[sustran] Re: Jakarta plans "Odds and Evens" license plate traffic rationing

[Anjali Mahendra]

Hello all,



I'm late to this discussion, but Carlos, Lloyd, and Cornie have already
made some of the points I wanted to bring up, about:

-          Evidence available from Mexico City regarding purchases of
older, more polluting vehicles to get around the Hoy No Circula restriction
(to Cornie’s point)

-          The fact that Bogotá does switch around the numbers under the
Pico y Placa scheme and restricts 4 numbers a day (to Lloyd’s point); and

-          Really, such bans on vehicle circulation are not effective *in
the long term *-- even if congestion does perceptibly reduce on weekdays
when the bans are in effect and gets worse on weekends, as in Mexico City.
As Cornie and others have said, to manage the growth and use of private
vehicles more effectively, some mix of quotas, parking pricing, and
congestion pricing (if feasible) must be considered.  Of course, the
revenues can be a handy funding source for public transport maintenance and
improvement.



Todd laid out a useful list of references to which I’d like to add this
paper from 2008:

Mahendra, Anjali. (2008). *Vehicle Restrictions in Four Latin American
Cities: Is Congestion Pricing Possible?* Transport Reviews, Volume 28,
Issue 1, pp 105-133.



In it, I explored the possibility of replacing the vehicle restrictions in
four Latin American cities (Bogotá, São Paulo, Mexico City, and Santiago)
with congestion pricing, and surveyed experts in each city about the idea.
I can send a PDF to anyone who’d like to see it.  The above issues are
discussed in detail in the paper.



Carlos, you mentioned that you are currently evaluating the schemes in
several Latin American cities; so you might find this useful.



Regards,
Anjali



------

Anjali Mahendra, Ph.D.

Strategy Head – Research and Practice



EMBARQ India
WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE



* *

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Carlosfelipe Pardo* <carlosfpardo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 5:19 AM
Subject: [sustran] Re: Jakarta plans "Odds and Evens" license plate traffic
rationing
To: Cornie Huizenga <cornie.huizenga at slocatpartnership.org>
Cc: sustran-discuss <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>

I would like to go back to the odd-even discussion. This is a
beautiful topic. I'll extend my initial remark based on what Cornie,
Lloyd and Eric have noted:

1- Regarding in-depth studies as Cornie asks, the UNAM in México did a
very useful study in 2009 of the actual impact of their "Hoy no
Circula", now more than 25 years after its initial (an ineffective)
implementation, showing that it has had all the negative effects one
can imagine (more pollution, more congestion, more motorization).
Bogotá (now on its seventh version of its own Pico y placa) does
studies of the impact of the scheme but they are government-led and
not entirely useful (they try to see only the effect on traffic
speeds, and try to model the "new and improved version" of the pico y
placa. In any event, after going back and forth between
4-numbers-per-day, odd-even (this is the current version), full-day,
peak-hours and a good set of variants in between, it is clear that the
city is now more congested and that people have bought new and used
cars to evade the restriction (nobody has been able to point clearly
to the exact linkage of the increase in motorization with pico y
placa, since GDP is also increasing and other cities in the country
also have their own variants of the restriction).

2- Lloyd's 3 rules are very useful, and two of them (4-numbers-per-day
and switching the numbers once a year) have been implemented in
Bogotá. The second one (linking registration with home address) has
not been implemented but it would be interesting to see if that would
have an effect (I think they haven't done so due to the operational
difficulties of implementing it). Bogotá has also used various other
schemes (banning the choosing of license plate numbers, applying the
restriction on specific hours of the day, applying it differentially
to cars registered outside of the city with a longer restriction).
These have either been smartly made ineffectual (i.e. car dealers
buying full "lots" of license plates so they can end up giving the
client the option to choose) or have had positive effects but in other
arenas (i.e. greater revenue for car registrations in Bogotá, but no
reduced traffic in practice).

3- Eric's point about some groups of people needing the car more than
others is an oft-quoted reason for not having the restriction, or for
trying to differentiate users somehow. Again, Bogotá does have
differential applications, though mostly stupid: the groups who do not
apply to the restriction are diplomats, ambulances, armored cars, 4x4
(yes, pickup trucks do NOT have pico y placa) and others. Of course,
what this has done is that car dealers have increased their sales in
4x4's (and have used the restriction as a basis for their
advertisements), or people have started getting armored cars. This,
indirectly, is favoring people with higher income. I would definitely
favor a scheme where other groups would be able to use their cars for
work purposes (whenever they can prove that a tricycle or public
transport simply cannot be used for that purpose), but again I would
like to see how this can be implemented without "smart" people getting
away with it.

I welcome the full debate on plate restrictions from everyone,
especially since I am currently evaluating the schemes of cities in
Latin America which have had it for five or more years (Mexico,
Santiago, Bogotá, Medellín, and more recently Quito, La Paz, 9 cities
in Colombia...), and have found no proof that plate restrictions work
at all as a structural, other than for the first few months after
being implemented. My opinion is that a plate restriction is like
Sudoku: it makes people think they're smart, but what it actually does
is make them spend time on something which is really useless in the
end when they should rather be doing other stuff (the full opinion, in
Spanish, here:
http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/bogota/ARTICULO-WEB-NEW_NOTA_INTERIOR-11967520.html
).

Best regards,

Carlos.

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 12:51 AM, Todd Alexander Litman <litman at vtpi.org
>wrote:


> I agree that vehicle restrictions based on license plate numbers are
> probably not very effective at reducing air pollution since many trips
> (errands, shopping, social visits, etc.) are simply deferred from one day
> to
> another, and they are economically inefficient because they lack
> flexibility, for example, if a residents really needs to make a trip
during
> their no-drive day. Some objective research does indicate that vehicle
> license plate restrictions applied over long periods encourages some
> households to purchase additional vehicles, which where often cheap, old,
> high polluting cars. See:
> Haynes Goddard (1997), "Using Tradable Permits to Achieve Sustainability
in
> the World's Large Cities," Environmental and Resource Economics, Vol. 10,
> 1997, pp. 63-99; at
> http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023%2FA%3A1026444113237.
>
> There are much more effective and efficient ways to reduce urban vehicle
> travel, some of which generate revenues that can be used to improve
> alternative modes. The best is simply to efficiently price parking and
> eliminate minimum parking requirements. As Don Shoup says, free parking is
> a
> fertility drug for cars. As much as possible on-street parking should be
> priced, parking should be unbundled (rented separately from building
space,
> so apartment residents only pay for the number of parking spaces they
> need),
> and employers should price or cash out commuter parking (so commuters who
> don't drive receive a cash bonus equivalent to the value of free parking
> provided to motorists).
>
> Road space reallocation (also called "complete streets" policies), with
> wider sidewalks and improved crosswalks, bike lanes and bus lanes, and
> lower
> design speeds on urban arterials, give efficient modes priority over
> automobile traffic. Restrictions on vehicle ownership, such as Singapore's
> lottery, and congestion pricing such as in London and Stockholm, are good
> but more difficult to implement.
>
>
> For information see:
>
> "Vehicle Restrictions" chapter of the Online TDM Encyclopedia
> (www.vtpi.org/tdm )
>
> Paul Barter (2010) Parking Policy in Asian Cities, Asian Development Bank
> (www.adb.org); at
> http://beta.adb.org/publications/parking-policy-asian-cities. Also see
> www.slideshare.net/PaulBarter/barter-for-adb-transport-forum-2010.
>
> Beijing Transport Demand Management (www.tdm-beijing.org) aims to identify
> and evaluate suitable non-technical measures to reducing vehicle traffic
> and
> associated pollution emissions.
>
> GIZ (2011), Changing Course in Urban Transport- An Illustrated Guide,
> Sustainable Urban Transport Project (www.sutp.org) Asia and GIZ; at
> www.sutp.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2825.
>
> ITDP (2011), Better Street, Better Cities: A Guide To Street Design In
> Urban
> India, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (www.itdp.org);
> at www.itdp.org/betterstreets.
>
> ITDP (2012), Transforming Urban Mobility In Mexico: Towards Accessible
> Cities Less Reliant on Cars, Institute for Transportation and Development
> Policy (www.mexico.itdp.org); at
>
>
http://mexico.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/Transforming-Urban-Mobility-in-Mex
> ico.pdf.
>
> Santhosh Kodukula (2011), Raising Automobile Dependency: How to Break the
> Trend?, GIZ Sustainable Urban Transport Project (www.sutp.org); at
> www.sutp.org/dn.php?file=TD-RAD-EN.pdf.
>
> Todd Litman (2011), "Transport Pricing Reforms for More Efficient Cities:
> Options and Impacts," GEF-SUTP Quarterly Newsletter, Vol. 2/5; at
> http://sutpindia.com/docs/SUTPNewsletter_january2012.pdf.
>
> Frederik Strompen, Todd Litman and Daniel Bongardt (2012), Reducing Carbon
> Emissions through TDM Strategies - A Review of International Examples,
> Transportation Demand Management in Beijing
> (http://tdm-beijing.org/index.php) GIZ and the Beijing Transportation
> Research Centre; at
>
>
http://tdm-beijing.org/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=category&cid=1
> 2&Itemid=9&lang=en; direct link at
> http://tdm-beijing.org/files/International_Review.pdf; summary at
> http://tdm-beijing.org/files/International_Review_Executive_Summary.pdf.
>
> UTTIPEC (2010), Parking Policy as a Travel Demand Management Strategy,
> Delhi
> Development Authority (www.uttipec.nic.in); at
> www.uttipec.nic.in/writereaddata/linkimages/7460355562.pdf.
>
> Lloyd Wright (2009), Environmentally Sustainable Transport For Asian
> Cities:
> A Sourcebook, United Nations Centre for Regional Development
> (www.uncrd.org.jp); at
>
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/uncrd/unpan031844.pdf
> .
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Todd Litman
> Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)
> litman at vtpi.org
> facebook.com/todd.litman
> Phone & Fax 250-360-1560
> 1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA
> "Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"
>
>>> Quoting Lloyd Wright <lwright at vivacities.org>:
>>
>> > Dear all,
>> >
>> > There ways to make license plate restrictions work without significant
>> > purchases of second vehicles.  However, the simple odd-even scheme as
>> > proposed in Jakarta is perhaps the most ineffective.
>> >
>> > To discourage additional car purchases (in order to bypass the
>> > restrictions), a city can:
>> >
>> > 1. Restrict four numbers per day (meaning one would have to purchase
>> > more
>> > than two cars to drive every day)
>> > 2. Do not permit the same ending number for any vehicle registered by
>> > the
>> > same person or for a vehicle at the same address
>> > 3. Change the days associated with each number at least once per year.
>> >
>> > License plate restrictions are more realistic for developing cities
than
>> > more complex TDM mechanisms such as congestion pricing.  To be
>> > effective,
>> > though, mechanisms as suggested should be implemented that can
>> > discourage
>> > the purchasing of additional vehicles.  And of course, a
>> > well-functioning
>> > vehicle registration system is required.
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> >
>> > Lloyd
>> >
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sustran-discuss-bounces+litman=vtpi.org at list.jca.apc.org
> [mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+litman=vtpi.org at list.jca.apc.org] On
> Behalf
> Of Cornie Huizenga
> Sent: December-17-12 6:40 PM
> To: Carlosfelipe Pardo
> Cc: sustran-discuss
> Subject: [sustran] Re: Jakarta plans "Odds and Evens" license plate
traffic
> rationing
>
> Hi Carlos - I have heard a lot of anecdotal evidence on people buying
> additional cars but have not really seen hard numbers on this. Obviously
> what the governor of Jakarta is most interested in is the number of cars
on
> the road on a given day and not the number of cars owned.  There are hard
> numbers available that such a odd-even scheme reduces the numbers of cars
> actually on the road on a given day and that it does increase average
> speeds.  It is good to see that additional investments are being made in
> public transport.
>
> My preference would however be a vehicle quota with the auction proceeds
> being used to improve public transport. Currently 400 new cars are being
> registered in greater Jakarta area (
> http://www.indii.co.id/news_daily_detail.php?id=4164) resulting in annual
> 144,000 new cars.  Having a quota of 50% of that number (70,000) with an
> average auction price of $7,500 would generate $ 525,000,000 per year in
> income for the city and would enable it to implement   a high quality
> public transport system as long as it does not succumbs to the idea of
> having a metro.   Various feasibility studies have also been carried out
on
> congestion charging in Jakarta - this could be used to regulate the use of
> existing vehicles.
>
> All in all a more sustainable approach than the rather primitive odd-even
> scheme which does not generate any revenues.
>
> Cornie
>

> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 11:36 PM, Carlosfelipe Pardo <
> carlosfpardo at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Based on the experience of every city where this scheme has been
> > applied, I wouldn't be suprised if the amount of car sales (used and
> > old) increase substantially once it's implemented...
> >
>>


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