GRIN Verlag Städtischer Verkehr und Überfüllung

Diplomarbeit aus dem Jahr 2006 im Fachbereich VWL - Verkehrsökonomie, Note: 2,0, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Südasieninstitut), Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Congestion is an increasing problem in cities worldwide and is, for example, responsible for the slowing down of London's traffic since 1977. Considering the increase in the number of cars in many European countries within the past ten years, it is not surprising that many cities experience the same problem as London. This work deals with the problem of congestion resulting from bottlenecks in urban traffic. Moreover, measures are analyzed that can be used to solve the congestion problem. Besides the costs of congestion, additional private and external costs of a trip are discussed. This analysis comprises a variety of means of transportation and compares the composition of their cost components. A main component of the private costs as well as of the external costs are the congestion costs of car traffic. This emphasizes the car traffic's responsibility for traffic jams. Using the bottleneck-modell, traffic jams are explained through the rational decisions of individuals and it is shown how road pricing leads to a social optimum without traffic jam. Furthermore measures are examined to improve the traffic situation in cities and evaluated regarding their ability to internalize the external effects of a trip. Looking at the traffic policy in three cities worldwide having implemented a road pricing scheme, and one city where the trial to implement road pricing failed, conclusions about the efficiency of the measures analyzed in this paper to improve the urban traffic situation are drawn. I find that levying time depending tolls is sufficient to eliminate traffic jams, but other measures need to be implemented to internalize other external costs of a trip, like a petroleum tax to impute environmental damage caused by a trip.