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By Vincent Piron Vinci Group, Department of Concessions, Director of Strategy and Development In our previous studies on toll facilities, we pointed out that existing toll systems throughout the world tended to conform with the laws of political acceptability, which happen to differ considerably from economic laws, and in some instances suggest entirely opposite rules of conduct. The parameters that seemed pertinent for rate-setting consisted of the degree of mandatory use of the facility and the frequency of use, with the acknowledgement of toll rates moving lower as the degree of mandatory use rose, an observation in clear contradiction with the laws of supply and demand. Our attention now turns to complementing this qualitative approach by a quantitative assessment which allows decision-makers to measure the level of political dissent resulting from the institution of a toll. One suggestion taking shape calls for focusing on the notion of “discontent”, which seeks to quantify the opportunity loss perceived by an individual denied access to the facility due to an inability to pay the toll. The application of this concept to the urban concession projects conducted by the Vinci Group has yielded promising results, helping generate practical rate-setting principles and offering tangible rationale for political actors. Introduction In a series of articles published over the past three years in the review “Transports” (issues 377, 379, 385 and 393), we have sought to...

VINCENT PIRON Director of Strategy and Development Concessions Department Société Générale d’Entreprise, Graduate of Ponts et Chaussées Engineering School The population shift from the countryside to the towns has been a gradual one, taking place over the last few centuries. But in the last thirty or so years, the reduction in the cost of automobile transport, and the changing industrial scene (growth of tertiary business and the surge in new information and telecommunications technique) have led to a trend reversal. Towns have become ever more extensive, while inner city population densities have fallen. The demarcation line between city and countryside is becoming more difficult to determine. But the processes used to finance infrastructures have not changed, and hence no longer reflect social or economic realities. In particular, the continuing formal separation between the sources of finance for facilities in urban areas, and in interurban areas, has led to chronic lack of resources, both in the city itself and in its immediate suburban or periurban environment. It is time to seek a change in the way facilities are paid for out of the public or private purse, and in how resources are allocated. The combined analysis of cities, travel and current motorway pricing suggests that the approach already in used for the A14 and A46 roads might well be more widely adopted. The allocation to urban facilities of financial resources...

This article follows those published in “Transports” N° 377 and 379, concerning time values and traffic models in urban areas. Introduction The development of the market economy has lead to an increasing proportion of the cost of services being paid for directly by the end user and not by the taxpayer through the public purse. The development of motorway tolls, and of road and crossing tolls in urban areas are in keeping with this logic. With the increase in the costs of infrastructure that results from a better integration of town planning and environmental considerations and the reduction in capital expenditure, it is no longer possible to carry out master plans within a time scale that is compatible with the desired development of the city. Why not then attempt to use the motorists’ desire for mobility to levy a toll which would simultaneously serve two purposes : *  provide a source of finance, in addition to taxes, allowing construction work to be accelerated *  limit the volume of traffic by increasing the cost of private car use and directing the public towards other modes of transport, such as public transport, two-wheeled vehicles or walking ? The first objective presents no problems and has already been applied for centuries. The second, however, encounters two major unknowns : the reaction of the public to the toll and its impact on the...

BY VINCENT PIRON Director of strategy and development, concessions department, Société Générale d’Entreprises (SGE) From the standpoint of living circumstances, the major changes of the last century were the development of cities and the birth of the automobile. The structural change is probably behind us now, but there are still substantial investments to be made in the area of urban transport in France (several hundred billion francs are involved) as in developing countries. But forecasting tools, and especially traffic forecasting models, are not sufficiently reliable. They suffer from three major weaknesses, which are: – the impossibility of representing a traffic jam, – the poor description of customer choice parameters; – the neglecting of long-terms structural effects on the economy and the social landscape. This article will try to demonstrate the danger of over-confident use of computer models, and will suggest a complementary approach, a pragmatic one to take into account social diversity, the willingness of households to pay and the reality of traffic jams. THE STAKES WITH MODELS In December 1982 the LOTI (interior transport orientation law) was passed, providing for an evaluation of major infrastructure projects. In 1984, the field of and modalities for this evaluation were defined. In 1995, the framework-instructions for interurban projects appeared. In parallel, thinking was going on for a method to evaluate urban projects. The problem thus changes in nature and its degree...

How can the profitability of a transport infrastructure be evaluated ? The time used to be when growing traffic demand could be satisfied by building free roads, toll roads, railroads, and airports, all to the same destination, all at the same time, and with no need for overall optimization. Now, the infrastructure in France is at a level where each mode competes with the others. So, finer methods now need to be developed for predicting traffic and evaluating the returns. The key parameter used is time, which places a figure on the generalized profit of a given trip. But time has as many values as there are clientele segments. The value of time has no meaning. Distinctions must be made between the ideas used (guardianship value, revealed values, households’ and companies’ willingness to pay) in as fine and realistic a marketing framework as possible. The values obtained also depend on the mathematical models used to stimulate the use of the infrastructure. These distinctions explain why published time evaluations vary so widely. The whole game of transport “marketing” revolves around treating the user as an individual customer exercising freedom of choice, rather than as the captive of a given mode of...