Travel mode choice and impact of fuel tax in Beijing

Abstract As an international metropolitan area undergoing rapid development, Beijing is facing a sharp rise in the volume of motor vehicles and mobility, which has become the major contributor to the air pollution in this city. This is evident in the recent ranking of Beijing as the most congested as well as the most polluted city in the world by the Millennium Cities Database. Local government has adopted a battery of policies to reduce these problems. In this study, we investigate the impact of increasing the fuel tax on travel mode choice based on a large sample of travel survey data. We estimate that if the price of gasoline increased to a moderate level, 11.53 RMB/liter, the total car volume on the road would be reduced by 7 per cent, which corresponds to a reduction in CO2 emissions of 786,002.4 tons, or about 8 per cent of vehicular emissions from private cars and company-owned cars in Beijing.

[1]  M. Espey.  Gasoline demand revisited: an international meta-analysis of elasticities , 1998 .

[2]  Jie He,et al.  Simulations of pollutant dispersion at toll plazas using three-dimensional CFD models , 2009 .

[3]  J. Hao,et al.  [Calculating emissions of exhaust particulate matter from motor vehicles with PART5 model]. , 2002, Huan jing ke xue= Huanjing kexue.

[4]  Ken Pease,et al.  Prospective hot-spotting - The future of crime mapping? , 2004 .

[5]  K. Train.  Halton Sequences for Mixed Logit , 2000 .

[6]  J. Hao,et al.  Controlling Vehicular Emissions in Beijing During the Last Decade , 2006 .

[7]  Yu Xue-chun.  Variation characteristics of PM_(2.5) concentration and its relationship with PM_(10) and TSP in Beijing , 2002 .

[8]  J. Watts,et al.  China: the air pollution capital of the world , 2005, The Lancet.

[9]  Jean-Claude Thill,et al.  TRIP DISTRIBUTION FORECASTING WITH MULTILAYER PERCEPTRON NEURAL NETWORKS: A CRITICAL EVALUATION , 2000 .

[10]  IMPACT ANALYSIS OF CAR-RELATED TAXES ON FUEL CONSUMPTION IN JAPAN , 2003 .

[11]  Fredrik Carlsson,et al.  Valuing wetland attributes: an application of choice experiments , 2003 .

[12]  T. Sterner.  Fuel taxes : An important instrument for climate policy , 2007 .

[13]  Moshe Ben-Akiva,et al.  Recent Evidence on Car Cost and Time Elasticities of Travel Demand in Europe , 2001 .

[14]  Xin Deng,et al.  Economic Costs of Motor Vehicle Emissions in China: A Case Study , 2006 .

[15]  Mark Lawrence,et al.  Evaluation of emissions and air quality in megacities , 2008 .

[16]  K. Small,et al.  Fuel Efficiency and Motor Vehicle Travel: The Declining Rebound Effect , 2007, Controlling Automobile Air Pollution.

[17]  Gunnar S. Eskeland,et al.  Is demand for polluting goods manageable? an econometric study of car ownership and use in Mexico , 1997 .

[18]  R. Mendelsohn,et al.  The effectiveness of gasoline taxation to manage air pollution , 2001 .

[19]  Wang Wei,et al.  Source Identification of Ambient PM_(2.5) in Beijing , 2005 .

[20]  F. Creutzig,et al.  Climate change mitigation and co-benefits of feasible transport demand policies in Beijing , 2009 .

[21]  M. N. Eltony.  Transport Gasoline Demand In Canada , 1993 .

[22]  Spencer Ch.  The Utility of Hotspot Mapping for Predicting Spatial Patterns of Crime , 2008 .

[23]  T. Dinan,et al.  Clearing the air: The costs and consequences of higher CAFE standards and increased gasoline taxes , 2005, Controlling Automobile Air Pollution.

[24]  J Vivier.  MILLENNIUM CITIES DATABASE FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS , 2001 .