Do Gothenburg’s Car Drivers Care About Congestion Charges?

Abstract

This paper analyses the effect of the controversial congestion charge in Gothenburg – both the implementation in 2013 and the increase of the congestion charge in 2015. Our focus lies on the commuters; therefore the study is limited to peak-hour traffic which suffers from the most severe congestion. The data sets that we use are divided since The Municipality of Gothenburg handled the data before and after the implementation on the 1st of January, 2013, and The Swedish Transport Agency collected data after the implementation and after the charge increase on the 1st of January, 2015. The models used are log-linear OLS models with streets and months identified as fixed entities. The results show that the implementation of the congestion charge had a negative effect on traffic demand but that it diminishes with time. The price increase did not affect traffic demand significantly; however it might have slowed down the otherwise rapid increase in traffic flow in Gothenburg. The main contribution of this study is deeper knowledge about the peak-hour traffic demand in response to the congestion charge in Gothenburg.