well as route choice. The origins of dynam-ic models is the bottleneck model which is originally developed by Nobel Prize winner researcher Wil-liam Vickrey. In this study, a congestion pricing scheme is mod-elled for Eminonu, in order to evaluate the applica-bility of congestion pricing to Istanbul. Among all the districts of Istanbul, Eminonu have unique prop-erties. First of all, the district which is a peninsula has clearly defined borders, easing the access con-trol issues. Moreover, due to the small surface area of Eminonu, the road network is relatively small and less complicated. As the host of many historic, rec-reational and governmental areas, severe conges-tion is routinely experienced on the road network of the district. The focal point of the modelling studies for Eminonu is the determination of optimum price which is calculated according to the principles of the static models of congestion pricing. Analysis of the equilibrium conditions is made possible by ob-taining, average cost, marginal cost and demand curves representing the whole district. In practice, marginal cost pricing may sometimes be ignored or not preferred to be implemented by decision makers. Thus, an evaluation of other pricing regimes differ-ent than optimum price is also included in the study. Furthermore, the gains, losses and related measura-ble economic quantities for the individuals are also calculated. The optimum price is calculated as 0.58 TL/km. It is expected to record a decrease close to 16% in the usage of private vehicles by collecting this toll. Maximum revenue can be generated by col-lecting a toll of 5.042 TL/km which reduces the number of private vehicle users more than 76%.Futhermore by deploying the average travel-ling distance of 5.32 km in Eminonu road network, per km prices can be converted into constant prices. Consequently, the optimum price is equal to 3.09 TL in constant values. This study provides valuable information for the ap-plicability of congestion pricing to Istanbul. Obvi-ously, when a congestion pricing scheme is intro-duced significant amount of individuals will start to travel without their private vehicles and considera-ble amount of money will be collected In order to secure sustainability and acceptability of the scheme, the revenue collected from the individuals must be returned to the system in favour of users who are worse-off by congestion pricing.

Özet

Trafik tıkanıklığı modern kent yaşantısının önemli sorunlarından biridir. Özellikle büyük metropol-lerde, önemli ulaştırma yatırımları yapılarak bu soruna çözüm bulunmaya çalışılmaktadır. Trafik tıkanıklığı sorunun çözümünde yatırımlar kadar etkili olan uygulamalar arasında, ulaşım talebinin parasal veya parasal olmayan yöntemlerle sınırlanması da yer almaktadır. Bu yöntemlerin en önemlilerinden birisi tıkanıklık fiyatlandırmasıdır. Bu uygulama, Londra ve Stockholm kentlerinde-ki başarılı örnekler ile beraber son yıllarda dünyadaki popülaritesini arttırmaktadır. Tıkanıklık fi-yatlandırması, ciddi trafik tıkanıklığı sorunları yaşanan İstanbul için de uygun bir yöntem olmasına rağmen, yoğun nüfus ve plansız yapılaşmanın sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan karmaşık ulaşım ağının, uygulanabilirlik açısından çeşitli güçlükler yaratması söz konusudur. Bu çalışmada, tıkanıklık fiyat-landırmasının İstanbul’da uygulanabilirliğinin araştırılması amacıyla, eski Eminönü ilçesinde ger-çekleştirilecek bir kordon fiyatlandırması uygulaması için bir fiyatlandırma modeli geliştirilmiştir. Eminönü, ev sahipliği yaptığı tarihi ve kültürel varlıklar ile kentin önemli bölgelerinden biridir. Bölgenin küçük yüzölçümü ve düşük yerleşik nüfusuna karşılık sürekli ziyaret edilen bir yer olması, bölgede ciddi trafik tıkanıklığı ve otopark sıkıntıları ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Fiyatlandırma modeli, sosyal optimumunu sağlamak için uygulanan optimum fiyatın yanı sıra, farklı fiyatlar için de değer-lendirmeler yapmaya olanak veren bir modeldir. Modelden elde edilen sonuçlar, iyi planlanmış bir fiyatlandırma uygulaması ile yalnızca trafik tıkanıklığı sorununa çözüm üretilmeyeceği, ciddi dü-zeyde ilave maddi kaynak da yaratılacağını ortaya koymaktadır.