​ Demand Management Strategies in Dense Urban Areas

Demand-oriented solutions, have been increasingly considered as viable strategies for improved outcomes in cities. In contrast, supply-oriented solutions (typically driven by road capacity expansion) are becoming less attractive and feasible, owing to their high costs and low impact. In the last decade, a new type of instrument has attracted much interest in the transportation community: tradable mobility credits schemes (TCS). TCS can be seen as a hybrid instrument that combines economic and quantity control. As in economic strategies, the central authority (CA) charges travelers for the congestion/emission caused. The charges are expressed in terms of permits or credits, which have a corresponding monetary value. As in the quantity policies, the CA sets the traffic demand to be served by providing credits. Travelers can save credits and benefit from selling unused ones. As in a cap-and-trade system, the CA can gradually decrease the number of credits allocated (the cap) to steer the system towards a desired goal. Tradable credits approach has been successfully applied in environmental control, such as forestry and acid rain regulation. Furthermore, in 2005 the European Union launched the Emission-Trading-Scheme, a cap-and-trade system aimed at curtailing greenhouse gas emissions by controlling the carbon market. Compared to the other demand management strategies, TCSs are more equity-oriented and have better acceptability chances, putting them under the focus of the research community in the last decade. This stream of research focuses on different strategies for demand management as well as the design of a more practical TCS using state-of-the-art and large-scale simulation environment. It is also planned to implement TCS mechanism in the closed environment of the EC JRC Ispra site in Italy to manage morning commute problem and promote sustainable mobility.